Yet going by the rule (with all its assumptions and flaws) that we'd need troop strength of 2% of the population to be controlled, we'd need 500,000 to control 25 million Iraqis. I've written at length in the past about how I think we have through most of the war had sufficient total troops given the varying threat levels across Iraq so I won't go over that again (but see here for what I think is my recent post). Suffice it to say that we and the Iraqis deploy well over 600,000 security personnel. We have enough troops in Iraq to win.
And now we hear we don't have enough troops in Afghanistan. That is the whole basis of the ridiculous "distracted by Iraq" charge. If not for Iraq, we'd have enough troops to avoid losing in Afghanistan. Yet this ABC report about how President Hamid Karzai thinks we have basically defeated the Taliban and al Qaeda despite the continuing violence also says:
Military experts say that 30,000 American troops are not enough to ensure peace in Afghanistan and that the country needs about 80,000 more American and NATO soldiers. Karzai agreed that Afghanistan could benefit from more force.
How can this be? Afghanistan's population is a bit larger than Iraq's. How can a total of about 150,000 Western troops be enough when we'd need 2% by the standard metric? And this number isn't increased a lot by adding in national army and police formations.
First, if it is based on calculations of threat levels as I've done in the past, then saying 150,000 Western troops are needed in Afghanistan means that the standard complaint against the Iraq campaign that we have too few troops is and has been wrong all along.
Second, how do we explain why we need such an increase in force if we are beating the enemy in Afghanistan as Karzai says (and as I noted here)?
Third, would the loyal opposition that believes the real war is in Afghanistan support adding 80,000 more American troops (you don't really think we'd get more than a handful of additional NATO troops, do you?) when each soldier in Afghanistan costs about four times as much because of transportation costs? Would the loyal opposition add several hundred thousand to provide the density they say we failed to achieve in Iraq?
And if the loyal opposition doesn't think that we need 80,000 or nearly half a million more in Afghanistan, why not? Again, is the claim we have too few troops in Iraq perhaps wrong as I have consistently argued? Will our loyal opposition always say we have either too few or too many troops in Afghanistan? Do they really just want to bitch? Ok, that's a rhetorical question.
All I have to say is this new math is highly confusing and frightens me. I am but a simple caveman thawed out and educated in history and political science at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.
