The on-site commander has requested 40,000 additional troops. According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama will announce an increase of about 30,000 tomorrow at West Point. Notably, he seems ready to reject a second high priority of Gen. McChrystal: a doubling of the Afghan police and army over the next few years. The New York Times also reports that Obama will discuss a timetable for withdrawal, but not with any where near the specificity of the Iraq plan to be completely out by 2010.
What does it all mean?
The war in Afghanistan is soon to enter its ninth year. That makes it third longest war in our history:
- Vietnam: 116 months
- American Revolution: 100 months
- Afganistan: 97 months
- Iraq: 80 months
To put this in context, WWI only required 19 months, WWII took 45 months and Korea lasted 37 months.
The Definition of War
The real rub is that most wars are fought against another country — that sets up a very clear end condition, when you have taken the surrender of that country. Iraq and Afghanistan are both part of the “War on Terror”, and we need to seriously rethink whether we want to classify our conflict with terrorists as “War.” After all, when does the War on Terror end? There are hundreds of terrorist groups around the world and if we have learned one thing about terrorists, is we are successful in stamping out one group, another rises to take its place.
Our troops are being asked to do more than we even asked of the “Greatest Generation” in WWII. True, when we drafted troops for that war, it was for the duration: but that only amounted to 45 months if your were called up in the first wave and served all the way to the end. Our troops today are seeing three and four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is no end in site. Post Traumatic Stress Disease (“PTSD”) has become so prevalent, the Pentagon is considering making counseling mandatory for all returning troops. But that is a palliative at best — troops from Vietnam still experience flash-backs from PTSD. Hell, I only spent 22 days in combat 40 years ago, resulting in one hot mission and one gunshot wound to my left wrist. But if I hit a pot hole just right with my car, the sound and vibration is so close to the feeling of rounds going through our helicopter that, for just a split second, it takes me right back there.
What we re doing to our soldiers today is unconscionable. I have a truly radical proposal: let’s bring them home from all foreign assignments. Europe is surely able to handle its own defense now — bring our troops home from Germany. We still have 28,500 troops in Korea, and effectively, they serve as a trip wire to bring us into any conflict if North Korea decides to invade with the 700,000 troops it has within 90 miles of the DMZ. But do we need that trip wire? Wouldn’t our treaty with South Korea be just as effective?
Think out of the box with me here. We have over 200,000 troops stationed in 144 countries. By bringing all of our troops home:
- We would help reduce our national deficit by an enormous amount and could help fund strategically critical programs for our own people in education and health care;
- The rest of the world would be called upon to take up the slack in their own defense — they already make clear they don’t like us, so screw them and let them field their own damn troops;
- To the extent we pulled out of Muslim countries, we would be undercutting the number one driver of Jihad — the presence of US Troops in Arab holy lands.
- Most importantly, we could accomplish everything we do by spending billions to keep troops overseas by simply speaking the truth: Iraq, if you cut off our oil, we will be coming back. Russia, if you invade Europe (how and with what?), we will hit you with everything we have. North Korea, if you invade South Korea we will just as surely turn your country side to slag as we would have after you had slaughtered our 28,500 troops (no matter how good our troops may be, they face 700,000 North Koreans and would not last for more than a few hours at best).
In other words, speak softly but carry a big stick! But don’t leave that stick inserted in 140 countries around the world.