…and it would better understand policy.

should’a read: …and it would be easier to understand policy.

#4 – what happened to the “PREVIEW” toggle?

Holly in Cincinnati said,

…

#1 – I agree.

#2 – If offending posts were edited instead of deleted your “ATTENTION COMMENTERS:” post would make more sense to those of us who didn’t see the offending remark and it would better understand policy.

#3 – regards, SteveK

Does anyone want to defend the current state of our military and foreign policy?

I forgot to add: Because I think everyone is being pretty civil, actually.

Is there anyone in particular that was aimed at?

Doma,

What I will concede is that Iraq has impeded our larger counterterrorism mission – not just in Afghanistan – but around the world in the past couple of years. I don’t think Afghanistan was impacted at all in 2002-2004, or if it was, only marginally so. Beginning with the previous “surge” for the elections in 2005, the optempo has been materially damaging our forces which is impacting everything the military does, including Afghanistan. It’s made us strategically vulnerable. We have no reserve for contingencies. It has undoubtedly emboldened Iran, who now knows that a “regime change” land invasion against it is impossible and that our forces in Iraq are vulnerable to Iranian counterattack should the US go with airstrikes.

In short, I do not mean to demean the negative impact Iraq has on a host of factors, but it remains my belief that we’d still have a huge problem with the Taliban today even if Iraq hadn’t occurred for the wide variety of reasons already laid out. IOW, I completely disagree with the notion that the Taliban and AQ would somehow be defeated if not for Iraq. Even a cursory examination of the history of the regions would indicate otherwise.

Look at our budget, if you want further proof of what this is costing. You can’t possibly claim that those costs don’t spill over into other capabilities, both in Afghanistan and at home.

As I said above, spending on Afghanistan has increased every year since 2001. I don’t see Congress debating either/or with regard to funding Iraq and Afghanistan – what I see is Congress cutting checks for pretty much everything that’s requested – in fact, it’s even increased funding in both theaters from what Bush has proposed on a few occasions.

Short-term, I don’t think there’s a lot of impact to this since all this money is basically borrowed. Long term? Yeah, it’s going to be a kidney punch as the economics of interest payments really start to kick in. We’ll be paying for these wars for a long time. I think my generation – “gen x” – will suffer the worst as we’ll be paying for these wars probably into retirement plus paying for all the boomers on social security and medicare. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

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A good back-and-forth by everybody… Well done.

It reminds me of the good old days, Thanks.

In Iraq we have 175,000 troops and an even larger mercenary force so that we can keep the effort in a holding pattern, hoping that the Iraqis someday decide they feel like getting it together. We have built permanent bases that may never be used an a mammoth sized embassy which is accomplishing exactly what? Except to send the signal to the Arab world that we expect to occupy Iraq for the forseeable future.

Meanwhile we are spending 12 billion a month– how can that approach fiscal responsibility?

Rudi- I stand corrected on Khan. I didn’t know that the West played such a big role in Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons.

Bush (or one his generals?) announced that after troops begin to be recalled from Iraq, some would be deployed to Afghanistan.
NATO generals are repeatedly complaining that there are insufficient troops in Afghanistan. Mosttly it’s due to Europeans not fulfulling their obligations, but you can’t say that the US using up its troops in Iraq has no effect on our capabilities in Afghanistan.

Look at our budget, if you want further proof of what this is costing. You can’t possibly claim that those costs don’t spill over into other capabilities, both in Afghanistan and at home.

That’s your best defense of the current state of American military and foreign policy?

Perhaps you failed to read anything else I’ve written in this thread, nor the links I’ve provided? The fact that something happens on GWB’s watch does not mean that GWB is the cause or that GWB is to blame. If that’s the game you want to play we can apply such dubious logic to events that happened during the watches of previous Presidents, though I suspect you might not like the conclusions. After all, it would mean that Reagan was responsible for beating the USSR, Clinton was responsible for India and Pakistan going nuclear and the Taliban and AQ, and Carter was responsible for the oil embargo. See what I mean?

Were there ever plans to have anything close to that many troops in Afghanistan? No. Could the US logistics system keep that number of troops supplied in a land-locked country with the world’s crappiest road network? No. Is there any evidence to show that the military ever wanted more than roughly 30k US troops in Afghanistan? Not that I’ve found. After all, we only needed a handful to take the country in the first place and we were really only able to supply 15-20k in 2002 anyway since almost everything had to come in by air and even then there was only a couple of airfields that could handle C-17′s.

I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but until I see some evidence – and not speculation – I will continue to criticize the idea that Iraq sucked much away from Afghanistan.

Certainly the Iraqi debacle has been disastrous for our armed forces in general, impacting everything from training to readiness and the adverse effects of the current optempo are certainly affecting Afghanistan.

Correlation does not equal causality.

That’s your best defense of the current state of American military and foreign policy?

You do the math: 175,000 U.S. troops in Iraq today, the highest level since the outset of the war (in part because of troop rotation overlaps) and 27,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Resources were diverted from Afghanistan for the sake of invading Iraq. Would the resurgent Taliban have the appeal they now do in the border regions of Pakistan if they weren’t being successful in Afghanistan because of that lack of resources and effort? I think one feeds the other at this point.

Again, what resources? I see this claim all the time, but where is the evidence? Aid to Afghanistan has gone up every year since we invaded. No military units that I know of were pulled out of Afghanistan for the Iraqi invasion.

The principle drain has really been one of expertise – the best COIN minds are in Iraq right now, not Afghanistan.

Khan received the most important nuclear assistance from URENCO and China – Khan worked at URENCO and despite ample warning and red flags, he absconded with all the technical and engineering data he needed to create a centrifuge program in Pakistan. China is widely believed (though it’s not proven) to have provided Pakistan warhead design information as well as test data that would allow Pakistan to build more advanced warheads without having to test.

But I still say that many US and European regimes were warned about Khan after they realized he had stolen nuclear technology secrets, but did nothing.

We didn’t do nothing, it’s was Western technology that gave Pakistan the bomb. It was a reaction to the coziness of India and the USSR. Look at my posting above, it’s North American companies that supplied the Pakistan military, not just Khan(an engineer), so that they could counter balance a Indian-Russian alliance.

But I still say that many US and European regimes were warned about Khan after they realized he had stolen nuclear technology secrets, but did nothing. We are living the nightmare of the perfect storm- destabilized governments combined with radical Islam, combined with unprecedented anti-US sentiment, combined with the proliferation of nuclear technology to the unstable or anti-US regimes.

The Axis of Evil policies just exacerbated an already dangerous situation.

When the Russians where in Afghanistan, it was all about the Russians, and the region was treated like an expedient, unimportant background.
The same with Iraq. Then it was about Iran and Saddam and democracy, with no one figuring out what Iraq and the region was like from the inside. The Iraqis themselves were just a blurry background to our pursuit of national interests.

Bush, I think, tried to transcend the narrow focus and did think about the region as a whole. However, he neglected to consider the details of execution for his vision, because he, like his predecessor, treated the region as mere background to his plans. He didn’t look at what constitured the background.
Consequently, he made things worse.
That’s why he continues to get the blame: he made things worse. And while it’s neither fair nor productive to stop at this point, it’s understandable for a people living with today’s high anxiety about the region.

Now, while in the midst of multiple crisis situations (Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Musharaff trying to detroy the judiciacy, the resurgence of the Taliban, the ever present AlQaeda), some sertious thinking is emerging that actually looks at the regions as it is, not only how it would fit nicely into the pursuit of our national interests.
Entropy links to some exemplary thinking.

My fear is that it comes too late. My fear is that we’ll be hamstrung by dealing with immediate crises and will once again, assign the nature of the region to a blurry backgroung to serve our own interests.

I’m all for looking out for our own interests. BTW.
I deeply regret and fear, however, our short-sighted, crisis to crisis manner of doing it.