{"id":32103,"date":"2012-09-22T08:32:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T12:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32103"},"modified":"2015-02-06T13:34:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T18:34:25","slug":"well-the-afghanistan-surge-is-officially-over-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32103","title":{"rendered":"Well, the Afghanistan Surge Is Officially Over. Now What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Army Times is reporting that the surge in Afghanistan is over<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on Friday the troops had come out, declaring the surge had accomplished its mission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But I’d take issue with that “accomplished its mission” part, Mr. SECDEF.<\/p>\n

From day one, the surge in Afghanistan – unlike the surge in Iraq – was smaller than those on the ground felt necessary.\u00a0\u00a0 And the results were predictable for anyone who knows a damn thing about military history.<\/p>\n

There’s an old military proverb.\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re facing a dug-in enemy company, you can take your objective with a battalion – but you’ll suffer heavy casualties.\u00a0 Attack with a brigade, and you’ll suffer light casualties while annihilating the enemy.\u00a0 Attack with a division, and you’ll likely prevail without firing a shot.<\/p>\n

In short:\u00a0 using too small a force ends up being as costly as hell.\u00a0 Mass has a quality all its own.<\/p>\n

We forgot all of that when it came time for the Afghanistan surge.<\/p>\n

I agree with the SECDEF that there will be difficult days ahead in Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s obvious, since we botched the surge by bringing too little.<\/p>\n

So, pray tell, Mr. SECDEF:\u00a0\u00a0 now what?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Army Times is reporting that the surge in Afghanistan is over. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon … Well, the Afghanistan Surge Is Officially Over. Now What?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,84,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-military-issues","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}