Here we go again:
According to FM3-24, the U.S. Army's counterinsurgency manual, "Twenty counterinsurgents per 1000 residents is often considered the minimum troop density required for effective COIN [counterinsurgency] operations." With a population of over 33 million, that means a force of 660,000 troops is needed in Afghanistan. For a sense of scale, consider that the total U.S. Army active duty force is less than 500,000 soldiers. It's also worth noting that that peak U.S. troop deployment during the Vietnam War was more than 500,000 soldiers and we did not win that counterinsurgent operation.
One, in the Vietnam War the counterinsurgency fight was largely won before we left. South Vietnam fell to a conventional North Vietnamese invasion spearheaded by armor and backed by heavy artillery.
Two, much the same was constantly said about troop density in Iraq yet we won Iraq War 1.0 by 2008 with nowhere near the troop density of US troops on the ground. What was always missing was a discussion of non-US troops.
Or of threat levels in different areas that required different troop densities. Most of the fighting takes place in a small number of Afghanistan's provinces, complicating the troop density calculation.
Remember, going back to Iraq, that President Obama boasted we'd left a sovereign and stable Iraq behind after he pulled out troops out of Iraq at the end of 2011. So we did win with far fewer American troops than the 2% rule suggests is needed. (But it is a guideline more than a rule, of course.) Add in Iraqi and allied troops and police plus militias and armed contractors, and we passed the ratio threshold when you consider the threat levels.
I really didn't read any more after that offense to my sense of reality triggered my forehead into my keyboard.
I don't understand why some people are so willing to let Afghanistan be a sanctuary for jihadis again.
Sigh. I'm so old that I remember when Afghanistan was the "good" and "necessary" war.
