Iraq or Afghanistan Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Just another reason why you can't look at Iraq in a vacuum.  Progressives have been making this argument for years at the more meta level, and in recent months Admiral Mullen has acknowledged that we aren't doing everything we can in Afghanistan because of Iraq (Something that should have been acknowledged by this Administration a long time ago).   But it is more significant when you start getting very specific numbers on precise troop shortages.

The Pentagon has concluded it can't send additional troops to Afghanistan until sizable numbers of forces withdraw from Iraq, a senior military official said Monday.

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan believe they need an additional three brigades of American forces, between 10,000 and 12,000 troops, to combat the Taliban and to speed the training of Afghanistan's security forces.

The requests will go unmet until U.S. troop levels in Iraq start coming down. The military "can't move a substantial amount of additional forces into Afghanistan unless there are additional forces which come out of Iraq," the official said. "We might be able to generate a little bit more, but not 10,000 to 12,000 more troops."

The comments were an acknowledgment of the challenges facing the Pentagon as it scrambles to find enough troops for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. troop levels in both Iraq and Afghanistan are already at or near their highest levels since the start of the two wars. The administration's decision to freeze troop levels in Iraq after the last of the 30,000 "surge" troops depart this summer has left Pentagon officials with few options for finding more forces for Afghanistan.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

we aren't doing everything we can in Afghanistan because of Iraq

Why has the military option become the only option for US foreign policy, not only for the government, but for pundits? Is the US a completely Spartan state now where the only influence it can exert is to send troops somewhere?

That seems to be the general feeling these days, and it's wrong. It's what has caused not only US domestic fiscal and "wounded warrior" (and dead warrior) problems but also widespread killing and destruction of people who would rather not have the US interfering in their countries. And of course it has engendered widespread hatred of the US in the world, particularly the Muslim world.

We now hang on every word from Mullen, Gates and Petraeus as to what reality is and what US policy should be. We have all become amateur military analysts playing wargames. We need another brigade in that country. Where do we find it? Let's take it from this other country. We'll chance a lower kill ratio one place to get a higher kill ratio in another place and then we might win in both places! Victory! How cool is that!

Barnett Rubin, Afghanistan expert:
"Unilateral commitments will only provoke more resistance from Afghans and regional powers, and Afghan stability ultimately depends on lowering the level of threat through multilateral diplomacy and political negotiations."

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We now hang on every word from Mullen, Gates and Petraeus as to what reality is and what US policy should be. We have all become amateur military analysts playing wargames. We need another brigade in that country.
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