Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, warns against presuming success in an Afghan "surge" parallel to the one in Iraq. He is not naysaying or merely couching, as the headline may suggest to some. Read carefully and you will identify the same basic challenges that were described before the Iraq surge.
One of the Pentagon’s top policymakers warned Thursday that a “surge” of U.S. troops to Afghanistan like the one executed in Iraq 18 months ago doesn’t recognize the complexities of the Taliban and al Qaeda-sponsored violence there and could backfire.
Eric Edelman, the Pentagon’s top civilian policy advisor to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said the situation in Afghanistan is far different than the one faced by U.S. troops in Iraq during the darkest days of sectarian violence in 2006,
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