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Title: Six More Years: U.S. General Wants to Train Afghans Until 2017
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URL Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/201 ... s-to-train-afghans-until-2017/
Published: Jun 8, 2011
Author: Spencer Ackerman
Post Date: 2011-06-08 10:55:31 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 92
Comments: 6
There once was a time when President Obama implied that the Afghanistan war would at least start to end in July 2011. Then that date got pushed back to 2014. Now, the general in charge of training Afghan forces to take over for departing Americans pegs that date closer to 2016 or 2017 — that is, if the U.S. doesn’t want the entire Afghan security apparatus to implode.
What will ensure Afghan soldiers don’t collapse? “Strategic patience and an enduring commitment,” Lt. Gen. William Caldwell told a crowd at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Translated from the mil-speak: many more years and billions of dollars. Asked by Danger Room how much longer the training mission needs to last, Caldwell replied, “We won’t complete doing what we need to do until about 2016, 2017.”
It’s one thing to train Afghans to fight. Lt. Gen. William Caldwell has done that in spades, producing an “industrial kind of method” to build a force of 296,000 soldiers and cops — more than 100,000 more than when he arrived in Kabul in fall 2009. But the real test for the training mission is “that it endures and it will last,” Caldwell said. “It has to last. It’s not enough to just transition.”
Caldwell might have just delivered some real talk about what it takes to build an army and a police force from scratch. But even so, he essentially moved the goalposts at least two years beyond NATO’s December 2014 target date for putting the Afghans in charge of their own security. Not that 2014 should be mistaken for a date at which the war ends: senior administration officials are quietly negotiating long-term basing accords with Afghanistan. But Caldwell said that the Afghan air force won’t be ready patrol the skies until 2016 at the earliest.
And keeping planes and helicopters in the air isn’t even the hardest aspect of building a viable Afghan security structure. The Afghans still don’t have a mature logistics chain and support battalions — the sustainment forces that keep militaries functioning. Before 2011, Caldwell said, the Afghan police didn’t even have engineers to keep its facilities running. Now, he’s got to put them through three months of education to cultivate their “basic technical skills.”
That’s itself a huge challenge. Caldwell has made basic literary and numeric education a cornerstone of his training regimen after discovering that very few Afghan recruits can read on a first-grade level. How to make an engineer corps out of illiterates? If that wasn’t enough, about 18 percent of Afghan policemen and nearly a third of Afghan soldiers walk off the job early every year, Caldwell said. And lest we forget, Caldwell’s command estimates that it costs $6 billion every year to yield a capable Afghan security force.
But the general was hardly all gloom and doom at Brookings — where, full disclosure, Danger Room editor Noah Shachtman is a non-resident fellow. (Maybe because Caldwell didn’t face any questions about inappropriate media strategies.) He’s ahead of schedule to meet NATO’s goal of 305,000 soldiers and cops by October. And those troops — infantrymen and cops, mostly; not support elements — are better fighters than they’ve ever been, he assured.
Which might be faint praise. Caldwell broke a big taboo in the Afghanistan debate by invoking the ghosts of the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. “I’ve been constantly reminded of a previous effort by a major power to build an Afghan government and security force. Wherever you go in Afghanistan, there are echoes of the previous effort — that succeeded,” he said, “in building a government and a very robust security force, but the effort failed to make it last.”
Still, making it last requires patience that very few in Washington have for a war nearing its tenth anniversary, especially after the man responsible for it recently took two bullets to the dome from a Navy SEAL. And if Caldwell has any opinion about how many troops need to stay in Afghanistan to ensure the Afghans don’t collapse, he kept that to himself during his Brookings talk.
Poster Comment:
what was that about Obama getting the US out of these wars post haste?
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#1. To: christine (#0)
And repealing the patriot act and...... Only the suckers believed him. "The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor" - Ronald Reagan
Perpetual war while our domestic economy implodes, that's just bloody great. Obama and his sycophants must be real proud of what they've accomplished during Bush's Third Term.
__________________________________________________________ The sob has lied about everything else so I guess that one won't break his jaw either.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Lord Acton He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits. Albert Einstein
It's all part of the Federal Reserve's Cash For America's Sworn Enemies program, James. Get with the program! Do you want to be the odd man out? Of course not! The bankers will be pleased.
"I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it." - William S Burroughs
Yeah, I kinda lost it there for a minute I guess.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Lord Acton He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits. Albert Einstein
It's a New World Order now, stay alert! :)
"I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it." - William S Burroughs
what was that about Obama getting the US out of these wars post haste?
#2. To: christine, *Obama Reality Check* (#0)
Now, the general in charge of training Afghan forces to take over for departing Americans pegs that date closer to 2016 or 2017
"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?"
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#3. To: christine (#0)
what was that about Obama getting the US out of these wars post haste?
OsamaBinGoldstein
#4. To: James Deffenbach (#3)
The sob has lied about everything else so I guess that one won't break his jaw either.
#5. To: Dakmar (#4)
OsamaBinGoldstein
#6. To: James Deffenbach (#5)
Yeah, I kinda lost it there for a minute I guess.
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