David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency guru who advised Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, gave an hour-long talk tonight at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The talk was broadly about counterinsurgency in U.S. foreign policy, but Kilcullen spent a good deal of time on the big story of the day: Afghanistan.
Kilcullen told The Guardian last week that Obama should either go big or go home to avoid a "Suez-like" disaster in Afghanistan. He elaborated on those comments tonight, explaining why he felt the middle ground was so dangerous. And he argued -- perhaps inadvertently -- that the strategies reportedly being considered by the Obama administration move too slowly, and give the Taliban time to adapt.





