The Afghan insurgency has too much momentum for the US to defeat it ....

Gareth Porter in AsiaTimes/ here

"A veteran United States Army officer who has served in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars warns in an analysis now circulating in Washington that the counter-insurgency strategy urged by General Stanley A McChrystal is likely to strengthen the Afghan insurgency, and calls for withdrawal of the bulk of United States combat forces from the country over 18 months. In a 63-page paper (Go Big or Go deep. pdf.) representing his personal views but reflecting conversations with other officers who have served in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L Davis argues that it is already too late for US forces to defeat the insurgency. 

"Many experts in and from Afghanistan warn that our presence over the past eight years has already hardened a meaningful percentage of the population into viewing the United States as an army of occupation which should be opposed and resisted," .... Providing the additional 40,000 troops that Gen McChrystal reportedly requested "is almost certain to further exacerbate" that problem, he warns........... 

In the paper, Davis suggests what he calls a "Go Deep" strategy as an alternative to the recommendation from McChrystal for a larger counterinsurgency effort, which he calls "Go Big". 

The "Go Deep" strategy proposed by Davis would establish an 18-month time frame during which the bulk of US and NATO combat forces would be withdrawn from the country. It would leave US Special Forces and their supporting units, and enough conventional forces in Kabul to train Afghan troops and police and provide protection for US personnel. .........Davis argues that a large and growing US military presence would make it more difficult to achieve this counterterrorism objective. By withdrawing conventional forces from the countryside, he suggests, US strategy would deprive the insurgents of "easily identifiable and lucrative targets against which to launch attacks".......

After reading Davis's paper, Colonel Patrick Lang, formerly the defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, told Inter Press Service he regards the "Go Deep" strategy as "a fair representation of the alternative to the one option in General McChrystal's assessment". 

Lang said he doubts that those advising Obama to shift to a counterterrorism strategy are calling specifically for the withdrawal of most combat troops, but he believes such a withdrawal "is certainly implicit in the argument"......

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