Afghanistan troop surge argument continues

Nicholas Kristof is the latest pundit to weigh in on the “no” side. In his nut graf, he directly refutes Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency-based call for a troop “surge”:

Standard counterinsurgency ratios of troops to civilians suggest we would need 650,000 troops (including Afghans) to pacify the country. So will adding 40,000 more to the 68,000 already there make a difference to justify the additional annual cost of $10 billion to $40 billion, especially since they may aggravate the perception of Americans as occupiers?

Sounds pretty straightforward, no?

Meanwhile, some “boots on the ground” work in Afghanistan looks promising, but, could it hold, even if we put more troops in now, and then pulled back three-five years later?

But, Kristof counters, as far as al-Qaida fears:

Steven Simon, a National Security Council official in the Clinton years who is now a terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that there may be more Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Yemen and perhaps Somalia than in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Taliban will know we can hit them with cruise missiles, and, eventually, Predators, from offshore, if they support an al-Qaida renaissance, anyway.