But can we really 'Go Big, Bold' in Afghanistan?

There's a good article in the Globe and Mail by retired Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie in which he argues that in order to get the job done we need to send another 30,000 troops to the country. That seems low to me if, as has been widely argued, the occupation of Iraq (pop. 26,783,383, land area 437,072 sq.km.) needed something like 350,000 to be done right. Afghanistan is more populous with 31,000,000 people and larger (land area 647,500 sq.km.). Why would a force of ca. 70,000 (now there are 30,000 NATO troops, including 12,000 Americans, there already plus 11,000 Americans not under NATO command) be up to the job? Is the situation that much more benign in Afghanistan? But I defer to Mackenzie on this since he as a retired Major General is no doubt a better judge of this than I am as a 'retired' Master Corporal.

The number's not the issue, however; we can all agree it should bea lot bigger than it is now. Mackenzie, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head when he says NATO's future is...

hanging in the balance, fence-sitting NATO partners have to be convinced, coerced, intimidated to live up to their end of the contract they signed when they joined during more peaceful times. Failure to do so will signal the end of a 57-year-old alliance that failed when faced with its first real test in the field.

Too right. Sadly, I'm pessimistic about the chances of a greater contribution from the rest of Europe, either in quantity or quality. Will any of the EU 'core' France, Germany, Spain or Italy pony up more troops? Statements like this from the foreign affairs adviser to Socialist presidential candidate Segoline Royal make me very doubtful:

...the question the English have to answer is - do the English consider the English Channel to be wider than the Atlantic?

We on the Continent have the right to deplore the fact that Great Britain appears to consider the Channel wider.

Mackenzie accuses 'Old Europe', to use Don Rumsfeld's term, of fence sitting while 'Old Europe' reckons it's the British who are fence sitting and that the choice for Europe whether or not to be '...vassals of the United States, do we want to be a 51st state?'

Feh. With that being the atmosphere amongst the allies I have low expectations.