I know what I want it to be.
I worry about putting too many troops into landlocked Afghanistan with lines of supply through Pakistan and Russia not as secure as I'd like. One additional reason I worry is that I'm not sure what we want them to achieve.
I worry that we will put too many troops into Afghanistan, build up a central government security force that can't be maintained without Western financial support, and otherwise try to turn Afghanistan into a modern state governed from Kabul.
Frederick Kagan debunks the idea that we might put too many troops into Afghanistan and alienate the people by rightly explaining that our war is way different than the brutal Soviet war that inspired mass resistance:
For all of these reasons, there is absolutely no basis for assessing that an increased ISAF/US military presence along the lines being considered will result in some kind of "tipping point" at which local Afghans turn against us because they see us as a Soviet-style occupation force.
I'm sorry, but the preceding essay on the brutal Soviet methods does not lead to this conclusion.
Remember, we don't have to be the same as the Soviets. The Afghans just have to believe we are the same as the Soviets were.
And the way the press has reported on the rare casualties our air strikes cause, do you really think that result is unlikely? Come on, the global Left believes we slaughtered Iraqis on a massive scale despite the lack of any evidence that we actually did that.
