34K is the new Magic Number

It amuses me that Republicans accuse Obama of "dithering" just because he and his cabinet have spent 2o hours (gasp!) in meetings evaluating war strategy. Anyone who has worked, well, anywhere, knows that 20 hours is about the number of hours you put into a hackneyed marketing campaign, let alone an escalating war across the globe.

Now the Obama administration has come up with 34,000 troops as the likely number of new troops sent to Afghanistan. This number represents a "medium-level risk" according to General McChrystal, who has comfortably positioned himself to take the credit for success if this plan works, but say "I told you so" if it fails.

The 34,000-figure seems to have the support of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, that wilely "swing voter" within the Obama team, which may be enough to convince Obama, according to the New York Times. Always good to know that after we all worked so hard to get President Obama and a Democratic Congress elected, the deciding vote on healthcare is held by Olympia Snowe and the deciding vote on the war is held by a Bush appointee.

A total of 23,000 soldiers from the Army and Marines will be sent bolster combat numbers, 7,000 will be sent to support a base in Kandahar, and 4,000 will be sent to train the Afghan military and police. One administration official explained why the decision, which seems to be a done deal internally, may take a while to roll out:

"Another reason for the president to hold off for a bit on ordering more troops to Afghanistan is that we can tell Karzai that if he doesn't act firmly now, there won't be any support for a troop increase. That has the added advantage of being true, and it's easier to hold off on sending more troops than it is to threaten to pull them out once they're there." Afghan officials have suggested that the Obama gave the Karzai administration a six-month deadline to start making serious reforms, but it is doubtful he will wait that long to start sending the new troops. Even if he signs off on the troop increase now, the 34,000 will probably not all be in place until the end of 2010.

Charting the political timeline- it seems that Obama will be able to brush off anti-war critics by claiming that we need to wait until all the troops arrive before we can really admit that the war in Afghanistan has failed. Meanwhile, Republicans will have difficulty critisizing Obama for not doing enough in Afghanistan in the lead up to the 2010 midterm elections, as by then he will have over 100,000 American boots on the ground. Then, if the war is still going really poorly, Obama can start drawing down before the 2012 election. So it goes.