Examining Obama's Afghan Options

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

And I'm Madeleine Brand.

We begin this hour with Afghanistan and signs the Obama administration is rethinking its strategy there. Back in the spring, President Obama announced a new strategy. Since then, the insurgents have sharpened their tactics. U.S. casualties have mounted. Afghanistan has held seriously flawed elections. And the top commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, has delivered a bleak assessment on what he acknowledges is a deteriorating situation.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly has been tracking all of this. She's here now. And Mary Louise, we've been talking a lot about that report from General McChrystal. Is that really the catalyst now for a change in thinking?

MARY LOUISE KELLY: I think so. And the reason is that the McChrystal report, the message of that report is that the current approach with the current troop levels are working. That if you really want to pull off a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, it's going to require a lot more resources. Hence, the current debate underway here in Washington.

BRAND: And a lot more troops, he says. So, let's walk through this and start with the goal. President Obama has announced a very specific goal for the war and is that now being rethought?

KELLY: No. That goal is not being rethought. The goal that was announced back in March was to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida. That is not changing. I talked to an official at the White House this morning, who said there is zero talk there about shifting the goal.

So, what's in play is how do you do it. If the goal is defeating al-Qaida, then what's the strategy that you need to do that? And what the president had started with was a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. We heard talk about securing the local population about rebuilding the Afghan state. Now, the president's remarks just in the last couple of days indicate that maybe he is rethinking some of that.

And I wanted to listen to him. Here, he was speaking over the weekend on NBC. He had just talked about going after al-Qaida, and he was talking about the best way to do that.

President BARACK OBAMA: If supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy, then we'll move forward. But if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face.

KELLY: So, President Obama there at least opening the door, it sounds like, to possibly a different approach.

BRAND: And Mary Louise, what would that look like?

KELLY: Well, there is a lot of talk in Washington at the moment about shifting to a more narrow counterterrorism approach. Meaning, if the goal is going after al-Qaida, do that with drone strikes, do that with special operations forces. Do not do that by sending in a lot more ground combat forces.

In essence, think about scaling back the involvement instead of deepening it, which is what we understand General McChrystal is asking for. Now, is the president actually leaning that way? We don't know. And I will say, a note of caution here that the White House official I spoke to today said, unlikely. That would be a real reversal that this - that the president is not closing any doors to anything at this point. But that would be such a radical reversal that it doesn't sound like it's probably in the cards at this point.

BRAND: So, what about some sort of middle ground - some troops but not as many as, say, 40,000?

KELLY: Sure. And then perhaps keep the door open to further increases at some point down the road. And there are other questions at play here. The question, it's not just, do you send more troops, but what kind of troops? Do you send more combat troops? Do you send more trainers? That's really a critical question here is the question of U.S. forces training Afghan security forces. And, you know, how bigger role Afghan security forces are ready to play in securing their own country at this point is a big factor in all of these decisions.

BRAND: And we'll hear more about that in a moment. And quickly, when do we expect a decision on troop levels and the overall strategy?

KELLY: Weeks, not months, we think. President Obama says he wants to take his time. These are big decisions. On the other hand, General McChrystal says, we don't have that much time. He said specifically in his report, if we don't turn this thing around quickly, 12 months from now, we might not be able to - the U.S. might not be able to. So, I think we'll probably see a decision sooner rather than later.

BRAND: NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, thank you.

KELLY: You're welcome, Madeleine. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.