Brian Ulrich notes that the escalation of American military involvement in Iraq is going to be achieved, in part, by withdrawing forces from Afghanistan which is apparently an "economy of force" operation where the important thing is simply not to allow it to drain too many resources from the government's top priority of wasting resources in Iraq. Sad to say, but I think it's all-but-inevitable at this point that Afghanistan will, due to neglect, be passed the tipping point by the time we get a new president in this country.
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Surging Backwards
09 Jan 2007 07:17 am
Comments (9)
Two thoughts:
1) I've been saying for awhile that I think the Dems could make some serious hay off the tradeoffs between helping Iraq and helping Afghanistan. If Bush's proposed escalation weren't forcing the timetable, I'd have preferred Congressional hearings on Afghanistan before those on Iraq, so the latter could be placed in the context of the awareness of an Afghanistan that's still probably salvageable, but near the tipping point.
For too long, we've considered Iraq in a vacuum, as if it were the only place our troops were needed. It's not, and the narrow focus on Iraq could really come back to bite us in Afghanistan.
2) Steve Duncan's absolutely right - a whole horde of problems will be worse in two years. (I'd add global warming to his list.) I honestly think that if it were remotely politically possible, we should simulpeach Bush and Cheney ASAP simply to keep all these crises from going off the rails. Can we impeach a President and Veep for stubbornly insisting on steering this country into a train wreck? I say, hell yes.
Shorter Matthew: we need a surge! But in Afghanistan!
Matthew wants our troops to DIE FOR THEIR GOVERNMENT!
Wait, wait. We've never had more troops in Afghanistan? And we've got lots and lots more NATO troops there too? And yet there is still record number of attacks by the Taliban? So, the more American and NATO troops we bring into Afghanistan, the more attacks from the Taliban we get? Huh?
I agree with RT about the prospects for political hay, which only Dean seemed interested in doing in 2004. The Bush administration would probably blame reluctant NATO allies there, but NATO populations have an understandable reluctance to fight a war against someone who attacked the U.S. when the U.S. considers it a second-tier project.
Maybe the Democrats could find a way to tie the Iraq funding for increased attention to Afghanistan, thus effectively running to both Bush's left and right?
Re Matt's last sentence and RT's point #1: Spot on. I've heard a few Dems make this point (Bill Clinton and Russ Feingold come to mind), but they should be making a lot more noise on the tradeoff between Iraq and other military priorities, most notably Afghanistan. This makes tons of sense both substantively -- as Matt suggests, Afghanistan has not passed a tipping point yet (not to mention who was sheltering our attackers, we have a lot fewer troops there, it's a bigger country, etc.) -- and politically.
Watching Al try to play "gotcha" is like watching a turd try to talk.
It is also worth mentioning that NATO was willing to send more troops under Article V or whatever (an attak on one is an attack on all), but the Bushies said they really didn't need NATO's help that much because more NATO involvement meant spreading the power to run the war around.
The Soviets had approximately the same number of troops in Afghanistan as we have in Iraq. Afghanistan actually has a larger population in it than Iraq. The military death rate for U.N. and U.S. forces in Afghanistan has been similar to the death rate in Iraq.
Why on Earth does anyone think that the Afghanistan project has any more chance of sucess than the Iraq project? We have fewer soldiers dying in Afghanistan because we have fewer soldiers there. We can get our military death rates down to zero in both countries by a simple procedure of withdrawal. Everything else is wishful thinking, including the idea that there is anything in either country worth pursuing.
James:
The population of Afghanistan in the 1979 census, the year of Soviet invasion, was 15 million. Iraq's current population according to the CIA is 26 million. The Western military death rate (combat and non-combat) in Iraq this year was 5.7 per 1000, about the same as 2005. In Afghanistan it was 4.8, also about the same as in 2005. That's not an insignifiant difference.
On the other hand, multiple sources (AP/HRW/UN) pegged the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first nine months of this year was pegged at something over 1,000 (mostly from Taliban attacks). Pick any Iraq source you want but their number for that country would be 1-2 orders of magnitude higher. The simple reason that Afghanistan has "any more chance" than Iraq is because the Afghans haven't been killing each other in any large numbers for going on five years now.
If our goal is to get our military combat death rate to zero, then, yeah, policy-making gets real easy.
I'm no expert on the middle east but it seems to me like one big difference b/w Afganistan and Iraq is that our occupation of the former is regarded a lot more favorably by the native population.
This justs kills me. If Bush wanted to surge 20K more troops into Iraq for political purposes... well, its only 2 more years. But losing Afganistan for it as well? That's just rough. I don't even think Bush will benefit from this move.
Comments closed January 23, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
By 2008 all the critical issues we're dealing with today will be more dire and unsalvageable than at present. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Africa (AIDS, Al Qaida, civil wars, debt) can be expected to further disintegrate in terms U.S. interests. After 2 years in power the Mighty Wurlitzer of right wing radio, Fox News and the Gingrich Brigade will manage to convince the electorate it's all the fault of Democrats. The 2008 elections will be a referendum on whether we need four years of dirty fucking hippies running the country. The alternative choice will be turning the dial to "11" on the blood lust meter, always an easy, popular lever to pull. By then it'll have been five years since we've been treated to the nighttime scenes of cruise missiles laying waste to a major metropolitan area. Can Wolf hang on long enough to breathlessly detail the destruction of Tehran or Damascus?
Posted by steve duncan | January 9, 2007 8:22 AM