Steep U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan brings substantial risks
“The
Afghan National Security Forces, now 352,000 strong, have
made considerable strides, but they remain heavily reliant on U.S. help for air
support, logistics, intelligence, route clearance and other key “enablers.” The
Defense Department’s newReport on Progress Toward Security
and Stability in Afghanistan noted
that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades is able to operate without coalition
help. The report also “anticipates that the [Afghan army] will continue to
require assistance with logistics and acquisition processes beyond December
2014.”
Afghanistan is not
expected to have a functioning air force before 2017, so Afghan forces will
remain especially dependent on U.S. help for air support and aerial medevac.
But it is doubtful that U.S. commanders would call in airstrikes without having
U.S. advisers embedded with Afghan units — and under the rumored plan, no such
advisers will be available. Afghan security forces will be on their own to face
an entrenched insurgency, which has been degraded by the surge but remains a
major threat in southern and eastern Afghanistan, thanks in no small measure to
its havens in Pakistan.
It is hard to imagine
how anyone in the Obama administration could conclude that a force of just
6,000 personnel would be sufficient after 2014 when, even with 68,000 troops
today, the United States cannot prevent the Taliban and Haqqanis from operating openly an hour’s drive
from Kabul. Such a precipitous drawdown vastly increases the risk of a Taliban
takeover”
.Cassi Creek: the
planed draw down is inherently dangerous to any and all U.S elements serving in
the Afghanistan-Pakistan Theater. As a
reference point for calculating the impact upon our troops, recall the Vietnam
War in the period called Vietnamization.
As the combat units, their attached logistics, and other support units
were rotated to the CONUS, by simply not replacing troops who had completed
their tours of duty, the operational capabilities of those units was degraded
to the point that they were incapable of defending and supporting their
assigned troops. What developed was a
pattern of units retreating into support bases where security duties were
officially shifted to ARVN units but which were actually covered by U.S.
troops. The level of trust in the ARVN
units was politically announced as high.
Every trooper I knew regarded ARVN units as riddled with intelligence
leaks and incapable of supporting their selves.
The Special Forces units and some of the U. S. advisors may have found
ARVN units that were reliable and effective.
They worked at a much closer level of mutual need.
The article
above makes no attempt to whitewash the level of capability resident in the
Afghan armed forces. The cultural and
social differences that have already manifested as reasons for increased danger
to our troops will only become a greater problem as the Draw down continues.
Remember the photos and films of the 1975 evacuation of the U.S. embassy in
Saigon. Complicate that clusterfuck with
the longer distances that evacuees must cover to safely leave the theater. The best thing we can do for our troops is to
formulate plans to affect their exits now.
We need to remove as much of our hardware, transport, ordnance, and
other ancillary systems as possible. The
time for us to engage in nation building in Afghanistan is over. The Afghans must either pick up the tools and
begin to create and defend their own nation, or watch the Taliban resume where
they left off ten years ago.
Weather or not: The
NWS has indicated that there may be severe thunderstorms with the risk of
long-lasting, long-line tornadoes along the Gulf Coast States and into the Southern
Appalachians. The potential threat is
documented by the Storms Prediction Center in Oklahoma.
If the forecast zone shifts, it may very well put us into
another after dark storm pattern. The
weather underground maps and radar interface that worked so well for warnings
in 2011, has been modified by the programmers so that the real-time
capabilities have been degraded and eliminated.
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