When I read this article at Reuters, reporting that President Trump had authorized the Pentagon to determine the troop levels necessary in Afghanistan:
U.S. President Donald Trump has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan, a U.S. official told Reuters on Tuesday, opening the door for future troop increases requested by the U.S. commander.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no immediate decision had been made about the troop levels, which are now set at about 8,400.
The Pentagon declined to comment.
The decision is similar to one announced in April that applied to U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Syria, and came as Mattis warned Congress the U.S.-backed Afghan forces were not beating the Taliban despite more than 15 years of war.
“We are not winning in Afghanistan right now,” Mattis said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier on Tuesday. “And we will correct this as soon as possible.”
it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember an instance of the Pentagon ever determining that more troops were being deployed than circumstances warranted. Can anyone? Presumably, we can expect more troops sent to Afghanistan soon.
It’s not merely that we’re not “winning in Afghanistan”. It’s that after fifteen years and several thousand U. S. casualties the situation in Afghanistan is actually deteriorating:
The Afghan government was assessed by the U.S. military to control or influence just 59.7 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts as of Feb. 20, a nearly 11 percentage-point decrease from the same time in 2016, according to data released by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
I would be more comfortable with increasing troop levels in Afghanistan if I thought the counter-insurgency objective presently being pursued there were achievable. I don’t. I think it’s a fool’s errand.
Mattis needs to make the case that Taliban et al can be defeated. To date, no one has in other than electoral sound bites.
The Taliban are Pashtun. There are 44 million Pashtun living in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they are the largest tribe in each country. They have been fighting foreigners since 1973, when local communists overthrew the monarchy. The Taliban (a Pashto word) are strongly supported by the Pashtun people, who are fundamentalist Muslims, and the Paki government, which wants a friendly state on its northern border.
We could not defeat them when we had 100,000 troops in-country, and there is no possibility of deploying more than a small fraction of that number now. This war cannot be won, and our continued presence has so stabilized Afghanistan that ISIS and al-Qaeda have been able to establish themselves there. The only rational decision is to withdraw immediately.
correction: destabilized
Actually, I think there’s another rational alternative, Bob: abandon counter-insurgency in favor of counter-terrorism , come to a modus vivendi with the Taliban, and keep a small, compact, lethal force in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future with just two missions: counter-terrorism and force protection. I’ve advocated that policy in the past although I’m wobbly on it now. There are others much more knowledgeable than I about Afghanistan who advocate such a path and whose lead I’m following in this matter.
There are several problems with the strategy not the least is it’s politically difficult. That’s a problem created by the Bush Administration and fostered by the Obama Administration. I don’t honestly care that it’s politically difficult at this point.
If we elect to leave Afghanistan completely at this point, it should be with the clear understanding on the part of all parties that, if the U. S. is attacked from Afghan soil in the future, we will respond mercilessly. The hardest people to convince of that will be Americans.
Alas, I suspect that you are correct and we will see an increase in troop deployment to Afghanistan. It won’t do much. I actually think Mattis is pretty bright and have some hopes otherwise, but I think it is just too engrained in the military psyche that you can do anything if you just make the effort. No surrender.
Steve