Since All of TPM Has Become an Ad for Obama's War...
Senator Chris Dodd on Obama's Afghanistan Strategy
n this video, taken on Saturday, September 26th, '09, Senator Chris Dodd makes sense on the situation in Afghanistan. It starts with Nutmegger John Kantrowitz, from My Left Nutmeg and the Conn-Post Blogs, discussing the shades of Vietnam parallels. But there is an 800 pound guerrilla that too many ignore that I try to point out at the end of the video:
Just so you understand what I am talking about at the end of the video, General Petraeus re-wrote the doctrine for dealing with counterinsurgencies:
The first chapter of Petraeus's manual calls for a "force ratio" of 25 counterinsurgents (here meaning US, allied, and Iraqi soldiers and police) per 1,000 residents. In Baghdad that would require a total force of 120,000. But even with the additional 17,500 US troops President Bush has called for, and a reallocation of Iraqi troops from the North to Baghdad, the total force will be approximately 80,000, a full third less than what the manual prescribes.
I was shooting from the hip and based on my faulty memory, but the numbers I was talking about were sufficiently close to make the point. Thinking in terms of the situation in Afghanistan a quick look at the math tells you what you need to know.
The population of Afghanistan is 28,150,000 according to wikipedia - And the math based on 25 soldiers per thousand residents?
703,750
By Genral Petraeus' own standard that is how many soldiers would be needed to effectively stabelize Afghanistan. Accounting for US, UN and even the Afghanistan soldiers that have been trained up to provide security there are nowhere near enough. And there will never be anywhere near enough without a draft. That is an 800 pound guerilla that nobody will address.
Little wonder why Obama may be suffering from buyer's remorse on campaign statements and early decisions after he was sworn in:
Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.
As it happens, this was never Obama's "war of necessity." It was always Petraeus's. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus's progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn't cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn't deliver -- a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.
It's a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, "it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal." No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous "defense analyst" quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering "buyer's remorse for this war... They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock."
At this moment in time the Generals are asking for more troops and, even by Petraus' own standards, they aren't asking for enough to deal with the issue. And that is assuming the strategy of more boots on the ground is even an effective one. It isn't because the whole strategy is based on loonytunes logic [emph. mine], according to Pen and Sword's Jeff Huber:
Obama said that he would only approve another escalation if he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be." McChrystal's report is incoherent on the subject of strategy.
It says, "We must conduct classic counterinsurgency operations" and states that success depends not on "seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces" but on "gaining the support of the people." That's laughable in light of the fact that classic clear-hold-build counterinsurgency operations involve seizing terrain and destroying the insurgent forces that occupy it.
The notion that we can separate the Afghan people from the insurgents is as ludicrous as the idea of invading Mexico to separate the Hispanics from the Latinos. Nor can we pretend to be the good guys when the Karzai government we prop up is as bad or worse than the insurgents. McChrystal admits that Afghans have "little reason to support their government."
McChrystal says he sees no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So, his argument goes, in order to disrupt al-Qaeda terror network, we need 45,000 more troops to occupy a country al Qaeda is not in to make sure it doesn't come back. And what exactly is this al-Qaeda juggernaut we've come to quake in fear of? As former CIA officer Philip Giraldi recently noted, "An assessment by France's highly regarded Paris Institute of Political Studies [suggests that] Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not."
If McChrystal and his allies get their way, we'll have deployed over 135,000 troops to Afghanistan--on top of the roughly 130,000 troops still in Iraq--for the purpose of rounding up fewer than a dozen bad guys. Daffy Duck and Wiley Coyote could come up with a better strategy than that. Our military leadership and its supporters are a thundering herd of buffoons whose only real objective is to keep the cash caissons rolling and the gravy ships afloat and the wild blue budget sky high.
Thanks for reading. :)
October 2, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for posting this. Completely off your topic, I hope this new experiment in adverts at tpm gets over quickly. It makes my laptop go nuts, and I'm not sure what it is going to do on my desktop at home.
October 2, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I used adblock (firefox)to get rid of it. Being a pacifist, I didn't need armed men in my space. Turned the ad into the loveliest shade of deep olive green.
October 2, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Works fine on my desktop but the page looks too darned busy. 2 ads at the top and a 3 collumn Blog with more ads down the side?
When I clicked over from my bookmarks for a moment I thought that I had accidentally clicked on one of the mil-blog links I have bookmarked.
October 2, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've decided I'm going to be busy doing something besides watching television on October 13th.
October 2, 2009 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
One important thing to always keep in mind: McChrystal is suspected of war crimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html?pagewanted=2
Obama chose to "look forward" and not investigate torture, then chose such a man to lead US forces in Afghanistan.
Democrats used the anti-war movement to get elected then did nothing to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, although they have control of Congress since 2007. Obama himself reneged on his promise to withdraw one brigade a month starting in February 2009.
So yes, those are now Obama's wars, and he deserves all the blame he will be getting -- including from the disgraced neocons he tried to placate.
October 2, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Petraeus oversaw the loss of about 200,000 weapons that wound up in the Turkish black market:
Turkey-Contra Affair?
"The attacks were no mystery. What puzzled Turkish police was the weapons' origin. Glocks are high-quality sidearms, but by last year they had practically become common street weapons in Turkey. More than 1,000 had been taken from criminals, guerrillas, terrorists and assassins all over the country, and authorities believed tens of thousands more had found their way onto the black market
There are many more where those came from. At least three U.S. government agencies are now investigating the massive "disappearance" and diversion of weapons Washington intended for Iraqi government forces that instead have spread to militants and organized gangs across the region. The potential size of the traffic is stunning. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last month showed that since 2004, some 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, bought with U.S. money for Iraqi security forces, have gone missing.
snip
Major U.S. arms transfers began when Gen. David Petraeus was commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command—Iraq (MNSTC-I), better known as Minsticky. Its mission was to train, arm and organize Iraq's military and police forces, but the Iraqis' weapons came via the State Department, and the supply line was actually run by private contractors."
These are not the brightest, shiniest General stars we have ever seen...
October 2, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
TPM has done this before for "Frontline."
See this thread complaining about it,
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/flyinsaucier/2008/10/frontline.php
and Andrew Golis' comments on it, including this one at the bottom:
October 2, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
P.S. As with previous times, it appears to be the case that they planned the Frontline promotion to go for only an hour.
I just wish they'd chose a better background color next time. On dialup, it was impossible to read anything until you waited several minutes for the white central background to load, which was loading last.
October 2, 2009 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't hate it, but it was too busy.
October 2, 2009 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
And remember that there are 160,000 private-contractor in Iraq.
October 2, 2009 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am talking about Afghanistan. Yes, there are a number of mercenaries there, as well. But it does not change the fact that the logic of deploying more soldiers, especially so few, there is just crazy.
Even IF we had the numbers to send there (and we don't), it makes no sense at all to do it.
October 3, 2009 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Osama has adherents the way the Beatles had fans. So the exact number of people hanging on his coattails is somewhat irrelevant compared to the number of people willing to imitate him. This is a function both of his effectiveness and our conduct. Fortunately for us, Al Qaeda has been adept at getting itself hated by killing civilians, bystanders and local leaders.
That said, this post deals with some of the realities in Afghanistan and I'm recommending.
October 3, 2009 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
What you say about al Qaeda makes sense to a large degree. Especially when you have to consider that there never really was a worldwide organization called "al Qaeda". Doesn't even really span the Middle East. Just a bunch of different terrorist groups with some overlapping interests and some competing interests. Calling them all al Qaeda makes about as much sense as calling the USA, UK, France, Germany, Russia and various other nations a "New World Order" just because they want to work a bit together on fighting international terrorism, IMHO.
Part of the problem for Obama is that he likely made campaign statements based on faulty information filtered by the Bush administration. (Yeah... I am lookin' at you, Dick "Stovepipe" Cheney)
Now it is important to take a bit of time needed because he does have to reassess it all completely. And even if the Generals were 100% correct here (I don't think they are anywhere near that and I ain't alone on that), is this really a priority for the nation at this time considering other pressing foreign and domestic issues?
October 3, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink