FRONTLINE - Obama's War (Oct. 27, 2009)

[jcd11235 0]

"Tens of thousands of fresh American troops are now on the move in Afghanistan, led by a new commander and armed with a counterinsurgency plan that builds on the lessons of Iraq. But can U.S. forces succeed in a land long known as the 'graveyard of empires'? And can the U.S. stop the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan, where U.S. troops are not allowed and the government is weak?"

Did anyone watch Obama's War on FRONTLINE? (Direct link to video)

It painted a pretty unflattering picture of our progress in what they called the longest war in United States' history. As they presented it, a victory for the US in Afghanistan will be nearly impossible, and will require things to happen which are outside the control of the military.

One requirement is a significant reduction of corruption by the government led by Karzai. With its current levels of corruption, including an inability or unwillingness to hold free and fair elections, it is not viewed as a clearly superior alternative to the Taliban shadow government that is in place in Afghanistan.

Another requirement is an end to Pakistan's unofficial support for the Taliban. ISI, (Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence) sees the Taliban as a proxy force for protecting Pakistani interests inside Afghanistan, much as they viewed other mujahideen extremist groups, with CIA support, as tools of foreign policy during the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

One particularly interesting quote from Col. Andrew Bacevich (Ret.):

There seems to be some sort of presumption that Afghanistan is jihad central, that if we can simply succeed in pacifying Afghanistan that the problem of violent Islamic radicalism goes away. It won't. All we care about is that al Qaeda not use the place as a sanctuary, and you don't have to occupy the country in order to prevent that from happening.

Regarding a COIN strategy, Lt. Col. John Nagl says:

By classic counterinsurgency measures, success in Afghanistan would require 600,000 counterinsurgents. We're well below half that right now. So the current international forces on the ground, after a huge increase in American forces in 2009, which is not yet complete -- we're at about 100,000 internationals. We've got about 80,000 Afghan army, we've got about 60,000 Afghan police, for a total of 250,000 counterinsurgents.

This implies that even if General McChrystal gets the 40,000 additional troops he's asking for, there will still be less than half of the troops necessary to successfully carry out a counter insurgency mission.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!