Newsflash: Shadow Army of 74,000 Privateers in Afghanistan
Jumpin’ Joe Lieberman continues to wave the war banner, yanking out the old Nazi stand-ins one more time on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday to push for continued intervention — and what sure sounds like more U.S combat troops — in Afghanistan:
LIEBERMAN: …This is as if we were in the end of the second world war, democracy was beginning to take route in Germany and the Nazis started an offensive to take the country back. That’s what the Taliban is doing. So right now, the president has put a new team in charge, and they’re good. General McChrystal, Ambassador Eikenberry, he’s committed to 21,000 more troops. They’re beginning to arrive. They’re making a difference, those marines, in southern Afghanistan under General Larry Nicholson, doing a great job in turning the tide.
(HOST JOHN) KING: Do you see any political pressure on General McChrystal to ratchet down those numbers, to not ask for a significant number of more troops?
LIEBERMAN: I haven’t seen any. I sure hope there’s not. If there’s a lesson we should’ve learned from Iraq, some of the pressure that was put on our generals there not to ask for what they thought they needed to win meant that we lost a lot of lives, spent a lot of money. My own opinion coming back from Afghanistan with a new team, new strategy, we ought to take the option that General McChrystal gives us that has the least risk.
In other words, don’t dribble it out, don’t go for incrementalism. That’s a lesson we learned in Iraq. Frankly it’s a lesson we learned a long time ago in Vietnam that give our troops and our civilians there State Department, economic assistance, people, the support that they need as quickly as we can get it to them, and then demand that the Afghan government do the same. Raise the number of security forces that they have in the battle and produce a good government for their people.
Let’s put aside Lieberman’s curious references to Marines “turning the tide” in Helmand (did he not listen to Adm. Mullen on the same show?) and the “lessons” we supposedly learned from Iraq, given that last week’s bombings seem to present the biggest, loudest ones so far, and not in the way he and fellow warhawks have been bloviating about for the last year. Lieberman is on the losing end of this debate and he knows it. McChrystal is likely to ask for more troops after finishing his much-awaited review, and considering the pliancy of this congress in the past, he will probably get them. Maybe. Everyone seems to be bracing for a fight, pointing to plummeting approval ratings for the war overall.
But a little noted news item in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal might point the way for Lieberman and McChrystal, et al, to have their war and man it too (on the QT). Seems like they’ve been doing it already. According to the report, private contractors now outnumber U.S troops in Afghanistan. This heretofore unknown statistic is somewhat staggering: as of June 30, there were almost 74,000 civilians contracted by the military, compared to the roughly 58,000 U.S soldiers there. When I wrote about this in May, I pointed to estimates of 70,000 contractors by 2010.
Without the contractors, the story goes, the administration wouldn’t be able to sustain its current, nor long-term presence in Afghanistan. Just like in Iraq, which still has 120,000 contractors. That’s why huge sums of taxpayer dollars keep flowing to contractors with mile-long allegations and charges of fraud and abuse, like the $15 billion dollar package that just went in part to Dyncorp International to build U.S bases and “other infrastructure” in Afghanistan, for an occupation that our President has insisted won’t be open-ended. Now we need them more than they need us. Not a very good position to be in. But as far as Mr. Lieberman is concerned, whatever it takes to stay the course. We wouldn’t want another Vietnam, would we?
Here’s what I don’t get. So Iraq and Afghanistan are fundamentally civil wars. And in Afghanistan I’m assuming that the majority of the Afghanis are against the Taliban. (If they are not, then why are we there?) That said, then where are all the Afghani men stepping up to fight aggressively against their Taliban oppressors? They are in the majority, we will provide them weapons. Where is the patriotic hoard clamoring to protect themselves, their women and children? And in Iraq too. All we’ve done is move food around the plate by building tribal ghettos. But it’s still the same miserable pastiche of political and tribal dysfunction.
It’s impossible to “rescue” a population mired in learned helplessness from itself. We gave the Iraqis plenty of time to step up and face the challenge. And the Afghanis too. And they just didn’t get it done.
Life ain’t fair. The MSM should write about what the Afghanis and the Iraqis owe themselves and about their responsibility to take ownership of defeating their unique malignancies. And how you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
@ SteveM, “I’m assuming that the majority of the Afghanis are against the Taliban. (If they are not, then why are we there?)”
I don’t think it matters what the Afghanis think – /we’re/ against the Taliban: case closed.
Re: pimpernel
If Afghanistan is a “war of necessity” as claimed by Obama, and if we don’t care what the Afghanis think, and if the Taliban must be destroyed, then have Congress declare war, impose a draft and invade Afghanistan with the same ruthless determination that we used to subdue Germany and Japan.
Nation building versus Taliban destroying – Pick one…
Are these contractors in combat operations, or are they guarding civil assistance activities, like road repair and well digging? My guess is the latter.
Hello Thomas O. Meehan: It isn’t legal to put contractors directly into combat — though one would argue the line has been blurred with the tens of thousands of private guards hired to protect convoys, bases, outposts, diplomats, and other assorted VIPs. There is a hiring push by the military on now for security guards in Afghanistan. The simple point is, without these “shadow soldiers” — whether armed to the teeth for security or slinging hash at the FOB — the unending occupation(s) could not be sustained. Without them, the Army would have to rely on its own, and the sheer numbers just aren’t there — without a draft, that is.
Kelley, I think we agree that the whole Afghan occupation is a mess. I can’t fault the government for contracting under the correct circumstances. But since we’ve made a mess of things in Afghanistan, compounding our presence with contractors just makes our withdrawal more complicated.
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Ol’ Joe might call himself an independent, but scrach away the veneer and you’ll find the neo-con beneath.
I guess he’d like to make Afghanistan his Vietnam, also.
When I served in Operation Enduring Freedom 2006-07, we consistently had trouble keeping the Afghan National Army battalions at even close to 3/4 strength, as most would desert after the first paycheck. Then I thought I was going to see what right looked like after serving in Iraq, but it was a far worse nightmare in Afghanistan. Only the Taliban have no problem keeping their recruits, the ANA, not so much. A political settlement with more moderate elements of the Taliban and withdrawal is the only near term solution worth pursuing. Afghanistan is not worth a single American drop of sweat or blood.