Still more troops needed, says Petraeus.

Yes, that right. What can’t be accomplished with 60,000 soldiers will be accomplished with 80,000. Or maybe 100,000. That’s what we’ve been doing wrong. Does that last line of the General, ‘for the first time…’, does that not strike you as kind of outrageous? That in essence, the reason for our failure so far, is that we have not killed enough enemies.

Maybe in a conventional war, that reasoning might hold. Say, WWII. But here and now, that is old thinking, cold-war thinking: more men, more guns, more bullets, more killing. That is what it amounts to right? More killing. Let us call it for what it is. Not ‘kinetic action’ which is how the officials at the Department of Defence in Canberra refer to it, in a perfect example of Orwellian Newspeak. Or ‘Degradation of Hostile capacity’. Killing. You don’t bring in more soldiers unless that is where you[...]

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