Troop Levels, and Western Casualties, in Afghanistan

One thing the American presidential candidates on both tickets agree on, besides eventually bombing Iran (McCain would do that soon, Obama would do it later, Biden would do it much, much later), is throwing more troops at Afghanistan.

McCain was a big advocate of throwing more troops at Iraq. He takes recent, modest improvements there, such as the lowering of the monthly death tool to "just" 500 Iraqis and 40 Americans or so, as an improvement. He thinks he can replicate the feat in Afghanistan, however vastly different Afghanistan and its horrendous problems happen to be than Iraq's. America's bigger problem is that Obama agrees with McCain. Obama, tool, wants to thorw a brigade or two at Afghanistan. They should both listen to Rory Stewart, who's lived in Afghanistan most years since 2001, except for a stint as a governor in a southern Iraqi province on behalf of the British government. So he knows both places.

"Western troops," Stewart wrote in Time in July, "can win any conventional battle against ill-armed extremists, but both history and the latest doctrine on counterinsurgency suggest that ultimate victory will require control of Afghanistan's borders, hundreds of thousands of troops and a much stronger and more legitimate Afghan state, which could take Afghans decades to build. The West does not have the resources to match our ambitions in counterinsurgency, and we never will."

The aid should be economic, it should be targeted at what the West knows how to do (foster a judicial system, train troops, build hospitals and schools, but otherwise get out of the way of local affairs, which, unfortunately, the West knows less how to do).

But what are we saying when we talk about troop escalations in Afghanistan? Here's an up-to-date chart outlining troop strengths by country--and casualties by country.