Michael Yon: Undeniable Progress, But it Could All Unravel

With regard to being afraid of things getting out of hand if the ISI/Pak thing is brought up. I do believe that they are giving important support and sanctuary. However, I do not see this as a critical vulnerability. That is, I don't believe that if you cut it off, the insurgency will die. I speak against it strongly not because I'm afraid of the war expanding, but because I think it is a cop out. An excuse like the Ho Chi Minh Trail was an excuse. A false prophet. Even if we had significantly interdicted the trail, there were many, many other routes for things to come in to the country. And we would not have been successful in completely stopping the flow even along the HCM Trail routes. Yet this argument, with others, are held out as ways we could have done it better and perhaps won the war. I think that is the wrong lesson. Same goes for Pak Army/ISI. It is a convenient scapegoat, and it is real. Yet, it will not be the reason for winning or losing the war. I almost wish we would go after it just to keep the counterfactual argument from coming up in debate in the future. The issue is less the Pak support than the fact that we have about zero control of the border. It is real for us and imaginary for everyone else. That is not a matter to blame on the Pakistanis. It has been a matter for the counterinsurgent to deal with in almost every insurgency where land borders were in play.

PS

Carl, why I agree with the sentiment, your item was much better written than the Yon item...there is something in that advice about not typing angry...

Ken White said: "The humanitarian aspects of the liberation of France occurred as a by product of a totally focused war effort aimed at destroying the German Army and achieving their unconditional surrender. That the people of France were nominally liberated was almost an unintended byproduct -- the liberation of the French people was far from the primary goal or effort of the armed force."

Which does not explain while the rehabilitation of Europe progressed seamlessly from the end of the war in Europe into the Marshall and the same happened in Japan. It is more than just the realisation that the Soviet Empire was going to need resisting but an acknowledgement by some very smart people that the lack of such a programme post-WW1 was a direct precursor for the second go-round.

The best way I have heard it described was in Puckapunyal "...while no one told Eisenhower to conduct stabops during the post-D Day march across Europe, it was a clear implied task" Smart people, some of those Aussies...

The only thing that needs to be said on this trifle of an op-ed.

http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2011/06/20/michael-yon-has-gone-crazy/

Ken's point rounds out what I should have made clearer. I am certainly not saying that it is good to meddle and leave. First, I think we should avoid meddling to the maximum extent possible, be clear about what are truly threats, and be honest about our capability to decisively deal with them. We routinely get ourselves into things that we shouldn't, or get into them in ways that are not likely to be decisive. In my opinion, when we make these errors, we need to learn to lose small, rather than sticking it out until we lose big.

As far as getting ourselves into things, there are two problems: politicians and generals. The politicians generally want to expend as little capital as possible. Rational. The generals generally want as much force as possible to mitigate risk. Rational. They then barter until they get to a point where the means don't really suffice to attain the end. Irrational, but this is the nature of compromise. The generals must be the ones to say that we cannot attain these ends with these means. But they don't. Finally, once the politicians have decided on a course, they tend to overpromise, thus expanding the ends by way of justification of the effort to the American people.

I think our military institution needs to be far less confident about our ability to bring about any but the most straightforward of changes by the use of force. Time and again in the modern world, we've tried to use force to achieve limited and incredibly complex aims (limited as in other that complete defeat of a nation and occupation of the territory), and it has not worked out. In these interventions, we tend to sow the seed for the argument that we did it wrong and should have stuck it out. I just don't believe that military force is as agile and fungible an instrument as the stick-it-out argument would have us believe.

The answer isn't to not stick-it-out. The answer is to not get involved in the first place except in cases of clear and dire national interest or with extremely, extremely circumscribed ends in mind. When we ignore this advice, however, I think that we need to be capable of extricating ourselves rather than continuing to waste strategic power.

Jamie B,
Iraq 1: "We had to go back." I'd argue that we didn't have to go back. Saddam was no more of a threat to us than any other handful of dictators around the world still standing. See Bob's comments about defining true threats.

Korea: Uhh, we're still there. We just got kicked out of the northern part and signed a truce. How would you rewrite that history?

Japan: I don't get what you're saying. We stayed in Japan long enough to set them on their feet and they are now a highly developed state and zero threat. Also, we stayed there with our bases, which were critical nodes for Korea and Vietnam.

By your logic, we should have troops in all of these places, plus Lebanon, Somalia, Panama, Granada, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and probably a whole list I'm forgetting. Why? And extending that logic, we should be doing regime change/nation building in Yemen and host of other places. Why not take over Mexico to rid ourselves of the drug violence and trafficking threat there?

We left Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, Haiti, etc, because we never defined nation-building as one of our goals there. Are they garden spots? No. But they aren't draining our resources and lives right now. And most of the places you say we "had" to go back into (Libya, Iraq) we didn't really have to go back into. Why did we have to get involved in Libya but not Syria? Answer is we don't have to be involved in either.

Finally, instead of "staying" in Afghanistan after the bombings, which would mean that we would have invaded, we should have invaded Saudi Arabia, Germany, and a bunch of US flight schools instead, since that is truly where the threat came from. Yes, I get the Afghanistan connection, but there are a lot of other ungoverned spaces where these people will go around the world to hatch their plots. Once they do that, their operatives can actually move more freely in our country and the West than in the security states we are so concerned with.

So withdrawing is a stupid modern idea. Fine. What is the alternative? Global empire? Who do you expect to man all of these adventures you propose? I trust you are in the military and eager for a life abroad.

Not everyone or everything that "threatens" us is also a "threat" to us.

Iran? Not a threat.

North Korea? Not a threat.

An unstable Afghanistan? Not a threat.

Venezuela? Not a threat.

AQ? Not a threat.

China-Taiwan reunification on China's terms? Not a threat.

(If I gored your personal ox, or your favorite program employed to justify the Billions of dollars provided to your Service, I did so intentionally. We need to define ourselves more accurately by what we need to do so that we will have available what we need to do it)

A threat is something that puts our national survival at risk, or arguably one that puts a truly vital national interest at risk. When I read our current national security strategy I see a laundry list of interests that are vastly expanded (though oddly labeled as "enduring") vital national interests. To me it appears that we have expanded our interests to match our current list of things and people who "threaten" us. Part of being a powerful, credible figure is knowing the difference between what is a threat and what merely threatens, and acting appropriately according to a sound assessment.

We seem to shoot at noises in the dark, and to spend a lot of energy arguing with and slapping around little loud mouths that draw much of their own credibility through their ability to get us to react. Sad.

Strategist far smarter, better credentialed, and experienced than I identify two limiting factors for defining vital national interests that I believe need to be dusted off and re-applied today:

1. Do not define a vital national interest that exceeds ones resources to enforce.

(Today's list is a list made by a rich nation with no peer threats. A Hegemon. That is how we see ourselves, at least. Peers are rising though, and we are descending to meet them. Alliances can form quickly, changing that math as well. Enemies become friends on one side, and friends become neutral on the other, and suddenly one finds themselves in confrontation where they cannot simply order the other side to do what you want. We cannot afford our current list, and we are quickly, if not already, out of the Hegemon business - and that is not all bad.)

2. Vital national interests should avoid what Walter Lippmann described as "American Fundamentalism" - a describing of American ideals as universal truths.

(I am first to admit that I flirt with this myself. I do, however make a distinction between "principles" and "values" that our policy makers do not. I see a value as a principle that has some judgment applied to it, with the classic example being the American belief that "all men are created equal." I see that as a principle and believe that it is ok for us to promote that ideal. A value is how any given culture defines that principle at any given point in time, and certainly even within the short history of the US we have valued "equality" in radically changing ways. When we demand others to recognize our "values" on womens rights, etc I believe we go too far and violate this rule of "American Fundamentalism.)

Why discuss vital national interests? Because it is how we have defined our interests that pins us to this problem. Our vital interests are impossibly broad and outrageously judgmental and intrusive on issues and people that are certainly things we should care about, but are not things we should go to war over.

Arguments about letting the military define conditions that mark success and staying until they achieve those conditions is about as smart as letting ones teenage child define when they need to be home at night. (Or giving the all the money, toys, time and authorities to do everything they have put on their list of activities). The civilian government cannot punt this responsibility, and the way they begin setting limits is with interests. Our current interests are sadly limitless.

Cheers.

Bob

Carl,
The Syria reference was to bring a modern analogy. If Cambodia and Laos were tragedies, then so is Syria. We're not involved in Syria, a tragedy today. I'm asking if you think we should be involved there. If not, then you think it is peripheral to our interests, just as I argued that Laos and Cambodia were peripheral.

The border issue: Unless you can seal off the border, then there IS sanctuary on the other side of it even if the ISI/Army aren't actively "giving" sanctuary. Even if the ISI/Army were in complete cooperation, there IS sanctuary across that border and unless we are going to start operations across the border in significant numbers, then it is a moot point. I don't think that ISI's active assistance is as decisive as many would have us believe. There are simply a lot of weapons, money, explosives, etc floating around on both sides of the border. Even if the ISI stopped all assistance tomorrow, others would sell weapons, etc. Thus, the only way to stop the cross-border flow is to hermetically seal it and that can't be done, so the argument is irrelevant.

The mud huts comment may seem pejorative, and really it is. That is because my mental image of a barren country full of mud huts in the Stone Age would look like is exactly what I saw when I first got to Afghanistan. The first compound I saw on the helo north out of Kandahar once we got into the mountains was abandoned. I thought it was an old ruin. Then we went over the next hill and in the valley was an identical compound in slightly better repair with people living in it. This is simply not a place that bears any resemblance to a nation-state, whether at that superficial level or at more significant levels of examination, so when we try to project nation-state derived political, economic, and social structures onto it, they just don't work. The history of national rulers like the Iron Emir is great, but outside of the cities, it is irrelevant.

Carl,
I don't know where you are coming from and what your background is, but I do understand what it means to have fire in my belly and I do know that for those at the tactical level, that determination to win is absolutely indispensable. I stand by my argument, however, that the calculus needs to be more cold and measured the further one is removed from the actual fighting by level of command and span of influence. Determination to win, stick-to-itiveness, or whatever else you want to call it from your computer screen, whether at home or in a headquarters, becomes mindlessly filling bodybags and transfer cases. So, the fire in my belly is directed at people like you who think it is a good idea to waste young lives and the nation's wealth for your b*&$it ideas and imagination that if we just stick it out, it will all be better and no one else will ever trifle with us.

As for the Cambodians and Laotians, and Vietnamese, Iraqis, and Afghanis for that matter, the lives lost are a tragedy. Tragedy, however, does not make a given fight any less peripheral to US interests, nor should it guide our interventions. Would you have us filling US bodybags in Syria due to the deaths there? Would you have had us filling bodybags for Laos or Cambodia? If so, I detest you. If not, then why wave that in my face? No conflict is peripheral to the people in the middle of it, but the US need not become mired in every one to make you feel better about yourself.

Afghanistan is a huge state with a sizable population in forbidding territory. You could place the entire thing on the moon tomorrow and we'd still be chasing ghosts around for years. And even if we did more to interdict the borders and gain Pakistani cooperation, you simply cannot control the borders in this territory and others will step up where there's money to be had from selling guns, fertilizer, etc. Your Pakistani border argument is both overstated and an irrelevant counterfactual as it cannot be hermetically sealed even with a force twice, three times, even more larger than what we have now.

Finally, if you call a nation a handful of poorly connected urban areas interspersed with some of the world's most forbidding terrain dotted with Stone Age mud huts and people who have never been past the next village (i.e. for them Kabul might as well be Mars), then sure, there was one. My point is that even with the successes that we are having at the local level, there is not a national entity to really hold it all together in the way we are setting it up to work.

In sum, I like neither your ideas nor your smug tone. It reeks of someone lightly suggesting sacrifices for others to make. I've seen far too much of that, which is where my vitriol comes from.

Correction on my post above, I meant to write that the USSR was NOT defeated militarily. The Soviets sent a very small portion of their military into Afghanistan (because they under estimated the resistance), and easily could have surged many more if they thought that a military victory was worth the cost. They didn't so they chose to leave. Compared to our investment in Vietnam, their investment in Afghanistan was miniscule.

Peter, this was clearly a case of mission creep, or perhaps more accurately the administration didn't have an end state when we invaded (understandably) and after much debate during a time when voices like Wolfawitz were influencial our leadership decided to nation build. At the time I don't think I would have disagreed with the decision, but we need a check and balance system that constantly challenges our original assumptions to see if they're still valid, and if they're not we have to have the courage to readjust our objectives and plans accordingly. If we don't do this, then we fail to be a learning organization. Perhaps something along the lines of design will facilitate this?

Carl,
Your original term was stick-to-itiveness. You redefine it as determination to win. What is determination to win? It is nothing. It is meaningless, especially when you cannot or have not defined what the hell winning is. So in the absence of a real definition of what winning is in a given conflict, or when winning is on a sliding scale that changes every few months, determination to win is meaningless. When that happens, you're back to stick-to-itiveness, which is continuing to plod along wasting money and lives with no real and actually attainable end in mind. So, stick-to-itiveness is not a preferable military virtue when there is no definition of winning.

Second, you didn't address any of my points in the referenced comment. It was a paragraph of snot, then you moved on to Jones.

Third, point taken on the "nation" comment, given that the term nation is very squishy and can mean any number of things. I should have chosen my words more carefully. I would argue that Afghanistan has never been a modern (in the political and economic sense) nation-state along the lines of what we are trying to build. The "nation" from the time period you reference was really a few urban power centers and little beyond that.

Fourth, your cutesy little tink-tink is a nice foil, but it is underlined by a misunderstanding of just what the domino theory really asserted. Here's Eisenhower's formulation of what he feared in Asia in 1954: "But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions and millions and millions of people. Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten Australia and New Zealand. It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place in the world to go- that is, toward the Communist areas in order to live. So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world."

This vision of the domino theory, and it is arguably the one that got us into the war, is quite a bit more than your smug tink tink example. You suggest that two out of three dominos fell. There are a lot more dominos in Eisenhower's formulation. Yes, two peripheral countries bordering Vietnam fell. But the doomsday scenario on which the checks were written and the lives staked never came.

Finally, the whole ISI/Pakistan (Ho Chi Minh Trail, etc is the analog) argument is overstated. If you (a) could and (b) did cut off Pakistan completely from Afghanistan, there would still be a lot of people fighting our presence there and nation-building would still be a questionable task at best.

Bill M.,
Point well taken, but note that this mission came in April of 2002. I haven't read enough about the national security decision-making between September 01 and this formulation, but isn't this a bit of an afterthought window dressing coming that much after the original invasion? Granted, orders are orders, but maybe it just shows the mission creep? It is also telling that, from my understanding, we were willing to leave the Taliban in power if they turned over UBL. So it wasn't about regime change for regime change, it was about UBL and AQ and the fact that they refused to give them up.

Here is what President Bush said in 2002,

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/18/world/a-nation-challenged-the-preside…

''We know that true peace will only be achieved when we give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations,'' Mr. Bush said. ''Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government. Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan train and develop its own national army. And peace will be achieved through an education system for boys and girls which works.''

He also talked at length about the need of a Marshall Plan like to rebuild Afghanistan. Interesting numbers quoted in the article (I don't know if they're accurate), the author said we spent the equivalent of 90 billion dollars on the Marshall Plan for 17 European nations, and we were only allocating 15 billion to Afghanistan. Only 15 billion? While I know the dollars were not divided equally between the 17 nations, 90 billion divided by 17 is roughly 5 billion per country. Afghanistan never had an industrial base to "rebuild", so I would think 15 billion "wisely" invested would have been more than adequate. Why did we fail to make the impressive gains we made in Europe? I suspect for one that the war was not (and is not) over in Afghanistan. Other reasons is the lack of unity, lack of history/knowledge with modern economic models, corruption, etc. It appears that SEC Rumfield made a statement that was contrary to the President's, or at least tried to limit his vision on what U.S. forces would do. Obviously their was considerable mission creep from the original intent of avenging the attacks on 9/11. I know there is a lot of disagreement in this forum (and in Congress) on the wisdom of nation building in Afghanistan, but I don't believe there is any doubt that is what the President told us to do.

As for all the talk about winning and losing. I suspect this opinion will create a crap storm, so I'm open my umbrella, but from a military perspective the USSR was defeated in Afghanistan. When they finally realized what it would take to achieve their stated objectives, they decided it wasn't worth the cost. The government they installed didn't collapse right after they left, they actually held on for a few years, and it is doubtful the Taliban would have won if they weren't supported by Pakistan (and all their rich Muslim friends who donated money so the ISI could fund the Taliban). Our downsizing in Afghanistan is clearly not a loss, although some will try to paint that it that way. It is a realization that the bang is for the buck just isn't there. One more year, or 10 more years, will not change the structural problems with the current government, and as long as we are the power to reckon with in Afghanistan the Afghan people can't fix it. We did achieve our initial goal of punishing and greatly diminishing AQ. Our fight with the Taliban was "only" because they provided sanctuary to AQ. If the Taliban turned over the AQ leadership in their country, I doubt we would have invaded. Downsizing doesn't mean we're pulling the rug out from under the Afghan people, but simply that we're taking the training wheels off their bicycles. We are not "leaving" Afghanistan, we are downsizing, and that is two entirely different things.

The nation building aspects need to be readdressed to see what is working and what is affordable, and if it is actually possible to do effective nation building before there is peace.

Carl,
Your response basically underlines your inability to address my examples that you snottily dismiss except to restate that persistence is good. It is also roughly akin to Einstein's definition of insanity in some cases: continuing to do the same thing but expecting different results.

Persistence is not good when it becomes the end in and of itself, as in we can't cut our losses and call this good enough because we haven't "won" when no one knows what winning looks like. No matter how persistent one is in Afghanistan, we have to leave someday and they know that. No matter how persistent one is in Afghanistan, it still isn't in our core strategerical (is that dumbed down enough since you seem to have taken offense to the use of the word strategically as overly schoolish) interest to try to build a nation there where there never has been one. If persistence means staying around to bash your head against a rock after you've already done what you originally went there to do, then it isn't good.

Persistence can actually be bad and play into the enemy's hands when your enemy's stated goal was to draw you into a "bleeding war" and you have obliged for over a decade. Persistence is also not good when you expend on the order of a trillion dollars chasing after peripheral interests just as your nation is facing significant fiscal challenges and others are growing relatively stronger.

These people all know that we can take any state down we want, if we really wanted to, and that we will persist in that campaign until finished. They also know that we will persist in chasing shadows in the mountains or jungles for about a decade, then go home. But show me how continuing to chase shadows for longer than a decade is going to be any different than the first 10 years. Show me how not persisting in Vietnam sowed the seeds for our downfall, resulted in the dominoes falling across Asia, and in the Soviet Union winning the Cold War. Losing small can be a virtue, but when we mis-define our ends and keep getting drug in deeper, persistence becomes the argument that keeps the charade going.

Popcorn,

Just curious where you got that "mission" from? Similarly, why you feel compelled to define this in terms of "threats" to be defeated, rather than "problems" to be resolved?

This is inherent in military approaches to insurgency. Mission creep has been perhaps the greatest "threat" to success in Afghanistan in many ways.

The inititial mission was pretty simple, to punish AQ for the attacks of 9/11 and to deny them formal, state-sponsored sanctuary in Afghanistan. There are a couple of key points that I believe are worth remembering:

1. The Taliban are not the invaders in Afghanistan, we are.

2. The people of Afghanistan did not participate in the decision to replace the Taliban government with one fromed from the Northern Alliance; the NATO Coalition did not participate in the decision to replace the Taliban government with one fromed from the Northern Alliance either. This was a unilateral decision by the President of the United States, and we were clear, that "you were either with us or against us" in that decision.

Now we grow frustrated that the segment of the Afghan populace that we elevated into governance seems little interested in governing, and more interested in wealth, power and control. We also grow frustrated that the segment of the populace supportive of the government we opted to drive off into exile grow increasingly resistent to our "surging" efforts to force them to submit to the solution we have crafted for them.

Must we now define a "win" as the ability to force a stability under the terms we have defined and the conditions we have created? Does continually moving the goal posts with new mission statements help or hurt our actual interests that brought us to this region in the first place?

I get it that the military was given a mission, and that the military will break itself trying before it will admit that it cannot accomplish the mission (though clearly they are not shy about refining the terms of that mission as it suits their efforts).

The fact is we have already won. The American people wanted revenge agaist AQ and they wanted to feel safe once again as they went about their daily lives. THAT is the original mission that led a President to declare a War on Terrorism. Ask yourself: Do the American People feel avenged? Do the American People feel safe?

I believe we all know the answer to that. Yes. And they owe that to the hard work of a very small portion of the populace who have dedicated years of their lives and endured tremendous hardships to this cause. The war, my friend, is over. The ends are met. The mission, however, continues. But it need not continue in terms of "fixing" Afghanistan, that is the duty of Mr. Karzai and we enable him to ignore that duty with our current course. We also inflame the very factors that led to the initial attacks of 9/11 by continuting to wage war long after the ends for the war are well met.

Now is a time to focus on policy and diplomacy, and to maintain a razor sharp CT capability that works silently behind the scenes to continue to disrupt dangerous networks, while the US gets on track for how to better engage the world in the current environment.

Cheers,

Bob

There's a reason for doing METT-TC and other ASCOPE, DIME, and PMESII-PT analysis. Every situation is different and historical "lessons" often do not apply to different places, people, and times.

Mission: Prevent Islamic EXTREMIST terrorism in an area where it breeds and nuclear weapons are at risk and local nuclear war is a possibility. It goes beyond al Qaeda to LeT and other groups traveling to the isolated area and its madrassas and being financed by other external extremists.

Enemy: Taliban, LeT, and foreign fighters with sanctuary and ability to blend in with the 40 million Pashtun population. Very few enemies are in the northern half of Afghanistan or the "stans" to the north. A potential enemy is Iran which also poses a nuclear and state-sponsor of terror problem.

Terrain and weather: Harsh and huge making small force "clear and hold" impossible and breeding localized rule where 10 miles difference can be a world away. Weather/terrain also limit arable land and create desperation/greed reliance on the drug trade. Localized gem/timber interests breed problems elsewhere. New mineral finds will create new problems.

Troops and support available: ISAF and U.S. capabilities prove an international realization of the mission's importance and enemy's relevance. Pakistan Army and ISI allies are critical but have elements that are enemies. ANSF are thrust into unfamiliar areas where ethnicity/language are not their own. They may not consistently fight there but would to defend Tajik/Hazara/Uzbek territory. ANSF are building to required numbers/capabilities once again proving that less is not more.

Time available: 2014 because Iraqi priorities precluded adequate earlier money/forces focus.

Civil considerations: Most critical and diverse contrasted with other insurgencies. There is a reason for a Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, informal Balochistan etc. But there is no Pashtunistan. Why? The Durand Line from over a century ago and a recalcitrant Pakistan that needs "strategic depth" from its perceived Indian nemesis.

While we negotiate with the Taliban, could there be opportunities to do the same with Pakistan over a Sinai-like buffer called Pashtunistan. Could a referendum be offered to the people of Afghanistan as in Sudan? Could monies spent on nation-building be used for moving Pashtuns out of the north, exchanging land with Tajiks in the south? Could Pakistan be persuaded to give up Kurram and Northern Waziristan to the new Pashtunistan?

If all else fails, shouldn't we support and base/"build" in the parts of Afghanistan most receptive to progress, women's rights, and rejection of terror? In a country with walls around every rural home, wouldn't barriers around Kandahar, Kabul, and a few other Berlin-like multi-ethnic areas provide added security?

Freudian slip in the final paragraph, I meant to write "Just ensure the reasons are truly vital," but I wrote "Just endure..."

Bob

As I read the latest series of posts from Carl, Popcorn eater, ET. al.; I am reminded of a simple exchange long ago:

"When Harry told him, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."

Insurgency viewed as a military problem, as a war to be won, is indeed a vexing problem. Certainly military capabilities bring a very necessary skill-set to any comprehensive security operation, but left to lead are at best a tool to suppress current challengers in a manner that allows the status quo to endure. This is not success; it is merely the enabling of a bad system to continue to exist in an environment it is unsuited for.

This is not unlike strapping scuba gear on a man and allowing him to operate in an underwater environment long beyond what his natural capabilities would allow. Nothing wrong with that, just don't thing that means you have gills.

If the goal is to extend some unsustainable system for some vital reason, ok, but never forget you are merely "putting tanks on it." If the goal is to actually resolve the problems that make that current system unsustainable, one may still need to put tanks on it for a while, but one must be dedicated as their main effort to modifying the government to make it sustainable in the environment it operates in.

Instead we apply "stick-to-itiveness" logic that Carl promotes, and just keep rotating in new guys with new tanks to continue the artificial capability. While those guys are there, they seek not to fix the government to operate in its natural environment (they are military after all, and fixing government is not what the military does), they instead takes on tasks, such as popcorn describes, to attempt to change the very environment to accommodate the government as it exists in its unsustainable form. So we in effect seek to oxygenate the ocean, or build those big sci-fi Plexiglas bubbles over undersea cities....

I apologize for the silly analogy, but the fact is our current scheme, our historic western scheme, of engagement to insurgency is equally temporal, equally artificial, and equally silly in so many ways.

Nothing wrong with being able to force an artificial condition for some short period of time for some vital reason. (I question the interests and rationale we use to justify opertaions in Afghanistan) Just endure the reasons are truly vital, as it will be expensive to do this. And never forget the conditions you create are as temporal as they are artificial. Nature always wins in the end.

Bob

Stick-to-itiveness "That attribute is quite a valuable one in a fight and in avoiding future fights." I disagree. Tactically, yes. Strategically, this was a major reason for continuing to pour resources into Vietnam and the end result was that we couldn't make our non-strategy work and pulled out after committing ourselves deeply. It did not avoid future fights, it showed our limits. We could have done it differently, blah, blah, blah. In Iraq the surge, COPs, and MRAPs won the war (neither part of that statement is by any stretch of the imagination fact popcorn eater, and while we may be bashing, some of the bashers have given up significant parts of our lives in quest of "victory"), etc, etc. The lesson is not that stick-to-itiveness is a virtue. We need to learn how to think smaller and, if need be, "lose small" rather than going all in when we do not need to. If we had defined our aims more carefully in Afghanistan, we could be gone already. Now, we're there to "win" when by what the original strategic definition of our ends should have been we've already won. But if we pull out, we're not sticking to it. We've got generals saying that we have to "make their sacrifice count," so because people have died, we have to stay there with more people dying to make it all worthwhile. What sense does that make? Define a strategic end. And that end is not "sticking it out" so others know we'll stick it out. All we are doing is bleeding ourselves for a nation that will never be. And the popcorn eater can say that Iraq proved us pessimists wrong, but in 5 years, I'm not sure that place will really look all that much like a place worth all that effort and sacrifice. But of course, because he's non-scholarly and not a pessimist and not bashing anyone, we're unpatriotic and weak.

Carl,

You prompted me to read it again, and you're right, he specifically said GEN P shouldn't consider political or economic factors, although I'm not sure how you filter those out entirely, but point well taken.

My point about the little girl is there are thousands of little girls in similiar conditions across the world in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Of course it matters to them and their families, but one little girl shouldn't drive foreign policy decisions. Personally I would like to help them all, but reality limits what I, you and our nation can do. However, I understand that putting a human face on it makes it stick and gives the article/opinion more power.

Works out in the end for "our country", the situation didn't work out for the people of Lebanon, again I wish we could "effectively" help them, but I doubt by staying we would have been able to stablize the country, but again it didn't put our nation at considerable risk. I wouldn't have used Poland as an example, actually that was an example of a wake up call that may not have been heeded as soon as it should have.

Poorly written, what I was trying to convey with the sink and drown comment is that if we don't do something about Pakistan (instead of just giving them billions of dollars) when we eventually hand Afghanistan's security back to them they will sink and drown due to the Tsunami of Islamist radicals flowing in from Pakistan that are well armed and financed.

Madhu your comments are perfectly logical, and I think many (if not most) of the policy makers understand that. They may not address the complexity in public forum, because it doesn't nest well with a 30 sec sound byte, but the complexity is recognized, which is why there is so much debate on this topic.

Lost in all the bashing by some is inaccurate analysis of historical facts, and near-stubborn denial of other realities.

Fact: things were going badly in Iraq until the surge, COPs, concrete barriers, and MRAPs. Violence-driven segregation of Shiites and Sunnis also helped. A Marine MI type wasn't optimistic about Anbar and said as much and they don't tend to be pessimists.

Fact: Billions more were spent in Iraq than Afghanistan until recently. All prior years of "militarism" were too little for the Texas-sized terrain and problem. If it was so militaristic in the early Afghan years, why were casualties so low back then. If less is more, why didn't nine year of less solve the problem...

Fact: Since the Afghanistan surge, things have improved...approximately one year of out ten worth of resources were finally allocated, still far short of Iraqi funds/forces.

Fact: the Israelis seem to solve their insurgency problems by building fences and segregating folks with different ethnicities. Funny, that worked in the Balkans, too. It seems to work in Iraq, as well.

Michael Yon has been there before, and never had any problem calling a spade a spade in the past. Although a less altruistic motive for staying is probably the real reason to remain there in force. The terror problem won't end and we may need a return engagement if we don't train the ANSF properly before leaving.

Counterterror is difficult if you cut off Pakistani money and they cut off the drone flights while Karzai simultaneously demands no more SOF raids and no U.S. bases.

In some ways this article illustrates the American decision making process. Instead of using rationale arguments, it focuses on emotion (and we have done this throughout our history). This article hypes GEN Petreaus and then reaches real low when it exploits the poor 4 year old Afghan girl and ties our decision to stay to her future opportunity to pursue higher education someday (that may be true, but in the big picture that isn't important). Then it completely rejects reality by stating that politics and economics should have nothing to do with our decision? In what democracy do political leaders not consider politics when making decisions on wars, especially wars of choice where the objectives are vague at best? We had to go into Afghanistan, the choice part was staying and trying to rebuild it. What rational leader would disregard the greatest threat to our national security and future position in the world, which is our current economic crisis when they weigh the pro's and con's of various options for Afghanistan?

As for the four year old sweet heart, as Michael wrote, many of us have spent a good part of our adult lives in developing nations and in all those nations they had cute kids who didn't have much opportunity in life. We're not cold to that fact, but that sure as hell doesn't drive national security decisions. We have kids in our own inner cities who don't have a good shot at life. Most parents think their kids are cute, but they don't so look so cute coming home in caskets, or when they're terribly maimed by acts of war. Parents and families have a vote on the what the cost of the war should be, and politicians who stay in office had better listen to that vote. Personally I don't hear or see a big back lash against the war, I just see frustration with a strategy that doesn't seem to be producing results.

GEN P is getting paid to provide military advice (and in reality much more), and that advice is then considered by our civilian leadership. They incorporate it into the larger strategic political and economic picture to determine the way forward (whatever that should be).

I do think this piece came across as cheerleading; to much along the lines of Max Boot, but the big difference between Michael Yon and Max Boot is that Michael has been living and working the war zone for a long time. When he writes stories about soldiers and Marines I enjoy them because they are authentic; he is a great battlefield reporter, so I hope this piece doesn't sour the opinion on the many good articles he has written. It is understandable to have bias when you live there, so I don't fault his views, but it simply isn't good and balanced reporting in this case.

Know matter what decision regarding our future in Afghanistan it will be second guessed for years to come but in the long run I suspect it work out. Pulling out Lebanon in 83 didn't seem to hurt us too much in the long run, and probably avoided more losses (after the tragic loss of more than 200 Marines in the suicide attack) when no real gain was achievable. Yes there is a Hizbollah issue, and still a lot of instability, but by staying would we have prevented it? We pulled out Vietnam (a decision I still question), but in the end it seems to be working out. I'm not trying to make light of these events or Afghanistan, but simply pointing out that those that predicted the end of the world before were always wrong.

I'm not non bias, but then again I'm not writing an article as a professional journalist. I think we can achieve some semblance of a win in Afghanistan if we have the courage and will to deal with Pakistan, if we don't then we're simply treading water, and we when we quit treading water we'll sink and drown. Its an opinion, but one that I think is valid.

I keep hearing that our enemies traditionally have not believed we have any "stick-to-itiveness"- our military "can-do" attitude notwithstanding.

I definitely think there have been some issues with us getting too enamored with our efforts and take on things and not taking into consideration competing narratives, alternative logics, the rest of the world's perceptions, and our own people's will (and thinking we should actively shape it towards our take on things). If that isn't "militarism"- then it still can lead us down a dangerous path. I'd hate to lose our populace's trust in our objectiveness again.

In terms of things getting better- I'm sure some metrics in some areas point that way- I'm curious, though, to hear Michael's opinion if he thinks they are sustainable- and, if not- when they might be. I think when I was there that was one of the most-debated and relevant topics- and probably still is.

Carl,
How'd that stick-to-itiveness work out for us in Vietnam? For the Soviets in Afghanistan? That was an argument used in 1965 to bring in more and more and more troops. It was actually "70 percent" of the justification by one influential staffer. Stick-to-itiveness is not a strategic justification for continuing to piss strategic power down your leg.