Obama Using 'Logical Process' to Determine Afghan War Strategy, Senior Official Says

President Obama is weighing his revised Afghan war strategy through a "logical process, starting with an assessment of what's going on in the region," a senior administration official told FOX News Thursday.

The comments come one day after Obama's national security team marked the war's eighth anniversary with a three-hour meeting in a secure room in the White House basement.

The White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the primary focus of the meetings has been to figure out "exactly what we're trying to achieve, and let that be a starting point for a discussion of strategy and resources."

Obama's first few meetings with the national security team have been "overviews" during which he examined how the situation on the ground "has changed since March," the official said.

"The President's first order of business is to protect the homeland and protect attacks against the U.S. homeland or our allies," the senior official said. "That's why he identified Al Qaeda in his speech in March. They're a transnational terrorist network with the capacity and intent to attack our homeland and allies....

"Al Qaeda has to be destroyed, and we've done a lot to decreasing their capacity by decapitating their leadership."

But Obama believes there are clear differences between Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and he will have different strategies for dealing with the two groups, the official told FOX News.

"Al Qaeda has a global agenda," the official said, while "the Taliban is an indigenous movement located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are elements of the Taliban that have been aligned with Al Qaeda, but the Taliban is not a homogenous organization."

The official adds that some leaders in the Taliban have "localized ambitions and concerns," but Obama does not want to allow the group a safe haven from which to operate "as they (did) before 9/11."

Obama has had the troop request proposed by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for at least a week. The report is said to include a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 combat troops to -- McChrystal's strong preference -- as many as 40,000.

But Obama's decision on the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan is about much more than troop levels, the official explained.

"It is about what kind of global counterterrorism strategy we're deploying to dismantle the Al Qaeda network. And within Afghanistan, it is about what we're doing in a military and political sense to prevent it from becoming an Al Qaeda safe haven.

"So this is a very broad strategic questions, and one that requires a comprehensive regional strategy that focuses our resources on that first order goal of destroying Al Qaeda," the official said.

FOX News' Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.