Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV; Commanding General of the Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas; on Security Force Assistance: A Change in Mindset. Frontier 6 delivered this speech yesterday at the Infantry War Fighting Conference and opened by highlighting some items contained in General Stanley A. McChrystal's, Commander, International Security Assistance Force; counterinsurgency guidance.

He requires us to change our mindset. He asks us to think and act very differently to be successful. He expects us to partner with the ANSF at all echelons. He reminds us that we must build [the Afghans'] capacity to secure their own country. In doing so, the intent is to foster ownership, with the clear implication that their success is our success. In brief, we must live and train together, and plan and operate together. Our job, according to General McChrystal, is to share the same battle-rhythm and information. In the end, we have to understand that this is a battle of wits.

Read the entire transcript here.

Cross-posted from the Center for Defense Studies, Lest We Forget by Tom Donnelly.

One of the reasons that Gen. Stanley McChrystal can argue that victory in Afghanistan is achievable is that he counts on a force forged in the years since 9/11 into a superb instrument for irregular warfare. Indeed, Americans in uniform have done much to rescue American strategists from their mistakes.

Yet we in Washington take the quality of the force too much for granted. We tend either to stand in awe of people in uniform or pity them; rarely do we devote much effort to simply understand them, be it individually or collectively. Tomorrow, CDS will try to rectify that with a conference "Surviving and Thriving in Harm's Way," a look at how soldiers are managing the many stresses of repeat deployments to some very cruel wars.

We'll begin with a presentation from Nate Self, a former Army Ranger who led the desperate fight of "Roberts' Ridge" in March 2002, during Operation Anaconda which swept the last major al Qaeda force out of Afghanistan. Though Self and his men passed a pure test of courage under fire--the fight has passed into Ranger legend and is honored in displays at Ranger Regiment headquarters--he suffered from a severe case of post-combat stress that drove him from the Army. Yet despite the contention of professional PTSD advocates, Self is not only himself recovering from his trauma but now works with other soldiers who suffer from similar problems.

And we will conclude with a presentation from Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, another stoic soldier. In 1991, while serving as a flight surgeon on a search-and-rescue mission to save a downed F-16 pilot, the Blackhawk helicopter carrying Cornum was shot down; many of the crew were killed and she was held as a prisoner of war until the cessation of hostilities. Her subsequent memoir, She Went to War, focused the debate on women's roles in combat. An M.D. and PhD., Cornum now heads the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, a effort to prepare soldiers and their families for the personal challenges they now face.

AEI's Sally Satel will also moderate a panel assessing and discussing new clinical thinking about PTSD. Many of elements of past PTSD mythology--especially those that comprise the caricature of the "broken veteran" in popular culture--do not withstand rigorous scientific scrutiny.

In sum, this promises to be a conference that digs more deeply in search of the understanding needed to formulate wise personnel policies for the "Long War." For if we do "break the force"--if we break these people--we cannot win.

More on Surviving and Thriving in Harm's Way - Friday, September 25, 2009; 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM; Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, American Enterprise Institute; Washington D.C.

Britain's Afghan Wisdom - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

When it comes to Afghanistan, the British have a special perspective: Every mistake the United States has made recently, they made 150 years ago. So it's worth listening to British experts in the debate over Afghan strategy. Afghanistan drove the British bonkers for much of the 19th century. They couldn't control the place, but they couldn't walk away from it, either. They found that there wasn't a military solution, but there wasn't a non-military solution. It was a question of managing chaos. Sound familiar?

The best answer the British came up with was working with tribal leaders in the border regions - paying them subsidies, wooing them away from the baddies who genuinely threatened British interests, but otherwise letting them run their own affairs. That was a cynical approach and it left Afghanistan a poor, backward country. But it worked adequately, especially compared with the alternative, which was unending bloodshed in a faraway country that refused to be colonized. A modern version of this "work with the tribes" approach is still the best answer. And it seems to be an important part of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategy that was leaked this week. It's dressed up in the language of counterinsurgency - he speaks of "population-centric" operations, and he uses the word "community" 44 times, by my count. But his assessment is basically a discussion of how to stabilize the country without just shooting people...

More at The Washington Post.

Brigadier General H.R. McMaster has sent to Small Wars Journal the latest draft of Army Capstone Concept version 2.7. McMaster leads a team at TRADOC that is charged with revising the Capstone Concept, which provides fundamental guidance to the Army's doctrine and training efforts.

By December, McMaster and his team will complete their work on the Capstone Concept. Between now and then, he wants to hear from you. So please open this file, read it, and provide your comments, either here or at the Capstone Concept comment thread at Small Wars Council. McMaster and his team will read these comments and use them to improve this important document.

(You will note that the Capstone Concept draft we received is marked "For Official Use Only." I assure you that we received this document openly from the Army and for the purposes explained above. McMaster and his colleagues at TRADOC want Small Wars Journal's readers to help them improve the Capstone Concept.)

UPDATE (1515 EST 24 Sept 09): TRADOC sent me a version of the file without the "For Official Use Only" notation, which I have inserted.

A Comprehensive Strategy for Afghanistan: Afghanistan Force Requirements - Frederick Kagan, American Enterprise Institute, and Kimberly Kagan, Institute for the Study of War.

President Obama identified a number of questions that must be answered before he can make a considered decision about whether or not to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The assessment of General Stanley McChrystal, which appeared in the Washington Post on Monday, answers those questions. The assessment does not provide an estimate of the forces actually required, which were to be submitted in a later document.

The American people need to have a detailed explanation as soon as possible of what forces are needed, how they might be used, and why there is no alternative to pursuing the counter-insurgency strategy that General McChrystal proposes if we are to achieve the fundamental objectives President Obama announced in his March 27 speech, "...to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."

To inform the national discussion, therefore, we have produced a report that argues for an addition of 40,000-45,000 US troops in 2010 to the 68,000 American forces that will be there by the end of this year. The report illustrates where US, NATO, and Afghan forces are now and where additional forces are needed to accomplish the mission. It links the US force requirements to the growth of the Afghan National Security Forces on an accelerated timeline. It explains the methodology for assessing the adequacy of a proposed force-level. This product, and our recommendations and assessments, are entirely our own - they do not necessarily reflect the views of General McChrystal or anyone else.

Afghanistan Force Requirements - Slide Presentation

Obama's Befuddling Afghan Policy - Leslie H. Gelb, Wall Street Journal opinion.

I'm lost on President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy - along with most of Congress and the US military. Not quite eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 US forces for starters. He proclaimed Afghanistan's strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan - an even more vital nation because of its nuclear weapons. And a mere three weeks ago, he punctuated his commitments by proclaiming that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity," not one of choice. White House spokesmen reinforced this by promising that the president would "fully resource" the war.

Yet less than one week ago, Mr. Obama said the following about troop increases: "I'm going to take a very deliberate process in making those decisions. There is no immediate decision pending on resources, because one of the things that I'm absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources." He repeated that on Sunday's talk shows.

Are we now to understand that he made all those previous declarations and decisions without a strategy he was committed to? Prior to his recent statements, it seemed clear that the president and his advisers had adopted a strategy already - the counterinsurgency one - and that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was tapped precisely because he would implement that plan. The idea, to repeat, was to deploy forces sufficient to clear territory of Taliban threats, hold that territory, and build up the sinews of the country behind that...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Maladies of Interpreters - Joshua Foust, New York Times opinion.

In counterinsurgency, the most important thing is winning over the local population. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander in charge of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, was right to warn that a "crisis of confidence among Afghans" imperils the effort to rebuild the country. For most American troops, however, the only connection they have to the locals - whether soldiers in the Afghan army or villagers they're trying to secure - is through their interpreters.

United States Army doctrine describes interpreters as "vital," which is fairly obvious given the bevy of languages spoken in Afghanistan: Dari, Pashto, Tajik, Uzbek and others. Yet the way the military uses translators is too often haphazard and sometimes dangerously negligent. Many units consider interpreters to be necessary evils, and even those who are Americans of Afghan descent are often scorned or mistreated for being too obviously "different."

Mission Essential Personnel, the primary contractor providing interpreters in Afghanistan, has basic guidelines: interpreters need to be given a place to sleep, for example, and fed. But beyond that, how they are treated is often left up to the individual unit. Many times, they are treated the way they should be: as vital members of a team. Sometimes, however, they are shockingly disrespected...

More at The New York Times.

A Pragmatist, Gates Reshapes Policy He Backed - Peter Baker and Thom Shanker, New York Times.

On his tenth day on the job, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signed off on an ambitious if politically charged plan to build a new missile shield in Europe. Just two weeks later, he supported an even more wrenching decision to send additional American troops to Iraq, into a war that was not going well.

That was nearly three years, one president and a political lifetime ago. Now serving Barack Obama instead of George W. Bush, Mr. Gates just recommended jettisoning his own missile defense program in favor of a reformulated version and once again is wrestling with whether to send more troops abroad, in this case to Afghanistan.

Quiet and unassuming, Mr. Gates has emerged as the man in the middle between policies of the past he once championed and the revisions and reversals he is now carrying out. His stature and credibility have allowed him to extract concessions on the inside, including on missile defense, according to senior officials, while serving as a formidable shield against Republican spears on the outside...

More at The New York Times.

Here's a sampling of some early reaction - and in no particular order - to General Stanley A. McChrystal's COMISAF's Initial Assessment - released last night and posted by The Washington Post.

The Clock is Ticking - Tom Donnelly, AEI / CDS: Bob Woodward's story in today's Washington Post summarizes the Afghanistan "assessment" of Gen. Stanely McChrystal. It's a good get by the dean of Washington insiders, but the report has been ripening in the Indian summer sun since August 30 and its main points--including the need for more troops - are hardly news. What is remarkable is how long it's taking for the president to make up his mind.

The Case for More Boots on the Ground - David Wood, Politics Daily: In the sputtering debate about Afghanistan and what to do about the war, I haven't heard anyone advocate surrendering to the Taliban. What I have heard are lots of thoughts about how to make the war less painful, at least for us. Force the allies to do more. Train the Afghans to fight in our place. Cut back our own forces, just a bit. Find a cheaper way to fight, one that doesn't involve so darned many American troops. I particularly like this last one, because it feeds into the fantasy that superior American technology can overcome any adversary almost bloodlessly, especially the bearded primitives of Afghanistan.

Gulliver In Afghanistan - Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish: General McChrystal is to be congratulated, it seems to me, for the candor and seriousness of his report to the president on what has gone so wrong in Afghanistan and what can be done to set it right. McChrystal's role is to find a way to win: he's a soldier fighting a war. And yet this hardest of hard-nosed military men essentially concedes that this is a political problem at its heart. You cannot fight a counter-insurgency on behalf of a government that is as corrupt as Karzai's.

The Odd Optics of the 'Strategic Review' - Marc Lynch, Abu Aardvark: I must confess to finding the entire exercise baffling. The "strategic review" brought together a dozen smart (mostly) think-tankers with little expertise in Afghanistan but a general track record of supporting calls for more troops and a new counter-insurgency strategy. They set up shop in Afghanistan for a month working in close coordination with Gen. McChrystal, and emerged with a well-written, closely argued warning that the situation is dire and a call for more troops and a new counter-insurgency strategy. Shocking. Were it not for the optics of a leaked "strategic review" amidst an intensifying public debate, I doubt this would dominate the front pages.

The Afghanistan Strategic Review - Judah Grunstein, World Politics Review: Most of its principle elements have already emerged since July, but to see them finally gathered and presented in a coherent draft helps clarify the assessment of where things stand. Curiously, I was most impressed and encouraged by the discussion of the Afghan insurgency's strengths (pp. 2-5/2-8). I found myself thinking that, despite all of the insurgency's recent advances, our understanding of its various strands, how they overlap, and their lines of operation seems sophisticated enough to render aggressive kinetic operations effective.

What Strategy? This Strategy - Max Boot, Contentions: Keep in mind that this is the assessment of the administration's handpicked general, who was brought in to replace a competent but uninspiring incumbent; he was judged the best man for the job. General McChrystal has done what was expected of him. He has delivered a cogent and impressive review of the situation, one that lays out his new strategy. Now he is simply waiting for the resources needed to execute that strategy. Without those resources, the "likely result," he warns, is "failure." Yes, one might prefer that debate take place according to a set of rules from a fabled age of civility, where politics stopped at the water's edge, generals were unfailingly deferential to civilian political leadership, and nothing was ever leaked to the press.

Debating Afghanistan: Beyond the McChrystal Leak - James Joyner, The New Atlanticist: Still, the tide has certainly shifted, with the Washington consensus that "winning" in Afghanistan is necessary having given way to serious doubts about whether "winning" is even possible - or even if we know what it means. Inertia and calls from respected generals for more troops to "finish what we've started" will likely prevail in the short run but, absent a rapid change in perception, it will be incumbent on the pro war side to make the case for staying the course.

And by "Strategy," We Meant... - Tim Sullivan, AEI / CDS: So what gives? It can only be assumed that the president's strategic objectives have shifted, or that the administration is somehow dissatisfied with elements of the military plan conceived by Gen. McChrystal. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung suggest in today's Post, it's likely some combination of the two.

To Look Good Or To Feel Good? - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement: Don't forget the rest of the world and all of our allies and enemies out there, also paying attention. Our last big fashion faux pas, Vietnam, was all over us like a cheap suit for decades. Right up to Sept. 11, 2001. The problem is, the decision is still in the hands of people who have signalled that they can't tell the different between looking good and feeling good.

Bob Woodward Strikes Again! - Peter Feaver, Shadow Government: It is not good to have a document like this leaked into the public debate before the President has made his decision. Whether you favor ramping up or ramping down or ramping laterally, as a process matter, the Commander-in-Chief ought to be able to conduct internal deliberations on sensitive matters without it appearing concurrently on the front pages of the Post. I assume the Obama team is very angry about this, and I think they have every right to be.

General McChrystal's Report on Afghanistan and External Influences - Bill Roggio, Threat Matrix: There are a couple of redacted sections of the report that would have made interesting reading, such as information on Taliban operations and the groups' command and control, and Taliban control throughout the country. One part of the report that will get lost in the inevitable political debate on the Afghan surge will be McChrystal's assessment of "External Influences" on Afghanistan. The assessments are brief but reinforce the available information on the safe havens in Pakistan and the ISI's role in aiding the Taliban, as well as the role of Iran's Qods Force in training and arming elements of the Taliban.

Why Does McChrystal Need More Troops for Afghanistan? - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor: McChrystal's apparent answer is that the US must mount a proper counterinsurgency effort. In the bumper-sticker parlance of counterinsurgency, coalition forces must clear, hold, and build. To do that, the US and its allies must protect the population, weed out the insurgency that attempts to grow among it, and train an indigenous security force to ultimately take over the mission. Afghanistan has long been an "under-resourced" mission, McChrystal says. This prevents coalition forces from being able to "hold" an area after clearing it. That creates a vacuum the insurgency can once again fill.

Winning Afghan Hearts and Minds - Patrick Walters, The Australian: Primarily, the war requires more coalition troops, and soon, if the military initiative is to be regained and the Taliban insurgency thwarted. McChrystal's conclusion is that the overall situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating and that without a clear step-up and an overhaul of strategy and tactics, the US-led coalition cannot succeed. McChrystal's 66-page study was completed late last month and leaked to The Washington Post yesterday. At the core of McChrystal's bleak assessment is the view that US strategy in Afghanistan cannot only be focused on seizing terrain or destroying Taliban insurgents.

The McChrystal Report: A Make or Break Moment for Obama - Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard: It's probably not a coincidence that the McChrystal report leaked just as Obama looked like he was going wobbly on his commitment to the war effort. Democrats on the Hill are already threatening to obstruct funding for additional US forces - Pelosi, Levin, and Murtha among them - and Obama was skeptical of the need for more US forces on the Sunday shows yesterday. "I don't want to put the resource question before the strategy question," Obama told CNN's John King. "Because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?"

Now That the McChrystal Strategy Review Has Leaked ... - Spencer Ackerman, Washington Indpendent: McChrystal can't be faulted for presuming that Obama's commitment in March to a counterinsurgency campaign for a counterterrorism goal meant he should interpret counterinsurgency as broadly as he could or pursue it as aggressively as he could. Nor can the administration be faulted for worrying that such commitments push the means into overtaking the ends they're supposed to yield. And the public can't be faulted for turning away from a war that exhibits such strategic drift. But the leak of the strategy review means it's now harder for everyone to make rational decisions without worrying whether their bureaucratic adversaries are going to undermine them in the media.

It is 'Fish or Cut Bait" Time - McQ, Blackfive: Note that the word used is "success", not "victory". I'm not one to quibble about those words. Victory is used in a military sense. Victory is success. But we all know that while the military is an integral part of any success we might have there, ultimately it can't "win" the day by itself. Success will be defined as leaving a sovereign nation capable of governing and defending itself when we eventually leave. We may not like that definition, we may not like the fact that we're again engaged in nation building and we may not like the fact that such an endeavor is going to take years, possibly decades to achieve - but that is the situation we now find ourselves in. If we were to abandon Afghanistan now, we'd see it quickly revert to the state it was in 2001 - ruled by Islamic fundamentalists and a safe-haven for our most avowed enemies.

McChrystal to Resign if Not Given Resources for Afghanistan - Bill Roggio, Threat Matrix: Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal's team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn't given sufficient resources (read troops) to implement a change in direction in Afghanistan.

Via The Washington Post:

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post. Bob Woodward reports; Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung provide analysis; and a declassified version of document is available on washingtonpost.com.

The Report: Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." ... McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians. He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

Bob Woodward's full story can be found here.

Analysis: McChrystal's assessment, in the view of two senior administration officials, is just "one input" in the White House's decision-making process. ... When Obama announced his strategy in March, there were few specifics fleshing out his broad goals, and the military was left to interpret how to implement them. As they struggle over how to adjust to changing reality on the ground, some in the administration have begun to fault McChrystal for taking the policy beyond where Obama intended, with no easy exit. But Obama's deliberative pace — he has held only one meeting of his top national security advisers to discuss McChrystal's report so far — is a source of growing consternation within the military. "Either accept the assessment or correct it, or let's have a discussion," one Pentagon official said. "Will you read it and tell us what you think?" Within the military, this official said, "there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration."

The full piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung can be found here.

The Department of Defense on Sunday evening released a declassified version of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's assessment of the war in Afghanistan. The Post agreed to publish this version, which includes minor deletions of material that officials said could compromise future operations, rather than a copy of the document marked "confidential." The document can be viewed here.