What a Surge Can't Solve in Afghanistan - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion

If there was one foreign policy issue on which Barack Obama and John McCain agreed during Friday night's debate, it was that the United States should send more troops to Afghanistan. The bipartisan enthusiasm for this surge is so strong that there has been relatively little discussion of whether this strategy makes sense.

So here's a skeptical look at the issue, drawn from conversations during a visit to Afghanistan this month with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Rather than more troops, the real game-changer in Afghanistan may be Gates's plan to spend an extra $1.3 billion on surveillance technology to find and destroy the leadership of the insurgency.

The case for more troops was made forcefully by the new US commander, Gen. David McKiernan. He said in a briefing in Kabul that to cope with rising violence, he needs three more combat brigades, in addition to the extra brigade already promised for early next year. That could add at least 15,000 troops to the current force of about 35,000. Other senior officers made similar pitches in briefings at Bagram and Jalalabad.

But the commanders' description of the enemy that these troops will be fighting was fuzzy. The adversary isn't al-Qaeda; it's not even the Taliban. It's what McKiernan called a "nexus of insurgency" and what other officers described as a "syndicate" of insurgents and criminal groups.

More at The Washington Post.