Let the trumpets sound. And let the people rejoice. Let the heralds go forth and proclaim unto the world, we have a brand new bouncing baby strategy. Surely, our future victory in Afghanistan is now assured.

Well, before the heralds all get out of breath perhaps we should pause to consider this new strategy. For it is not as if we didn’t have one before. I’m sure that the Bush administration must have had something posing as a strategy in the six years we have been fighting in Afghanistan. Perhaps it was just hiding in one of Dick Cheney’s undisclosed locations.

But surely President Obama, like the Oracle of Delphi, will do better. Let us consider his vision.

A Regional Approach

For the first time the President will treat Afghanistan and Pakistan as two countries but one challenge. Our strategy focuses more intensively on Pakistan than in the past, calling for more significant increases in U.S. and international support, both economic and military, linked to Pakistani performance against terror. We will pursue intensive regional diplomacy involving all key players in South Asia and engage both countries in a new trilateral framework at the highest levels. Together in this trilateral format, we will work to enhance intelligence sharing and military cooperation along the border and address common issues like trade, energy, and economic development.

Building Capacity and More Training

For three years, the resources that our commanders need for training have been denied because of the war in Iraq. Now, this will change. The 17,000 additional troops that the President decided in February to deploy have already increased our training capacity. Later this spring we will deploy approximately 4,000 more U.S. troops to train the Afghan National Security Forces so that they can increasingly take responsibility for the security of the Afghan people.

In the President’s strategy, for the first time we will fully resource our effort to train and support the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. Every American unit in Afghanistan will be partnered with an Afghan unit, and we will seek additional trainers from our NATO allies to ensure that every Afghan unit has a coalition partner.

Who could possibly be curmudgeonly enough to criticize it? Well, let me be that curmudgeon for a moment. Let’s see, give more help to Pakistan. Well true, we don’t want a nuclear armed state lapsing in chaos so we have a stake in keeping it unified. Of course, that was the same rationale that kept us aiding former President by coup d’état Pervez Musharraf for years, until his resignation last August, and look at how well that worked.

Even worse, nobody seems interested in considering that it was doubtful that al Qaeda would seek to move into Afghanistan as long as it is based in Pakistan and that escalating U.S. drone airstrikes or Special Operations raids on Taliban targets in Pakistan will actually strengthen radical jihadi groups in the country and weaken the Pakistani government’s ability to resist them.

Of course, aiding Pakistan will only be useful insofar as Pakistan actually supports our goals. In that regard the March 26 New York Times article noting that the Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, is worth noting.

Nevertheless the Obama administration is planning billions in new assistance to Pakistan (tripling non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year for five years to be precise), yet the record of previous U.S. military and development aid there has been marred by a lack of accountability and transparency.

And then there is “Our strategy focuses more intensively on Pakistan than in the past,” Well, true enough, if you consider increased Predator drone strikes in the Pakistani-Afghan border region to be an adequate means of focus. That assumes you have adequate intelligence to strike the Taliban and not innocent civilians, something that often not been the case.

And, oh yes, regarding those “17,000 additional troops that the President decided in February to deploy have already increased our training capacity” here is a little secret. That’s not training they are doing; that is combat. As journalist and periodic conservative Robert D. Kaplan writes in the Atlantic:

Afghanistan is about to spike in the news this summer, as 17,000 more marines and soldiers arrive from the United States and pour into the southern Kandahar region. They will advance down roads and river valleys where American troops have never ventured in eight years of war here, and deliberately stir up a hornet’s nest of Taliban strongholds in Mullah Omar’s backyard. This incursion will lead to fighting and attendant casualties perhaps on a scale that Americans have not seen since the early days of the surge in Iraq.

Still, this is a supposedly sharp, new strategy, not a continuation of the Bush strategy, even though, as the New York Times reports, the 21,000 additional American troops that Mr. Obama will have authorized almost precisely matches the original number of additional troops that President Bush sent to Iraq two years ago, bringing the overall American deployment in Afghanistan to about 60,000.

The difference is that President. Obama avoids calling it a “surge” and resisted sending the full reinforcements initially sought by commanders, who at one point had requested a total of 30,000 more American troops. Instead, they are getting 9,000 less.

Still, we should note that President Obama’s aim to reach out across the aisle and seek allies across the aisle is working. The New York Times reports Taliban leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan have decided to set aside their differences and work together in a new offensive in Afghanistan to greet the buildup of American troops. Indeed, bipartisanship, like Joseph’s coat of colors, is a many splendored thing.

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