Uhh,Barry.
It would appear that the Taliban have not been ''pushed out'' after all. The first sacking of a four-star general since Korea [ five stars for MacArthur] has created a leadership vaccum where nothing appears to be going right. Instead of pushing the Taliban out of Swat, they have invested this region and then some up to and including regions that hold Pak nuclear weapons. Instead of keeping the Taliban out of the Afghan north, they are moving in. Confused sets of political priorities that include the backing off of air strike and other tactical ground operations that could kill large numbers of civilians have created a piecemeal scenario no differant than the pre-Surge Iraq, where we were fighting on the insurgents terms and not our own. Indeed, the Kabul attacks come on the heels of the largest US operation since Iraqs 2004 Fallujah to date, yet more Taliban have been popping up like opium flowers all over Afghanistan. Barrys article is a reminder of how often the media gets things wrong and can be used as an instructive lesson.
17,000 … and Counting
Why Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan now, and a look at the possible end game.
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
President Obama was initially wary of agreeing to this week's announced deployment of some 17,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, according to administration sources. He preferred to await the outcome of a full-blown review on U.S. strategy in the country which could land on his desk in six weeks or so. But with critical elections looming, even that delay wasn't acceptable.
Already postponed from May because the Taliban insurgency has prevented voter-registration across most of the south and east of the country, Afghanistan's national elections have now been set for early August. This vote's success is critical to Washington's strategy in Afghanistan. And it won't be unless U.S. troops can bring security to the most threatened areas.
With the addition of 17,000 extra troops, starting in late May, the U.S. total in Afghanistan will reach 55,000. Add the 32,000 non-American NATO troops already in the country, and the total Western troops in Afghanistan will hit 87,000—the highest total yet in the seven-year war. And thousands more are expected to be required by year's end.
Military units can't be turned on like a spigot. Most need weeks to gear up—and, ideally, months to train up—for deployment; and then more weeks, once they're in the country, before they're truly knowledgeable about their allotted territory.
So, at a session in the White House last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, made their case to the president. The need for more troops to safeguard the elections couldn't wait for the review.
The destinations of those 17,000 extra troops are no secret. The first to leave, 8,000 Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., will be guarding the southern approaches to the capital, Kabul. Taliban forces now cluster within a few miles of the city; and last week demonstrated—with simultaneous suicide-bomb attacks on three government centers in Kabul—that they can ravage the city at will.
The second tranche of U.S. reinforcements—4,000 soldiers of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash.—will set off in late July. That's perilously close to the August elections. But the hope is that, by then, the Marines will have pushed the Taliban back far enough from Kabul to allow these new forces to take up the security role in the capital, while the Marines pursue the Taliban deeper into the south-eastern border areas of Afghanistan.
The Stryker armored vehicles—fast, almost silent, carrying a squad of nine, and equipped with communications and navigation gear enabling their crew to speed through even strange cities—proved their worth as rapid-responders in the urban warfare in Iraq, starting in Mosul in 2004. But they're not designed to operate in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan. For that, helicopters are needed. So one of the "support elements" also heading out there later this year will be the helicopters of the 82nd Airborne Division's combat aviation brigade: 2,800 troops with more than 100 helicopters, mostly Apaches, Blackhawks and Chinooks. (This is a swift return for some: one battalion of this brigade was in Afghanistan as recently as 2007.)
- 1
- 2
- Next Page »
Discuss