Fifteen Thousand Marines To Afghanistan?

There are currently some thirty thousand US troops in Afghanistan. Additionally, there are roughly thirty thousand allied forces, many of them in non-combat roles and relatively safe locations.

The US Marines are bored in Iraq. Long ago the mission of the twenty-two thousand jarheads in Anbar Province shifted from active combat operations taking the war to the black turbans to one of providing civil operations and back-up to the Iraqi security forces.

The possibility of shifting fifteen thousand of these under-employed, offensively oriented personnel to Afghanistan has been under active consideration by the Corps. The notion seems to have gained traction not only among the senior leadership of the Marines but with guys down the food chain, the men who do the killing--and the dying.

At first sight the transfer of the more-or-less out of work Marines to Afghanistan seems to be a good idea. The commanders in Afghanistan have long and correctly called for more boots on the ground. The President-elect has maintained that Afghanistan is the "central front" in the "War on Terrorism."

Then there is the simple, but unpleasant reality that the US and its allies are nowhere near having accomplished the minimum necessary strategic goal, which is "not-losing." The term "not-losing" means the clear demonstration that the enemy, al-Qaeda and Taliban, cannot defeat us either militarily or through the enervation of our domestic political will.

It is important to understand that the concept "not-losing" is not the same as "winning." The underlying reality in Afghanistan is that there is no meaningful way in which an outsider such as the US can hope to "win." The failure which was built in to the American headed invasion of Afghanistan was the notion that we could "win" through the implantation of foreign political institutions such as a secular, pluralistic, liberal democracy in the rocks of Afghanistan.

The willful ignoring of the realities operating on the human terrain of the Afghan population caused by ideological considerations assured that we and those with us would enter the country without a proper political goal, definition of victory, or means of achieving the goal and victory as defined. Since "winning" was an impossible option from the moment the first missile hit or the first US boot touched ground, there have been only two potential outcomes for this adventure in a remote, rugged and hostile land.

The more obvious potential end for the Afghan effort is the one which, at this moment, seems more likely. In a word, losing.

No matter how it might be camouflaged, a withdrawal under pressure from Taliban and al-Qaeda would be seen by the Islamist opposition worldwide as the military defeat of the "Crusader states," most important of which is the US. Foe, neutral, and friend, including many Americans, would see the US exiting Afghanistan under pressure as a military and political defeat. The consequences of this would be large, long duration, and unpleasant from an American perspective.

The only alternative to defeat is that of "not losing," of leaving Afghanistan after having reduced both the military capacities and the ability to use them of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. "Not-losing" means that the Afghan political situation will remain in a state of flux with the final outcome to be determined by the Afghan population. That Taliban will remain as a player in the political sphere is to be expected. The potential of Taliban re-emerging in or even as the government must be accepted.

The "not-losing" option is the one which finally obtained in Iraq following the success of the much debated and often maligned "surge." The final shape of internal Iraqi politics is still in process and at may eventually prove quite unsatisfying from an American perspective.

Whether the final outcome of Iraqi internal politics meets with our approval or not is quite irrelevant. The relevant consideration is simply that the hostile elements in Iraq did not force a military defeat upon us or cost us the totality of our political will to continue the war.

"Not-losing" has been a good enough outcome for US policy in both Korea and Iraq. While not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, it is a better end to an effort than was the barely hidden defeat of American political will in Vietnam.


It has been long established that counterinsurgency is a manpower intensive kind of war. When SecDef Donald Rumsfeld tried for victory on the cheap through high tech "shock and awe," he overlooked one of the two most important historically derived principles of interventionary war: It takes a lot of people. People on the ground operating over time is the second of the three pre-requisites for success, even the limited success described by the term "not-losing."

(As a side note, Rumsfeld wrote an op-ed piece in today's NYT. He comes across as though he was a born-again member of Code Pink. The Geek can't help but wonder where his expressed concern for the Afghan people and the necessity of them making the decisions on what sort of government they want might have been hiding back during the days of testicle grabbing mouthings of "shock and awe?")

The shifting of fifteen thousand Marines from Iraq to Afghanistan would provide a very significant increase in ground combat power. Given that the Marine Expeditionary Force includes it own air as well as ground units, the force would be tightly integrated and capable of operating with extreme rapidity and effectiveness to actionable intelligence. This has been shown repeatedly in the past, in counterinsurgency operations stretching back from Iraq to the so-called "Banana Wars" of the Twenties and Thirties.

On the downside of course are the considerations of logistics. While these are solvable, even if it means relying all the more on private Russian contractors operating ancient Soviet era cargo aircraft, the problems of supplying another fifteen thousand personnel are not beyond our capacities.

Indeed, if diplomacy were to be employed effectively, we might be able to regain the lost cooperation of some of the adjacent Central Asian Republics. The current administration lost that cooperation due to its usual inept, heavy-handed efforts at diplomatic coercion over irrelevant matters of human rights. What diplomacy has lost, it should be able to regain.

A far more important downside effect of redeploying the Marines is that to do such would mean an increase in the tempo of combat operations. That means an increase in Americans killed and wounded.

The real risk for the decision makers both in and out of uniform is simply what additional stresses can American political will accept? Given all the bad things happening in our collective life, can We the People take more news of more Americans killed in the pursuit of something so hard to grasp as "not losing?" Or, if Taliban and al-Qaeda inflict enough death upon our troops, if these black turbans cause enough destruction, death and turmoil that success no matter how limited in definition seems impossible, will We the People simply give up and call the troops home?

As the British say, "That is a bit of a poser, what?"