{"id":48928,"date":"2014-05-27T11:41:50","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T15:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=48928"},"modified":"2014-05-27T11:41:50","modified_gmt":"2014-05-27T15:41:50","slug":"pentagon-pushes-prez-for-10k-troops-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=48928","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon pushes Prez for 10k troops in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link from The Daily Beast<\/a> which reports that the military is asking for ten thousand troops to remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal date later this year;<\/p>\n

These commanders were concerned that if the numbers went much lower than that, the U.S. would have to shrink its mission to perhaps just Kabul and Bagram, leaving the countryside to Afghan security forces that still struggle to get ammunition, equipment, fuel, and food, to their troops.<\/p>\n

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were worried that the White House would perceive any publicly expressed doubts or recommendations as an attempt by the military to box Obama into a specific number of troops, as it was when Gen. Stanley McChrystal\u2019s recommendations for Afghanistan were leaked ahead of Obama\u2019s decision on troop numbers in his first year in office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since this administration determined a long time ago that they aren’t interested in winning this war against terrorists in any measurable fashion, ten thousand is about 100% more than what I’d accept. All we’re going to hear about are “the last” troops to leave Afghanistan this year and the mission will move even further back in the news than it is already.<\/p>\n

I’d like to hear how those ten thousand troops will be employed, you know, other than their own security forces;<\/p>\n

[Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the commander of NATO\u2019s International Security Assistance Force]\u2019s predecessor, Gen. John Allen, recommended in 2013 that Obama leave 20,000 troops in Afghanistan past 2014 and said 10,000 troops would represent a \u201chigh-risk option,\u201d according two U.S. military officials who worked on the planning documents.<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s recommendations were also made before a massive, 61,500-pound truck bomb headed for a U.S. forward operating base on the Pakistan border was intercepted this fall by Afghan security forces. The bomb was the largest one U.S. officials had seen for the entire war. First reported by ABC News, U.S. military officials tell The Daily Beast that the truck bomb forced U.S. military planners to increase their estimates of the troops needed just to protect U.S. bases in Afghanistan after 2014.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2009, the President was told by the CIA and the Pentagon that he would need an additional 60,000 troops. He was told that any fewer folks would greatly impact the success of “the war that mattered” negatively, so he sent 30,000 troops. The predictions of the experts were borne out. Now he’s faced with another decision – but I wonder what he expects the troops to accomplish.<\/p>\n

If the answer isn’t “victory” we should abandon the mission immediately. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link from The Daily Beast which reports that the military is … Pentagon pushes Prez for 10k troops in Afghanistan<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48928","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}