Colonel Peters retiterated many of these same points during a radio interview yesterday.
Money quote(s):
"Trump will be sending additional troops — likely up to 4,000 — to Afghanistan. That would boost our commitment to just above 12,000 men and women in uniform.
And they’ll be expected to accomplish what 140,000 US and allied troops couldn’t achieve at the peak of our engagement, when the Taliban was considerably weaker."
This level of engagement, essentially a maneuver division in strength, is not going to defeat anyone on a national basis, but it provides the U.S. with a robust platform to support the training and capacity-building mission. The Afghan government has to win this war for itself.
"One suspects that this new initiative springs less from rigorous analysis than from the emotional attachment felt by senior officers who’ve seen their troops bleed and can’t bear the prospect of a meaningless sacrifice, of simply walking away.
We have a magnificent, well-led military, but rare is the general who understands the economic principle of “sunk costs,” that you can’t redeem a bad investment by investing even more. When money is gone, it’s gone. The same applies to lives."
The concept of "sunken costs" is an unthinkable one to apply to a decade-and-a-half of American casualties, but strategic thinking sometimes requires thinking-the-unthinkable. I once felt the same way about the Vietnam War (and was likely wrong) and feel the same about our involvement in Iraq. But a steely-eyed analysis (rather than feeling) may be in our national interest, at long last.
"In 2001, we did the right thing by going to Afghanistan to slaughter terrorists. But we were fools to stay. Afghanistan is strategically worthless. Tragically, former President Barack Obama backed the wrong war when his turn came, abandoning the strategic prize of Iraq because of a campaign promise to concentrate on Afghanistan — which he called the right war — to prove his security chops."
For the U.S., Afghanistan's strategic value is essentially a negative one: denying its use as a base for our enemies. Nation-building there may be a fool's errand.
Peters concludes:
"We can justify a limited presence in Afghanistan, perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 troops total, for the purpose of killing international terrorists. And we need not stop providing arms to Kabul. But it’s time to stop giving blood.
I hope I’m wrong. I, too, want our casualties to have meaning. But no matter how we reinterpret our mission, there’ll be more American blood. And the only Americans who’ll benefit will be contractors, who love impossible missions that never end.
We cannot save a country that won’t save itself."
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