From what was an essentially blanket opposition to the use of combat troops and a reluctant approval of even a security mission, he had continued to be eroded. He knew better than most what the military were aiming for, and that the tempo was being speeded up. Now he was arguing not against US troops but for a much more restrained use, for the enclave strategy, for testing out the troops in the enclave strategy, which allowed an easy US exit and which kept the US troop ratio down. The Plimsoll line was very much on his mind. What was it, he asked friends, the point at which for every American you added, you in effect added nothing but simply subtracted one ARVN. Was it 75,000 or 100,000, or perhaps as high as 125,000? At which point did it become an American war? What point would signify the end of the counterinsurgency program, of which he had been the major architect?
So what was it that Max Boot and Michael O'Hanlon can't understand about adding more US troops to Afghanistan to replace nonfunctioning Afghani troops? CATO's got the number on Max Boot:
Boot believes that the coalition should properly resource the war effort. What does that even mean? What Boot neglects to tell his readers is that our current policy requires more troops than we could ever send. The metric for successful counterinsurgency missions suggested by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps would require 200,000 counterinsurgents in southern Afghanistan alone, and upwards of 650,000 in the country as a whole, for upwards of 12 to 14 years—not including the last eight. The time and resources required for assisting Afghanistan would not be accomplished within costs acceptable to American and NATO publics.
Max Boot is an ass. He's not serious about what it would take to get the job done, all he can do is mouth the word "surge." As for Michael O'Hanlon's comment in the NY Times:
“I don’t think I can defend [President Obama] for being out of touch with his commander [McChrystal],” said Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. “He has other people who advise him. But there’s no one else with the feel on the ground that McChrystal has.”
Seriously, Mike? Fuck off. First of all, there have been just a few domestic emergencies that Congress doesn't want to face up to, so the president has been busy. Second, there is at least two four-star general officers between Obama and McChrystal - that would be Petraeus and Cartwright - and if they are competent, Obama doesn't need weekly chats with every theater commander who's working out there. I'll bet Odierno doesn't chat with the president much either, but he knows how to follow orders when the president said "pack up and leave Iraq."
Third, the situation in Afghanistan requires more than a military expert opinion. Does McChrystal have the answer to fixing a corrupt Afghani government? Can he get the Afghani warlords to support Karzai? Is he up on all the international and US aid going into the country? How about the counternarcotics efforts? Can he get Pakistan to actually keep the Taliban and AQ out of Afghanistan? If not, then really, fuck off. You're the one who's "out of touch."
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