Gen. Stanley McChrystal wants a minimum of 40,000 more troops (60,000 to 80,000 preferred) for Afghanistan. The problem is that nobody has figured out where all of those warm bodies will come from. 40,000 is for McChrystal's "medium risk of losing this fucking war" option.
The Marines can send 7,400 more. The Army can send 25,000 more. That's it and they are tapped out.
So what can be done? They can go back to 15-month tours, but that almost broke the Army in Iraq and the generals don't want to do that again.
Close the German bases and send everyone? Yank everyone out of South Korea and tell the North Koreans that any attack will be met with a nuclear response (Japan will just love the idea of radioactive fallout)?
Park all of the F-22s in the Arizona desert and send the people n those squadrons to Afghanistan? I think there are nine F-22 squadrons, give or take. I've no idea how many zoomies are in a squadron, but even if it is 500, that's only another 4,500 people and they'd need to go to the six-week "trigger-pulling" school.
Park all of the aircraft carriers? There are 3,000+ sailors in the ship's company of a CVN, but you'd still need enough to keep it maintained to some basic level and to provide for security and fire watches. The reactor spaces still need to be manned, so maybe you could reduce by half? That gives you 15,000, maybe more if you lay up the CVN's escorts. Then countries around the world start to freak out and alliances start to shift. And then you have to figure out where you are going to get the air support that was flying from the CVNs.
Gen. Westmoreland wanted another 250,000 troops in 1968 (over the 500,000+ already there) and that is what ultimately broke the back of the Vietnam War. McChrystal's desire for 80,000 more troops may very well do the same for the Afghan War.
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I'm guessing that they think that as they pull ground units out of Iraq they can send them to Afghanistan.
Maybe in the future we should only get involved in one war at a time...
Cujo, that is already happening, as troops slated for Iraq (and who have spent time learning some Arabic) are going to Afghanistan. But they can't draw down in Iraq fast enough to meet McChrystal's needs.
So now what?
Recall IRR troops. There is probably a couple 100,000 of individual ready reserve IRR who could fill this. I'm one of them but shit it's been 12 years since I was in uniform.
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