LONDON — In an echo of a time when things were going from bad to worse in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the Bush administration is reviewing its war strategy in Afghanistan amid spreading insurgent violence, rising U.S. and allied military deaths, and doubts about winning.
With only a few months left before President Bush leaves office, the administration apparently is attempting to draw a clearer picture for the next commander-in-chief of what needs to be done to stabilize the country, to sustain and increase international support and to make the most of U.S. and allied military forces.
Any changes in strategy now being contemplated would not be as substantial as Bush’s decision in January 2007 to take a fundamentally different approach in Iraq, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. Bush added more than 21,000 combat troops in Iraq and endorsed an overhaul of military strategy.
“Nothing of that magnitude” is being considered for the war in Afghanistan, Morrell cautioned.
Gates did not say the current U.S. approach in Afghanistan is failing. Nor did he explicitly call for a change of direction. He alluded, instead, to the 2007 makeover of U.S. strategy in Iraq and suggested in an interview with a group of reporters that the administration is reconsidering fundamental aspects of its strategy. “We are looking at it, and I guess that is as far as I would go” in explaining the process, he said.
“You have an overall approach, an overall strategy, but you adjust it continually based on the circumstances that you find,” Gates said. “We did that in Iraq. We made a change in strategy in Iraq, and we are going to continue to look at the situation in Afghanistan.”
Gates visited Afghanistan on Wednesday and flew to London for NATO consultations beginning Thursday evening.
A senior defense official traveling with Gates said later that the administration was examining a range of strategic questions, including whether to reduce the combat role of NATO troops in Afghanistan in light of planned increases in U.S. combat troops.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said it amounted to a broad review that included more than just military aspects of U.S. strategy.
In Washington, military analysts Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies issued a report concluding that the war is “probably being lost at the political and strategic level.”
“The situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating for nearly half a decade and is now reaching a crisis level,” Cordesman wrote.
Gen. David McKiernan, the senior U.S. general in Afghanistan, told reporters Tuesday at his Kabul headquarters that the current strategy was adequate but that he needed more than 10,000 additional U.S. ground forces and other resources to properly execute it.