"In Afganistan the final battle begins"
Paul Wells of Maclean's magazine writes a lengthy piece about his recent visit to Afstan, accompanying Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, the (outgoing) Chief of the Land Staff (see fifth bullet from the bottom here, and here):
...This time the tactics are different and backup has arrived...
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 3:32 p.m.
1 Comments:
Interesting comments from the piece:
Menard: “I don’t care about the insurgents. I really don’t. All I want to do is marginalize them.”
There's an argument to be made for avoiding the bloodshed, and there's a counterargument that this just leaves live insurgents to fight another day. But smarter folks than me have hammered this problem around for years and come down on this side of the debate.
Next: "It’s the Afghan army, rapidly growing and professionalizing, that’s needed. “Until then, that school sits as a monument,” Ellis said. “It sits there as a monument to the fact that their government won’t do anything for them.”"
Couldn't say it better. There's no middle ground on that sort of thing - do it right, or don't do it at all. Because a half-effort just turns things against you.
Next: "Menard ran down a list of the other elements of his command philosophy. “Persistent, partnered presence.” No more of the “whack-a-mole” Canadian forces participated in for so long, where they would show up just long enough to beat down a sudden outcropping of insurgent violence, only to leave for another crisis zone and allow the Taliban to rebuild where they’d just been flushed out.
To be fair, we knew all along this is what we were doing. I spoke with MGen Fraser years ago, and he acknowledged that that's what TF Orion was doing in that first roto in Kandahar. But with the resources he had, that was really the best of a slate of mediocre options.
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