Tommy Sowers is a former Green Beret who’s running for Congress — as a Democrat. He recently said that America will lose in Afghanistan even if the current training mission succeeds. In an interview with Noah Shachtman he explains:
You start analyzing what is the stated objective for Afghanistan. It is to train, arm and equip the Afghan military and police, so that, one day, we can hand things over and leave. But let’s think through that objective. Let’s think through accomplishing that and set aside all the challenges we see on a day-to-day basis, most of which we didn’t have to the same degree in Iraq — the level of corruption, the level of illiteracy, the lack of centralized government.
Use Gen. [David] Petraeus’ own ratio which is one counterinsurgent for every 50 members of the populace. That’s 600,000, which is bigger than the active U.S. Army. But of course we’re not doing that, we’re training hopefully 400,000. So we’re already building a force that’s too small to secure. But then if you think through it even further and you say, “OK let’s just assume we’re going to do it.” One day we’ve got 400,000-600,000 trained, armed and equipped Afghan tribesman and we leave. The central question — and this is a logistical question which Congress should be asking now — becomes: “Who’s going to pay for the Afghan military?”
So we’re building a force that’s too small to secure and too expensive to maintain. So training arming and equipping an army the size of our army in Afghanistan that will one day not be paid and will seek employment is not in our long term strategic interest.