General Petraeus Opens Up
“Troops, money and a plan were long lacking in the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In a SPIEGEL interview, Commander David Petraeus, discusses these failures with unusual frankness.”
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“The operation [in Afghanistan] was what the military would call an economy-of-force effort for many years. We have spent the last 18 months doing what I call getting the inputs right. The fact is that we did not have the organizations that are necessary for the conduct of a comprehensive military counterinsurgency campaign together with our Afghan partners. In other cases we didn’t have the right people in place, we didn’t have sufficient plans and concepts and above all we didn’t have the resources, beginning with sufficient troops, civilians and even funding.”
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