The Washington Post published two items concerning General David Petraeus' interview with Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Excerpts from the interview can be found here and Rajiv Chandrasekaran's follow-on article, "Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy 'fundamentally sound'", can be found here.
Fred W. Baker's American Forces Press Service overview of the "Meet the Press" interview follows (emphasis SWJ):
Growing pockets of security progress in Afghanistan must be extended and linked to fully root out the Taliban and other extremist organizations, and that will take time, the top U.S. and NATO commander there said in a prerecorded interview aired today.
"We're making progress, and progress is winning, if you will," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told NBC's David Gregory in the "Meet the Press" interview. "But it takes the accumulation of a lot of progress ultimately ... to win overall, and that's going to be a long-term proposition, without question."
In his first significant interview since taking command of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus acknowledged what he called "up and down" progress, with coalition and Afghan forces taking key sanctuaries from the Taliban, but not without a fight. Petraeus said progress really only began this spring, as more U.S. and international forces began pouring into the country, stretching out into areas that before were Taliban strongholds.
Late spring saw operations in central Helmand province start to improve security conditions there, but now expanding into neighboring Kandahar province is proving to be a "tough fight," the general said.
"What we have are areas of progress. We've got to link those together, extend them, and then build on it, because of course the security progress ... is the foundation for everything else -- for the governance progress, the economic progress, rule of law progress and so forth," Petraeus said.
The general said he understands the growing lack of U.S. patience for the war in Afghanistan, but he noted that only in the past 18 months has the proper focus been in place for the strategy on the ground there.
"A lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan," he said. "We realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign."
Also, he said the fight in Afghanistan was under-resourced.
Under President Barack Obama's orders, by the end of this month the number of U.S. troops on the ground there will have nearly tripled, Petraeus said. Also, NATO forces have expanded, and the number of civilians supporting the war will have tripled. Funding also was increased to train 100,000 more Afghan national security forces.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan now has almost 120,000 troops from 47 different countries assigned to it. The United States provides 78,430 of those ISAF troops, part of the roughly 100,000 American troops now based in the country.
The largest regional command in Afghanistan is in the south, with 35,000 troops. The command is focused on Kandahar, the country's second-largest city and the spiritual home of the Taliban. The next-largest regional command is in the east, with 32,000 personnel.
After the United States, the country with the largest number of troops with ISAF is the United Kingdom with 9,500, followed by Germany with 4,590. France is next with 3,750, followed by Italy with 3,400, Canada with 2,830, Poland with 2,630, Romania with 1,760, Turkey with 1,740, Spain with 1,555, and Australia with 1,455.
"The inputs are already enabling some outputs," Petraeus said. "And, of course, what we have got to show is that these additional inputs can allow greater progress, and that that's progress that can be sustained, over time, by Afghan forces and Afghan officials."
Petraeus said the commitment in Afghanistan will be enduring, and would not say how many U.S. troops will begin to leave under Obama's July 2011 transition timeline.
"It would premature to have any kind of assessment at this juncture as to about what we may or may not be able to transition," he said. But, he added, any troop movement will be based on the conditions on the ground.
"As the conditions permit, we transition tasks to our Afghan counterparts and the security forces in various governmental institutions, and that enables a responsible drawdown of our forces," he said.
Petraeus said Obama's July 2011 timeline to begin turning security over to the Afghans and drawing down U.S. forces provides a sense of urgency for Afghan leaders, people in uniform and civilians contributing to the effort "that we've got to get on with this, [that] this has been going on for some nine years or so, that there is understandable concern [and] in some cases, frustration."
"And therefore," he said, "we have got to really put our shoulders to the wheel and show, during the course of this year, that progress can be achieved."
Regardless of how the transition plays out next summer, Petraeus predicted an enduring U.S. commitment in Afghanistan that will evolve as the capabilities of the Afghan government and its forces improve. At the end of the day, he said, it boils down to the Afghan government becoming accepted and supported by its people, and in turn providing the support and services the people expect.
"It's not about their embrace of us. It's not about us winning hearts and minds," Petraeus said. "It's about the Afghan government winning hearts and minds."
Petraeus said he is leery of using the term "winning" with reference to the fight in Afghanistan, because it implies a clear-cut and obvious victory that will not necessarily ensue.
"It seems to imply that ... you just find the right hill out there somewhere, you take it, you plant the flag, and you go home to a victory parade. I don't think that's going to be the case here," he said. "I think ... that this [is] going to require a substantial, significant commitment, and that it is going to have to be enduring, to some degree -- again, albeit its character and its size being scaled down over the years."
In the end, the general said, the United States must remember why it began fighting in Afghanistan in first place.
"We are here so that Afghanistan does not, once again, become a sanctuary for transnational extremists the way it was when al-Qaida planned the 9/11 attacks in the Kandahar area, conducted the initial training for the attackers in training camps in Afghanistan before they moved on to Germany and then to U.S. flight schools," he said.
Comments
Hey Gian,
You are correct - I did not mean to imply that tasks like seize, clear, destroy, neutralize, etc. occur without friction, confusion or subjectivity before and during the execution. Or that they are in less difficult to execute - in fact from the perspective of the one executing them, the consequences are more severe, and more difficult to recover from.
What I am saying is that if you destroy the enemy on the hill, seize the hill, occupy to retain the hill, and leave the enemy in such a manner that he is unable to challenge you for the hill - that supports an objective measure of an end-state (how you want things to look, how you want to be positioned, and how you want to leave the enemy. So I am saying that with respect to a specific act, at a specific point in time, we have a more objective way to measure success or failure.
You can make the argument that the conduct of security operations as part of COIN could facilitate the same sort of observable measures. However, I don't think that is what GEN P is expressing. I think he is specifically discussing the development of the political apparatus, civilian government and economic conditions which require a different set of metrics. Metrics that are not as visible or concrete as physical possession or destruction (you own it or don't/something is alive or not). Metrics that lend themselves to a host of multiple causes that may or may not be attributable to your actions, and that you may or may not even know about.
Now, that level of thinking still exists in other types of missions - did the enemy withdraw because he culminated and I killed most everything he's got, or did he withdraw because he wants me to stay where I am at, the ground I own no longer matters, and/or he has found a better way around me? I think allot depends on how much of him you killed, and how it supports what you want to do.
Still, I think we have a better way of measuring and communicating success where we can demonstrate and/or observe it in a manner that is attributable to a known action.
While the number of dead insurgents remains an important metric, it may not be the metric that gets us to the realization of our policy goals (of course this assumes that our policy goals are correct, pass the FAS test and yes identifiable.
I think I've said before that all war and politics serves up hardships and that the character of each is unique to the conditions that brought it into existence and those believe to be required to finish it). I don't think there is a "graduate level" per se - unless you are discussing the differences between theory and practice, or between training for war and war.
For anyone to infer or state that one war is more intellectually challenging than another may well be doing so out of a desire to grapple with something that is different than they anticipated, were educated for, or trained. This I think can be an oriented inwards as a means of learning, or outwards as a means of educating others (or influencing others).
This sort of notion may hold true only until something harder comes along - or as a good friend of mine once pointed out - its only the hardest thing I've done until I have to do something harder.
As for me, I retired from Active Duty this Summer and currently work as a contractor at the US Army Accessions Command G5 looking at human capital issues. It puts me in KY which is home and gives me a whole different perspective - something I am finding useful in a number of ways, and one I think can benefit the Army.
Glad you are still making us all think. As there are few final answers in life the thinking is never done.
Best Rob
COL Gentile,
We're really good at conventional fighting. We're not really good at pop-COIN. The stuff that you're good at always seems easier and less complicated.
We're so bad at pop-COIN that we don't even know when not to attempt it and, furthermore, our domestic audience doesn't even know what it is. I tried explaining it to my father and he asks questions like, "how do you trust any of those dirty bastards? They all hate us" and "why do we care what they think? We do nothing but give them money and rebuild their country." But he understands taking a hill and planting a flag because he's seen the photo of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. He hasn't seen a picture depicting what meeting our objectives at any level of war looks like in Iraq, Afghanistan - or even the Balkans for that matter.
Rob:
Long time no hear, what have you been up to?
It is those things to be sure, but what I have tried to point out in the original comment I made on this thread and my follow up post is that there is a long standing tradition among Counterinsurgency and Small Wars experts, analysts, and operators since the middle of the 19th century to construct phrases, arguments, metaphors, etc that give the sense that Counterinsurgency (or the larger category of small wars) are more difficult than conventional war. CE Callwell did it, Lawrence did it (read: "Irregular war is more intellectual than a bayonet charge," Galula did it, and it still happens today. For example and as I have already cited Colonel Robert Cassidy in an important 2004 Military Review article put it bluntly when he said "Counterinsurgency is more difficult than conventional war." Same too with General Petraeus's statement here and although I acknowledge the things that you say as reflecting his points, it is hard to square the last sentence away from what I have been arguing when he states that "it's just hard work" thus implying from the sentence that came before about assaulting a hill and putting a flag on it that those kinds of things, because they are of shorter duration are not. Again, there are subtle but discernible underlying implications and themes going on here.
Also Rob, might I ask you to make an argument as to why assaulting a hill is an "objective" act, but doing Coin in the Korengal is not. I know you are not saying that Hamburger Hill was an "objective" act and therefore a rather a straightforward affair, and implying that there was no friction, confusion, and subjectivness to it.
In any case, Rob, good to see your name on SWJ.
gian
Gian,
I appreciate that you continue to ask the type of questions that cause us to reflect on our strategic choices. Yours is fundamentally a question that gets to what type of force and why.
The quote you took from GEN P:
"It's a gradual effort. It's a deliberate effort," he said. "There's no hill to take and flag to plant and proclamation of victory. Rather, it's just hard work."
reflects his frustration of metrcis more than anything else. Seizing a hill is about ownership at the expense of the enemy. The sort of two things not being able to occupy the exact same space at the same time objective measure that is clear. In this way you can chart a true line of operation.
When I read his remark, he is saying that this effort is not objective in the same manner - probably it is subjective as it is always in a state of flux, and while two things may still not be able to occupy the same space, it is difficult to know if you are occupying the right hill needed to support your final objective. I think this is the challenge of charting Lines of Effort.
Best, Rob
Had to laugh aloud, GPG. Here's to keeping it lite, or getting back to there, and may you experience better success than I, of late.
Back on point, you offer assessment, without advice to our 'closest ally' that would further a US agenda of untangling ourselves from the bifurcated Pashtun tar baby. No advice is sought, just our departure, accompanied by a lot of cash?
Pakistan has offered a relatively safe environment to AQSL, for longer than Omar's Taliban ever did. (No 'missed him by that much' events that we know of.) The Islamic Republic is a nuclear proliferator, and allied with deep Wahabi pockets that support, perhaps indirectly, a robust Deobandi insurgency in Pakistan- with dotted lines to terrorism in India, Britain, and apparently back to the USA.
While Col. Yingling's conflation of war in Kunar today with the AQ of 9/11 may be pretty weak tea, the insurgency on the Pakistan side does seem connected more directly with this citizen's emotional need- to see someone put a stake thru the heart of the suicide jihad gurus.
If conventional warfare practice offers us no help or advice in pursuing a US agenda to get IRPakistan over 1949, and whack the beards in the caves, we're sort of stuck hoping that the COIN guys have a useful idea, no?
BTW, the UAV decapitation strikes on Pashtuns in Pakistan seem conventional and attrition oriented to me. Like snipers (or artillery) reaching out from the static lines of WW1. Not connected to any real hope of resolution, just making sure the other side bleeds too.
After reading more of last week's interview counteroffensive, I don't hear Gen. P engaging strategic issues, like obstruction of our project from Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. If those who control Afstan's borders are seeking revenge and 'symmetry' for blood debts, that's a pretty big hurdle to overcome. I'm hearing a Churchillian mantra of blood, sweat and toil, without the promise of a payoff, come dawn.
WW:
Very interesting point. Actually I consider myself a light weight, always have always will.
With regard to Pakistan, and I am bumping up to your weight class here, well certain American Coin experts have argued that the Pak Army needs to model itself and its approach on American style pop centric coin in order to win hearts and minds. Clearly what happens in Pashtunistan (on both sides of the Durand Line) is of vital, vital interest to the Pakistanis. They have a tough line to walk, speaking to their interests, of utilizing the Pashtun Taliban to fulfill their ends in Afghanistan yet at the same time keeping the lid on them within their own borders. I suspect, and again my knowledge of the area and its issues are not deep, that the Pak Army uses conventional force to fight there with a strategy of attrition largely as a holding action while they maintain their main focus on India and especially events in Kashmir. That is to say they are not necessarily looking for victory American Coin style in their side of Pashtunistan because that kind of victory it seems to me would require a huge increase of effort where they dont have the resources and would also involve political compromises with the Pashto Taliban that they are unprepared to meet. Instead they use conventional albeit limited tactical action there to further their larger interests of maintaining influence with the Taliban in Afghanistan, keeping their main focus toward India, and also awaiting for what they probably see as an upcoming American withdrawal.
but i defer to your expertise of the area.
gian
Re the General P's information offensive:
I haven't read all the links and trancripts yet, but the one above lacks the word that I use to differentiate smoke and mirrors from serious sharing of opinions on our Af-Pak war.
'Pashtun'.
If he wants voters like me to take his efforts as PAO in chief seriously, General P can't just say 'Taliban', or imply Pashtun by invoking our failure to pacify their old imperial capital at Kandahar.
For better or worse, the war we're fighting is against the Pashtun Taliban. An informed discussion should to face facts, that 2/3 of the Pashtun are E. of the Durand Line, over in Pakistan, where the Taliban gestated and still thrives among the war refugees and orphans. And where it still offers succor to Zawahiri and bin Laden, who should be killed or otherwise brought to justice by any number of countries.
Col. Gentile:
I'm way out of my weight class in addressing you. Nonetheless, the war we're fighting, for better or worse is in Pashtunistan. A major part of that war is being fought conventionally, by the conventionally trained Army of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, on the (now flooded) Indus River watershed. If the US falls short in the current COIN offensive, backs off to some variation of an economy of force/CT approach West of the Durand, what advice to our IRPakistan proxies do conventional warfare thinkers offer?
I agree with Schmedlap and Mr. Billington. Each case is different, but this tremendous advantage in conventional capacity could be used more judiciously instead of saying "we can occupy any country we want, so we should". There may be far more cost-effective solutions.
Being sort of leftwing, I am also occasionally suspicious of the motives of those pushing occupation. Paradoxically, people on the left (who are supposedly anti-capitalists) are very conscious of the role of the profit motive in decision making, while many people who supposedly regard the profit motive as the best motivator around are almost blind to the possibility that individual profit (for the people whose jobs and contracts are tied up with conquest, to give a low-level example) may be motivating some decisions....perhaps even subconsciously? e.g. many commentators here have no difficulty imagining that the Pakistani army likes the idea of a long war rather than a quick victory because the money is tied to the war, but doesnt that apply to many Americans who are profiting from the war? Or is it the case that the institutional arrangements are so incorruptible that this factor is negligible and Cheney would never go to war just to make money for his chums? I dont want to sound too conspiratorial; Most of the time, I dont think profit is the major motivator, but I admit that the thought does cross my mind....
Carl:
Fair enough, we agree to disagree. But those quotes you use are exactly what I am talking about and when Swinton is placed in context with others like Callwell and those who came before and of course Lawrence afterwards one can see the constructed caricature of conventional war by these people as I have presented it.
I have written an article that makes this argument with supporting primary evidence, when it comes out in print I will be sure to get you a copy of it. Also, I am presenting this argument at a history conference in a couple of weeks, if it bombs in front of other historians I will let you know that as well.
Thanks for the discussion
gian
Gian:
We are going to have to disagree on this. I just read the book again and I can find comments that seem to me to be directed against unrealistic training and parade ground convention; but mostly the asides are directed against lazy thinking that does not take into account the situation that exists on the ground. That situation is presented in great detail.
The idea is for Mr. Forethought to break out of the convention of not thinking at all. How he did so is presented step by step. There was nothing unconventional about the Boer opponents. They were presented as proficient mounted infantry with supporting artillery who made good use of the ground and could handle their weapons well.
I am forever a civilian but the fictional situation was presented as a platoon sized group defending a fixed location against a numerically superior opponent who had some artillery. That seems pretty conventional.
Carl:
There are numerous quips especially in the earlier dreams of stodgy concepts stuck in European ways of conventional wars of files and lines and volley fire. The whole idea for Backsight Forethought is to break out of the convention of ossified thinking of European War and adapt and adjust to the unconventional Boer enemy that he confronts.
thanks
gian
Gian:
I cannot find in "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" any suggestion or implication that small wars are harder than big ones. The only thing the book was about was a small unit leader working his way through a difficult tactical problem without help from anybody. In my view the thesis of the book was that minor tactics can be just as difficult and require as much imagination and thinking as being able "to take up a position for a division". That has nothing to do with which is harder, big or small wars.
It may be worth noting that in the Second World War and after, Afghanistan in 2001 and after, and Iraq in 2003 and after, we overcame conventional (or open-field) opposition in all three and then occupied the countries that had opposed us. In World War II, where conventional resistance was difficult to overcome, the occupations that followed were easy, while in the two more recent wars, conventional resistance was easy to overcome but the occupations that followed were difficult.
I don't think it can be argued as a general matter that counterinsurgency is harder than conventional war, because there have been major wars where the conventional phase was very difficult. The problem is with those wars in which counterinsurgency follows a conventional phase that is in fact easier.
The problem with counterinsurgency thinking is its need to consider the factors bearing on the decision to follow a conventional victory with an occupation of the defeated country. In the case of all three wars mentioned above, we worried that to withdraw right away from the defeated countries would allow the countries to revert to their previous states. But we could have worried also that not to occupy them would have given the appearance of being deterred by the potential of the defeated country to contest an occupation by means of insurgency.
We were fortunate in Germany and Japan that the conventional phase (supplemented at the end by nuclear weapons) took the will to resist out of the defeated populations. The conventional phases in Afghanistan and Iraq did not have this outcome. But even if we had known in the latter two that a major insurgency was likely, we might have felt compelled to occupy the two countries anyway because of the feared consequences of not doing so after having defeated their governments on the open battlefield.
This is the intellectual trap that we have not solved. Our armed forces will need conventional capabilities to meet future challenges from other great powers. The Army will also need at least some ability to fight insurgents. But we need to answer certain questions (please see my comment under the Cognitive Dissonance thread) before the ease of a conventional phase of war again tempts us to take the plunge and then obligates us to occupy the defeated country afterwards. There may be alternatives.
It was a sloppy sentence, I only meant in my extended response to Vito to show that there is a long tradition of Coin experts, analysts, and officers making statements to create the perception that Counterinsurgency and irregular wars are more difficult than conventional wars, and that conventional wars are relatively simple. History shows this quite conclusively to be the case. Read Lawrence's classic statement: "Irregular warfare is more intellectual than a bayonet charge."
gian
Gianperi Gentile:
"So there is actually nothing new to these quotes by General P and many other Coin experts of today"
Tell us, exactly, WHO said the Quotes by General P are new, WHEN these person(s) made such comments about General P's quotes, and WHERE such comments were published newspaper, book, etc. If you are relating unpublished comments made to yourself, please elaborate.
Vito: There are few militaries in the world that allow serving officers to be as vocal and outspoken and stimulate critical thinking as ours. Criticize the ideas, debate them, counter them, work to make our military better and stronger, but there is no need to attack the man or stifle debate or critical thought. If we do not look critically at what we are doing we all may as well get on the bus to Abilene and we all know how that turns out.
<blockquote><em>"It's getting to the point where if an Army publication on the preventive maintenance for an entrenching tool was published here you'd find some hidden COINdinista message within the text."</em></blockquote>
It's not like you'd have to look very hard.
<blockquote><em>"... in Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, the communists used the entrenching tool, the rifle, and the howitzer to destroy a 15000-man French force."</em> - Harmon, Christopher C.. "<a href="http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/01495939208402861">Illustrations of 'learning' in counterinsurgency</a>" Comparative Strategy 11.1 (1992). 17 Aug. 2010.</blockquote>
COL Gentile, you really should give it a break. Everything in the quote is true and it was said to convey the situation as it stands in Afghanistan and in no way short-changes the difficulties of conventional combat. It's getting to the point where if an Army publication on the preventive maintenance for an entrenching tool was published here you'd find some hidden COINdinista message within the text.
Here is another swipe by the Counterinsurgency culture in the US Army by carefully implying that Coin is more difficult than old school conventional warfare, just like Dr Kori Schake did last week when she said Ike's mission to invade the continent of Europe was "straightforward." Implicit in her remarks were that current GOs in Afghanistan have it more difficult because their mission is less "straightforward" than Ikes.
Perfectly in line with the lead in quote to one of the chapters in FM 3-24 that states Counterinsurgency is the "graduate level of war" now General Petraeus in this interview states this with regard to the difficulty of the mission in Afghanistan and his implicit point that taking a hill in conventional combat is somewhat easier:
"It's a gradual effort. It's a deliberate effort," he said. "There's no hill to take and flag to plant and proclamation of victory. Rather, it's just hard work."
How else to read this sentence other than taking a hill in conventional combat--Pratzen, Malvern, Suribachi, Hamburger, etc--is at the tactical level of war less "hard work" than establishing a cop in Helmand by way of example. To be fair the other implied point that one could take from this statement is one of temporal aspect rather than tactical difficulty in that any of the above battles for hills lasted somewhere between hours and weeks. But also tinged with this statement is in fact the notion, albeit subtly and carefully crafted, that Counterinsurgency warfare is more difficult too.
The point here to restate from last weeks thread is not that combat soldiers have it easy in Helmand Province today or anywhere else in Afghanistan, but to highlight how the culture of Counterinsurgency in the US Army and other parts of the US military continues to bend historical accuracy and truth toward constructing certain narratives of the current wars that we are fighting.
gian
Don Vito (Paisan):
In the spirit of Brother Maxwell's follow on post let me add some meat to the criticism i have made on a sustained basis of the Coin culture and its intellectual treatment of conventional warfare.
There is something to it and these quotes by General P that I have pounced on (as well as Dr Schakes statements from last week) actually draw on deep roots in the intellectual history of small wars and counterinsurgency. General P's quotes are similar to those made by Colonel Robert Cassidy in an important 2004 article where he said that "Counterinsurgency is more difficult than conventional war." And he drew on the same line of thinking of other coin experts like John Nagl from the late 90s to Andrew Krepinevich in the 80s to Gunther Lewy in the 70s, Galula and Thompson in the 60s, and further back. All of these modern Coin experts and thinkers have made the argument at one point or another that Coin tends to be more difficult, complex, whatever than regular war. These modern thinkers in fact drew on a longer tradition that keeps going back in time to Lawrence, Callwell, and its origins with the British and French Army in the mid 19th Century at the heyday of European imperialism. You see it was that period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the end of the 19th Century where there was largely a dearth of conventional warfare on the European continent where British and French imperial officers out doing the business of empire in places like Algeria, India, Indo China, Africa etc began to criticize (rightly I might add) the stodgy thinking of conventional warfare and the concomitant need for imperial armies to adjust and adapt to conditions very different from conventional war. The problem, though that came about in this intellectual ferment was that in so arguing for adaptability in imperial, small wars they then made the mistake of reducing conventional war to a caricature of simplicity and relative ease compared to the small wars of empire. One sees this in the writing of even the great ones like CE Callwell in his classic "Small Wars" and ED Swinton in his equally classic "Defense of Duffers Drift."
Then of course comes the Great War and in its aftermath the writing of Lawrence which further the criticism of conventional armies and saw in irregular war a better way. In fact following on the heels of Lawrence in this intellectual tradition was the Vietnam War and its aftermath where folks especially in the United States and Britain sought tactical explanations for why the US Army lost. And in this analysis they focused on the conventionalism of the American Army and saw the solution to it in the form of better tactics in irregular warfare.
So there is actually nothing new to these quotes by General P and many other Coin experts of today. The problem I have with this line of thinking is that it makes conventional war seem easy, like it is something simple to do and not requiring much training, education, and organizational effectiveness. And it is in this way of thinking where the Army continues to go astray and has lost sight of how broken we have become in terms of combined arms competencies.
Gianperi Gentile