Sen. Kerry on Counterinsurgency

I think Sen. Kerry is on a roll, and I'm glad to see that he is bucking the general inertia towards escalation in the Afghan war. His remarks from a recent press conference:

" 'We cannot and we should not undertake a manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operation on a national scale in Afghanistan,' said Kerry, D-MA, sounding a lot like his Senate cohort Carl Levin, D-MI, who has also advocated for a strategy centered around building up Afghan forces, not adding U.S. combat soldiers.

'I am convinced, from my conversations with General Stanley McChrystal ... he understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area,' Kerry went on, 'But I believe his current plan reaches too far too fast.' "

I think I can live with limited counterinsurgency, as long as our strategy explicitly acknowledges the limits of this approach and shies away from our recent grandiose ambitions for Afghanistan. I read somewhere recently that Kerry might make a good Secretary of State, and I have to admit his thinking on the big issues have been a lot more interesting than Sec. Clinton's...