Senior U.S. military commander re: Afghanistan: "We have no strategic plan. We never had one"

[sabra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/12/AR2009011203492.html?hpid=sec-nation

<snip>

Since the November election, Obama has been flooded with dire assessments of the war. A National Intelligence Estimate warned that a reconstituted al-Qaeda leadership, dug into the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border, continues to plan attacks against the United States and Europe. The Bush White House delivered a major review of Afghanistan last month that echoed that judgment, acknowledged that a modern Afghan democracy -- stable and free of extremists -- may be both unattainable and unaffordable, and said that the United States may have to accept trade-offs among priorities.

"We have no strategic plan. We never had one," a senior U.S. military commander said of the Bush years. Obama's first order of business, he said, will be to "explain to the American people what the mission is" in Afghanistan. The officer is one of a number of active-duty and retired officers, senior Obama team members and Bush administration officials interviewed for this article, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the presidential transition.

[eridani]

1. The mission was supposed to have been capturing bin Laden

Instead, that was outsourced to warlords, and our policymakers kept in house the project of dictating Afghanistan's government. Should have been the other way around.