General McChrystal has written, spoken, and probably leaked to the public his earnest desire to win the war in Afghanistan by requesting what the Democrats called for several years ago, more troops.
Back when Iraq's future remained uncertain, many Democrats, including the current Secretary of State, called for more focus on Afghanistan. They, including the current president, called this country the real war and Iraq the distraction. Now Afghanistan is the distraction and the Olympics are the real war.
Naturally the officers and soldiers have gotten fed up with the shifting of attention. Obama called health care the most important struggle of this generation (excuse me, are we not at WAR?) He has little concern or time for Afghanistan, so long as he can get one domestic victory and the Olympics (oops, may have screwed the pooch on that one.)
Danger does exist in too massive a buildup; after all, we trained them to hit the logistical units of massive concentrations of men and armor during the Soviet occupation. However we need to expand our presence in the countryside. Experts at the Army War College have studied two hundred years of irregular warfare in American history and figured out a gameplan for victory.
They concluded that you can pacify a region like Afghanistan in two ways, offer security or terror to the most important factor which is the population. Americans do not terrify civilians, even though that is the easiest way to win. Instead the goal is to establish permanent security. It makes no sense to advance into a town, secure it, gain cooperation, then abandon it to go after another objective. You need a long term presence to help train security units and home guards so that they can protect themselves. This requires time and more manpower.
Is Obama interested? Does Obama care? His generals have taken the extraordinary step of speaking out to try and pressure him into giving the war more attention than the Olympics. Let's hope they succeed. Failure in Afghanistan means emboldened terrorists and more attacks on our soil.
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