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My friend Jeff Stein at CQ asks:
I’ve got an idea: Why not get the Saudis to pony up, say, 20-30,000 troops for Afghanistan, about the same number that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said Sunday might be added to the 30,000 we already have there?
Can we not? To engage in some Wikipedia journalism, the Saudis don’t have a history as an expeditionary land force. Their wars tend to be either close to their borders, or as non-factors, as with their token participation in the Yom Kippur war against Israel. (There’s a small contingent of troops in Afghanistan who are from the Gulf, but if memory-and-Google serves, they’re from the United Arab Emirates. Just saying. Maybe there’s a small Saudi contingent, though. I could be wrong.) And isn’t the Saudi army kind of, well, not really well-esteemed? Afghanistan is really rugged territory, and it doesn’t look like the Saudis are so equipped for it. Before you jump down my throat, I understand that Jeff’s point is primarily a political one — we tend to do a lot of Saudi-protecting, and it would be rather helpful to get a Sunni Muslim force on the ground. But let’s not put politics so far ahead of capabilities.Crossposted to The Streak.
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Or the Saudi Navy could fight off the pirates in their neighborhood.
All are welcome to fight the pirates!
The saudi army would likely be comprised of many filipinos. Saudi Arabia tends to import Filipinos for labor intensive work.
I thought it worked out well the last time the Saudis recruited volunteers to fight in Afghanistan…NOT!
The Saudis don’t have anywhere near 20,000 combat troops and the infantry they do have couldn’t handle a large LA street gang.
If you’re serious about getting Sunni troops from a ME country that owes us favor, you have to look to Egypt.
Of course, if you’re less choosy, some Hindus may be available.
What did he write that for ?
That’s like a Pakistani asking why can’t they get the US to help fight the foreign troops in Afghanistan. Because they’re on the other side you clueless tit.
The Saudis (the guys with the oil revenues) financial support of the Afghan regime that replaced their beloved Taliban has been surpassed by Australia’s funding. Meanwhile, they’re pretty much the entire external support network for the recruitment of current gen Taliban and for the indoctrination of future gens.
So that’d be why.
The Afghans would have the Saudis for lunch, and without hardly raising a sweat. People that go up against attack helicopters with RPGs and who have a military tradition stretching back to Alexander’s time will not be impressed with a bunch of Arabs dumped in their midst. It seems hard for people to understand that dressing folks up in uniforms and giving them equipment does not in and of itself create a credible military force. Just look what happened to the Argies in the Falklands; they were handed their heads by a smaller, but highly trained and motivated British force. We had a very narrow window where we might have been able to create a success in Afghanistan back in 2001-02—and even then it was less than a 50-50 proposition—but Bush and Cheney squandered it. We’ve already lost in Afghanistan, but simply aren’t ready to admit it yet.