Estimated number of US troops now in Afghanistan: 68,000.
Number of troops US General Stanley McChrystal is currently asking for in addition to that: 40,000.
Number of troops during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan at its height that resulted in defeat: 108,000.
Like Switzerland, Afghanistan’s topography makes it militarily impenetrable.
It doesn’t matter how many fancy toys you have, in the end military victory still resolves back to taking and holding real estate.
oh but surely that’s different; Afghanistan was the USSR’s Vietnam… And of course, these days, Afghanistan is nothing like Vietnam…
People fighting on their home ground will always win. With the exception of two things:
1) You kill everyone (Alexander the Greats method when he conquered Afghanistan)
2) Breed out the natives (China in Tibet)
One is politically untenable, the other is just plain not going to happen.
Captcha: execute.
I think Obama’s strategy might be to:
– give McChrystal his troops for a year or so
– declare the “surge” a success based on any tenuous evidence of reduced insurgent activity
(if nothing else, if they send 40,000 troops and keep them in a bunker, then that’ll reduce the effective casualty rate).
– move to a model where the US has a minimal “smart” presence, and that can be spun as victory. This will be hard as the Taliban are likely to gain more control over the country once the US is gone, but there are a couple of ways of sorting this. The US could negotiate with “moderate” Taliban elements and arrange that their suzerainty will be tolerated providing they keep a fairly low profile and don’t call themselves “Taliban”. Alternatively, the continuing war could be presented as a slow but positive battle by the Afghan “government”, backed by a small number of US special forces, to defeat the Taliban. With the mass US troops removed, this mini-war could drag on indefinitely with minimal media coverage and thus appear to be a solution.
Either way, large parts of Afghanistan will wind up under Taliban control. The only reason for the US “surge” is to avoid the overt appearance of a defeat.
sounds about right to me
I see that Hillary Clinton is wondering why no one can find Al Qaeda.
Here’s why, Hillary – they don’t fucking exist and, what’s more, you and your ilk created the fantasy.
just one of the dangers of creating imaginary foes 😉
and don’t forget the British Empire at its height, when manpower was not an issue, and the Afghanis didn’t have access to the latest weaponry, being thrown out of Kabul