34,000 Troops and the Wuss Factor

By Steve Hynd

McClatchy has the scoop - President Obama will announce on Dec 1 that he will order 34,000 additional troops sent to Afghanistan.

As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan � to which the U.S. has long been committed � and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police.

Which is just about the number everyone was expecting and exactly enough to keep both the pro-war and anti-occupation camps dissatisfied. Obama must have decided he'd just piss everyone off equally.

If there were a sensible mission in Afghanistan that extra combat troops might accomplish - and we've argued at length that there isn't here at Newshoggers - then three combat brigades on perhaps their fifth tours are going to struggle to do it. If there's any sign at all of "they'll stand up so that we can stand down" working - and again, there isn't much of a glimmer there either - then 4,000 trainers is simply inadequate to the task of doubling and tripling the Afghan security forces' numbers while preserving even a minimal effectiveness.

Still, Obama is at last drawing a line in the sand for Karzai and his government, apparently telling them they've six months to step up to the plate.

The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.

"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.

It's "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for getting them out," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

The approach is driven in part by concerns that Afghan President Hamid Karzai won't keep his promises to root out corruption and support political reforms, and in part by growing domestic opposition to the war, the U.S. officials said.

As McClatchy reported last month, the Obama administration has been quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an "Afghanistan Compact," a package of political reforms and anti-corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-tainted re-election.

The British government is offering to host a conference early next year to win international support for the compact.

Actually, I believe the British government's offer to host that NATO summit is all about preparing its own 180 turn to an exit from a domestically disasterous war prior to the British elections next year- Brown and his Blairites just aren't that altruistic - but that's rather beside the point. The knowledge that their leaning post would not last forever, wouldn't "stay the course" no matter what, is exactly what brought Iraqi politicians and power-brokers to the realization that they had to bring a modicum of effective governance along with their power-games and graft and is long overdue in Afghanistan too. And only that modicum of good governance can save Karzai's ass and the current Afghan state long-term.

So Obama has apparently split the difference, not just on troop numbers but on opposing domestic viewpoints. Those troops already on the ground are there to hold the domestic political line with their blood while Obama sets up the conditions both in Afghanistan and at home for a proper phased withdrawal. It's what he should have done in the first place and doesn't need extra troops to do so - but extra troops are seen as a domestic political necessity because Obama and his administration are wusses afraid of the electoral effects of being called wusses by Republicans and their own neoliberal hawks. They're going to be called wusses anyway. As is too often the case, foreign policy is domestic politics that gets inflicted on foreigners.