thedrifter
07-08-08, 07:47 AM
Published on Tuesday, July 08, 2008
What next?: Don't dismiss Pentagon's shift as a trivial rhetorical flip-flop.
Twenty-two hundred Marines who were expecting to be back at Camp Lejeune in October won’t leave Afghanistan before November.
If you think an extra month in combat is no big deal, tell them that. Not only were these men assured and reassured that this wouldn’t happen; every member of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit knows that an additional 30 days could cost some of them their lives.
None of that makes this the wrong decision. It does raise questions about the war that Americans have stoutly supported from the day the Taliban were toppled. What’s going on over there?
If the words of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, count for anything, those Marines are exactly where we need them, dealing with a bit of mission creep. Originally deployed to suppress rising violence, they now find themselves facing more violence than their civilian and military superiors bargained for.
“The Taliban and their supporters have, without question, grown more effective and more aggressive in recent weeks,” Mullen said, citing a rise in the number of casualties. “It’s a very complex problem,” he added somewhat enigmatically, one that’s “tied to the drug trade, a faltering economy and, as I’ve said many times, the porous border region with Pakistan.”
In fact, commanders are calling for 7,500 more pairs of boots on the ground. But the higher-ups, it is said, can only hope to identify replacement units by year’s end. And so the 24th fights on.
Mullen wasn’t entirely clear whose “faltering economy” is at fault — Afghanistan’s, or our own. But you can look at his numbers and agree that if 7,500 are needed, this is the wrong time to be thinking about bringing more than a third that many home, with no replacements in view.
The question most probably would like answered is, are the new forces for whom the 24th is buying time going to take over the suppressing of violence in the south, or will their objective be that porous border region with Pakistan? And if it’s the latter, might that be yet another example of mission creep, to be acknowledged on some distant date along with the news that it will require still more extensions and deployments?
We’ll go along with Mullen’s assertion that “there will be no quick fix.” But people could do with better evidence that a fix of any kind is in prospect. Inconsistency is one thing; indirection is something else altogether.
Ellie
What next?: Don't dismiss Pentagon's shift as a trivial rhetorical flip-flop.
Twenty-two hundred Marines who were expecting to be back at Camp Lejeune in October won’t leave Afghanistan before November.
If you think an extra month in combat is no big deal, tell them that. Not only were these men assured and reassured that this wouldn’t happen; every member of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit knows that an additional 30 days could cost some of them their lives.
None of that makes this the wrong decision. It does raise questions about the war that Americans have stoutly supported from the day the Taliban were toppled. What’s going on over there?
If the words of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, count for anything, those Marines are exactly where we need them, dealing with a bit of mission creep. Originally deployed to suppress rising violence, they now find themselves facing more violence than their civilian and military superiors bargained for.
“The Taliban and their supporters have, without question, grown more effective and more aggressive in recent weeks,” Mullen said, citing a rise in the number of casualties. “It’s a very complex problem,” he added somewhat enigmatically, one that’s “tied to the drug trade, a faltering economy and, as I’ve said many times, the porous border region with Pakistan.”
In fact, commanders are calling for 7,500 more pairs of boots on the ground. But the higher-ups, it is said, can only hope to identify replacement units by year’s end. And so the 24th fights on.
Mullen wasn’t entirely clear whose “faltering economy” is at fault — Afghanistan’s, or our own. But you can look at his numbers and agree that if 7,500 are needed, this is the wrong time to be thinking about bringing more than a third that many home, with no replacements in view.
The question most probably would like answered is, are the new forces for whom the 24th is buying time going to take over the suppressing of violence in the south, or will their objective be that porous border region with Pakistan? And if it’s the latter, might that be yet another example of mission creep, to be acknowledged on some distant date along with the news that it will require still more extensions and deployments?
We’ll go along with Mullen’s assertion that “there will be no quick fix.” But people could do with better evidence that a fix of any kind is in prospect. Inconsistency is one thing; indirection is something else altogether.
Ellie