Hunkered down in the White House this week, top US officials thrashed out options for Afghanistan in a dispute that has split the administration and could decide the future of the fight against al-Qaeda and President Barack Obama’s hopes of a second term.
The likely outcome of that debate ”“ which has pitted General Stanley McCrystal, the administration’s handpicked commander in Afghanistan, against war sceptics in Congress and at the highest levels of government ”“ is coming into view.
Officials, diplomats and analysts say Mr Obama will probably authorise more troops, though not perhaps the 30,000-40,000 sought by his generals, that a substantial proportion are likely to be trainers as well as combat forces and that, because of other demands on the US military, the extra boots on the ground will not arrive until next year ”“ and only over time.
This is a repeat of a comment that I just made regarding and article that was posted yesterday.
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The integration of ‘friendly’ indigenous armed personnel into the midst of U.S. military units in an active or ‘hot’ war zone carries with it the risk of exposing U.S. personnel to harm by ‘unfriendly’ indigenous personnel mixed in with the ‘friendlies’ in those units.
That’s the way of it. There is no quick and easy technological ‘fix’ or strategy, policy,doctrine or tactic that will effectively reduce this sort of danger. Its a sort of ‘pay to play’ type of situation except that what we are ‘paying with’ to ‘play’ are the lives of our servicemen.
This is an inherent cost of participating in counterinsurgency. You can’t win it with U.S. troops alone without overwhelming destructive force being applied against the insurgents unless you are willing to mercilessly apply that force and not care about the tremendous number of non-combatant civilian casualties that will be the consequence of the application of ovewhelming destructive force.
And that’s something, that, because of who we are and what we believe, we will not do.
The Soviets did it to ethnic groups within the Soviet Union with varying degrees of success, but we, thanks be to our Lord, are not Soviet communists.
Therefore, the integration of indigenous personnel into military operations and even our military units will be a fact of life and we had either ‘suck it in’ and get used to it or seriously consider the situation ‘unwinnable’ because of the restraints that we place on our own conduct.
In any case, our military personnel who are putting their lives on the line deserve a national leadership that strives toward strategic goals with policy, doctrine and tactics that makes their sacrifices in Afghanistan worth their cost.
The necessary strategy, policy, doctrine and and tactics should not be the product of petty and internecine political maneuvering and bickering back here in the United States of America.
Indicators seem to be pointing towards a certain promise made during the presidential campaign being called up for payment. As all politics is local, it will be interesting to see how Democrats in the New York City area (including northern NJ, LI, CT) spin a half-hearted attempt to do something and subsequent follow-up withdrawal from Afganistan.
In fairness one must note that the Republican leadership has never had to answer for a near decade-long half-hearted attempt to do something in Afganistan. For them procrastination has so far paid off.
More worrisome is the big-picture (oh that we had statesmen in our offices of power): what becomes of Pakistan in the reemerging power vacuum in Southern Asia?