So now the official announcement about the "new" direction in Afghanistan is public.
I think it is safe to say that this will be a unique point in military history when both the left and the right agree that the policy is wrong.
The left will complain about too many troops (ie - more than 1) and the right will complain about too few troops (what ever the President announces + 1).
Both have reasons and both have facts but they, thankfully, are not part of the National Command Authority.
34,000 is less than General McCrystal asked for but that does not mean it is doomed to failure. When a military staff is tasked to create a plan, one of the things the commander gives them are planning assumptions. Key to those assumptions are constraints. Typical constraints are "no additional funds will be available" "only assigned forces are available" "movement from A to B will be opposed/unopposed." In the case of the plan that the staff drew up for Afghanistan, it is likely that General McCrystal told his staff to make a "resource unconstrained" plan. In normal terms, he told them to dream big and then write it down. That sounds bad but it is not. He was asked to give his best plan for "winning" Afghanistan. Not his ONLY plan, just the best one. If that is what you are asked, you dont give your staff constraints other than the laws of nature. The plan cant include magic beans or sharks with laser beams but if there are 545,000 soldiers in the Army, you can ask for them all. The planners know they cant REALLY ask for all 545K but they know how many combat Brigades are available and start form the idea that they can have any that are not already committed. Hence, the plan to send Brigades that had been programed for Iraq are now going to go to Afghanistan instead of getting a break. Once the staff builds their unconstrained plan, it gets put into the reality squeeze because there are always constraints.
Assuming away any fiscal constraints, and that is a big assumption, we are left with raw numbers. The unconstrained number was 40K, the constrained answer was 34K. So where did the 6,000 troops go? Nowhere, and that is the point. Here I will lapse into RUMINT (Rumor Intelligence) since the hard facts are not available to me and even if they were, I couldn't repeat them. That said, I have no reason to believe that my RUMINT is significantly different than reality. As of 1 October (our "New Years Day") the Army had approximately 51,000 uncommitted active duty forces. 15K are now going to Afghanistan, leaving 36,000. This leaves the Army with roughly one Division uncommitted. 9 in, one out. Now that does not mean that all 9 divisions are deployed at once. What it means is that between the in action troops and those programed to replace them, one division is left. But even that is not quite right because those 15,000 have to have programed replacements so that leaves 21,000 - an under-strength Division. If the other 6,000 had been committed, we would be down to 9,000 or roughly one Brigade.
There is another key factor here. Not all soldiers are the same. Despite perceptions by some, we are not mindless drones. One of the critical planning factors is the availability of "Low Destiny" personnel. Low density folks fill positions where you cant just plug any old troop in. They are hard to generate and critical to success. This is another area the last guys didnt get. They threw numbers a problems. So far, the current team is throwing capability. Capability gives you a tool set instead of just a hammer, preventing everything from looking like a nail.
Much will be said about the President not resourcing the commander. I am willing to bet the unconstrained option never reached him as a real option. It would be irresponsible for the SecDef and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to present a plan that reduced the operational reserve for the NATION to one Brigade. The unconstrained plan was probably shown and then the impact of that plan was shown too. From there, the SecDef and Joint Chiefs have the responsibility to show the President what they feel they need as an operational reserve. Back when we had 18 Divisions ad 5 separate Brigades (mini divisions), two full divisions were uncommitted and available to the National Command Authority at all times. This was not in some distant magical time - I was a young sergeant when those two divisions existed. And unlike then, we have now essentially emptied Germany and Korea of ground combat forces. And unlike even early in OIF, we have very few "spares" in the institutional Army (training base, headquarters, R&D, etc). Those too have been stripped to the bone. This makes the need for an operational reserve even more critical. We have no wiggle room.
I recently got an assignment list for my next assignment cycle. There were 27 possible assignments. Of those 27, 8 were "must fill" - read deployment - assignments. Of the remaining 19, 2 were almost guaranteed to deploy and 4 others were in the "might" deploy category. Normally that would not seem too bad - roughly 60-40 chance of not deploying. Only in this case its more like 90-10 because there are only 12 of us to fill those 27 positions. Once you fill the "going to deploy" and "probably going to deploy" you are left with 2 people who will be out of the line of fire. And the 12 available for assignments include people who recently returned from deployment. The hard reality is that even if we wanted to send 40K, we dont have them. I wonder how many on the right know the last guy left the President with an Army that is below 50% manned in some jobs?
34,000 does not equal failure. As has been covered in the news, we are asking our allies to add additional troops too. And even if they dont, we can still make 34,000 work. We might not meet the time line we want or we might have to accept risk in areas but it is not a deal breaker. Well, I hope. I shudder to think that missing less than 10% of the "dream team" would cause failure. We had better be good enough to over come that.
Much has also been made of the timeline for the decision. This too is only partially true. I am going to be part of the "new" plan announced last night - a fact I knew over a month ago. And that was just the "official" word. Reading the tea leaves - "hey, we have a Pashtu self study course available, that would be good Professional Development" - I had a good idea in August where I was headed. The SecDef and the President appear to have decided on a new way of planning too - resource a plan THEN announce the plan. This is in stark contrast to the last team who announced a plan and then often failed to resource it or under resourced it. Prior to deploying, I will go through two months of additional training so I will be more prepared for my mission (Woa, that is new!!). That training did not exist in June but it does now. 300+ people were moved from one mission to a mission supporting this plan. Working backwards, I am guessing the "decision" was made in the June/July time frame - right about the time General McCrystal has his staff DEVELOPING the plan. This is what we call parallel planning. One portion of the staff - in the case the trainers at TRADOC - sees where another portion is going. They can make some assumptions - we will have to train more people - and start their own planning. By the time the SecDef and Chairman presented the plan they could say to the president "Yes, we have the training resources in place to support between X and X troops in X number of days/weeks/months" and "we have 'low density' personnel to support between X and X total forces" and we have body armor and weapons for all of them (in 2003 when I deployed from Qatar to Baghdad I SHARED a pistol and my office SHARED ammunition) This is how military planning is supposed to happen. We call it "The Deliberate Planning Process," part of the "Military Decision Making Process" and it was something that the last SecDef openly mocked. It is not new and its not sexy but it works and it has worked since the time of the Romans. We are finally back to being serious about military plans instead of just "winging it."
I am explaining this not to defend the president or his policies but in the hope of making you better informed and by extension others. There is no doubt that many will either support or oppose the President despite any facts but I think the majority of Americans really want to know. If you have the opportunity to pass this on, please do. I dont care if someone supports or opposes the plan but I do care that they understand why they do.