British General Supports Request For 40,000 New Troops In Afghanistan

Lieutenant General Jim Dutton (U.K MoD)

From Times Online:

Britain’s top general in Afghanistan backed calls for more troops, insisting it would be impossible to deny al-Qaeda their terrorist safe havens by “simply patrolling from the skies”. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Lieutenant-General Jim Dutton, said yesterday that he supported a formal request made by his boss, General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander, for up to 40,000 new troops.

On Friday General McChrystal submitted a formal request to Nato and the Pentagon for a surge in troop numbers to help to tame a growing insurgency.

General Dutton, the deputy commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, insisted that “long-term stability” in Afghanistan was the only way to stop international terrorists using the country as a launch pad for attacks in Europe and the US.

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My Comment: The key paragraph in this article is the following ....

General Dutton told The Times that victory was a matter of “straightforward force ratios”. “If you want to achieve long-term stability, and therefore a lack of terrorism potential in an area, you need to be doing more than simply patrolling the skies,” he said.

I cannot disagree with the General on this point.