Not enough troops in Afghanistan
Running up to the 2008 election, we read about how Bush had neglected Afghanistan and how the war there was under-resourced. Critics, of course, rightly blamed the Bush Administration, consistently and loudly every time a report emerged which bolstered their pre-conceived notions. So what should we do with this report;
Despite the addition of more than 50,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the past year, there still aren’t enough forces to conduct operations in the majority of key areas, according to a congressionally mandated report released Wednesday on progress in Afghanistan.
Coalition forces have decided to focus their efforts on 121 key districts in Afghanistan, but right now, NATO has enough forces to operate in only 48 of those districts, the report said.
So where is that consistent and loud criticism these days? I guess it’s better used to beat down enforcement of our immigration laws, or to complain about the folks who invest our money in a market we don’t understand. Or to complain about banks which foreclose on our houses when we don’t pay the mortgage for months or years.
I guess it really doesn’t matter anymore that General McChrystal asked for more troops than he got;
“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” U.S. and NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in the document, according to the Post.
The President and Congress sought a political compromise in a no-compromise situation. Political decisions made by amateurs have no place in the all-too-real world of fighting wars. When our foreign policy is written in the front room of the Code Pink House, we really can’t expect a different outcome than we have now.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Code Pink, Congress sucks, Foreign Policy, Liberals suck, Terror War
I find it odd that you cite one of my articles as an example of a person who “consistently and loudly” screamed about too few troops, and then go on to wonder why there are no complaints about troop levels.
For those who follow my prose, I have consistently begged for more troops about every other article for four years. I blamed Bush, Obama, Rumsfeld, and about everyone else I could think of or who got in my way.
I said even recently that we have “too few troops.”
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2010/04/27/chasing-the-enemy/
I will continue to pound this mantra. I will not deviate to the right or to the left. It isn’t a political issue for me. It’s an issue of winning the campaign.
It matters to me that McChrystal asked for about 10,000 more troops than he got. It will always matter. He should have asked for more than he did, and Obama should have given them to him. The fact that Obama felt that he knew better than McChrystal shows arrogance and lack of support for the campaign.
I say that we have too many troops, in fact get all the troops out of Afganistan and let the civil war begin. Then perhaps we can go back in and pick up the pieces, or not, depending on the commitment of the potus.
Ahem. The oil, dude…