October 14, 2009 (LPAC)—When President Obama announced, last spring, that he had authorized the deployment of 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, whether he knew it or not, he lied. The 21,000 included 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 trainers for the Afghan army and police. Not included were all of the troops required to support those formations, such as medical units, military police, engineers, intelligence, logistics and so on. According to the Oct. 13 Washington Post, those troops amount to at least 13,000 more, bringing the total authorized to 34,000.
This is similar to what happened with the surge in Iraq in 2007. The five surge brigades that President Bush announced at that time, also amounted to 21,000 combat troops, but the total deployment added up to 30,000, because of the additional 9,000 support troops that were required. The higher number of support troops for Afghanistan for the same number of combat troops is probably explained by the fact that Afghanistan has much less support infrastructure than Iraq had in 2007.
The Post story usefully also includes a graph that shows that the current US troop deployment to both Iraq and Afghanistan adds up to 189,000, the highest, or as high as, it's ever been. The Post story notes that while senior Army officials want to avoid a return to the 15-month rotations of the Iraq surge, they are not sure they can avoid it. One thing that hasn't changed is the stress on the Army and the Marines.
Source:
LPAC.com