[Peace-discuss] AfPak escalation

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This is being done with practically no public discussion, owing to the 
Democrats' co-option of the anti-war movement.  --CGE]

	Senators, Advisers Urge Obama to More Than Double Afghan Forces
	By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan

Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders 
are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size 
of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and defense officials urged 
Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and the new U.S. commander in 
Afghanistan to boost the Afghan National Army and police from current levels of 
175,000 to at least 400,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces 
will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators 
Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, 
chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 
letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will 
recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an 
assessment he will give U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen by Aug. 14, 
according to a military official familiar with the review.

McChrystal won’t suggest in his report how many additional U.S. or NATO troops 
would be needed to train those Afghan forces or to boost the U.S. fighting 
effort, the official said. Any discussion of U.S. or NATO troops will come in 
the weeks after McChrystal’s assessment is submitted.

Substantial Expansion

In a meeting last week with Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, the deputy national 
security adviser who oversees Afghan policy at the White House, Levin said a 
substantial expansion of Afghan forces is essential, according to his 
spokeswoman, Tara Andringa.

In a May 19 letter to Obama, 17 Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed 
Services Committee, including Levin, a Michigan Democrat, Lieberman, a 
Connecticut independent, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican 
presidential candidate, urged a doubling of Afghan forces. They cautioned Obama 
against “taking an incremental approach” that “does not reflect the realities on 
the ground.”

The U.S. already has agreed to fast-track the buildup of combined Afghan 
security forces to 134,000 Army personnel and 96,800 police -- 230,800 in all -- 
by 2011, according to U.S. Central Command.

Funding Request

The Department of Defense has requested $7.5 billion for fiscal year 2010 to 
fund the expansion. Training and equipping 160,000 additional forces, as the 
lawmakers and officials are urging, would balloon costs and require thousands 
more foreign military advisers, a commitment the Obama administration has been 
reluctant to make.

Senators argued in their May letter that building Afghanistan’s own forces would 
be far cheaper than sending more U.S. soldiers. “For the cost of a single 
American soldier in Afghanistan, it is possible to sustain 60 or more Afghans,” 
the senators wrote.

A similar message was drummed home by a dozen civilian national security experts 
in meetings with McChrystal and in a written report they gave him after a month 
in Afghanistan assessing ground conditions.

McChrystal asked the analysts from the secretary of defense’s office, the 
Congressional Research Service, Washington research institutions, the European 
Union and a French think tank for help in preparing his assessment.

Commander’s Comments

The calls for the administration to raise the targets for more Afghan forces 
echo comments to reporters last month by Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, 
commander of U.S. Marines leading an offensive in Afghanistan’s Helmand 
province. He said he was “not going to sugarcoat it. The fact of the matter is 
we don’t have enough Afghan forces” partnering with U.S. troops.

More Afghan troops would bolster U.S. efforts to conduct joint operations, said 
Major General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander for NATO forces in eastern 
Afghanistan, where the U.S. is the lead nation in the coalition.

“I do see a need for a greater capacity within the Afghan national security 
forces,” Scaparrotti told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday via video link 
from Afghanistan. “General McChrystal has stated we look at not only building 
their competency but building their capacity at a quicker pace.”

Lieberman, who has long advocated an expansion of Afghan forces, said the 
commitment “is a decision that we have avoided making for far too long.”

‘Drag Our Feet’

“Every day we continue to drag our feet and fail to commit to the indigenous 
security forces” hinders the fight against extremists and delays the pullout of 
U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Lieberman told Bloomberg News in a statement last month.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert, predicts 
doubling the size of the Afghan Army would likely be a five-year, $25 billion 
commitment that would require 12,000 U.S. military trainers. Those troops would 
have to be reassigned from other duties.

The realization in Washington “of the scope and scale of what would be required 
in Afghanistan is frankly causing waves,” said Nagl, a member of the Defense 
Policy Board that advises the secretary of defense. He is president of the 
Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“The national security community, broadly speaking, recognizes the importance of 
a much larger Afghan Army” as a prerequisite for an eventual exit by U.S. 
troops, said Nagl. “The administration has not yet decided to pursue that path.”

Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, in June said the president’s strategy 
to boost civilian assistance should be given time to work before further 
commitments are made.

In February and March, Obama pledged 17,000 additional U.S. ground troops and 
4,000 trainers, all of whom will be deployed by the end of September, said Major 
John Redfield, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command.

There are 63,000 U.S. troops and 40,500 non-U.S. NATO forces in Afghanistan, the 
highest number since the war to oust the Taliban regime began in 2001.

To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at 
ilakshmanan at bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 5, 2009 00:01 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAFZskgzLx1U

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Posted: 04 Aug 2009 05:27 AM PDT

...Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus and Special Rep Richard Holbrooke 
hosted an 11 hour Pakistan policy discussion at Ft. McNair Monday. "Everyone who 
works Pakistan policy" from the under secretary/assistant secretary level was 
there, a source said. Holbrooke has a meeting scheduled this morning with Vice 
President Joseph Biden, who has expressed his opposition to sending more U.S. 
troops to Afghanistan.

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