McChrystal: Afghan War Needs More Troops, Strategy

Nonno

Habari Na Mijeldi
"Courtesy of the Washington Post, we can now take a firsthand look at Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghanistan assessment, and it’s not upbeat. The Afghanistan campaign, the top U.S. commander there warns, will require more troops and resources; continuing without them, his assessment states, “will likely cause failure.”

The document — posted online without a classified appendix — emphasizes more than just boots on the ground. While it points to a need for more resources (i.e., a possible troop increase), the assessment also calls for a broader re-think of strategy.

“Success is achievable, but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or ‘doubling down’ on the previous strategy,” it states. “Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely. The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.”

It also divides the problem into a “short-term” and “long-term” fight. In the next 12 months, McChrystal wants to reverse the gains by the Taliban so that Afghan security forces can begin to step up to the challenge. Failure to seize the momentum from insurgents, the assessment states, “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

A couple other points jump out. The assessment points to the already well documented weaknesses within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, which has been hampered in the past by national caveats, lack of resources and an unwieldy command structure. ISAF, the assessment states, “is a conventional force that is poorly configured for COIN [counterinsurgency], inexperienced in local languages and culture, and struggling with challenges inherent to coalition warfare.”

More at source: Danger Room
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
Time to get the hell out. Bomb the hell out of the Poppy fields and starve them into submission.

I will never understand how we move an army into the heart of the illegal heroin trade and do nothing but help it prosper in anything but the most cynical view.
 
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