In Afghan We Stand

Today President Obama announced his plans for Afghanistan, in response to General McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops. Many military experts criticized the General's request as paltry considering that a true counterinsurgency strategy required significantly more troops. Anyway, the President basically said that we have the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda which is a tremendous security risk for America so we need a surge and we have a coalition of the willing. Except, he assured us that this would not be an open ended commitment. What does that sound like? I'm afraid that "Bush-lite" is really going to stick on this one.

Essentially, President Obama plans to send 30,000 troops within the next 6 months. Apparently NATO will send some as well, for some 43 nations are in support of our surge. NATO is expected to make an announcement later this week. The President did not refer to his strategy as a surge but that is essentially what it is, for in the summer of 2011 he plans to start drawing down troops. But what happens if things take another turn for the worse like in Iraq where our military surged and then surged again?

The cost of the surge is estimated at $30,000,000,000. The new number circulating is that the war costs $1,000,000 per soldier. Obviously this is a disingenuous number calculated by dividing the total cost of the war by the number of troops; it is the military equipment that is costly not the individual soldier. The rationale for the President's strategy is that we need to re-take some geography from the Taliban and Al Qaeda and train more Afghan security forces before we can leave. Those of us who wanted to end the war sooner than later will be disappointed. Those of us who wanted the full troop assignment (and then some) will also be disappointed.