Commentary: An Afghanistan scale-down road map

[unhappycamper]

Commentary: An Afghanistan scale-down road map
Posted on Sunday, March 20, 2011
By E. Thomas McClanahan | The Kansas City Star

On the eve of World War II, our Navy was heavily invested in battleships and poorly prepared for the aircraft-carrier war that actually ensued. Our admirals saw future conflict through a mental frame that became obsolete at Pearl Harbor.

They adhered to a military doctrine that was radically out of sync with the war they found themselves fighting.

Bing West, a former Marine infantryman and former Pentagon official, argues that in Afghanistan, our current doctrine of counterinsurgency is similarly out of sync.

As the title of his recent book bluntly states, we’re fighting “The Wrong War.”

~snip~

The book’s subtitle promises to offer “the way out of Afghanistan,” but what West serves up is less an exit strategy than a way to carry on while our current force is drawn down over time.