Marines to Afstan

If I read the reporting right, the combat units will go to Helmand in support of the Brits (and Danes and Estonians) while a battalion with a largely training function will go to Kandahar. Though of course the air component will almost certainly be based at Kandahar.

The latest:

About 3,200 Marines are being told to prepare to go to Afghanistan, military officials said Monday, in an effort to boost combat troop levels and get ready for an expected Taliban offensive this spring.

Once complete, the deployment would increase U.S. forces in Afghanistan to as much as 30,000, the highest level since the 2001 invasion after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon...According to officials, 2,200 members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit [MEU], based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., will go to Afghanistan, as well as about 1,000 members of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, which is based at Twentynine Palms, Calif...

The 2nd Battalion, which is from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, is an infantry unit, and it will be used largely for training Afghan forces...

Earlier:

The Marine air-ground task force will go to Helmand, where its mission will be "to beat back another spring offensive," [Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell] Morrell said. Fighting in Afghanistan tends to be seasonal, with a lull in winter when the weather makes travel difficult. British forces now lead the NATO command in southern Afghanistan, including Helmand...

One hopes the lessons learned by this Marine who served in Iraq will be effectively applied in Afstan.

And one shudders at this Canadian hypocrisy about the Marine deployment. My letter sent today to the Globe and Mail:

Lawrence Martin suggests ("Send in the (U.S.) Marines: a surge that could work for Canada, Jan. 14) that increased US troop strength in Afghanistan, a course advocated even by leading Democratic presidential candidates Clinton and Obama, might provide cover for Canada's ending our combat role there. How delightfully ironic. Canadians are always criticizing the big, bad aggressive Americans but now should be grateful to them for doing the hard work while we bug out.

Canadians should actually be asking themselves why the Democrats, the US party most Canadians seem to love, should see the necessity for combat engagement in Afghanistan when those Canadians do not.

Update: This quote from the first, AP, story above, shows how bad and a-historical Western reporting has become:

"...the deployment would increase U.S. forces in Afghanistan to as much as 30,000, the highest level since the 2001 invasion..."

During the 2001 "invasion" there were around 400/600 Special Forces and CIA personnel in Afstan (can't find a precise reference)--nothing close to 30,000. The first conventional US formation, a thousand-plus Marines, started arriving at Kandahar in late November after the Taliban had been routed in most of the country by the Northern Alliance, with US air and US and Brit special forces/covert types assistance. What crap from AP.

Upperdate: Meanwhile across the border where a real "invasion" comes from (thanks Fred in "Comments"):

Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say

Uppestdate: The Marine deployment is official. The MEU part will be under ISAF but the training battalion will be under Operation Enduring Freedom (I infer the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan in this case; the combat side of Enduring Freedom is Combined Joint Task Force - 82). No precise location for the basing of the two different units is given; maybe the trainers will actually be stationed in Kabul at Camp Eggers--or at least be part of US training activities in the Kabul area. The MEU's

...deployment is slated to last seven months and "will temporarily fill a standing ISAF request for a maneuver force in southern Afghanistan...”