The Patriot Post® · Just Enough Support to Fail

Amid much fanfare the Chosen One finally issued orders Tuesday to send roughly 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing total U.S. forces to about 100,000. This decision arrives more than two months after a request from General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, for 40- to 60,000 additional troops.

What drove that request? To understand the answer, we must first understand America’s overarching objectives in Afghanistan, namely: 1) defeat the ongoing – and growing – Taliban insurgency in opium-rich regions like the Helmand and Kandahar Provinces, which are primary funding sources for the insurgents; and 2) set up Afghanistan’s government to be able to protect its people within a secure, politically-stable sovereign state. Incidentally, these steps are exactly what we have done in Iraq, in spite of claims that such goals were “impossible.” The task at hand is to repeat the process in Afghanistan.

As with any counterinsurgency, the target isn’t simply the enemy’s militia because generally, killing enemies breeds even more enemies. This principle is especially true if insurgents are able to convince the public that counterinsurgency forces are trying to occupy, not liberate, the region. Rather, the real target is the nation’s people – winning their hearts and minds – so that the insurgents lose popular support as well as a potential source for additional forces.

This understanding leads us to the answer to our question. The only way to ensure popular support of a counterinsurgency is to protect the public from intimidation and attacks from insurgents. The safer the population feels, the less support it will give to insurgency, and the more willing it is to provide counterterrorism intelligence that will accelerate counterinsurgency efforts. This means the U.S. must not only provide a stabilizing force in the interim, but must also train indigenous Afghan police forces to protect its public. All of this translates into more troops. General McChrystal has asked for a force level he believes necessary to accomplish this task; we owe him support sufficient to get the job done.

The Left hasn’t helped Obama’s cause any, of course. For example, Rep. John Murtha (D-Earmark, ABSCAM), a liberal “hawk” (that phrase itself is an oxymoron), claims he never got a clear picture of what constitutes “an achievable victory” during his recent trip to Afghanistan – as if he ever could. Meanwhile, leftist documentarian Michael Moore hurls contempt at U.S. commanders while belittling our troops with condescension: “Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals.”

Notwithstanding these insights into partially developed brains, we fully support the president’s decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan. However, we would go even further, offering two additional suggestions from this “teachable moment:” 1) as commander in chief, you owe your commanders whatever reasonable support they’ve asked for, and nothing less – if they botch the job, fire them and get new ones who can execute your directions, but don’t hobble their efforts with stingy, second-guessed support; and 2) never delay a decision on a request for support from a combatant commander, whether you grant or deny that request – a delayed decision at best stalls operations, and at worst leads to defeat from losing the initiative and/or momentum.

Finally, we must ask: is this support – only three-quarters of the bare minimum requested, at that – too little, too late? As the Heritage Foundation notes, “[W]hen General McChrystal provided President Obama his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan in August, he identified three troop levels each with a corresponding level of risk that the mission could fail: 1) an additional 20,000 troops that would run a ‘high risk of failure’; 2) an additional 80,000 troops that would be a ‘low risk option’ that has ‘best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan’; or 3) an additional 40,000 to 45,000 troop ‘medium risk option.’ President Obama’s 30,000 troop increase falls squarely between the ‘high’ and ‘medium’ risk options. Nowhere in his address did Obama explain how a medium or high risk of failure in Afghanistan could possibly be acceptable to the American people.”

Meanwhile, we’re praying that the Obama administration hasn’t given Gen. McChrystal just enough support to fail.