Thursday, February 24, 2011

Christ ...

While I was at SW for the post below, I noticed this little nugget that almost slipped by.

One in three Afghan soldiers still leave the army each year, but NATO remains on track to raise the number of security forces to 305,000 by October, an alliance general said Wednesday.

...

The attrition rate among Afghan troops is "not a trend across the army," Caldwell told reporters during a visit to NATO and European Union headquarters in Brussels.

But it is particularly high among battalions facing a fierce Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan, the US general said, blaming the attrition in part on weak Afghan leadership. [my em]

...


Ya think? So, by next year you're gonna have to raise another 100K troops to replace the ones who split? And the year after that? And the year after that? Ya see where I'm going here?

We get all these rosy forecasts but still have to throw more troops and money at this war. We have rogue generals running I/Ops against our elected representatives instead of "winning hearts and minds". And, to top it all off, a third of the military recruits for the Afghan Army don't want to fight.

So tell me; how are we ever gonna "win" there, let alone leave?

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