The editors at the New York Times line up with Joementum on a matter of national security:
The Bush administration planned to increase the Afghan Army from 90,000 troops to 134,000. That still won’t be big enough to secure a vast, rugged country with a larger population than Iraq’s. American planners propose expanding it to as many as 260,000 troops – roughly the size of Iraq’s Army. No decision has yet been made. The Pentagon estimates that it would cost $10 billion to $20 billion over a seven-year period to create and train a force that size. Paying it would cost billions more, especially if the current $100-a-month salary is to become more competitive with the $300 the Taliban pays. The total bill would still be a lot smaller than the cost of sustaining a huge American fighting force there. By the end of this year, there will 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, costing American taxpayers more than $60 billion a year.
Lieberman, meanwhile, has been the Senate’s most dogged advocate of a bigger Afghan National Army. A few weeks ago, he wrote to President Obama together with Carl Levin and 15 other members of the Senate Armed Service Committee, arguing for an immediate expansion in Afghan ranks. Key excerpt:
Taking an incremental approach toward the development of the Afghan security forces does not reflect realities on the ground. Given Afghanistan’s population, size, geography, and security challenges, it is clear that a 134,000-strong army will be insufficient to the country’s long-term needs, and that a significantly larger force will be required. There is ultimately no more cost effective approach to secure Afghanistan than to build up the Afghan National Security Forces dramatically. The cost of such increase is very modest because of the relatively small wages of troops and police in Afghanistan. Indeed, for the cost of a single American soldier in Afghanistan, it is possible to sustain 60 or more Afghans.
