As President Obama addressed the nation regarding his “drawdown,” media outlets are abuzz, seeing the announcement as the biggest change since the December 2009 escalation announcement.
On the ground in Afghanistan, however, it doesn’t seem like a drawdown, and the troops aren’t expecting any major change. Rather, they are expecting long deployings and a long occupation in an already decade-old war.
This speaks both to the Pentagon’s repeated calls for US troops to remain long after 2014 and to President Obama’s own decision to announce a drawdown that sounds a lot bigger than it actually is.
Though the drawdown will nominally remove 33,000 surge troops, only between 3,000 and 5,000 troops will actually be leaving any time soon, with the rest simply “planned” drawdowns at future dates, which have historically been very unreliable.
That's because this isn't a drawdown. Again, if one goes back and rereads what Obama has said up to this point, he's never even hinted that he was going to wind down this war. Even after he addressed the public after the reported killing of bin Laden he never indicated that, well, that satisfies the mission and now we can bring the troops home. Nope. He DID say that he could see troops there for a long time to come – in support roles…
And the troops, who done what they've been asked to do will continue to sacrifice any semblance of a home life for the continual rotations in and out of the zone. Meanwhile, the VA, the Congress, and by his silence, the President sit by and watch (or not) the support system for the wounded troops go through the political grinder reducing and eliminating programs to help them recover. that's their reward.
The surge was 30,000 troops. The "withdrawal" is 33,000. My math tells me he's withdrawing 3,000. My experience tells me that those 3,000 will be rebranded as something else and sent back, just like he did in Iraq.
If it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit and the flies land on it, there is a very good chance that it is bullshit.