Historians will remember the Obama administration’s 2009 deliberation over what to do in Afghanistan as one of the fiercest debates over military strategy during this president’s tenure. Although this debate was surely more nuanced than what was reported publicly,
accounts paint the administration as divided into two camps. One camp, led by Vice President Joe Biden, favored a light military footprint focused primarily on counter-terrorism. This would keep the U.S. military out of an expensive, prolonged, and uncertain nation-building project. The second camp’s chief advocates were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and – eventually – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. They pushed for a fully resourced, “
whole of government” counterinsurgency campaign with a large footprint aimed at delivering decisive blows against the Taliban insurgency while training and expanding the Afghan National Security Forces.
Historians will remember the Obama administration’s 2009 deliberation over what to do in Afghanistan as one of the fiercest debates over military strategy during this president’s tenure. Although this debate was surely more nuanced than what was reported publicly, accounts paint the administration as divided into two camps. One camp, led by Vice President Joe Biden, favored a light military footprint focused primarily on counter-terrorism. This would keep the U.S. military out of an expensive, prolonged, and uncertain nation-building project. The second camp’s chief advocates were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and – eventually – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. They pushed for a fully resourced, “whole of government” counterinsurgency campaign with a large footprint aimed at delivering decisive blows against the Taliban insurgency while training and expanding the Afghan National Security Forces.
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