I thought that our existing troop levels could work if we gave them enough time. A Dutch major general in charge of the south already sees the impact of our initial surge this year:
GEN. DE KRUIF: Well, I think it really changed when we deployed the additional 20,000 U.S. forces and the additional civilian capability that came with it in southern Afghanistan in July. That significantly expanded our footprint around Kandahar, in Zabul province and in southern Afghanistan, and especially when the insurgents realized that these forces were not just there to secure the elections, but they were going to stay there. We just saw that it had a huge impact on the insurgents because, as this expanded footprint, it put much more pressure on their leadership, their chain of command, their logistics, their safe havens, which made it very difficult for them to concentrate and project their power.
They are more in a surviving mode now than they are able to gain the initiative. And I think that's one reason that we didn't see well-synchronized, coordinated, conventional attacks happening in southern Afghanistan in the last 12 to 16 months.
Q If I could follow up on the momentum shift that you're talking about here, General McChrystal is talking about changing momentum over the next 18 months. If it's already beginning in RC South, I mean, what's the disconnect there?
GEN. DE KRUIF: Well, there is no disconnect. I had a long discussion with General McChrystal, a great discussion about issue, but of course he is taking a regional approach, including Pakistan and whole of Afghanistan -- so RC North, RC West, RC Central, RC East and RC South -- while I am in the position that I took a regional approach focusing on southern Afghanistan.
And I think actually that what we did in southern Afghanistan is that we proved that the concept is right; if you deploy more forces in July and August, then you will see the effect that you expect to see. And that actually led, I think, to the input to the initial assessment that, yes, we need more forces to complete the process of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, with the main focus on the South. So I don't see a disconnect. It's just a different scale and a different perception.
My view has long been that the situation in Afghanistan is nowhere nearly as bad as many have been saying. Indeed, I figured a level of 68,000--if matched by persistence--could eventually do the job. The second surge is about doing the job faster (and cheaper by winning faster). The price is the increased risk of having more troops at the end of tenuous supply lines for a time.
We are already making progress in the south. And the south is the key within Afghanistan, where the drug money and internal recruits come from.
