As
the announcement of the Obama administration's Afghanistan strategy
review gets closer and closer, more details are coming out about who
inside the room when the discussions are held and who has the
president's ear.
The
White House still maintains that there is no set date for the roll out
of the new policy, although White House officials have acknowledged
that the announcement is
unlikely to be before the President's trip to Asia later this week. The
White House team returns Thursday Nov., 19, and a typical
Washington public relations move would be to hold the rollout on a
Friday.
There
is some doubt that the rollout could be logistically accomplished in
one day, what with the need to consult allies, interested parties,
lawmakers, and then set up press conferences and briefings. The White
House staff would be exhausted after flying around the world for a
week, the argument goes, making a rollout on Friday, Nov. 20
unlikely.
"We don't have a rollout date set, because the President has yet to make the decision," said Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.
But
multiple sources have indicated that Thanksgiving is a tentative
deadline for the rollout, meaning that the last day the announcement
would come out is Wednesday, Nov. 25.
A rollout the day before Thanksgiving would be sure to roil the Washington policy crowd, whose proportionally large contingent of Northeast-born
members would then have to fight the gruesome traffic up the notorious
Interstate 95 on the worst traffic day of the year to make it home to
their extended families.
A
Nov. 25 rollout could also invite speculation that the
administration was trying to downplay the news, because as anyone who
has been in Washington the day before Thanksgiving can attest to, the
town is eerily empty on that day each year.
Regardless, with
increasing consultations with allies and interested parties alike, the
administration seems just about ready to come to a decision. There are
multiple reports that Obama is planning to give Afghanistan commander
General Stanley McChrystal most, if not all of the 40,000 troops he identified as a "medium-risk option."
Spencer Ackerman reveals
that McChrystal had two very close allies inside the White House
discussions the whole time, Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, the
commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Ft. Bragg, N.C., and Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, the deputy commander of Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.
"Both
men have deep ties to Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of
U.S. and NATO forces in the war. They are said to favor large infusions
of U.S. troops to Afghanistan for performing counterinsurgency
operations in select population centers, but they also advocate
marshalling forces to pursue terrorists across Afghanistan's rugged,
mountainous terrain," Ackerman reports.
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