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Our Afghanistan Strategy: The Confounding Chart

The goal in Afghanistan, as the World Blog writer Richard Engel interprets it, is to "convince militants to stop fighting and to persuade Afghans...

Patrick James
By Patrick JamesDec 06, 2009
Patrick James
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The goal in Afghanistan, as the World Blog writer Richard Engel interprets it, is to "convince militants to stop fighting and to persuade Afghans sitting on the fence-those unsure whether to back the Taliban or President Hamid Karzai's government-to throw their support behind the U.S.-backed government and its security forces."Fair enough. But if you want to know how we plan to accomplish that feat, take a look at the large version of the military's amazingly complicated schematic (from the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) which outlines the entire strategy. The chart, at least, is a bit of a quagmire.
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