McChrystal's 40,000 Troop Hoax

It's a time-honored Washington tradition. If you want to bully the government into doing something unpopular and the public into accepting it, manufacture a false emergency. Iraq war? If you don't approve it, mushroom cloud. Banker or IMF bailout? If you don't approve it, financial collapse. Social security privatization? If you don't approve it, the system will go "bankrupt." Our brand is crisis, as James Carville might say.

General McChrystal says that if President Obama does not approve 40,000 more U.S. troops for Afghanistan, and approve them right away, "our mission" - whatever that is - will likely "fail" - whatever that is.

But even if President Obama were to approve General McChrystal's request, the 40,000 troops wouldn't arrive in time to significantly affect the 12-month window McChrystal says will be decisive. So McChrystal's request isn't about what's happening in Afghanistan right now. It's about how many troops the U.S. will have in Afghanistan a year from now and beyond.

There is no emergency requiring a quick decision by President Obama. The current situation in Afghanistan is being used as a bloody shirt to try to lock America into to an endless war, and, as Andrew Bacevich argues in the Boston Globe, lock the Obama Administration into the continuation of military force as the main instrument of U.S. foreign policy.

The Washington Post reports:

In his 66-page assessment of the war, McChrystal warns that the next 12 months will probably determine whether U.S. and international forces can regain the initiative from the Taliban.

But as the Wall Street Journal notes:

a recent study by the Institute for the Study of War - a Washington, D.C., think tank headed by Kimberly Kagan, a military analyst who worked on Gen. McChrystal's assessment team - suggested it would be difficult to move enough troops from other posts to deploy anywhere close to 40,000 troops before next summer at the earliest.

The military agrees with the institute's overall findings, although [it] has identified different units it could deploy over the course of the next year.

Let's plot these two facts on the same graph.

Let's say that "12 months" equals 12 months. So, McChrystal's window is between now and next October.

Let's say that "next summer at the earliest" equals June.

We're in October now, so June is eight months away.

That means that for 2/3 of McChrystal's window that will "probably determine" whether we "win" or "lose" in Afghanistan, the 40,000 troops that Obama is being pressured to approve will be mostly irrelevant.

There is no crisis demanding a quick decision on McChrystal's troop request, and plenty of time to explore alternatives, including dramatically reducing our list of enemies, and dramatically increasing the role of diplomacy, negotiations, and deal-making, in Afghanistan and in the region.

In particular, if it's true that 70% of the insurgency consists of "$10-a-day Taliban," as a Senate report estimates, that suggests that we could make deals with (at least) 70% of the insurgency. Suppose that these deals cost us $20 per day, per fighter, and that there are 15,000 Taliban fighters overall. Then a deal with 70% of the insurgency would cost $210,000 per day. The war, on the other hand, costs $165 million per day.

If you assume that fighting this 70% of the insurgency has average cost, then fighting these 70% of Taliban fighters costs $115.5 million per day. So, if we made a deal with them, instead of fighting them, we'd save $115.3 million dollars, every day, for an annual savings of $42 billion dollars. By comparison, if the 10 year cost of health reform is a trillion dollars, then the annual cost is $100 billion. So making a deal with 70% of the Afghan insurgency would pay for roughly half of the cost of health care reform.

In addition, at the current rate about 23 American soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan every month. Assuming, again, average costs, that means that making deals with instead of fighting with 70% of the insurgency will save 16 American lives a month, or 194 American lives a year.

In what is surely an undercount, in the first six months of 2009, the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan recorded 1013 civilian deaths. If we use this figure and assume average costs, removing 70% of the insurgency would save 118 Afghan civilians every month, or 1418 per year.

And this analysis doesn't even consider the benefit of avoiding the wounding of American soldiers and Afghan civilians, nor the many other benefits of less fighting, including less trauma for American soldiers in Afghanistan - many of whom are depressed and deeply disillusioned, military chaplains tell the Times of London.

Nor does this analysis consider the benefits of less fighting in terms of less trauma to Afghan civilians and the economic benefits of less fighting for Afghan civilians.

In other words, there is at least one alternative to military escalation that would save more than a thousand lives and tens of billions of dollars every year, among many other benefits over military escalation.

Now, tell me again that there is an emergency requiring President Obama to approve sending 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman

Comments

[Ron Pryor]

Thank you for your intense research Robert, it's good to know people like you are out there. I wasn't quite sure where I stood on Afganistan til I heard that the Russians lost nearly 15,000. Are we ready for that. I don't think so.

[realtorgal]

Mr. Naiman does the math on what we would "save" by not sending in additional troops. Who among the prez's advisors is going to listen to him? Certainly not the war mongers who care little about what this war is costing!

The advisor family:
Doctor Kimberly Kagan.
Husband Fredrick. He is steeped in Neo Con war philosophy at the American Interprise Institute. Fredrick's brother Robert and the brothers' father Donald were connected to the Neo Con's Project For The American Century. http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/asia-mainmenu-33/2085-obama-sending-13000-more-troops-to-afghanistan

Kimberly Kagan was part of General McChrystal's assessment team.

Interesting background: Robert Kagan and William Kristol co-founded PNAC.

Frederick and his father David invented WND's.

Kimberly & Frederick were picked by Secretary Robert Gates to advise McChrystal. Others included Anthony Cordesman, assistant to Senator John McCain. William Kristol, of the Weekly Standard.

Dr. Frederick Kagan was at the core of the Project for the New American Century that was organized by Cheney and company after Cheney's boss, Bush senior lost to Bill Clinton. Their plan was to persuade Monica's boyfriend to kickstart a war with Saddam Hussein.

Clinton zipped down war; Obama has unzipped the PNAC plan open.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/jon-stewart-takes-on-fox_n_320287.html

[marinara]

very good blog. TY Mr. Robert Naiman.

[greyhound2]

The same general has been quoted as saying, "You could be in Afganistan for 100 years and still lose".

After nine years of stumbling around the mountains of Afganistan, they have a new plan. After 20 years, they will have a new plan. After 50 years, they will have a new plan. After 100 years, they will give up and conclude the effort was a complete waste of time, money and effort. Here's your bill.

[themidnightreview]

People like Glenn Beck had constantly played videos of Rahm Emmanuel making a comment that you never waste a good crisis, or something along those lines, and when the GOP and conservatives heard McChrystal's plea, they manufactured a crisis to take advantage of the situation. I guess General McChrystal really knows how to operate, giving the enemy a window into what he really thinks is happening in Afghanistan. Will they quit knowing American brass believe victory is unobtainable?

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http://www.themidnightreview.com
http://www.mumistheword.org

[oxygen]

the russians are laughing their arses off and I am too

[newyorkid]

If generals want to escalate the war by increasing 40.000 troops, they make a multiple choice request:
a. 40.000 troops.
b. 60.000 troops.
c. 80.000 troops.
d. A mix of all of the above.
Then they have many "independent" columnists on the pentagon's payroll writing for the media to press for 60.000. It's called PR. So in the end they get a "compromise" of 40.000, putting the government in a weak position. If things go wrong because it was insufficient the government takes the blame. That's how war propaganda works.

[LizM]

Oh, any of those numbers - or combinations of those numbers, for that matter - would be insufficient.

[Kirantana]

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. . . . [V]oice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

This was from Herman Goering... interviewed by Gustave Gilbert, an American intelligence officer, during the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Gilbert wrote the book, Nuremberg Diary.

[LizM]

...continued...

One would think that the kind of force-intensive COIN approach that McChrystal is advocating would be a non-starter from the get go. But, we can forgive President Obama for taking due time to come around to accepting his vice president’s wise and reasoned approach (not the 'Biden approach' you read about in the media and blogosphere, I hasten to add) to meet the essential US/NATO objectives through a comprehensive regional strategy.

I would just add that persuading a healthy majority of the Taliban to participate in the process of political reconciliation at the national and local levels, through whatever means, is critical to any success here. And, if that proves not to be possible, then we are truly up the proverbial creek without a paddle, as they say.

[LizM]

If General McChrystal is part of a grand conspiracy, or something, to lock the Obama administration into a paradigm of using military force as the preeminent instrument of US foreign policy, then the lot of them are in for a very rude awakening...so long as Vice President Biden has an ounce of influence in this administration.

And, there’s another fly in the ointment when it comes to the troops the General is asking for...I don’t know who he’s trying to kid, but whether he thinks he needs 40,000 or 50,000 or 60,000 more troops is a bit bizarre when you consider what it is he wishes to accomplish with those extra troops in the circumstances that currently exist in Afghanistan. The bottom line is that the number of troops that would be required to successfully execute the kind of COIN approach that General McChrystal apparently wants to take would be measured in the hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands...and, that’s if the necessary conditions for a successful counterinsurgency operation existed in Afghanistan - which, of course, is not the case.

...continued...

[vascopyjama]

Force is all we have left.

[Ergon]

Withdrawal is all we have left

[realtorgal]

vascopyjama;
Listen dear lady, there's more to this war than meets the eye and "force" is the option that has been used since the Civil War.

Look at who is advising the prez, the whole bunch are war hawks!

Doctor Kimberly Kagan. Who is she and what has she and her her family been doing to promote war all these years? Husband Fredrick is steeped in Neo Con war philosophy at the American Interprise Institute. Fredrick's brother Robert and the brothers' father Donald were connected to the Neo Con's Project For The American Century. http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/asia-mainmenu-33/2085-obama-sending-13000-more-troops-to-afghanistan

Kimberly Kagan was part of General McChrystal's assessment team. Robert Kagan and William Kristol co-founded PNAC. Frederick and his father David invented WND's. Kimberly & Frederick were picked by Secretary Robert Gates to advise McChrystal. Others included Anthony Cordesman, assistant to Senator John McCain. William Kristol, of the Weekly Standard. Dr. Frederick Kagan was at the core of the Project for the New American Century that was organized by Cheney and company after Cheney's boss, Bush senior lost to Bill Clinton. Their plan was to persuade Monica's boyfriend to kickstart a war with Saddam Hussein. Clinton zipped down war; Obama has unzipped the PNAC plan open.

[JDM73]

It is the business of generals to keep wars going indefinitely. Naturally, McChrystal is not going to say, "Hey, I think we'll have this thing wrapped up pretty soon, so we don't need any more troops. We're all looking forward to coming home." Trouble is, it's not just McChrystal who has Obama's ear; many more people have a vested interest in ramping up U.S. involvement in this war and discouraging an exit strategy, and they're advising the president.

[jeanrenoir]

The cynicism about McChrystal is crazy. He's a good soldier doing his best to protect America from Bin Laden's achievement of his obvious goal: getting his hands on enough Pakistani nukes to vaporize NYC, Tel Aviv, etc. The situation is that stark. This is, as Obama wisely has understood from the start, literally a fight to the death between us and the Taliban/Bin Laden. Bush and the fool neocons may, indeed, have made the war unwinnable with their "expedition to Syracuse" disaster in Iraq, which gave the Taliban and Bin Laden a free pass in Afghanistan for years. But if that turns out to be the case, this country is truly dead meat. A nuclear attack on NYC would make the current economic unpleasantness look like Happy Days.

[JDM73]

A surefire way to make al-Qaida more dangerous is to keep pushing them into Pakistan.

[Rule Of Law]

and once more--

Dianne Feinstein loves the idea of more troops in Afghanistan.

Of course, her billionaire husband own two war related corporations that continue to get favorable contracts through her connections. But don't take my word for it, google Richard Blum.

[LizM]

I think sending more troops into Afghanistan will be counterproductive at this point. There are better options.

But, you know, if the bank bailout didn't get done, we probably would have had a financial collapse and Afghanistan would have been the least of our problems, still.

[Spiritof1982]

Naiman writes:

"In particular, if it's true that 70% of the insurgency consists of "$10-a-day Taliban," as a Senate report estimates, that suggests that we could make deals with (at least) 70% of the insurgency. Suppose that these deals cost us $20 per day, per fighter, and that there are 15,000 Taliban fighters overall. Then a deal with 70% of the insurgency would cost $210,000 per day. The war, on the other hand, costs $165 million per day."

What, pray tell, happens when the Taliban can't be bought, oh wise think tank twit?

[RobertNaiman - Huffpost Blogger]

I never suggested that they could be bought. Only that deals might cost money.

That could come in the form of jobs or projects. And it could well be the case that it would involve more political flexibility than the U.S. has demonstrated so far.

But recent U.S. press reports indicate that such flexibility may well be in the cards. Already, the Obama Administration has signaled that it does not consider the Afghan Taliban a threat to the United States, and reportedly new guidelines are being issued for local U.S. commanders giving them greater flexibility in negotiating with local insurgents.

[BevfromNYC]

Do you actually read what you write? No matter what you may think you wrote, you are suggesting that we buy them off.

[Spiritof1982]

Naiman replies:

"That could come in the form of jobs or projects. And it could well be the case that it would involve more political flexibility than the U.S. has demonstrated so far."

Whether it's cash in hand or an in-kind bribe, you are still alleging that militant Islamic fundamentalists will accept some kind of kick back from the US and put down their weapons. Seems a little too cute for me. It works in DC but not in AfPak.

[Spiritof1982]

By the way, despite the fact that I think you're utterly wrong on this, I do appreciate that you have actually responded to the criticism.

[oxygen]

stimulation of the u.s. economy via the (what's left of it) military industrial complex, has nothing to do with Afghanistan at all, the u.s. has nothing else to export so they print out money and "spend" it overseas hoping people over there will use it and give it value ~ but they won't anymore so it's time to come home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSeuLsNV4CA&feature=related

[khepri]

I am a citizen of a country that apparently believes in perpetual war. The Defense Department has little to do with defense nowadays. What I don't get is how easily stampeded Americans are, believing that the enormous costs, death and damage created by its involvement in this region somehow makes sense. How long will the American people tolerate this madness? The author of this article is to be commended.

[sticksnstones]

The 2010 US Federal budget is scheduled to be largely consumed by a military spending (all inclusive/all aspects) pie wedge comprising 57% of its total.

You ask how long the American ( as in US citizens) people will tolerate this madness. The real question is how long will China be willing to keep issuing loans to pay for this madness.

As for this nation's apparent ability to tolerate this kind of military spending year after year and administration after administration, I'll let Alexander Cockburn chime in : " Insanity effortlessly trumps common sense. "