The Return Of The Surge

Bloomberg is reporting that Obama's advisors say we need just a few more troops in Afghanistan. Only about 225,000 more, that is.

President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are under pressure from senators and civilian advisers to double the size of Afghan security forces, a commitment that would cost billions of dollars.

In private letters and face-to-face meetings, these supporters of mounting a stronger effort against the Taliban seek to boost the Afghan National Army and police to at least 400,000 personnel from the current 175,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an assessment he will give Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen by Aug. 14, according to a military official familiar with the review.

And that large snapping sound is the trap closing around President Obama. More than double our troops in Afghanistan? Exactly how are we going to do that? With what troops, what materiel, what money? We're wiped out as it is in the troops department. We've already got National Guard deployed over there. Where are we going to get another 225,000 troops from?

Blackwater?

Also, how did I know Joe F'ckin Lieberman was behind this? Look folks, unless we immediately withdraw from Iraq and go straight to Kabul from Baghdad, it's not happening. If Obama does this, I don't honestly know what to think. Yeah, we're going to have to train more Afghans but we'll nee more Americans in country to do so.

We need to get out of that hellhole, not double down.

[UPDATE 7:42 PM] It's been pointed out to me that the article does mention that the 225,000 additional troops would naturally NOT be all American, but trained Afghan forces primarily. (They sure as hell won't be NATO.)

That's nice. So we pick up with the Iraq strategy, circa 2005, meaning we'll be in Kabul for, oh, another six years. As Afghans stand up, we'll stand down, etc.

Yay.