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Mullah Omar, the de-facto leader of the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, is calling for a surge of fighters in Afghanistan to counter our planned surge:
Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani journalist, wrote in Canada’s Globe and Mail on Saturday that Mullah Omar’s letter “to the commanders of the Pakistani Taliban,” also said that “If anybody really wants to wage jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan.” According to Mr. Rashid, Mullah Omar’s letter was part of “a strategic attempt by both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to unify and concentrate their forces for a spring offensive against the expected arrival of 17,000 more U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan.”
It seems both sides can play the surge game, and nothing is a better recruiting tool for the Taliban than more foreign fighters in Afghanistan. This is just another reason I’m certain our surge in Afghanistan will do little to bring peace, secure the populace, rebuild infrastructure, win hearts and minds, or keep us safe.
The planned surge is pretty meaningless in terms of accomplishing these goals, anyway. The Pentagon thinks we’ll need 100,000 troops in Afghanistan for more than a decade to get the job done:
Called a ‘conceptual document,’ the plan, authored by CENTCOM Commander Gen. David McKiernan, is based on a vast pacification scheme that would involve deploying large conventional U.S. forces to prevent the seizure of Afghan villages and towns by the Taliban while the United States and its allies strengthen support for the Afghan central government through a broad range of civil action programs, land reform, village autonomy, and expanded political participation by the populace, these sources said.
“It’s a huge undertaking,” said a former senior U.S. official who had reviewed the plan. “It would take 20-25 infantry brigades to implement.”
He added that implementation of the plan would require a U.S. presence in Afghanistan for “at least a decade or more.”
The cost would be more than we could afford, the former official said, and David Kilcullen, a partner at the Crumpton Group in Washington said in congressional testimony that to build “sustainable and accountable state institutions at the central and local level,” would be expensive, “around $2 billion per month beyond the roughly $20 billion we already spend.”
Governmental and developmental funding for projects would on top of that, he said.
It’s good we’re finally seeing some hard numbers from the military on what it might take to accomplish the implied goals, which have drifted far from the original purpose of the invasion – capturing Bin Laden and crippling Al-Qaeda. This means the American people can make their choice.
It’s time to think long and hard about what we’re doing in Afghanistan and what it will cost. Is securing the populace, rebuilding, and preventing the Taliban from gaining more ground worth 100,000 U.S. troops on the ground for 10 years? How about $2 billion per month over that same period? Or is there another way to make sure America is never attacked by terrorists again that doesn’t involved spending hundreds of billions and thousands of lives? And why are we putting in a mere 30,000 troops without a strategy when it’ll really take more like three times that amount?
Seriously, is it worth it? Is there another way?
