Oh Well, Another Handful Of Afghanis Dead
by dday
Digby was talking about Afghanistan earlier, in the context of Obama seeking to see “the big picture” in allocating resources. I hope events like this fit into the edge of the frame.
Nine Afghan soldiers were killed and four others injured by a U.S. airstrike on an Afghan army checkpoint Wednesday in an apparent friendly-fire incident in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and U.S. military officials.
The pre-dawn airstrike occurred after a convoy of coalition troops came under fire as they returned to their base in Khost province, according to a statement released by the U.S. military. Coalition soldiers called for air support after exchanging fire with Afghan troops near an Afghan army checkpoint in the Sayed Kheil area in what military officials said could be “a case of mistaken identity on both sides.” […]
Arsallah Jamal, governor of Khost province, said coalition and Afghan troops had been engaged in operations in the area for about 10 days before the strike occurred. Jamal said the army checkpoint was relatively new but was well-known and on a main road. “They knew it was there. They made a mistake,” Jamal said.
There was another airstrike in the region today that hit a Pakistani school and killed at least eight. And you can just read these stories with a sense of deja vu throughout the past seven years. We’ve been bombing Afghanistan for so long, as a band-aid to make up for the lack of troops, that I’m not sure if you asked an Afghan civilian that they would tell you that the Taliban is the real enemy and not the guys in the airplanes in the sky. Right now popular support for a foreign presence is almost even with opposition, and declining.
Russ Feingold spoke up today with one of those statements that isn’t allowed in the polite company of the foreign policy establishment in Washington – maybe we shouldn’t just transfer our military strength from one country to the next.
But few people seem willing to ask whether the main solution that’s being talked about– sending more troops to Afghanistan – will actually work.
If the devastating policies of the current administration have proved anything, it’s that we need to ask tough questions before deploying our brave service members – and that we need to be suspicious of Washington “group think.” Otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
For far too long, we have been fighting in Afghanistan with too few troops. It has been an “economy of force” campaign, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it. But we can’t just assume that additional troops will undo the damage caused by years of neglect.
Sending more US troops made sense in, say, 2006, and it may still make sense today. The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated badly over the past year, however, despite a larger US and coalition military presence.
We need to ask: After seven years of war, will more troops help us achieve our strategic goals in Afghanistan? How many troops would be needed and for how long? Is there a danger that a heavier military footprint will further alienate the population, and, if so, what are the alternatives? And – with the lessons of Iraq in mind – will this approach advance our top national security priority, namely defeating Al Qaeda?
How dare he try to ask questions, using such trifles as reason and logic. How dare he consider that massive military might can be anything but glorious. How dare he suggest that an international problem has something other than a military solution.
The very nerve.
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