Currency

After seven years of underfunding of the war in Afghanistan, President Obama will have to funnel more resources to Afghanistan operations if he hopes to win there, according to a new report.

The report, written by Anthony Cordesman and Erin Fitzgerald of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that the Bush administration dramatically underresourced the wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The Bush Administration failed to develop a meaningful long-term strategy or plan for the Iraq and Afghan Wars, while also failing to properly resource its wars and produce sound budgets," a summary of the report reads. "For the past eight budgets, the Department of Defense requested emergency supplemental or 'bridge' funding outside of the regular defense budget."

Consequently, the administration and DOD "never developed a consistent or credible long-term funding profile for war fighting, nor did it properly manage either conflict," the summary adds.

Only beginning in fiscal year 2009, the report says, did the administration "began to fund the war seriously."

But, it adds, Obama now must "deal with two badly managed and budgeted wars." In Iraq, he must handle the withdrawal of forces, while in Afghanistan he must "now pay far more to compensate for a past Administration's grand strategic failures or risk losing the war in Afghanistan."