First, the teacher in me weants to ask this question, who said the following?
“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while ……. security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,”
A) Washington B) Westmoreland C) McChrystal D) Jackson
Since I am an old fart and a vet of southeast Asia I would have said Gen. Westmoreland….but I would have been wrong…it was the current commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McChyrstal.
But will more troops necessarily mean a win in Afghanistan? It did not in Vietnam.
A better question is, what is the mission in Afghanistan? If it is to get Osama, then we are failing. If it is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans, then with every drone attack that kills civilians, we are failing. If it is to stop the flow of opium, then we are failing. Just what is the mission?
Or maybe we are to bring democracy to a feudal state……that also is a bust….the last elections were so fraudulent that there is a massive re-count going on. And we definitely cannot stop the corruption in the government…..so what is our mission?
Maybe it is the defeat of the Taliban……that is a glorious end but that will not happen anytime soon….why?…..the Afghans are staring to see us in the same light as they did the Russians 30 years ago.
Some where someone will have to let it be known just what the actual mission in Afghanistan is….as it is now…..few people know the actual mission scope or just what is the desired results……..will more and more troops actually help or hinder the situation?
I guess I will have to just wait and see what the next refinement of the Afghan mission is before I comment further. But I would imagine that more troops are headed to the country and in doing so the amounts of deaths will also rise.
You’re right of course and much the same has been said by numerous previous commanders in various campaigns.
However, there is a reason why it’s been said before – because it’s darned well true! – that was very restrained (for me), wasn’t it? 🙂
I seem to recall that it was Donald Rumsfeld who got ALL the numbers wrong in Iraq and look what a mess that turned into. In Iraq, the US SHOULD have sent in half as many troops again as they did – it would have shortened the initial conflict considerably and saved a lot of lives – not least Iraqi lives. They should NEVER have disbanded the whole Iraqi army, rather they should have “filtered” it – again I think that was the same man responsible for that prize piece of idiocy, although I’m less sure about that. Once there was basic victory, the numbers of US troops should have at least been doubled instead of being reduced (“peacekeeping” is always more manpower intensive than outright war).
The point the man is making is that, having won the basic victory in Afghanistan in the first place, it should then have been SWAMPED with US troops and LOTS of them should have been fluent by that time in the local language and already trained to be “ambassadors” as well as policemen. Wtih an abundance of manpower with an understanding of the local culture and more than enough others at the “sharp” end, it would have been much easier to gain the confidence and trust of the local people and so finally defeat the culture and legacy of fear left behind by the retreating Taliban at the time. If they once regain the upper hand, the whole goddam issue will have been a gargantuan waste of time, effort, money and above all lives on all sides.
You won’t change thousands of years of history of tribalism and cock-ups in ten minutes and for peanuts, but WE, the West, went in and the very least we can do is see it through and give these guys a fighting chance of becoming a relatively modern state with some degree of democratic freedom. Of course, honouring all our empty promises of huge investment in the area might help a bit too – a relatively wealthy population has something to lose – currently, there isn’t much!
The cost doesn’t matter a damn! The US like the UK is printing money like it’s going out of fashion (maybe it is) at the moment. So why we in the UK have been relentlessly mean in equipping our troops properly for the job I don’t know, but there was a rumour that the US had some at least of the same or similar problems. We can find the money for banks that they then give to their failed fat-cat CEOs, but we seemingly don’t have the money to equip our troops? What sort of jerks have we got running things for us in our governments?
SO, just for once, let’s both our countries do it right and put EVERYTHING that is required plus a bit more into this thing and GET IT DONE!
Then perhaps we can all begin to think about moving on.
Damn it is morning again…lol….Quin….the one thing that they screwed up was they should have made it a priority that the lanes into Pakistan were cut off in the early days….The American people are starting to doubt the necessity for Afghanistan and we do have elections coming soon it could be a factor….Here in the US we seem to always find money for defense contractors and we do not have the same desire for the troops…hell in Iraq in the early days some of our guys had to BUY their own body armor or fit their vehicles with the safety stuff for IEDs….that is unacceptable……
I need to add that many media pundits and others are saying that Afghanistan is NOT like Vietnam so we need to stop making the comparison…..let us see how true that is……both have inhospitable climates, both have inhospitable terrain, both have a population who dislike the idea of an occupation, both had a lower approval rate for the action, both are for the stopping of an ideology, both have Americans living and dying in the country, both are sucking up billions, both do not have a clear mission for success, both made contractors wealthy….but they are right…they are not the same! Vietnam has no snow capped mountains.