Afghanistan
The POTUS has taken over 90 days (thats 3 months) to decide on a "strategy" (its really a tactic) to deal with Afghanistan (it isn't to win or to get out or to satisfy his political friends or enemies as it does nothing to satisfy any of those goals). He made a speech on the subject last night. In the same breath he said we'll send 30K more military people (Marines and soldiers) into the country but we'll pull out in 18 months. He plans to accelerate training of the Afghans so that they can take over before we leave.
Oh, there is just so much wrong with this. First and most important is that 18 months, maybe 18 years, is too short a time to get success in retraining either Afghani police, military, or government officials to do their jobs in a way that Americans find tolerable. In fact with actual deployments not being effective until sometime next summer, 12 months is the actual amount of time on the ground for these additional personnel. That the whole "surge" is predicated on a pre-determined withdrawal date is the real killer for this plan. In the end such a program will be viewed as failure.
He is apparently doing nothing to turn the Afghans against the Arabs who seem to dominate the Taliban. Perhaps this is part of his diversity initiative. It is necessary that the Afghans be united against an enemy other than the U.S. They aren't. Self interest tells them that if they want to survive, if they want their family to survive, if they want their clan to survive, if they want their tribe to survive, they need to separate themselves from the national government because in 18-20 months there will be no national government. You see that's how it is there. That's the rank of priorities there. Combined with pre-determined withdrawal date this tells the individuals who would enlist or who serve in the government to sit back to wait and see what happens. It also tells the Taliban that they only have to build up their forces over the next 18 months to win.
He did set some conditions on the Afghan government, benchmarks, which seem incompatible with the pre-determined withdrawal date.
Much of the speech was given to covering his ass. He spent a lot of time trying to justify his choices. In that he appears weak.
It sure seems to me that the strategy here is all about re-election in 2012 and really has nothing to do with beating the terrorists. The POTUS obviously doesn't think that we're really at war (nor does he care) with radical Muslims who have tentacles everywhere and have co-opted several governments to give them safe havens for training and planning.
I predict that this is what we'll see aside from the political wrangling in this country.
- summer of 2010, military strength upped to 30K or so
- summer of 2011, drawdown begins
- October 2012, withdrawal completed
- November 2012 to January 2013, Afghan government falls
Labels: Military, Politics
