A brigade is about 5,000 troops, and a brigade a month is the pace at which we pulled combat troops out of Iraq. With about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, we can get nearly all of them out by the end of 2012 if we start now and withdraw a brigade a month.
In my opinion, we need to shift gears from talking in the abstract -- e.g. "We should be out of Afghanistan!" -- to talking about the specifics of how that's happening. We should talk about it expertly and conscientiously and relentlessly.
Moreover, we should talk about it with specific people - starting with the politicians who hope to be (re)elected in 2012. "A brigade a month" should be our non-negotiable minimum requirement. Politicians that want to derive advantage from their incumbency should start making it happen now. Politicians who can't meet this standard should find other employment, because we are going to work to get others elected who can make it happen.
This is a picture of what it looks like when we are troops are coming home:
Keep this picture in mind.
"A brigade a month."
P.S. - Here are links to my previous posts in June, 2011, and December, 2009, in which I tried to be a trusting Team Obama player, hoping that he was going to get the job done. He has not gotten the job done.
People are using Twitter to talk about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. You can see examples of this by searching on Twitter for the expression #AfghanistanTuesday-01. (You can learn all about the #AfghanistanTuesday campaign here.)
"A brigade a month."
Nice piece with concrete ideas. Thats a first I have seen from an anti-war movement in US. I have heard of total withdrawal from Berliners when I was there in 2009 though.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I feel the American politicians are using the Afghan war for their political-economic gains hence it will be hard to get them to agree on any withdrawal plans that has to do with total liberation of Afghanistan from colonial rule.
The only possible way then, if not preposterous, will be to desist voting for any politicians who do not want to commit on your plan - which is a decent plan - and the reduced number in votes will indicate to the US political-military class that the people are not going to support them in their wars on foreign fronts.
But then...US citizens will say they will b giving away their rights to vote for something that does not really 'affect' them.
Yours truly