Bush vows more troops for Afghanistan, but Mullen doesn’t have them

July 3, 2008

For the second consecutive month, more U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Nearly seven years after the war in Afghanistan began, June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops, and our force levels in the country are now at their highest since the war began. All of this, tragically, comes a few years after the president assured Americans that the Taliban “no longer is in existence.”

With conditions worsening, the White House now believes it’s time to send more U.S. troops into Afghanistan before the end of the year. “We’re going to increase troops by 2009,” Bush said, without elaboration.

As it happens, that might be easier said than done. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he doesn’t have the troops for Afghanistan, until he can pull them out of Iraq.

“I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq,” Mullen told reporters at a press briefing.

Of course, critics of administration’s foreign policy have argued for years that the war in Iraq necessarily diverted personal and resources from Afghanistan, and those concerns certainly seem to have been bolstered by Mullen’s remarks yesterday.

What’s more, it creates a very awkward dynamic. The president is announcing his intention to send additional troops, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is announcing on the same day that the president’s plan isn’t really an option right now.

The WaPo’s front-page piece on this did a nice job of explaining just how difficult this is.

The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.

Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said insurgent Taliban and extremist forces in Afghanistan have become “a very complex problem,” one that is tied to the extensive drug trade, a faltering economy and the porous border with Pakistan. Violence in Afghanistan has increased markedly over recent weeks, with June the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began in 2001.

“I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq,” Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon. “Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there.”

Mullen has raised similar concerns over the past several months, but his comments yesterday were more pointed and came amid rising concern at the Pentagon over the situation in Afghanistan, where insurgents have regrouped in the south and east. […]

In April, Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States was not doing all it should in Afghanistan and that more troops were needed. At a meeting in Fort Lewis, Wash., two weeks ago, Mullen said that he needed at least three more brigades in Afghanistan but that troop constraints were preventing such a move. “We are in a very delicate time,” he said.

Like Tim F., I can’t help but wonder about the conservatives who’ve been “willing to quixotically fight against the evidence that the Iraq war made it harder to win in Afghanistan. Let’s see whether we have any of those guys still around today.”

I’m sure they’ll think of something — they always do — but I doubt it’ll make any sense.

Why does Admiral Mullen not support our troops?

  • But remember, these people create their own reality.

    Bush does know how to do one thing well – leave a horrific mess for his successor. He’s been doing it all his life, but the catastrophe he’s leaving to Obama will be his grandest creation.

  • Normally, I’d advise Admiral Mullen to begin looking at a career change, but in this case, another change in command isn’t going to change anything. Mullen’s a great buffer, and has been in the past, against the more bellicose BuchCo ideas.

    It looks like a sane faction in the Pentagon is blocking an attack on Iran, and now we have a public statement about the truth of the supply of soldiers to fight all the wars we already have…we may make it to 1-20-09 without bombing Iran. That would be good.

  • Military chief warns against striking Iran.
    WASHINGTON — The words Wednesday from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were notable for their blunt pragmatism: An Israeli airstrike on Iran would be high-risk and could further destabilize the region, leading to political and economic chaos….
    “Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us,” Mullen acknowledged during a Pentagon news conference. He added moments later, “This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”

    If he knows what’s good for him, Adm. Mullen had better stop being honest about the situation in the Middle East. Just because we don’t have enough troops to respond should bombing Iran cause a Shiite uprising doesn’t matter – see? And just because that same bombing would shore up support for Achmadenijad’s government both at home and on the Arab street is no reason to forgo a futile and inflammatory gesture. They’ll greet us as liberators I tell ya’.

  • How in living hell have we let two basket case countries put the puppet strings on the strongest country in the world? A boot in the balls has the global policeman rolling on the floor and about to get steamrolled by an attack on Iran from Israel. And Bush and the boys are essentially still saying, “Bring it On!”

  • This Mullen guy seems to be a decent, realistic military commander. It’s a shame he just lost his job.

  • Bush: “We’re going to increase troops by 2009”

    So he’s for cloning now?

  • jimBOB has got it about right I’d say.

    Bush runs his mouth without checking the facts before hand. Half of what he’s says is spin and the other half is BS.

  • lou@9… Unfortunately it’s the exact same strategy that bin Ladin and company used on the Soviet Union. And exactly what they said they’d do to us… drain our economy until we fall. I hope it doesn’t work on us, but at this point I’m not holding my breath.

  • I think that it’s time that someone took a look at the example of the Royal Naval Division, and told the Navy and the Air Force to pony up some ground troops.
    The Air Force and the Navy, particularly the Navy, have been providing ground forces in Iraq. The Navy supplies EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams, as well as medics and support personnel. One of the problems with having the other services provide ground troops is that you don’t create an infantryman by simply handing someone a weapon. Marine Corps Infantry training takes a rigorous ten weeks. If someone has already been trained in another specialty then that training is wasted.
    A better solution would have been to train more Army and Marine Corps Infantrymen when it became apparent that we didn’t have enough troops. That would, however, have required planning and foresight – two things that the Bush administration clearly does not “do.”

  • The only “positive track” we’re on in Iraq [that I can see] is that we stand a pretty good chance of electing a US president who, at the very least, sees the war in Iraq for what it is — a needless, costly, criminal disaster. My guess is that Bush commits this phantom brigade just before he leaves in January.

  • How long’s it been since Hon. Sen. McCain has been to Afghanistan? or talked about the country?

  • Can you imagine if Bush, instead of George Washington, was in charge of the War of Independence?

    Happy birthday colonies!

  • I’m sure that when Mullen is booted and critics point out that Bush has repeatedly said that he listens to his generals, Perino will point out that Mullen is an admiral.

  • What in God’s name would we do if, say, Honduras came charging across the Mexican border and attacked us?

    The bottom line is we’ve stretched our military to the breaking point in two tiny third-world countries and achieved absolutely nothing for it, speaking charitably, at mind-numbing cost in blood, treasure and squandered opportunity. And now our economy is in the tank.

    You’d think that might wake somebody up, but it doesn’t. You’d think that we’d learn that we can’t dominate and bully the world militarily, and ought to try something different, like engaging in activities which produce global peace, harmony and prosperity, not destruction and mayhem, but we don’t.

    We just can’t seem to get out of this war machine mindset in this country. And it’s taking us down.

    [I mistakenly posted this on another topic. Sorry]

  • Bush vows more troops for Afghanistan. Meanwhile Obama vows more troops for America.

  • we’ve stretched our military to the breaking point in two tiny third-world countries and achieved absolutely nothing for it, speaking charitably, at mind-numbing cost in blood, treasure

    One of the things these two misadventures have shown is that our military wasn’t really designed for military purposes; it was designed to maximize profits for the arms industry. The U.S. spends more on arms than most of the rest of the world combined, but can’t sustain a couple of minor-league occupations. God help us if we had to deal with a real military situation.

  • Will Mullen get fired or will bAdmin. vigorously deny they ever said they were going to send more troops?

    Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of: As The White House Spins!

  • You could see this coming years ago but these idiot conservative media enabling neocon congressmen were so busy trying to support and defend the “surge” because that’s where the profits were that now they boxed themselves in with an over extended worn out military which leaves us unable to effectively redeploy.

    We are now too busy policing a civil war to actually combat real terrorists. Too distracted propping up an American approved government in Iraq which needs our complete protection as well as the oil fields to push back against a real terrorists regime. If we would have been smart and dealt with Afghanistan to begin with rather than focusing on Iraq we would not be in this position.

    Bush/McCain/Lieberman/Graham have collectively failed to listen, failed to pay attention to anyone or anything that took the focus off Iraq and our glorious surge which has failed completely to do what it was intended to do…produce political reconciliation to prevent an all out civil war…and now in order to deal with Afghanistan we will have to pull troops that have been policing Iraq and watch the ideal of political reconciliation get thrown out the window. These above mentioned people should be banned from giving anymore direction to the Iraq fiasco. Just STFU because you’ve proven to be fools.

    Also the Blackwater actions have made the US so unpopular now that no matter the results the Iraqis would just as soon we get the hell out of Dodge. They’ve seen enough of our idea of Justice and democracy.

  • One of the effects of attacking Iran would be to make Sadam a martyred hero which our involvement in Iraq is well on the way to achieving. Impeachment was all we had left to rid ourselves of these guys…quickly and efficiently. Instead we get a few more years of this insanity enabled by our dem leaders.

    We elected the dems in ’06 to end the war/occupation and stop government corruption and here comes Pelosi who says fuck that…let’s concentrate on getting the minimum wage raised to just under a “livable” wage, and then torture, illegal spying on Americans and the “splurge” results with private contractors stealing us blind. Oh the horror…the horror.

  • The first thing that occurred to me when reading about Bush’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan was that in the waning months of WWII, Hitler was sending out orders to his generals telling them where and how to move armies that didn’t exist except in Hitler’s imagination. It looks to me that our own Dear Leader is having such an hallucinatory moment himself. I hope that our own military leaders have the presence of mind and the intestinal fortitude to act like grown-ups in the coming trying times. Some of them have shown moments of brilliance and courage, but others have been less so.

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