They serve in the U.S. armed forces in disproportionately high numbers, with the highest troop-to-population ratios of any racial or ethnic group.
If higher troop levels are needed, several said, the answer is in recruiting more volunteers, not drafting people.
Some military analysts who have favored higher troop levels in Iraq in the past agreed that the current timetable still made sense.
"Unless you are prepared to stay in Afghanistan with high troop levels for at least a decade, then an overt campaign to tackle corruption is a big mistake".
Too slowly, the president and his team accept that a new strategy with higher troop levels is needed to calm the storm.
Senior NATO officials said Thursday that the allies were examining a new assistance package to Afghanistan that would last at least five years and keep the security forces at the higher troop level.
The commander, Gen. David D. McKiernan, said the higher troop levels would help him during the traditional fighting season in the spring and the Afghan presidential election, scheduled for August, when there is expected to be more violence.
He notes that experts — who recommended higher troop levels in Iraq, warned about the consequences of disbanding the Iraqi Army or worried about the lack of postwar planning— were continually ignored by the White House and Pentagon leadership, or themselves failed, out of cowardice or blind loyalty, to press insistently their case for an altered course in the war.
All three towns lie north of the main areas of the latest American offensives, supporting the notion that, as in numerous earlier operations, insurgent cells have flowed away from high troop concentrations, or affiliated cells have been activated in areas unaffected by those offensives.
She pushed for even higher troop levels than did President Obama.
In fact, General Nicholson's humble request is undoubtedly only an opening wedge in the Trumpian door through which future, far higher troop requests are then likely to enter. .
