Jon Landay at McClatchy — he of Nobody’s Business, who might have won Journopalooza if Mike Hayden was the judge — has the first leak of Afghanistan escalation numbers: 34,000, which is, Landay reports, inclusive of combat, support, trainer forces and a new division HQ for RC-South in Kandahar. His reporting, which matches something I was told Friday and which Josh Rogin reported earlier that day, indicates that Obama will roll out the new strategy and the troop increase after returning from his Asia trip on November 19. I should say that Taken For Action thinks that the real number here is 55,000.

The thing is, can we actually get 34,000 new troops into Afghanistan before summer of 2010? Remember that in the McChrystal strategy review, completed in late August, the commanding general talks about a window of about 12-18 month wherein he’ll know if he can arrest Taliban momentum. (That’s different, notice, than rolling back Taliban gains.) Check out David Wood’s latest Politics Daily column. Wood crunches the numbers on available Army brigade combat teams and finds that… there really aren’t any uncommitted brigades, at least not if the current year of “dwell time” (the time between deployments) holds. Here’s how you get to the plus-up:

Lash the troops to run faster. You can squeeze a little more performance from that formula of three BCTs to keep one deployed. One way is to give a BCT just back from combat 10 months to recover instead of 12 months. A BCT training to deploy again can have its 12 months of preparation and training cut to 10. Also in this category: deploy the BCTs for 12 months — and then stretch out their deployment. The Pentagon recently extended the 1st Cav in Iraq for 23 days; a Marine regiment got extended for 79 days.

In practice, of course, compressing the deployment cycle means all the stuff the troops used to get 12 months to do, they now have to do in 10 months. That means they get a few weeks of leave when they return from 12 months in combat, then they go back into intense training and equipment maintenance, working nights and weekends, and soon they’re doing field training for a week or two at a time, and that family discussion, Isn’t-it-time-to-quit, honey? gets postponed, once again.

My thoughts turn to what Bing West found on his most recent Afghanistan trip:

4. Decrease tour length to nine or fewer months for line battalions. I have asked dozens of
Soldiers and Marines about this. There is near-unanimous agreement that deployments on the  lines over eight months are too long. Aggressive patrolling decreases as the length of tour increases. The troops wear down. Absences of a year strain families and provoke divorces. Plus, the average mid-tour leave consumes 25 days, requires command attention, causes administrative  headaches and diverts lift assets.

This is controversial because many argue that a year is needed to build relationships.
This is a recent rationale, however. Since COIN did not burst on the scene until 2007, building  relationships was not the determining factor for the first six years of the wars in Iraq or  Afghanistan. Instead, tour length was determined by the flexibility or lack thereof internal to the personnel procedures inside each Service. The Marines went one way, and the Army another.

I have to bring up politics here. Remember that Jim Webb came close in 2007 to stopping the Iraq surge because of his objections to a 15-months-deployed-12-months-at-home formula. And the most pained I’ve ever seen Robert Gates was when he held a press conference in April 2007 to swallow hard and said that against his strong feelings he needed to instill a one time 15-to-12 Army deployment schedule. How much did he hate it? So much that he testified in February:

“The estimates that I’ve been given are that by the end of fiscal year ’09, we should be in a position where our brigade combat teams have a year deployed and 15 months at home,” Gates said. “In FY10 a year deployed, two years at home, and by FY11, a year deployed, 30 months at home. So I think we’re on the right track. The next few months will continue to be hard.”

Now, even if we decide to totally pull 120,000 troops out of Iraq to support the Afghanistan war, you’ve still got the dwell-time issue to deal with. How to get to the escalation? Something has to give.

It remains a mystery — how Americans think we can wipe the slate clean on a war with a change in strategy, give ourselves a second chance, find extra lives like the war comes equipped with a Konami code, escape context. But for the Afghans, the people whose perceptions Gen. McChrystal justifiably considers strategically decisive, none of that applies. Read this excellent New York Times piece to underscore how there aren’t any reset buttons amongst the populace.

If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here.

The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.

The quotes in the piece from Afghans are of the form “what do the Americans do for me?” and not “the Americans’ very presence here offends me,” and so it appears that the strategically-decisive perspective has not strategically decided. The counterinsurgents operate from the basic premise that they need to give an answer to the “what do the Americans do for me?” question before the decision-point occurs. But it’s important to remember that the answer has to trump eight years of ineffectiveness or disinterest if it’s going to be compelling to the Afghans.

What a fucking day. This email made me happy I’m drinking at my desk.

Spencer,
You are doing everything to protect Islam from the shootings at Fort Hood.  The reason so many centrist/independants like myself are starting to lean towards Foxnews, etc….is because you guys refuse to be fair.  The hypocrasy is openly blatant now.  You know if this was a story of a christian psychiatrist killing opening fire on a group of homosexuals, the judgement would be swift.  But that doesn’t happen.  Fact is, every christian majority nation has freedom of religion and freedom of speech.  NO islamic majority nation has freedom of religion and freedom of speech.  If you would just be honest, more would listen.  Independant americans are not fanatics, it’s just the media has moved so far left, we look that way.

Some of those Islamic majority nations respecting freedom of speech and freedom of religion include Turkey and, to a much lesser extent, Indonesia. India isn’t Muslim-majority, but it’s a democracy with, if I’m not mistaken, the world’s greatest number of Muslims.

And actually, I don’t “know” that if a Christian psychiatrist opened fire on “a group of homosexuals” — what a charming analogy from this asshole — “the judgment would be swift.” Instead, what I do know is that if someone decided to say there was something inherently bigoted about Christianity from the fact of such a disgusting occurrence, I would say that the utterance reflected more on the person issuing it than anything else. It is not my job to “protect Islam.” It is my job to adjudicate between what is valid and what is base; and between what is intelligent and what is extremely motherfucking stupid, venal and, yes, bigoted.

These fucking debater’s points, I tell you. I put up a plea earlier today for people to stop their euphemism. At least have the courage to say why you think Islam is so noxious. Instead, we get what we always get: anti-anti-racism. Somehow it all goes back to how comfortable the privileged wish to continue being. I don’t typically let hate mail bother me, but — God, this day. This is what people take away from a tragedy like Ft. Hood.