I find this a most amazing non-story:
The 340,000 members of the Afghan National Army and police “have shown progress in their ability to clear insurgents from contested areas but have exhibited problems holding cleared areas long-term,” Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the Pentagon intelligence agency, said in testimony prepared for a Senate hearing tomorrow. ...
Flynn’s assessment is in sharp contrast to assurances by top U.S. commanders in the field that Afghan forces are increasingly ready to take over.
Afghan forces “struggle due to the lack of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” as well as expertise and technology for countering improvised roadside bombs, Flynn said. Senior Taliban leaders “likely believe that they only need to continue” their present level of attacks “to be postured for victory” following a withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops and technology, he said.
So the Taliban expect to win? Well, they are religious fanatics. So what of it?
Good grief, stop looking for reasons to panic. Yes, top US commanders have assured us that the Afghans are ready to take over the fight at the pointy end of the stick. The Defense Intelligence Agency testimony quoted starts off saying just that.
And to keep the Afghan security forces fighting against the Taliban and help them hold their ground, they need American intelligence, recon, and bomb-detection help (and other support) until the Afghans can field their own--or adequate substitutes.
That's why we are supposed to keep 10,000 troops in place after this year.
This is how it works. When our allies can't fight, we fight for them and provide support while we train our allies to fight.
As they take over the fight, we continue to provide support while we train our allies to provide the support.
And then we can ease back on that support. I would note that South Korea still needs our support and that our European NATO allies needed our support to take on Libya in 2011.
Given Taliban strength which extends across the border into Pakistan and the consequences of letting al Qaeda get a foothold in Afghanistan again, I wanted more than double what the administration has indicated we will keep there, if we can get an agreement with the next Afghan president.
Once again it seems like an ordinary observation about how training allies to win could be used to justify retreat under the guise of cutting our losses.
UPDATE: More. We'd be better off not pretending "Afghanistan" is a political entity rather than a geographic description.
