Filed by KOSU News in World News.
October 6, 2009

President Obama meets with congressional leaders this afternoon to discuss the next steps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The meeting comes as Obama considers a request for as many as 40,000 more troops from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his top commander in Afghanistan.

The meeting includes lawmakers who represent different sides in the debate over Afghan strategy, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ),who advocates an Iraq-style troop “surge,” and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who has called on the president to take his time and define an exit strategy before sending more troops.

Speaking this morning on NBC’s Today show, McCain said the need for more troops was made “dramatically clear” by the deaths of eight American soldiers over the weekend.

“I know what a winning strategy is,” McCain said. “It worked in Iraq. The situation is deteriorating. We can turn it around in a year to 18 months.” McCain, Obama’s rival for the presidency in the 2008 campaign, said he has great confidence in McChrystal.

The general has said that the eight-year U.S. effort in Afghanistan “will likely result in failure” unless he has more troops.

During a speech in London last week, McChrystal advocated a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, using additional U.S. and NATO troops to capture territory now held by the Taliban, and hold it until the Afghan government and its security forces are strong enough to hold it by themselves.

The U.S. currently has about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan.

McCain’s insistence on more troops puts him at odds with Vice President Biden, who has argued that the U.S. should reduce the number of troops there and focus on a counterterrorism strategy aimed at hunting down al-Qaida operatives.

Biden has pointed to U.S. successes with airstrikes against al-Qaida leadership along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The New York Times quoted administration sources recently as saying that such strikes had killed more than half of the terrorist network’s key figures over the past year, severely hampering its operations.

Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has praised McChrystal for providing the president with what he called “a tightly reasoned blueprint” for achieving success in Afghanistan.

But Kerry has also argued that the U.S. must consider whether the current Afghan government is more of a help or a hindrance to a counterinsurgency strategy. In a recent commentary in The Wall Street Journal, Kerry cited the “deeply flawed presidential election” in Afghanistan, saying it raises questions about the credibility of President Hamid Karzai’s government in the eyes of the Afghan people.

Today’s meeting also includes Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. Levin has opposed adding more U.S. troops, calling instead for training and deploying more Afghan troops. Afghan security forces now number about 92,000.

In all, about 30 House and Senate leaders — Democrats and Republicans — are expected to attend the White House meeting.

Over the weekend, Obama’s national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones, sought to broaden the discussion beyond mere numbers of troops. He told CBS’s Face the Nation that troop numbers were just one element of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Jones said other key issues would be the integrity of the recent Afghan presidential elections and the role of Pakistan in denying sanctuary to the Taliban on its side of the border.

Obama was scheduled to meet with his national security advisers and top military personnel today and Friday. Jones said he expected that the administration’s review of Afghan strategy would be completed in a matter of weeks. Copyright 2009 National Public Radio