Comments
Grumpy 6,
I apologize for my failed attempt at sarcasm... and I agree with everything you say...
We win every major engagement, battle, operation and campaign (except the hearts and minds campaign waged in a shame and honor culture). But it does us no good because what are we going to do... keep winning every major engagement, battle, operation and campaign (except hearts and minds) for the next 30 years? This is not a defeatist attitude... it's Afghanistan. If Afghan history is any indication; retrograde and specifically targeted punitive expeditions (as required) are the most likely long term solution.
Reference "intheknow('s)" valid point... I submit that the Obama campaign team didn't support actions in Afghanistan any more than they did in Iraq... and that it had nothing to do with being perceived as weak on national security... and everything to do with a campaign strategy that sought to exploit a perceived Bush administration weakness in its economy of force and resource allocation and distribution approach favoring Iraq versus Afghanistan.... Hmmm... after it is all said and done (especially since those dang Pashtun just don't believe that we are serious about bringing modernity to the arid mountain region) maybe the folks allocating resources in the Bush administration actually understood that Afghanistan was a backwater and Iraq the prize...
I remember shaking my head in disbelief when candidate Obama pushed a Afghanistan first approach. A "cutting off your nose to spite your political opponent" strategy is a strategy... I guess. Maybe a cursory reading of Lady Sale's "Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan: A firsthand Account of One of the Few Survivors" first published in 1843 would have provided a bit of background information on the area under consideration. In hindsight, the Obama campaign planners that recommended weakening the Republican candidate's "Iraq first" approach didn't do his administration any long-term favors.
Can we still call a thing a tar-baby... or is this term and associated terminological baggage now considered taboo?
I actually believe that our pol-mil planners get it and are working diligently to get us retrograded ASAP with as much frontier prestige intact as possible... but is is so much more fun to second-guess... is it not ;-)
r/
MAC
The only way everything we are doing in Afghanistan makes sense is if we look at it through this lense:
- Initially we went in with no long-term objective/vision, but because we thought we had to because of 9/11. We had a fuzzy notion of bringing bin Laden to justice- but other than that we figured we'd overthrow the Taliban and then... no-one really thought about "and then". By the time we started to we were told (literally) to forget Afghanistan and concentrate on Iraq
- Later, when things started getting worse in Afghanistan we went through a change in leadership. The new group didn't like the Iraq war and supported the Afghanistan War because they couldn't afford to look weak on security. They didn't understand, nor were they interested in understanding, what needed to happen in Afghanistan beyond that they wanted to leave soon. They did two things:
1) decided to preach that we would get out as soon as possible, even setting a date to do so, and then deciding to give the military the absolute minimum the military said they needed to do "COIN" a la 3-24.
2) they bought-off (after much internal debate) on the military's definition of what COIN meant (nation-building).
Thus, we are acting like we are doing nation-building there when in actuality we are trying to do the least amount possible in order to spin metrics that will make things look like we have progress- and that will enable us to leave without the current administration looking weak on security.
This makes all the contradictions, hypocricy, tactical and strategic disconnects, and confusing guidance make sense.
Mac, the credibility issue is a double-edged sword - its great if you are winning, but it only makes you look dull and stubborn if you are there ten years and have little to show for it. Because we are wallowing around doing COIN, we have lost the Operational initiative. Pakistan is the home of a lot of bad guys...enough to qualify Pakistan as an enemy, but we have zero leverage with them. Sure, we can threaten to stop the money and weapons, but they can stop our operations in Afghanistan by closing the roads from Karachi to Afghanistan to our logistics convoys. Since nothing we do in Afghanistan matters because Pakistan and Iran indirectly control the level of violence in Afghanistan, why are we burning billions of dollars playing Cowboys and Indians (COIN) in Afghanistan? Qods Force and the ISI are our enemies as much as bin Laden is, at least in Afghanistan. Right now we are being taken for suckers by Pakistan. Credibility requires statesmanship, generalship, and an objective that shows we mean business. And this time we can't even conduct a "Cambodian incursion" to hit bad guy sanctuaries.
Afghanistan is a mess for a lot of reasons -- and we aren't going to fix it no matter how much "resolve" we demonstrate.
Grumpy 6,
Two reasons maybe? A lack of resolve in small things (Afghanistan) undermines credibility in large issues (Global War and prestige)... or pride (pop-centric COIN will work... eventually) rather than statesmanship (Gian keeps talking about this national interests, national security strategy/objective thing)?
How about, push hard (kill lots of bad guys or threaten to kill lots of bad guys in the near term) and retrograde... then conduct punitive expeditions as required... I am sure that someone has done a cost analysis for a punitive expedition approach to frontier warfare versus 100,000 troops in country for X amount of time?
r/
MAC
Wow! Now we are going to investigate Afghan corruption? And Afghan teenagers say they are joining the army to protect the mythical Afghan nation! Most Afghan teenagers can't even spell Afghanistan. If this is what we are spending blood and treasure on, then we will be in Afghanistan forever.
Can anyone provide a solid reason for why we are still in Afghanistan? What Strategic purpose is this campaign supporting? If we are after al Qaeda, then we are operating in the wrong country. Having 100,000 troops in Afghanistan creates a huge logistics issue since most of it must pass thru Pakistan. How much leverage do with have with Pakistan when they can choke off our very existence in Afghanistan? Get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible and be able to lean on Pakistan to: 1) give us our "diplomat" back in one piece; and 2) to get with the program and hunt down al Qaeda. We can't get to bin Laden flailing around training Afghans, or trying to change their corrupt society. Go hard or go home!
Happy days are here again....an all time classic. Yet another PR piece from the CNAS crowd. Messrs Nagl and Fick may not realize it, but the rapt audience for their puff pieces has dwindled considerably. IMO, the only people who put much credence in these sorts of self-licking ice cream pieces are the few remaining true believers.
There is a method to the madness, of course. This is their way of keeping pressure on the president, who's undoubtedly tired of bad news. Also never hurts to maintain visibility, something that's all important in D.C.
Really nice of the NY Times to give them the space. Guess it was a slow news day.
I'm sorry but that article reads like a happy-happy joy-joy juice party political broadcast...and not the cutting insightful commentary one might expect from either author
"...Once these areas are cleared, it will be possible to hold them with Afghan troops and a few American advisers -- allowing the United States to thin its deployments over time..."
The reason it called the 'long war' is because it takes one maybe two generations for the change in a society to really take root - and that assumes that there will be no internal or external destabilising events along the way. The 'long' approach also counters the insurgents' most common tactic of just sitting out the intervening forces until they go home. The most optimistic measure for a society to change is a year of recovery for every year of chaos but three to five would probably be more accurate. If we're lucky we MAY see the smaller ratio occur in Iraq (so long as the other kids on the block behave), in Afghanistan, which is entering its fourth decade of conflict, certainly not by 2014...
"...Afghan Army troop strength has increased remarkably. The sheer scale of the effort at the Kabul Military Training Center has to be seen to be appreciated. Rows of new barracks surround a blue-domed mosque, and live-fire training ranges stretched to the mountains on the horizon..." Wasn't OUR mantra in the Cold War 'size isn't everything thing...?
"...We are establishing a task force to investigate and expose corruption in the Afghan government, under the leadership of Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster. We are also shoring up the parts of the border that the Taliban uses by thickening the line with Afghan forces, putting up more drones and coordinating more closely with Pakistani border guards..." All respect to BG McMaster but that will only count as progress when Afghans lead their own counter-corruption programme...of course, the Taliban had quite an effective programme when they were last in power...more drones and coordination? The issues with Pakistan are far deeper than can be solved with these...
"...Not since the deterioration in conditions in Iraq that drew our attention away from Afghanistan have coalition forces been in such a strong position to force the enemy to the negotiating table...." Key word: negotiating i.e. searching for a plausible 'peace in our time'...
"...We should hold fast and work for the day when Afghanistan, and our vital interests there, can be safeguarded primarily by Afghans..." If interests are vital, then you safeguard them yourself...and those vital interest would be...
When one runs the trap lines they see CNAS making a case for a development-based, nation-building, Population-centric tactics approach under Michele Flournoy.
Then one sees DoD adopting said approaches once she became Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. This is affecting how we approach Afghanistan, and it shaped the nature and outcome of the QDR.
Since then one sees CNAS take the role of cheerleader for successes under those approaches that few others are able to see with the same, shall we say, "clarity." The fact that current CNAS President, John Nagl, is rumored to be in consideration as a deputy to the new ASD SO/LIC adds another layer of potential bias, and at a minimum, a conflict of interest that should cause one to consider recusing one's self from comment.
Leveraging fame and position for gain is the essence of politics. Mixing politics with analysis, however, tends to dull the edge on one's credibility a bit.