{"id":32103,"date":"2012-09-22T08:32:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T12:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32103"},"modified":"2015-02-06T13:34:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T18:34:25","slug":"well-the-afghanistan-surge-is-officially-over-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32103","title":{"rendered":"Well, the Afghanistan Surge Is Officially Over. Now What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Army Times is reporting that the surge in Afghanistan is over<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on Friday the troops had come out, declaring the surge had accomplished its mission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But I’d take issue with that “accomplished its mission” part, Mr. SECDEF.<\/p>\n

From day one, the surge in Afghanistan – unlike the surge in Iraq – was smaller than those on the ground felt necessary.\u00a0\u00a0 And the results were predictable for anyone who knows a damn thing about military history.<\/p>\n

There’s an old military proverb.\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re facing a dug-in enemy company, you can take your objective with a battalion – but you’ll suffer heavy casualties.\u00a0 Attack with a brigade, and you’ll suffer light casualties while annihilating the enemy.\u00a0 Attack with a division, and you’ll likely prevail without firing a shot.<\/p>\n

In short:\u00a0 using too small a force ends up being as costly as hell.\u00a0 Mass has a quality all its own.<\/p>\n

We forgot all of that when it came time for the Afghanistan surge.<\/p>\n

I agree with the SECDEF that there will be difficult days ahead in Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s obvious, since we botched the surge by bringing too little.<\/p>\n

So, pray tell, Mr. SECDEF:\u00a0\u00a0 now what?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Army Times is reporting that the surge in Afghanistan is over. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on Friday the troops had come out, declaring the surge had accomplished its mission. Over?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But I’d take issue with that “accomplished its mission” part, Mr. SECDEF. From day one, the surge in Afghanistan – unlike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,84,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-military-issues","category-terror-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-8lN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}