In this morning’s TNR Online, Steven Metz, a national security analyst at the Strategic Studies Institute (co-located with the U.S. Army War College) compares Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan, announced last night, with Bush 43’s “surge” in Iraq, announced not quite three years ago.
President Obama’s revised strategy for Afghanistan has already been pinned with the “surge” moniker, inevitably leading to comparisons with the 2007 “surge” in Iraq. Certainly there are similarities. Both were part of America’s global conflict with al Qaeda. Both revisions were compelled by a deteriorating security situation. In neither case was there a reason to believe that if the United States continued on its chosen track, the insurgents linked to al Qaeda would break ranks to join the masses of peace-seeking individuals. And both strategic revisions had dual purposes.
