Word: nagle
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Taliban and also to provide security for the Afghan elections. The trouble was, the troops would have been better deployed in Helmand's neighbor to the east - Kandahar province, especially in Kandahar city and its suburbs. "Kandahar is the center of gravity in this insurgency," says John Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who helped write the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine. "It is as important now as Fallujah was in Iraq...
...before he leaves office, and both presidential candidates have pledged at least an additional two brigades. But any troops are unlikely to arrive fast enough or in sufficient numbers. Afghanistan is a third larger than Iraq in size, and its terrain is a lot more difficult. Counterinsurgency expert John Nagl has estimated that there should be 600,000 troops--including Afghan ones--inside the country to quell the Taliban and al-Qaeda threat. Currently there are only about 65,000 coalition forces (including 33,000 U.S. troops) on the ground, in addition to some 70,000 Afghan army personnel...
...mainly on training the Iraqi army. Will that be enough to prevent Iraq from slipping back into sectarian civil war? Cautious optimists hope so. "Iraq is well on its way to becoming a normal Middle Eastern country, with all the good and the bad that that implies," says John Nagl, a retired Army officer who helped General David Petraeus draft the Army's new counterinsurgency manual. "As long as Iraq stays Page 26 news, that's O.K." But if anything goes wrong, it's going to be tough to handle. "We put ourselves in the position of fighting two wars...
...Nagl noted that, traditionally, commanders want as many troops as they can get, and that General Petraeus would be expected to "slow-roll the withdrawal" if he were to remain in charge of Iraq only. "But given that he knows that he is going to assume responsibility for Afghanistan as well, it indicates the gains in Iraq really are fragile and this is probably a prudent decision." But Nagl, now with the Center for a New American Security in Washington, is still puzzled by the decision. "I would not say we are winning the war in Afghanistan...
...This war in Iraq is not over yet," Nagl said. "There's been a little bit of a dance-in-the-end-zone phenomenon that concerns me." Nagl, who returned from Iraq last month, says there is "still a running gun battle with al-Qaeda in Iraq" in the northern part of the country around Mosul. U.S. troops there are "still in the 'clear' phase of 'clear, hold, build' counterinsurgency strategy," said Nagl, a West Point graduate and author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam who recently helped Petraeus rewrite the Army/Marine...