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Surge Lite

By John Batchelor on November 15, 2009 at 2:00 PM in Current Affairs

Editor’s Note: On Sundays at 11:00 ET, Larry Johnson joins the “experts panel” weekly on my West Coast syndicated radio show. Listen via KFI-AM.

 
Very Limited Resources.  

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John Bussey, WSJ, reports on the latest hot version from the DoD for the Afghanistan surge. Not eighty thousand, not forty thousand, not even the ten to fifteen thousand with an air fleet of Predator robots sweeping over the Khyber Pass in pursuit of Gunga Din’s heirs.   Instead the new magic number is 30-35 thousand, we are told (above), however the whole of the delivery will not come until the end of 2010.

Does this mean that the Obama administration has disappointed the DoD?  It does not.

The Obama administration is dealing with the facts of an over-extended yet sophisticated military.  My information is that General Casey does not want to continue the present rotation schedule of 12 months in the combat zone and 12 months out of the combat zone.

The US Army has very limited resources to put into Afghanistan over the next six months to a year.  Same for the Marine Corps, which is already heavily in-country.  Bluntly, we are down to the last of the trigger-pullers who are not already in either Iraq and Afghanistan.  The redeployment from Iraq is critical, but it is not sufficient.  Volunteer armies have natural limits.

Blame What?
AfPakia is a NATO effort with UN assistance, and the facts demonstrate that neither NATO nor the UN are contributing effectively or generously.  AfPakia is also not the center of the struggle.  In sum, the Obama administration is committing the US to a disproportionate combat role in a non-strategic combat theater.  Afghanistan is an extension of Pakistan.

The manipulation and bloody-mindedness in Pakistan mean that there can be no solution or even effective management at Kabul and in the Pashtun regions until and if Islamabad is stable and trustworthy.  There is the possibility that Pakistan is now in the control of the enemy.  By enemy, I mean the Wahhabists of Arabia.  The one and only ally the Taliban had back into the 1990s when it overran Afghanistan was the House of Al-Saud.

Nothing has changed.  It is not an endgame, but it is a strong move to blame the wretchedness of Islamabad and Kabul on the House of Al-Saud.

McChrystal.
The McChrystal plan in AfPakia was never one thing or another; it is a work in progress for what can be done with the resources available.  In the event of a disaster in Kabul or Islamabad (Jihadist coup), nothing will be enough.  My information is that this is not about politics.  It is strategy.  As long as the US maintains Riyadh as an ally, we will have trouble in  Jerusalem and Kabul and Islamabad.  As long as the US treats Tehran as a hostile state that can be managed with diplomacy, there will be trouble in Gaza and Beirut and Baghdad and the Gulf.  Surge lite in Afghanistan answers none of the critical questions.  It doesn’t even solve Al Qaeda.  The road to Bin Laden and his kindred of Cain begins in Riyadh, at Abdullah’s palace, at Abdullah’s desk.