But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a 'small footprint' in Afghanistan and because Iraq was drawing away resources, General Barno commanded fewer than 20,000 troops.
As a result, battalions with 800 soldiers were trying to secure provinces the size of Vermont. 'Coalition forces remained thinly spread across Afghanistan,' the historians write. 'Much of the country remained vulnerable to enemy force increasingly willing to reassert their power.'
That early and undermanned effort to employ counterinsurgency is one of several examples of how American forces, hamstrung by inadequate resources, missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war, according to the history, 'A Different Kind of War.'
This year, a resurgent Taliban prompted the current American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to warn that the war would be lost without an infusion of additional troops and a more aggressive approach to counterinsurgency. President Obama agreed, ordering the deployment of 30,000 more troops, which will bring the total American force to 100,000."
I'm not going to comment too much here, since much of the article is fairly straightforward. However, I'm not too sure why the Pentagon would insist such a small military presence in Afghanistan back then. I know in hindsight it's easy to say that the government made a bad call here, but honestly I don't know why we didn't commit more additional forces in Afghanistan, when just two years prior, we were attacked. Maybe we didn't know that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda held a strong presence there at the time and were responsible? I don't buy it. With our intelligence that can't be possible. It seems like we just dropped the ball. It also seems that the government isn't releasing too much information about this, due to it's complicated nature and if revealed would probably overflow the blog.
I know a lot of it has to do with the Bush administration's missteps and that's just going to open up a can of worms. I know most of everyone is familiar with the last paragraph and that is another good thing Obama is pushing forward, along with the larger usage of Predator missiles against Al-Qaeda, another thing Bush didn't seem to take advantage of. In my honest opinion, and maybe I need to be a little bit more informed about the subject, which is okay, Afghanistan's problems is something the U.S. should have taken care of LONG ago, almost a decade ago. Iraq was just pointless. I know we removed an abusive dictator, which is FANTASTIC, but what about all of the other dictators present in the world?
Yeah ...
-Andrew Oxendine 3°
5 comments:
Your last statement read to me along the lines of, "If we can only get 1 (dictator) why bother trying?", not sure if that's what you were going for but I hope not.
That's not what he said at all. He was saying that for all of the good reasons to invade Iraq, unseating a dictator, preventing genocide, etc, there are many other countries around the world with the same problems. And Iraq didn't constitute a grave national security threat to the U.S. in 2003, unlike the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think what Drew was saying was that it was not worth 4,000 American lives and countless Iraqi lives to unseat a dictator who didn't pose a threat to us. We are not the world's police force.
We protect countries all the time from other countries who don't pose a threat to us, normally we call these countries allies. In this case we did it to protect the lives of the people in Iraq and though we aren't a police force the attitude of "this isn't our country so we don't have to care" is a lot more harmful than one that actually intervenes when needed. Sadly you'll continue to downplay the dire situation in other countries because if we can't help them all then why help one. Before you try and say this wasn't what you were trying to say you should perhaps read your statement again because it was pretty clear that was your sentiment Jack.
I'm saying we shouldn't have, easy to say in hindsight I know, gotten involved with Iraq for the reasons given. Using the reasons the Bush administration provided, which we did, why not invade other countries who are experiencing the same problems? They don't have WMDs? Are we sure? Please ... we intervened based on groundless evidence, that people blindly supported. Afghanistan and Pakistan were the threat and still are, not to mention Yemen and possibly Saudi Arabia. That's what I'm saying.
Why can't we invade Iran?
Is it rhetorical?
Hmm ...
Whether or not we should have diverted attention from Afghanistan and invaded Iraq is a pretty hotly debated topic. Obviously, there are arguments for both sides. However, I got to agree with Anders, in that capturing a dictator who gassed thousands of his own people is a good thing. The number of Iraqis who died as a result of the invasion is absurd. However, who knows how many would have died under a continued Saddam dictatorship? True, there are other countries in the world that are suffering too. We picked to invade Iraq most likely because it was closest to Afghanistan, and because it had oil. (Greed) Also, I don’t believe that invading Iran would be a great idea. The Iranian government is not great, but at least it doesn’t gas people. Also, for those that fear an Iranian nuclear strike, don’t hold your breath. It’s not happening! Also, (and this is pretty random) there are many countries who disapprove of America’s invasions and wars. I would like to see how those countries would react if they were attacked by terrorists.
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