1,000 Troops For Every al Qaeda Operative in Afghanistan

From Think Progress via AlterNet:

The U.S. has committed nearly 100,000 troops to the mission in Afghanistan. ABC This Week host Jake Tapper asked CIA Director Leon Panetta how big is the al Qaeda threat that the soldiers are combating:

TAPPER: How many Al Qaeda, do you think, are in Afghanistan?

PANETTA: I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaeda is actually relatively small. I think at most, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less. It’s in that vicinity. There’s no question that the main location of Al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The 100,000 U.S. forces that have been tasked to dismantle the 100 or so al Qaeda members — a ratio of 1000:1 — is complicated by the fact that we are also engaged in operations going after the Taliban leadership.

More here.

Right.

The reality is that Al Qaeda is now in Pakistan, which we will most definitely not invade because they have nuclear weapons--the "50 to 100" Al Qaeda operatives still in Afghanistan are very likely stragglers, or lost, or trying to get to Pakistan, certainly not an organized force for mayhem and anarchy, and therefore not really worth all the trouble. That leaves the Taliban as enemy in Afghanistan, the people who controlled the country before we got there. In other words, we're fighting yet another home grown insurgency. Kind of like we were doing in Vietnam. And Iraq. And we're doing this in order to keep Al Qaeda from coming back. But why would they come back when they appear to be able to thumb their noses at the US from over the border?

So we're fighting an indigenous insurgency so as to create a modern nation state where there has never before been one to keep out an enemy who most likely doesn't want to go there. Needless to say, this makes absolutely no sense. Does the Obama administration really believe this bullshit?

Conservatives are saying that the BP oil spill will destroy the Obama administration. I'm starting to think our President's Waterloo lies in Afghanistan, rather than the Gulf of Mexico. Remember how successful LBJ was at home? The Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, "The War on Poverty," he got shit done. But Vietnam rendered it all meaningless by the time the primaries rolled around in 1968.

I guess we'll see where this all leads.

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