The Young Turks

http://www.huffingtonpost.c om/earl-ofari-hutchinson/bu shs-afghan-troop-plan-d_b_1 13761.html

President Bush's demand for more troops by 2009 in Afghanistan to win the war there predictably was scoffed at by the Joint Chiefs. They'll do the same with Obama's demand for more troops. In fact, any president or would be president who demands more troops will get the brush off. Yet Obama and almost certainly Republican rival John McCain will make that demand. The combat deaths of more U.S. troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May and June stirred panic and ignited a spurt of campaign jockeying and political oneupmanship between Obama and McCain on when and how to get more troops in the country.

But it's just talk. There are two reasons why. There aren't enough troops to effectively fight the Afghan war, much less two wars. Obama's plan to pull two brigades (about 7000 troops) out of Iraq and ship them off to Afghanistan is laughable. It won't come anywhere close to the number of troops needed to bring any semblance of military and political stability to the country, let alone win the war. That will take an estimated 400,000 troops. That nearly matches the number of troops in Vietnam at the peak of the U.S. war effort there. It took years to get to that level of troop deployment in Vietnam even with a compulsory draft. Moving that many troops to another war zone, assuming they were available, would be a nightmare of logistics, planning, supply, transport, funding, retraining, command changes and rotation.

But finding the troops and moving them from Iraq to Afghanistan is the smaller problem. The bigger problem is Obama's plan to escalate a war that's unwinnable; at least the way he wants to win it. That way is to toss more troops into a country that's stuck in a political and economic quagmire, where drug trading is endemic, the economy is crumbling, that has a long sievelike border with Pakistan where fresh Taliban recruits can move back and forth virtually unimpeded.

In recent months more Afghans say they distrust and dislike the U.S. and cheer the Taliban. In fact, dumping more American troops in the country would almost certainly increase that distrust, dislike and encourage greater military resistance.

An ABC News poll last December found that less than half of Afghans rated U.S. efforts in Afghanistan positively. This was a drastic plunge from the nearly 70 percent who two years before said they welcomed the U.S. presence in the country. A large number also said that the Taliban had grown in strength, and that they did not think the U.S. and NATO forces could do much about them. Since then the Taliban numbers have grown bigger, and even bolder in their armed attacks from suicide bombings, occupying towns, and controlling huge chunks of the country.

A massive troop build-up flies squarely in the face of the lesson of Vietnam. The lesson is that military might and firepower alone doesn't win wars in countries with fragile, shaky, and unpopular governments, an outgunned internal police and military force, against a resistance that controls a large part of the country and the loyalty of a big percent of the population.

Yet, on the eve of Obama's star driven campaign hyped jaunt to Afghanistan, McCain and Republicans and even a surprise Democrat Senator Joseph Biden whose name has been bandied about as a possible Obama running mate furiously wagged fingers at him on Afghanistan. The issue is what did he say and do about Afghanistan before his trip, before he became the presumed Democratic presidential nominee and before the spike up in troop deaths in the country.

The record doesn't look good. In February, he candidly admitted that he did not hold any hearings of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs on the problems and progress of the Afghan war. He chalked it up too a busy campaign schedule. This is a feeble explanation. The war even then seemed to be slipping badly out of U.S. control, and that was certainly a crucial time to deal with what went awry. The more credible reason is that Obama's subcommittee is supposed to deal with all U.S.-NATO related policies and issues. But that task is far too broad and ill-defined to make much of a policy impact. A full examination of such a weighty matter as Bush policy on the looming war crisis in Afghanistan is better handled by the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee subsequently held three hearings on Afghanistan. Obama attended only one of the hearings in March 2007.

Obama's Afghan appearance won't stop the criticism from foes that he doesn't know enough about fighting and winning a war, and that his credential as a tough guy on the war against terrorism is suspect. It certainly won't stop criticism that Bush's Afghan troop build up didn't work, and neither will Obama's. That's a criticism that shouldn't stop.