One More Reason to Pull Out of Afghanistan, An Addendum to 9/2 Article

On September 2nd, I adequately pointed out why, from a right-winged point of view, the American troops should pull out of Afghanistan:

http://libertarianjew.blogspot.com/2009/09/operation-enduring-freedom-should-no.html

If that wasn't convincing enough, I have come up with yet another reason to pull out.The Heritage Foundation recently put out a statement stating why we should support Afghanistan:

https://www.heritage.org/node/14105/print-display

Aside from the fact that they don't address any of the self-evident issues with being over there, it forced me to do a little bit of math. As they point out, there are only 173,000 men in their army and police, where as Iraq has 600,000. This is as startling contrast, considering the fact that Afghanistan is three times the size of Iraq. Last time I checked, if the Afghani government wanted to be comparable to Iraq, 600,000 x 3 = 1.8 million. On top of that, my other reasearch told me that 160,000 soldiers were in Iraq for its moderate levels of success, so 160,000 x 3 = 480,000 soldiers, and right now there are only about 110,000. So just some basic math here, which will be me subtracting the amount of necessary forces that are currently lacking in Afghanistan:

• 1.8 million - 173,000 = 1,627,000 Afghani soldiers and policemen short
• 480,000 - 110,000 = 370,000 American, NATO, and other foreign soldiers short

In total, we're a little bit shy of 2 million men short of being able to pull of such an operation.  If Heritage is stipulating that we cannot do "minimalist, off-shore tactics" and need to go in there "head-on," can somebody explain to me where this large quantity of men is going to come from?  Since WWII, most operations such as these have primary backing from the US.  Where is the US going to get 370,000 men?!  We have so many domestic issues to deal with right now, and the support for the war is already low, which kills morale.  Also, how are we going to train over 1.6 million Afghanis?  Better question, why should we even train them in the first place?  We have crime in America--let's use it for our police forces, or better yet, guarding the US-Mexican border from narco-terrorism.  Heck, it can be used to get Al Qaeda in Pakistan.  There are so many other things that this money could be used for.  Just because it's erroneously gift-wrapped in the ruse of "national security" doesn't make it any less of pork than building an Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere."  No matter where you are on the political spectrum, one thing should be clear by now--we're wasting valuable resources on something that cannot be won.