Der Spiegel has a lengthy article about Afghanistan -
Why NATO Troops Can't Deliver Peace in Afghanistan
By Ullrich Fichtner
05/29/2008
Forty nations are embroiled in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. Anyone who travels through the country with Western troops soon realizes that NATO forces would have to be increased tenfold for peace to be even a remote possibility.
What Cernig and I found amazing was this paragraph from page 3:
ISAF Commander McNeill has said himself that according to the current counterterrorism doctrine, it would take 400,000 troops to pacify Afghanistan in the long term. But the reality is that he has only 47,000 soldiers under his command, together with another 18,000 troops fighting at their sides as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, and possibly another 75,000 reasonably well-trained soldiers in the Afghan army by the end of the year. All told, there is still a shortfall of 260,000 men.
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2 comments:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/5493#comments
Strata has been crowing about the all-she-wrote "victory" in Iraq even though we were not winning in 2004 when the violence rate was
about what it is now.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/02/rate-of-violence-skyrocketing-in-afghanistan/
what he isn't mentioning is the bleak outlook in deteriorating Afghanistan.
oh, and AJ, maybe one shouldn't use American crime rates as ironic indicators of ....what?
ever consider that if a nation is unable to contain exorbitant crime at home, a good bet is it lessens the odds of its ability to squash insurgencies abroad?
Hey Steve, drop me an email, please?
Regards, C
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