David Chalian blog on "Afghanistan surge/war: worth it?" - since Dec. 2009

posted at PBS dot-org/newshour/

A little more than a year after President Obama announced his decision to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, his administration is releasing a summary of a classified review of the strategy that says the United States is still on target to begin withdrawing troops next July.  However, every note of optimism about progress in the fight against the Taliban is accompanied by a healthy dose of caution.
President Obama will discuss the findings in the report at 11:45 a.m. EST Thursday and then leave Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to answer questions from the press.
The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung writes:
"Taliban momentum has been 'arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, although these gains remain fragile and reversible,' the five-page summary said.
"The review, it said, indicated that the administration was 'setting conditions' to begin the 'responsible reduction' of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in July."
The president is keenly aware about the political dangers of providing an overly optimistic assessment of a war that appears to have diminishing support by the American people.
Julie Phelan and Gary Langer write up the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll numbers:
"A record 60 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, a grim assessment -- and a politically hazardous one....
"Negative views of the war for the first time are at the level of those recorded for the war in Iraq, whose unpopularity dragged George W. Bush to historic lows in approval across his second term. On average from 2005 through 2009, 60 percent called that war not worth fighting, the same number who say so about Afghanistan now."