Why We Need More Troops in Afghanistan

I'm deeply skeptical that nation building in Afghanistan is worth the costs. That said, if the Obama administration is going to try it, it makes no sense to do so with fewer forces.

A consistent theme with the American adventures in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been a persistent unwillingness to match ends with means. In both cases, we have insisted on post war outcomes that completely outmatched our ability to bring them about. Nation building is a manpower intensive exercise. For Iraq, the estimates called for a rotating troop base of 2.5 million - or 1 million more than we had in the entire armed services (including the Air Force and Navy) at the time of the invasion. In other words, even if we had heeded the advice of General Shinseki and poured 300,000 troops into the country, it would have almost certainly not been enough to bring about the outcomes desired by the Bush administration at the outset of the invasion.

None of this is seriously grappled with because, as we know with our domestic budget, Washington does not behave as if it lives in a world of limited resources or constraints on its behavior.

The Obama administration is poised to make a similar mistake in Afghanistan. The U.S. would need somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400,000 troops to properly police the restive "Pashtun belt." Right now, we have roughly 68,000 troops. Even with NATO forces and the Afghan military (which is not nearly as proficient as Western forces), we still fall short. If we are to protect the Afghan population, root out drug lords, reform their government, and battle an insurgency, then we need to add far more troops into the country.

(AP Photos)