I have common sense. What would the extra ten thousand troops do for a few years that could possibly have handed a decisive defeat to the insurgents? Hold down a few more districts? Train a few more ANA? Please explain. I’m sure if you ask Petraeus now he would say it wouldn’t have mattered much.
The problems in Afghanistan are political more than military. Our troops have defeated the the Taliban every time they have fought them. The reason the Taliban still has so many supporters is largely because Karzai’s regime is so corrupt and incompetent.
I honestly can’t tell you what a third more troops in the surge would have done. I said upthread that I am not a military person, let alone a General, so I just don’t have the knowledge. All I can say is the Generals (Petraeus) told him they needed 40,000 or it would fail and he only gave them 30,000. He knowingly guaranteed failure right there by supplying only 75% of the requested troops. I not putting blind faith in Generals, but one needs to defer to their requests in matters like these, and not second-guess them as Obastard does to everybody, always (he’s the smartest guy in the room, remember?)
I agree that the biggest problems were political. Politicians lost wars already won by the military plenty of times in history, so this wasn’t the first time. I blame the ROE as the primary factor for the massive increase in casualties. One needn’t be a military expert to know that if you give orders forbidding the return of fire, belligerents will take advantage of that.