What Obama Left Out

Increasing US Troop presence was just one of the recommendations from General McChrystal. Time talks about another one that was almost completely absent from Obama's speech:

There's no sign, at least publicly, of a surge in growth of the Afghan army. Obama on Tuesday night steered clear of dealing with McChrystal's August call to hike the combined size of the Afghan army and national police to 400,000. Current plans call for the boosting of the Afghan army to 134,000 troops and the national police force to 82,000 by 2011. McChrystal warned that those totals were insufficient and called for boosting the army to 240,000 ("to increase pressure on the insurgency in all threatened areas in the country") and the police to 160,000.

On Tuesday afternoon, a senior White House official who declined to be quoted by name dismissed McChrystal's call for a bigger Afghan force. "We know that number's out there," the official said, without mentioning that it was put out there by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. James Dubik, a retired Army general who trained the Iraqi military and is now a senior fellow at the independent Institute for the Study of War, argues that the Obama Administration needs to embrace McChrystal's goal. "There's a significant psychological effect on the Taliban if we announce we're going to build an Afghan security force of 400,000," says Dubik. "We're going to miss that opportunity."

Obama's message to West Point cadets was less specific: "We must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future."