White House Aides Said to Chafe at Slow Pace of Afghan Surge – New York Times

In today’s New York Times we have an article entitled White House Aides Said to Chafe at Slow Pace of Afghan Surge .  This is where the politics of running a series of wars from the White House clashes abruptly and jarringly with running a massive troop deployment from several military vantage points both within and without "the Homeland". (Gads I hate that term!).

Reality must be unsettling for the President and his gang of would-be Taliban conquering neophytes.  Anyone who has ever been in the Armed Forces of the United States for more than fifteen minutes knows from personal experience that an hour’s worth of flag-rank officers’ promises can take a year for non-coms, petty officers and junior officers to deliver.  And getting 130,000 American troops in place, supplied, protected, connected and tactically deployed can be just this side of maddening…and that is for the experts who do it every day.

I am continually amazed at how little the President’s people often grasp the full impact of any aspect of a war strategy.  Even under the best of conditions, military and naval movements are organized chaos with a million variables affecting ten thousand vectors going in one thousand general directions and under the command of hundreds of different supervisors, generals, admirals, GS-15s and contractors. 

Herding a stadium full of cats would be easier.

Let me give you an insider’s view of how these things work.  I have worked on enough admirals’ staffs to know. 

In my opinion, these 130,000 troops will take eighteen months to fully deploy and support and another 24 to 36 months to completely evacuate from in-country once the mission is completed.  That would be about five to six years from the time the first trooper landed in Afghanistan (that has already happened) to the time the last trooper turns out the lights and leaves.

That is about as fast as a 130,000 troop involvement can happen if you take into account the five to one ratio of support troops and their equipment and their necessary physical and command infrastructure to the one war fighter they are supporting.

Getting 130,000 troops in-country, mission completed and out of the place in eighteen months is quite literally impossible.  This is hands down, no questions asked, absolutely certain. However the President got the idea that this was possible is beyond me.  He must be getting his military advice from Beetle Bailey.

Honest to God, who is watching the store?  Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street? No, wait a minute, that is unfair.  Mr. Hooper would be a lot more organized, a lot nicer and frankly he would sing a song or two while we were Muppetting our way into the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.  And this would be all the while we are bombing the hell out of their tribal areas.

This is our strategy for "victory" over the Pashtun goatherders who have not once in their lifetimes travelled more than 100 miles from the field that they were born in?

You know, if this was a movie no one would believe it.

When Republicans wage a war they indiscriminately shoot everyone on the other side in the head.  When Democrats wage a war, they indiscriminately shoot everyone on their own team in the foot.

This is turning out to be the McHale’s Navy of all "terror war" stories. Do we actually have a plan other than embarrasing ourselves with this ridiculously choreographed Chinese fire drill?

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)