Petraeus cites Bush-era shortcomings in Afghanistan - military leaders inherited a faulty strategy

[jefferson_dem]

Petraeus cites Bush-era shortcomings in Afghanistan
‘We did not have the organizations that are required,’ U.S. commander says

U.S. military leaders inherited a faulty strategy for the war in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush administration and are still working to “refine the concepts,” the U.S. commander said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In his first interview since taking over as head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus told NBC’s David Gregory that when “a lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan, we realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct and the comprehensive civil/military counterinsurgency campaign.”

In the interview, which was conducted last week in Kabul and aired Sunday, Petraeus did not specifically criticize former President George W. Bush, who promoted him to head of U.S. Central Command in April 2008. But the timetable he described left little doubt that he believed the Bush administration inadequately laid the groundwork for integrating Afghan leaders into the allied military structure.

“Over the last 18 months or so” — Bush left the White House 18 months ago — “what we’ve sought to do in Afghanistan is to get the inputs right for the first time,” Petraeus said. “We needed to refine the concepts — to build, in some cases, concepts that didn’t exist” seven years after the Afghan war began in October 2001.

One of those concepts, he said, is whether to include former anti-U.S. insurgents into Afghanistan’s post-war civil structure.

“If you don’t want to have to kill or capture every bad guy in the country, you have to reintegrate those who are willing to be reconciled and become part of the solution instead of the continuing part of the problem,” he said.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38698040/ns/meet_the_press-meet_the_press/?ocid=twitter

[Exilednight]

1. Sadly, we haven't been fighting the Afghanistan war for 9 years ..........

but for one year nine times.