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Too many US troops in Iraq? So say some influential pro-war hawks:
For those of you who read Charlie Wilson's War, Vickers was the genius CIA strategist and former special forces officer who helped revamp US support to the mujahedeen to bleed the Soviets facing their own insurgency in Afghanistan.Indeed, Afghanistan, where the United States has one-tenth the troops it has in Iraq, was cited by several specialists as a model for the American presence in Iraq following the elections. The US troops are rarely seen by the wider Afghan population, operating primarily along the borders and flushing out remaining pockets of resistance.
"I think that many are now beginning to see that El Salvador and Afghanistan are better counterinsurgency and postconflict reconstruction models than the strategies we've pursued in Iraq," said [Michael] Vickers, the Pentagon consultant, who as a CIA agent helped oversee US support for Afghan rebels in their guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. "In counterinsurgency, an indirect approach is superior."
Update: I disagree with Matt here. I don't think the strategists above are advocating fewer US troops in Iraq out of a new conversion to dove-ishness, or alternatively, to free up US troops for more adventures (necessarily). I think it has to do with thinking about counterinsurgency strategy, and how a big foreign occupation army not planning to stay forever won't win against a domestic insurgency that only has not to lose. If there are less of you, and you try to hold less ground, the insurgents have less to poke at.