Obama has already taken his time contemplating the decision on sending additional troops to supplement the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan. He was vacillating perhaps in view of costs involved, or the possible heavy toll of lives of US servicemen. The US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, had requested for 40,000 additional troops in mid September, yet the pronouncement has taken more than 10 weeks. US decision makers have been there before. The 2007 troop surge in Iraq generated heavy debate although it is supposed to have contributed to US success in Iraq. The Democrats in US Congress at that time opposed the troop surge, yet now they will have to weigh in favour of the surge since they rule the roost. The main constraint is budgetary. According to media reports, US Budget Director Peter Orszag was invited by Obama to sit in for weighing the budget consequences of the troop surge. The war in Afghanistan has already cost $232,578,144,445. White House budget analysts have estimated that it may cost as much as $1 million a year for each soldier sent to Afghanistan - on top of the $227 billion already appropriated for the war from 2001 through 2009. US taxpayers will have to tighten their belts in an already dismal and grim economic crunch they are facing. A brief look at the history of financial decisions to augment the war effort reveals that Abraham Lincoln levied USA's first income tax to help pay soldiers and buy rifles for the Civil War. Franklin D Roosevelt raised taxes, as well, to help pay for World War II. Lyndon B Johnson acked a temporary 10 percent top of normal income taxes to help pay for the Vietnam War. The Congressional Research Service says the US has used four methods to fund wars: Raise taxes; cut other spending; borrow; and print more money. According to reports, a group of top legislators, led by US Republican David Obey of Wisconsin, proposes a surtax to help pay for the war. Obey's proposal would impose a 1 percent surtax on people earning less than $150,000. The real debate is whether the US troop surge would be effective and what would be its consequences on Pakistan's war against terror. According to media reports foretelling the troop surge, indicate that Obama would agree to sending 34,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan. The dilemma has been between counter insurgency versus counter terrorism. Does he place emphasis on defeating the Taliban or Al-Qaeda? The 34,000 troop increase indicates the president has chosen the middle road - less than the 40,000 troops requested by General McChrystal, but more than the 15,000 that reportedly the president and vice president advocated. It must be understood that defeating the Taliban or Al-Qaeda with this dispensation is well nigh impossible. US analysts have themselves admitted that they missed the opportunity of capturing Osama when they bombed Tora Bora into oblivion in 2001-2002. Their opportunity for victory lay then, but the US chose to divert its attention to Iraq. Now the twelve-headed Hydra has grown strong and nearly invincible, while US resolve to fight has been weakened. Already news of negotiations with like-minded Taliban is filtering through. The question being asked is: "Who would the ethnic Pashtun areas back, the US/NATO forces or the Taliban?" The US is about to cut its losses and run while the Taliban would persist in the region. General McChrystal has already warned: "A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution. This is their war and any success must come by, with, and through the Afghan government." In other words, without a legitimate and credible Afghan partner, that counterinsurgency strategy is fundamentally flawed. The current Afghan government is neither legitimate nor credible. It has recently been installed by nothing more than a fraudulent political default. President Hamid Karzai now knowingly presides over a culture of corruption, an opium-dependent economy and, so far, has shown neither the credibility nor political will to rid his government of its corrupt warlords and crony power brokers, providing slim hope for "an Afghan solution." Coming to Pakistan's concerns, according to The Washington Post: "The US may send as many as 9,000 marines to southern Afghanistan in the initial batch. They will double the size of the US force in the southern Helmand province. This may force more militants to ingress into Balochistan and add to Pakistan's problems in the strife-torn province. Pakistan is engaged in a critical war in South Waziristan to eliminate the miscreants, who had taken physical control of the region and were fomenting trouble for the rest of Pakistan, causing disruption of civic life. Suicide attacks on civilian and military targets had nearly paralysed life, causing western observers to sound alarms that terrorists could get hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and destabilise the region in particular and the world in general. Their fears are unfounded, but Pakistan has managed to occupy most of the terrorist territory in South Waziristan, smash their training centres and capture large caches of arms and ammunition. Yet the terror leaders have evaded capture and as is customary in guerrilla warfare, they have melted away and will perhaps cause trouble in future after regrouping." A paradox has been the role of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Instead of raising the vigil as Pakistan's offensive in South Waziristan commenced to choke the escape routes of the fleeing miscreants, their troops actually relocated themselves, moving their checkposts back from the border region. It remains to be seen whether the troop surge in Afghanistan will result in coordinated operations with Pakistani security forces in mutually supportive manoeuvres or create impediments owing to the trust deficit which persists between both
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