That’s a question being asked as the Pentagon and State Dept. scramble to revamp their approach to Afghanistan with a few weeks left in the Bush administration. The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reports that both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have agreed for most of the calendar year that the U.S. plan in Afghanistan– and also Pakistan– is in disarray.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a White House adviser on both Iraq and Afghanistan, is pushing Gates and Rice to ask back-to-the-basic questions like what are the U.S. objectives, resources levels and allies. Lute also wonders if the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments can ever "rise to the occasion."

Unsurprisingly, though, it’s a bureaucratic mess to re-do a war plan almost seven years into a war. Any change in strategy would have take into account the covert operations by the CIA in western Pakistan. And as for determining that change, the State Dept., Joint Chiefs of Staff, military commanders on the ground and National Security Council may each have their own ideas.-MB

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