Word: afghanistans
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...Indeed, for purposes of creating a representative government as the foundation of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, the key flaw of Afghanistan's August election was not the widespread ballot fraud; it was the fact that almost 3 out of 4 voters didn't show up at the polls because of the Taliban security threat. So, while a runoff election might satisfy the fraud complaints, it won't make the resulting government much more representative unless millions more voters show up at the polls this time. But the deteriorating security situation and limits of the appeal of both candidates give little reason...
...White House dispatched a further 60,000 to 80,000 troops. The reinforcement number talked about in many of the press reports on Obama's dilemma - a little upward of 40,000 new troops - represents McChrystal's medium risk scenario. (Watch a video about the soldier's experience in Afghanistan...
...into the Afghan theater may be necessary if the goal is simply to fight this one to a tie. (Logistical constraints, however, suggest that the surge may be more of a dribble, with the U.S. currently lacking the capability to deploy more than about 4,000 new troops in Afghanistan each month...
...against the Taliban. The ANA ostensibly numbers some 95,000 troops right now, but its capacity to fight the Taliban remains difficult to assess. It is certainly not immune to the political conflicts driving the insurgency; it is dominated by an ethnic Tajik officer corps viewed with resentment by Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, who are also the Taliban's social base. Training may be just one challenge in developing an army willing and able to fight what at present would be seen as those on the side of foreign forces in the middle of a civil...
...Despite well-founded fears of the rising cost of an open-ended war, Obama does not want to be the President who presided over a defeat in Afghanistan. In which case, his options are a lot narrower than the weeks of debate over the issue suggest, regardless of how the election debacle plays...