When speaking about US foreign policy during the Republican Primary debates, Mitt Romney often returns to a familiar theme: his belief that troop levels in Afghanistan should be determined through close consultation with the commanding generals on the ground. It is both a criticism of President Obama’s June 2011 decision to begin drawing down troop […]
The sum of the twelve largest population centers in Afghanistan is 5,649,162—and this is counting rural areas surrounding cities, not just the urban area itself. That total is 21% of the population of Afghanistan (28,150,000). Remind me again how ISAF and NATO forces are supposed to protect the population of Afghanistan by not protecting 80% […]
This is smart analysis. The obsession with the idea of an Afghan surge just doesn’t make sense to me. Why are we focusing on the major urban areas in Afghanistan, when 3/4 of the population lives in rural areas? Safe haven myths aside, wouldn’t an ‘urban’-centric COIN policy leave basically the vast majority of Aghanistan […]
General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops is, of course, expected. Military commanders are always going to want more resources to utilize, regardless of whether they know how to use them or not (McChrystal’s insistence on a population-centric strategy in rural Afghanistan seems to make little sense). As reported in today’s New York Times, President […]
General Stanley McChrystal, the Obama Administration’s guy in South Asia, has warned that without more troops the war in Afghanistan “will likely fail”, reports the Washington Post. President Barack Obama, not surprisingly, is worried about becoming embroiled in an escalating situation, where victory only requires an ever-increasing number of ‘just a few more (thousands) troops”. […]