..In Iraq anyway, where Basra is being touted as the "next Dubai" That's probably a bunch of hubris, but Basra is doing well:
This isn't a "surge" to Afghanistan. Yet. This is more like fulfilling some long held requests for additional troops to augment operations. They are considering more troops in a "surge" like activity, but don't think it is going to look like Iraq.
I just hope, as I expressed way back in January '07 at the Small Wars Journal, if we send more troops, we have an over all strategy and goal. Back then, unknowing of the surge plans, I had written to Kilcullen's post noting that I would only support a surge if it meant doing real counter-insurgency. Securing an area, building it up and moving to the next like a force multiplier for the message of America good, having safety in your town is priceless.
And, that doesn't mean killing every Talib in Pashtunistan nor even capturing Bin Laden. As Ol' Blue put it, it means making OBL and Mullah Whatever "irrelevant".
When that's done, then we can kill him, capture him or anything else with barely a blip on the map. And that, my friends, is how you get real revenge on Osama and his ilk: make them irrelevant.
But, as Churchill would have said, it's not the end, nor the beginning, but it is the beginning of the end. More troops to Afghanistan:Around the city the posters of religious leaders are being replaced with billboards advertising cars and mobile phones and photographs of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who is rightly credited with being the driving force behind the army's crackdown. You see the symbol of The Charge of the Knights everywhere, a black horse carrying the flag of Iraq trampling the gangsters underfoot.
This isn't a "surge" to Afghanistan. Yet. This is more like fulfilling some long held requests for additional troops to augment operations. They are considering more troops in a "surge" like activity, but don't think it is going to look like Iraq.
I just hope, as I expressed way back in January '07 at the Small Wars Journal, if we send more troops, we have an over all strategy and goal. Back then, unknowing of the surge plans, I had written to Kilcullen's post noting that I would only support a surge if it meant doing real counter-insurgency. Securing an area, building it up and moving to the next like a force multiplier for the message of America good, having safety in your town is priceless.
And, that doesn't mean killing every Talib in Pashtunistan nor even capturing Bin Laden. As Ol' Blue put it, it means making OBL and Mullah Whatever "irrelevant".
When that's done, then we can kill him, capture him or anything else with barely a blip on the map. And that, my friends, is how you get real revenge on Osama and his ilk: make them irrelevant.
Sigh........Dubai.........
"The End of the Beginning"
"The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
—Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House following the victory at El Alameinin North Africa, London, 10 November 1942.
It is the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end... see, easy.