Thursday, June 11, 2009

Afghanistan's New Plan

According to the New York Times today, the new war plan for Afghanistan starts not only with a new general, but by flooding the zone of operations with a whole bunch of new generals hand picked by him. This brings the number of generals in the combat theater to a new high, with generals filling posts formerly held by colonels. If memory serves me, this is actually not a good sign, in that more generals does not usually lead to more efficient warfare but rather to more frequent snafu. That certainly was the way it worked out in Vietnam.

Additionally, the article says that General McChrystal's plans include, "...reduction in I.E.D.’s, reduction in poppy, more interdiction of Taliban crossing the border, some anticorruption arrests/exiles, and greater civilian effort possible as a result of a reduction in the threat."

The last is not a method, merely a braggadocio statement that he is going to have better success. The first and third sound pretty much like what his predecessor has been doing. It's "reduction in poppy" and "anticorruption arrests/exiles" that worry me. This sounds like more of a war on drugs than it does the war on that criminal act which has America cowering in foxholes and so terrified that we have declared a war on it.

We have been trying for decades to get Americans to quit using drugs by eliminating the production of drugs in South America with, so far, about zero success. Now we are going to start trying to make the whole world stop using drugs by eliminating poppy farmers in Afghanistan.

America: the most fearful nation in the world, but still the world's police.

2 comments:

  1. bruce9:02 AM

    reminds me of the Battle of the Alamo and the Mexican Army - each battalion size unit (~500) was headed by a general. My memory of the event is a little fuzzy, I'm sure Jayhawk would be pleased to correct me. He might have even been there. But I digress...

    Too many chiefs leads to too many meetings, committees, plans, sub-plans, sub-organizations, fractured missions, snafus, fubars, knotted chains of command, conflicting orders, internecine [sp] warfare, etc etc. What, no Navy admirals? You gotta have one or a few of those, remember the Marines report to the Navy. Never mind any Navy support. Oh, and what about the Air Force?

    This is sounding like a political and/or corporate something, starting to go horribly wrong. It was just regular wrong before.

    Farmers grow poppy because there is a market for it. Hey, don't we want capitalism over there? The last part is a desired result, not a plan.

    Fearful? maybe... the world's police? self-appointed perhaps.

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  2. Well, no, I wasn't at the Alamo, but I might point out that, too many generals or not, they rather overwhemingly won that battle. So whatever point you were trying to make, you were either countering my point or rather wildly missed the mark.

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