New America Foundation's Peter Bergen on Afghanistan
Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation reports in a commentary on CNN today that “Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is expected to ask the Obama administration for additional troops and equipment.”
The real debate has boiled down to how long the U.S. will wait for the Afghan government to be able to control the Taliban insurgence without the help of the U.S. and NATO forces. As ASP Senior Fellow, Dr. Bernard Finel has pointed out on an earlier post on The Flash Point Blog, counter insurgency theorists “would like the Afghan government to field a force of somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000-600,000 disciplined troops, capable of using discriminate force and avoiding civilian casualties. They’d like the Afghan government to eliminate corruption. They’d like the central government to find a way to build loyalty from provincial governors and other local elites, to ensure an Afghan “whole of government” response.”
However, with the given resources – both in troops, funding, and infrastructure – of the Afghan government, Dr. Finel states that these theorists are setting Afghanistan up to fail: “A sane strategy for Afghanistan begins with an assessment of Afghan government capacity as it exists today, not as we wish it existed. From there, you have to assume that its capacity will increase slowly — at best — or suffer dramatic reverses — at worst.”
But patience may be wearing thin in the halls of Congress. Mr. Bergen states: “In May, 51 House Democrats voted against continued funding for the Afghan and Iraq wars. As the election season for midterm elections to the U.S. House of Representatives begins in earnest in early 2010, House Republicans will surely make Afghanistan an issue if there isn’t tangible progress being made there.”
You can read additional postings on COIN by Dr. Finel on his personal blog here and here.
Read Dr. Finel’s post “The Incoherence of COIN Advocates: Andrew Exum Edition” on the Flash Point Blog here.
