Afghanistan War Issue Heats Up In U.S. and Europe

The Afghanistan war issue is heating in the U.S. and Europe as the war reaches a fork in the road — and a decision point about the future:

Ron Beasley looks at Obama and Afghanistan against the context of LBJ and Vietnam.

Sen John McCain calls for more troops.

Obama considers a strategy shift.

NRO’s Jim Geraghty says the Democrats never really meant what was said during the campaign on Afghanistan.

Reuters reports that if the U.S. asks Europe for more troops for Afghanistan it may find that Europe balks:

The United States looks ready to ask allies for more troops for Afghanistan, but Europe won’t make any significant further contributions unless they are part of a clear plan for training Afghan security forces.

A leaked extract of an assessment by the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, published by the Washington Post on Monday, made clear that additional forces and a new strategy are needed to defeat the resurgent Taliban…..

More than 40 countries — from Singapore to Iceland — have sent forces to the war under the NATO banner, with Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Poland the largest European contributors, providing 21,000 troops all together.

They are also the chief candidates likely to be identified by Washington to stump up more guns and boots on the ground.

But with public opinion turning sharply against the war, combat deaths rising and the strategy unclear eight years since the Taliban was overthrown, getting any of them to show a deeper combat commitment is going to be an extremely tall order.

“If it’s more troops for combat, then there’s not going to be much willingness,” said Colonel Christopher Langton of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

The Christian Science Monitor has an editorial calling on Europe not to “go wobbly” on Afghanistan:

Germans hold national elections Sunday, and many voters must feel they’re in a bind. Most of the public wants to reduce or pull the country’s 4,200 soldiers from Afghanistan. But leaders of the main parties counter that Germany should hang in there.

Only one party – a smaller one of former communists and far-left sympathizers – demands immediate withdrawal.

This political disconnect makes for a tricky situation, not just in Germany – which has a historic aversion toward troop deployments – but also for NATO, which must preserve unity among its member nations fighting the Taliban.

Wars can’t be maintained without public support at home. That’s seriously eroding in the US and sorely lacking among key NATO allies. Sixty percent of Britons want to reduce troops or withdraw them, according to the Transatlantic Trends survey by the German Marshall Fund; 51 percent of French agree. Italians, too, are dismayed by last week’s suicide-bomb killing of six Italian troops in Kabul.

This explains why Germany, France, and Britain propose a UN-Afghan conference to set new timelines and benchmarks for handing more responsibility to Afghans. The meeting is a way for political leaders to show they hear their citizens, while buying time for the war to succeed.

At the end of the editorial (which should be read in full since this is only an excerpt) the paper declares:

Merkel is likely to win the election. But if NATO wants to avoid “going wobbly” (to use a phrase of Margaret Thatcher’s), she and others – including President Obama – will have to bring their publics around. Or follow them on a risky retreat.