Thursday, March 02, 2006

More defeatists whining about the situation in Afghanistan

You know from the first paragraph the guy's just another "defeatist":

For the 18,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the appearance of victory could be a recipe for defeat. American commanders in Afghanistan say they are in a high-stakes race against time. Their challenge is to subdue the resurgent Taliban long enough to build up Afghan security forces so they can stand on their own. (my emphasis)
This particular piece of "defeatism" comes from The waiting game: A stronger Taliban lies low, hoping the U.S. will leave Afghanistan by Sean D. Naylor, in the Armed Forces Journal, which bills itsef as "the premier magazine for military leadership" and "the thinking officer's magazine". Naylor is a writer for the Military Times magazine (Army Times, Marine Times, etc.)

This is an interesting bit of news that Naylor provides. We've been hearing about plans to replace several thousand of the US troops in Afghanistan with NATO forces so the Americans can be redeployed to Iraq. But it appears that those plans are effectively on hold for now.

The delay is due in significant part to arguments from the Army Special Operations Forces (SOF) that this would endanger the current couterinsurgency effort there:

Led by Lt. Col. Don Bolduc, TF [Task Force] 31 arrived at the [Kandahar] airfield in June for its third six- to nine-month tour in the Taliban's southern Afghanistan heartland in a little over three years. The Desert Eagles, as they are known, found numerous improvements had been made to the region's infrastructure and democratic systems in the year that the battalion had been gone. But TF 31's soldiers also found much to worry them.

"Among the most troubling changes was the state of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan," states an unclassified TF 31 "memorandum for record" dated Oct. 7 and provided to AFJ. "Exploiting the misconception that the insurgency was over, the enemy ... had expertly managed to reorganize, refit and prepare to conduct a more focused campaign against Afghan National Security Forces. Coalition forces, though more far reaching than 12 months earlier and occupying three additional fire bases in the most remote areas of southern Afghanistan, had limited themselves to locally focused operations, allowing the enemy to remain out of reach and unmolested for nearly six months."

As a result, the Taliban forces have emerged stronger than at any time since a combined U.S.-Northern Alliance force drove them from power in late 2001. Conventional and Special Forces officers say the Taliban has a functioning chain of command that stretches from senior leaders in Pakistan down to foot soldiers in the provinces. (my emphasis)


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