Between Iraq and a Hard Place

President Obama’s 18-minute speech August 31, 2010, left us between Iraq and a hard place. There was no immediately recognizable thrust. President Obama believes he is rid of the Iraq tar baby by simply stating that he is. His own Iraqi problems will become increasingly evident as we approach November’s mid-term elections. Much will depend on how Iran plays its strong hand. Already in 2006, the Iraq Study Group (Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker) opined that Iran already has more influence in Iraq than the U.S. The long common border and Iraq’s Shia majority are self-explanatory.

Mr. Obama did not offer an easy way out of Afghanistan because there isn’t one. Easy or tough, there isn’t one short of staying with the Afghan problem for the next five to ten years. Less than half the House and the Senate believes we should simply be patient in Afghanistan while Petraeus does his Iraq-style magic. But what happens when the Taliban launches a mini-Tet offensive — five or six simultaneous attacks on the capital and four or five other towns?

Col. Joe Buche, a deputy commander of the Afghan national army and police buildup was now running at the rate of $8 billion a month to maintain the current ANA force of 148,000. The next milestone is for 200,000 troops by the end of 2011, at a cost of $26 billion.

To build, sustain and regenerate an additional 105,000 to bring the ANA to 305,000 will have ongoing costs of:

FY 12 — $6.7 billion

FY 13 — $6.4 billion

FY 14 — $5.9 billion

FY 15 — $5.8 billion

The onetime 150% attrition rate has been brought down to unmentioned sustainable rates. A former NATO commander told us that to deny power to the Taliban, NATO, including the US, and various and sundry NATO and EU powers, would have to jack up troop levels to 400,000. Afghanistan is the size of France.