General Sir David Richards, head of the British Army and  a well-respected former head of NATO’s force in Afghanistan, has added his voice to that of General Stanley McChrystal and other senior military figures warning that the West needs to make a bigger commitment in Afghanistan to avoid a disastrous defeat. The Daily Telegraph quotes him as saying that the consequence of defeat would be “enormous” and “unimaginable”:

If al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe they have defeated us – what next? Would they stop at Afghanistan? Pakistan is clearly a tempting target not least because of the fact that it is a nuclear-weaponed state and that is a terrifying prospect. Even if only a few of those (nuclear) weapons fell into their hands, believe me they would use them. The recent airlines plot has reminded us that there are people out there who would happily blow all of us up.

Sir David said Britain was prepared to put in more troops but only if the U.S. began to implement McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy. “If you put in more troops we can achieve the objectives laid upon us more quickly and with less casualties,” he said. He added that success was “certainly difficult” but not “mission impossible”: “Having spent the last five years more focused on Afghanistan than anything else, I’m convinced it is most certainly doable.” But Sir David, in common with American generals, does not believe the mission can be accomplished by Vice President Biden’s small-footprint counterterror strategy: “Sir David said this was a strategy which would not work.”

Generals are rarely unanimous about anything, but insofar as I can tell, there is a striking unanimity among senior generals, American and allied, familiar with the war in Afghanistan. They are in favor of giving McChrystal the resources needed to carry out his strategy. Wasn’t it only a few  years ago that Democrats were chiding President Bush for supposedly not listening to his generals? Well, who’s not listening now?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 9:41 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.