Recently Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asserted that the Afghanistan strategy unveiled March 2009 was the first real strategy in the last eight years. An interesting comment considering that Secretary Gates served as Defense Secretary in the Bush administration when he replaced Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in January 2007. One can only wonder what Secretary Gate’s contribution was between the time he replaced Secretary Rumsfeld and March 2009.

In an interview with CNN Secretary Gates said: "I will tell you, I think that the strategy the president put forward in late March, is the first real strategy we have had for Afghanistan since the early 1980s."

Also interesting is the fact that General McChrystal, hand-picked to implement the real Afghanistan strategy and characterized by Secretary Gates as having "tremendous" skills and the "fresh thinking" required to implement the strategy, as of September had only spoken once to the President. So much for fresh thinking, or so much for a war-time commander in Chief? 

Additionally, General McChrystal’s request for additional troops to implement the real strategy is being second-guessed by professional politicians such as Vice-President Joe Biden, who is diametrically opposed to Gen. McChrystal's recommendations. Since Gen. McChrystal’s request and as of this writing, the President has attended at least five high-level strategic reviews of the war in Afghanistan. Does this mean that the real strategy is, well.... unreal?

At the end of last month, NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen assured President Obama that the war in Afghanistan is a team effort – but refused to pledge additional forces.

Last week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would send the additional troops as long as certain conditions were met, including Kabul agreeing to provide Afghan troops to be trained and fight alongside British forces and that the increase in British numbers also had to be part of an agreed approach with other military forces in Afghanistan, with all countries bearing their fair share. The number of troops in question? 500 , or a puny 1% of the troops requested by Gen McChrystal.. In other words, PM Brown echoes Rasmussen’s pledge: The war is a team effort – the US provides the effort, NATO provides the conditions.

What is MChrystal clear is that 107 allied troops have died since Gen. McChrystal requested additional troops to implement the first real strategy - and the General continues to wait, and wait, and wait......for high-level scrutiny of the real Afghanistan strategy.