No surge in Afghanistan: now a distinct possibility

... and that's to the good if it's true ...

It seems that there are now some minimalist proposals on the table for Afghanistan:

Since his election in November, President Obama’s promised escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been presumed to be one of the first things his administration would do. Yet the president has ordered reviews of the strategy to be completed before moving ahead with the troop surge: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now says the official decision on Afghanistan will be reached within days.

“There is a realization that some decisions have to be made before the strategic review is completed” according to Gates, who says the president will be choosing from several different options. What was once a doubling of the troops may now be as little as 3,500 additional forces.

Gates also commented on the status of a similar decision in Iraq, saying that the administration had not even begun to review the assorted plans for Iraq. Since the surge forces to be sent to Afghanistan would largely be coming from Iraq, the lack of action from the president suggests he is in no hurry to change the status quo in the assorted wars he inherited.

This is good. Since I have given the Obama administration a difficult time over foreign policy (not that they really care), I should point out when something right is going on.

If, in fact, there is a nominal 3,500-troop increase in Afghanistan on the table as the story above suggests, it means that the President is in fact listening to the military advisors explaining that the war there, as currently constituted, is perhpas unwinnable....