Win Wars?

I'm tempted to say something along the lines of "Caint git thar from here, best go back whar y'all started and try agin".

Not helpful, I know. But considering that I was one of those shouting "don't punch the tar baby" from the sidelines back in the day, and wincing when we decided to head-butt the tar baby instead, there's a certain irony in being asked for suggestions on how to get out of the tar.

I tend to revert to the policy level because I think that's where our problem lies: lack of a clear, coherent, achievable policy objective. It's difficult to develop effective strategy without one of those. So my suggestion to be to start with policy, define the goals, ratchet them back to a level that is realistically possible to achieve with the available resources and political will, and build a strategy based on that.

Again I think you're discussing policy issues at the strategic level, which of course are fair game and need to be discussed, but I want to see how your ideas translate into action now that were already down the road on the fool's errand. If you were GEN Petraeus, President Karzai and / or President Obama what course would you recommend today that will be acceptable politically?

No matter what course our President chooses he'll be attacked by the right wing media as being weak (even if it is the wise choice), so that limits his options. Sad to say, but simpletons like Glen Beck shape the decision making environment. The same would be true if we had a conservative President in office, he or she would be attacked by the liberal press, again limiting his/her choice of options available (unless they were truly heroic), plus you have to keep our allies somewhat happy (there are international red lines), and any effective change in Afghanistan (in my opinion) will require government restructuring to rid the government of excessive corruption. To do that, we would have to stand by and watch our so called allies get removed from office.

Based on these conditions, just what would you do differently today that would result in a legitimate government in Afghanistan? What would Pakistan's reaction be? If you were success and Pakistan still continues to support actions against that government, is that an act of war against the coalition?

Lot's of tough questions, and we can all offer criticism, but are your "practical" recommendations?

Re this...
<i>
Outside powers can, however, help a government and a populace to come together, but this is a complex task that is rarely done well.
</i>
Very rarely indeed, so rarely that it's an effort that in most cases might better be avoided.

The United States in particular is very badly positioned to manage this sort of effort. Whether justly or not, we are almost universally perceived as an imperial power intent on appropriating resources and imposing our will on strategic territory (in an odd human quirk, almost everyone in the world believes their territory to be strategically significant). We're also perceived as being the epicenter of evangelical Christianity, a provocative factor in non-Christian countries with religious sensitivities, and of a liberal and acquisitive lifestyle that raises conservative sensibilities.

Even if our motives are as pure as the driven snow, the perception will almost always be that we are out to snatch whatever resources are there (ebven if they are imaginary), plant our troops in the neighborhood forever, flood the place with bible-thumping missionaries and dress all the women in bikinis. The does not raise our chances of success. Best in most cases to not get into that position in the first place.

Bill,

Actually the mission of making illegitimate governments effective is a fool's errand. Worse, the efforts to do so cost us influence that keeps us secure globally, and also probably increases the motivation of insurgent groups that challenge those illegitimate governments to conduct acts of international terror to get us and our allies to stop.

I would argue that when one finds themself in a hole, stop digging. Our mission is actually to promote US national interests. Period.

To expend ourselves trying to make illegitimate governments effective is probably counter to achieving our primary mission. A supporting effort that has been overly weighted and drawn our energy and focus away from the main effort, if you will.

Mr. Jones your argument about legitimacy over effectiveness may be true in some cases (once again you visit our revolution) :-), but where is that advice applicable? If you shared that advice with policy makers prior to invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and the policy makers got it, then we may have been given realistic policy objectives and see a much different picture on the ground now. That window of opportunity has passed, so our mission now is to make illegitimate governments effective. Less than desirable, but at least it "may" be in the realm of the doable. We can't make governments legitimate (a lesson that should have been learned many times in our history). My comments are focused on achieving the objectives we have been given, not the flawed the policy decisions.

How can your ideas of legitimacy be applied in the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan by coalition forces (since we're now out of the combat role in Iraq it may be easier for Iraq to straighten itself out)?

Please don't get me started on our powerpoint wars, where slides are manipulated to show the boss what he wants to see. If you believe all the briefs we have seen, then we should have won the war already many times over :-).

Dennis, I appreciate your supporting fires. Consider this as you continue to chew on these complex issues:

"Effectiveness of governance" has become a bit of a battle cry among many engaged in COIN, and while effective governnace is certainly a good thing, it does not in turn assure that it is "good governance".

As an example that we can all relate to, British governance in the American Colonies was incredibly effective, and the people living there enjoyed perhaps the highest standard of living in the world. Yet the people rose up in insurgency, prevailed, and then found themselves mired in what was comparatively a far, far less effective governance. The difference? They did not recognize the legitimacy of the effective governance imposed on them from England but they did recognized the legitimacy of the ineffective governance they had imposed upon themselves.

Lesson: Legitimacy trumps Effectiveness every time, if you can only have one, go with Legitimate first, then let effectiveness develop over time.

Effectiveness is great, but it is over-rated. It is also typically measured by the intervening party that assesses degree of effectiveness by standards that have little validity with how that local populace assesses the same.

But it is far more objective to measure effectiveness than to measure goodness, so we go with effectiveness. Easier to capture in powerpoint for the boss. Measures of performance rather than Measures of Effectiveness, er, goodness...

Completely agree. Legitimacy comes from the people and is granted to the government. No outside power can create this; and any outside writ of "legitimacy" is actually just a recognition of some organization as being the "official" government, but in no way creates "legitimacy."

Any government installed by a foreign power has a presumption of Illegitimacy, and has the burden of proof, so to speak, to earn a writ of legitimacy across the diverse populace they now serve. Most never step up to that task, and immediately become struggling counterinsurgents because of that.

Outside powers can, however, help a government and a populace to come together, but this is a complex task that is rarely done well. Those external interests and biases queer the engagement in ways that typically doom it to a long, drawnout, often violent, situation.

The key is to understand the true measure of success, and to recognize that less is more if you really want to help a government prove itself to the people they serve.

Dennis M:

re this:

<i>A successful COIN strategy is about creating the perception of legitimacy of the host government among the population. </i>

I'd have to question whether it is possible for any outside power to create such a perception for a foreign government - especially in environments where foreign support and engagement is perceived as an inherently de-legitimizing factor.

The US Government, whether military, state, AID, any combination of the above, cannot govern Afghanistan. neither can we "create" or "install" a government that Afghans perceive as legitimate. These things are beyond our capacity, and if we adopt a policy that requires us to do these things, we will fail.

The first step toward achieving a policy goal is to start with an achievable goal.

I'm not arguing that the U.S. Government should pursue a "strictly" military strategy to assist the host nation in defeating an insurgency; however, I do believe an insurgency can be defeated with brut force alone w/out good government (or more accurately effective government). Armed uprisings in Eastern Europe were quickly suppressed by brutal security forces without the assist of good governance. The South Koreans (after the Korean War) brutally suppressed a communist insurgency using severe tactics. Sri Lanka recently defeated the LTTE in "battle", but agree to consolidate their victory they'll have to address the underlying Tamil concerns. Of course that will be much easier to do now that the LTTE is defeated.

On the other hand in the Philippines (in Magsaysay's era), and Thailand and El Salvador communist insurgencies were defeated (at least temporarly)by a combination of security force action (combat) and government civic action.

When civic action is appropriate then by all means use it, but our COIN doctrine doctrine is a legacy doctrine based off the era of communist insurgencies. Not all insurgencies are the same, and to blindly template the effective approaches used during this era today has "proven" to be ineffective.

I think that when either you or I argue over generalities we are both missing the key point that each conflict is unique.

Mr. Jones,

I didn't see your previous post, but my previous post with the bad grammar is my response :-). I agree with what your saying, and think your comments on Afghanistan self governed space are correct; however, they are not congruent with our current policies. I think most of us would agree that our goals to deny so called safe haven around the world for terrorists is a pipe dream (with some good stuff in that pipe). Realistically (militarily, perhaps not policy wise), we can physically destroy any insurgent training camp if our policy supports it, without trying to take over a country and shape it to fit our view of what a nation state should look like.

Bill,

The question you must ask yourself is, who is feeding you the "good propaganda"? It may be the ones who shaped the position you hold to so dearly.

Let's look at Vietnam. You can't start with 1965, and you really can't start with 1945 either. Most Americans focus on the era of the majority of our engagement there, say 1962 or so forward. At that point there was a state of North Vietnam, but that state was formed as a compromise by outsiders upon the defeat of France's efforts to recolonize the region following WWII. In terms of the larger conflict the state of N. Vietnam, as well as the state of S. Vietnam were largely fictions created by the West; but that served to confuse us into seeing this as a Communist State Vs a Democratic State, when in fact it was an oppressed colonized populace vs powers of Western Colonization. Other than confusing us as to the nature of the conflict, the creation of N. Vietnam also created a fantabulous sanctuary for the insurgency to operate out of, and also gave them a venue to engage the world's legal/diplomatic structure's with.

We then went in to prop up the failing, illegitimate government of Diem, and two subsequent, equally illegitimate governments formed by military coups.

I would not argue that the government of the north were good and pure, as neither was the government of the south. I would only point out that this is a great case study for the point that no amount of foreign intervention is likely to prevail in quelling an insurgency when the government being supported lacks legitimacy in the eyes of its populace.

As to governance, I always quite intentionally use the term "governance" rather than "government" as I recognize that governance may well come from informal or tribal structures and be over entities as small as a village or as large as the former British Empire. "States" have little to do with the dynamic, but are merely the coin of the current realm, so to speak.

I will agree whole heartedly that the Taliban were and are a tool of Pakistan to exert influence over Afghanistan. But again, we confuse ourselves by putting too much emphasis on the lines we draw on maps through other peoples lands. The Pashtun people do not recognize the Durand line, nor think in terms of the states of Afghanistan and Pakistan as we do.

As I told Admiral Olson prior to deploying from SOCOM to Afghanistan several months ago, "We are creating friction by trying to enforce the fiction." The fiction, of course, being that either the governments of Pakistan or Afghanistan ever truly exerted governance out over the entire territories or populaces contained within their boundaries, and that those boundaries in fact mean anything to those same populaces. Much of these areas are what I would term not "ungoverned space" (I hate that term), but rather as "self-governed space."

We destabilize the governments of both contries by forcing them to enforce a fiction that means far more to us as we look at maps and apply our concepts of sovereignty to a culture and region that share neither.

Show me an insurgency truely resolved through a military defeat of an insurgent force alone. I am still looking for that fact, an exception to prove the rule if nothing else.

Oh, and like our founding fathers (going back to the revolution just for you ;-), they discovered the same thing that the North Vietnamese discovered: Every successful insurgent becomes immediately a struggling counterinsurgent. There is no grace period, and the populace that carried you is still out there, and armed with the right and the duty of insurgency, they always get a "vote."

Mr. Jones,

As interesting response, and like good propaganda the lies are disguised in the truth :-). I'll respond in more detail later, but first mistake is you're trying to turn my accusation against me. I said you were too focused on the American Revolution (not I). Second, based on your comments you see good governance as national government, which means there needs to be a national identity versus say tribal identity that people are willing to fight for. The Taliban were an external threat sponsored by Pakistan that were not traditional or legitimate in Afghanistan, but they won by defeating their enemy (definitely not by implementing good goverance). Do you really think the North Vietnamese implemented good governance in S. Vietnam, or did they implement a terror campaign to consolidate their "military victory". Interesting twist on history you propose, but I don't see any facts supporting it.

Looks like I delted half of a sentence in the 5th paragraph:

" If those conditions did not exist in those nations, if those populaces."

originally said:

" If those conditions did not exist in those nations, if those populaces did not perceive some or all of the causal conditions to exist in their nations, AQ would not be able to conduct UW there."

Bill,

Youre focusing on the wrong thing, so you are drawing the wrong conclusions. Insurgencies are not caused by insurgents; insurgencies are caused by the counterinsurgent. It is a response by a populace to Poor Governance; not an attack on good governance by evil people. Do the people oft time end up with a greater evil during the transition period between what they threw out and what they ultimately get to? Absolutely.

We would probably look at insurgency and counterinsurgency more clearly if we changed the perspectives of the naming convention to something more along the lines of Poor Governance and CounterPoorGovernance. Recognizing that "Poor" does not mean ineffective, and it does not even have to be rational or rooted in fact, it is rooted in the perceptions of the populace. Even then it does not need to be a majority of the populace, it just has to be "enough" of the populace and that % varies by situation. These key perceptions are Legitimacy (populace recognizes and accepts the source of their government), Hope (populace believes they have trusted, legal and certain means IAW their culture to adjust governance when necessary), Justice (populace perceives that the rule of law as applied to them is fair), and Respect (populace perceives that they are not treated differently than others within the populace as a matter of status).

You may understand Americans better than Vietnamese, Russians, Iranian, etc; but that does not make this unique to America. Also you may empathize with those governments who are our "allies" more than those who are our "enemies"; but it does not change the dynamic because it is your friend rather than your enemy that is being confronted for the poor governance he forces upon the populace he is supposed to serve.

So lets look at your list of Evil, but successful, insurgents and what led to their rise to power, not what they did once they attained it, ok?

AQ: Not an insurgency at all, so doesn't really fit on the list. AQ is a non-state organization conducting a very sophisticated and successful UW campaign to leverage conditions of poor governance across a wide range of primarily Muslim nations where there are populace bases that are ripe for such exploitation/support. If those conditions did not exist in those nations, if those populaces. AQ is doing the same thing that nations have done for centuries: leveraging the populaces of his enemies to promote the interests of his organization. Our primary beef is that most of those failing governments are on "our team." For that same reason AQ directs those nationalist movements to attack the US as part of their local programs under the logical approach that they must break this source of external support to the government if they are going to prevail at home. Makes sense. We don't have to like it, but we do have to understand and respect what is going on if we are going to successfully address the true issues of the problem rather than just attack the symptoms of the problem.

The Taliban: Karzai has legitimacy in the eyes of the Pashtun populace? The people of Afghanistan believe he answers more to them than to the US? Its damn hard to be installed by a foreign power and have legitimacy with your own populace. This issue should be the focus of our COIN efforts there, not the Taliban. Attack the issue, not the symptom.

Iranian Revolutionaries. I assume you mean the ones who took down the Shah. See paragraph above.

Ho. He helped us defeat Japan, and then we reinstalled colonial France over the people of Vietnam and cast Ho aside. France was legitimate? France treated the people of Vietnam with Respect? Justice? They had hope? No, they found hope in Ho. Ho was a man for his times, the conditions created him; he did not create the conditions.

Same applies to Hitler. WWII was cast at the peace table in Versailles by the French and British, not at a beer table in Munich. If not Hitler it would have been someone else. Not every populace has a George Washington that emerges to lead, some have Adolf Hitlers. Tragic, but also avoidable if one understands what causes such uprisings in the first place. The best COIN is done long before the first shot is fired, at that point the Governmental failure is nearly complete, and what we see as insurgency is merely the finale.

Mao, same. China has always had power struggles, and will continue to do so. There is probably a new Mao sitting in a classroom somewhere in rural China as I write this.

Those who don't understand insurgency fixate on the tools of insurgency (tactics, ideology, leadership) rather than on the causes, and then attack the tools. We are also saddled with a definition of COIN that implies success in the sustainment of the very governments that are causing the insurgency conditions in the first place. Resetting the conditions of failure is about all the military can do. WILF says that is their job and that is good enough. I agree with the first part, COIN is not a military operation and it is not war. It is a civil operation and it is a civil emergency; military should only be brought
in as a supplement for limited and clearly defined purposes by that civil government.

We have been attacking symptoms for over 8 years now, and doing mostly lip service toward actual causes. Have we made any true progress?

It is probably time to put the "Liber" back in "De Oppresso Liber;" as history may well assess that we are on the wrong side of this one. That is not a condemnation; you see it over and over in the annals of the history of insurgency. Governments are the legal party, and de jure in the right. Insurgents are by definition illegal, but often de facto in the right.

When your friend is being attacked it is natural to defend him, even if he was being an ass and started the fight. Particularly if his attackers think they have a better chance of winning if they take you out of the fight first and whack you in the face with a 2x4.

Ok, get revenge for the 2x4 in the face, then either get your friend to stop being an ass or find new friends.

Robert Jones,

It is your tendency to draw parallels with todays wars with our American Revolution, which implies you assume every insurgency is about human rights and correcting perceived poor governance that I find to be problematic. Yet as you well know AQ, the Taliban, the Iranian Revolutionaries, Ho Chi Min, Mao, Lenin, etc. were not and are not about human rights and good governance anymore than Hitler was. Theyre just one side (out of many perhaps) that is conducting an armed struggle for power (during their insurgencies). If you developed a great government (in our view) in Afghanistan the Taliban would still fight until they were in charge of it or defeated. If you developed a legitimate government in S. Vietnam it wouldnt have stopped N. Vietnam from invading. Of course AQ has their perverse views of what good government means and wont stop pursuing it until they're incapacitated or win. Failure to recognize this has led to a half baked COIN doctrine that is resulting in status quo fight, we can't win and we can't lose, we just keep at it with half measures. Wilf is quite right when he said it actually pretty simple, kill the enemy, not the innocents. There is more to it than killing, but you can't throw the baby out with the bath water and expect to make progress. It isnt complex as the author notes, and actually in reality it is quite simple in theory. We just wont do it because were constrained by Western (UN think) views on how to fight a war.

R:

For a long time I saw things pretty much as you do. I think that came largely from growing up in the Cold War context, and partly from many years in a country that was once (but is no longer) actually under US dominance. At a certain point, after quite a bit of time in the ME, I got the uncomfortable feeling that I was shoving a square peg down a round hole. The key question for me was the one I asked earlier: who exactly do we dominate?

So I ask again: who do we dominate? Where in the Middle East do we have the capacity to impose our will... after all, isnt that what dominance is?

<i>Rare is the member of the "challenged" side in an insurgency who historically could fairly empathize with the position of the challenger. This is because, I think, that insurgency causation is rooted in perception far more than fact. </i>

The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly based on fact, not perception: in fact, the US took it upon itself to impose governments that we thought suitable. Those decisions - which were IMO poorly considered - produced insurgencies where we are the challenged party.

Where else in the world are we challenged by insurgencies? There really arent all that many insurgencies out there: lots of dissent, lots of internal conflict, but not many insurgencies and none where we are the challenged party.

When we look at other people's insurgencies the challenge facing us, I think, is not so much to empathize with the challenger as to understand the challenger and the challenged, and all the various other groups and factions involved. We obviously cant assume that government is good and insurgent is bad. Neither can we assume that any given violent opposition to a government represents a populace. Certainly we cant impose a Cold-War paradigm of insurgency = popular resistance to US-supported autocrat. It may fit in some cases, it wont fit in others. Each case has to be evaluated independently and, as much as possible, without prior assumptions.

<i>Facts matter little, it is all about perception.</i>

Certainly true, but theres a huge difference between trying to counter an inaccurate perception and trying to counter an accurate perception. We cant counter a perception that we dominate the ME by relinquishing our dominance, because we havent any dominance to relinquish.

We also cant counter this perception by using our influence to force changes that we think would benefit the populaces involved. The populaces involved are deeply divided and there is no consensus on what change is desirable: any change we tried to press for would be as likely to provoke dissent as to alleviate it. Most of the populaces involved do not want us involved in their domestic policies in any role. Most important, in most cases we simply havent enough influence to force anyone to do anything.

Bill C:

I don't see any reason to suppose that the US presence in Afghanistan reflects any large scale desirte to modernize failed, failing or rogue states, or to promote capitalism and/or globalization.

US policy in Afghanistan at this time (have to remember that US policy changes on a regular basis) is driven primarily by domestic political imperatives. The current administration inherited the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, unwillingly. It also inherited a set of competing domestic imperatives. Many Americans, including much of this administration's core constituency, wants us to wind down the conflicts and pull out ASAP. At the same time, there is an overwhelming political need for the administration to appear tough and avoid any action that would suggest weakness, and an overwhelming need to make our intervention appear progressive and benevolent to Americans. This is why our actions, seen in a foreign policy context, so often seem bizarre: it's not about foreign policy or long term goals for Afghanistan, it's about balancing conflicting political imperatives on the domestic side.

I really don't see that we have nay need or desire to promote change anywhere, or to advance globalization and capitalism, which advance themselves quite adequately without our help.

All societies change, all the time. This is inevitable. Change always generates conflict, this too is inevitable. Some people think change is too fast, some think it's not fast enough, and there is always disagreement on the direction of change. Our problem is not to promote change, but to manage the conflict that inevitable change inevitably produces, and to try to avoid spillover onto our territory and our interests. We don't always do that well, but there's really no evidence to support the contention that there is a US policy of trying to force change, globalization, or capitalism on anyone.

Bill,

Brother, to borrow an abused term from the recent elections, the perceptions on "main street" USA matter very little; it is the perceptions in the many ME countries that currently are producing "foreign fighters" that challenge the US efforts abroad that matter.

We try to write this off as some form of mental illness, that they are "radicalized." Wow. Try telling your wife that her girlfriends have 'radicalized' her next time she flares up on you for some move you pull, you know?

No, we very much have worked over the Cold War era to ensure we have governments in place that keep the oil flowing, that keep the shipping lanes open, and that don't overly challenge Israel. This has required a certain degree of manipulation that MAY be outside what the populaces of those countries actually want, and MAY have enabled some of those governments to act with a certain degree of impunity that has marked them as some of the worst in the world in terms of civil rights.

The fact is that corporations love dictators. Good for maintaining favorable contracts and all. These corporations have tremendous influence on the Hill. Christian and Jewish organizations alike are pro Israel, and that too has tremendous influence on the Hill. No, we are indeed working to maintain a status quo that becomes less sustainable every day. The information age has served to defeat the age old concept of "friendly dictators", as they can no longer control information to their populaces, and in turn can no longer control their populaces.

The people are speaking. Are we listening?

D.

I know you don't see it; but I do. I make my comments based upon what I see and assess from my basis of training, experience and capability. It's my professional assessment, no more and no less, offered here for the SWJ community to consider.

But you may want to consider the fact that you find yourself in "good" company. Rare is the member of the "challenged" side in an insurgency who historically could fairly empathize with the position of the challenger. This is because, I think, that insurgency causation is rooted in perception far more than fact. It is how the affected populace FEELS about certain critical higher order human needs, rather than on the facts of the case. The counterinsurgent tends to look to the "facts" as assessed from their perspective and either discount the legitimate concerns of the rebelling segment of the populace, or write their actions off to the "radicalizing" efforts of some leader or ideology.

Facts matter little, it is all about perception.

<i>I would argue that actually it is the West struggling to sustain a Status Quo of Western dominance and influence over the Middle East</i>

Is there such a status quo? I certainly don't see The West dominating the Middle East, and I certainly don't see the US dominating the Middle East. Far from it. Who exactly do we dominate? There are times when nations or leaders in the region perceive their interests to be congruent with ours, but in those cases they are pursuing their perceived interests, not ours. There have been many times when we've been manipulated into pursuing policies that benefit others... but that's hardly dominance.

Again... who exactly do we dominate?

<i>No, the extremist reactions coming out of the Middle East are a RE-action, not an Action. </i>

I'm not convinced of this either. It seems to me that in large part the extremists are proactively pursuing policy goals that are not necessarily a reaction to anything we did. Assuming a reactive opponent is attractive, as it suggests that we can modify our opponent's behaviour by changing our own, but I see no evidence to support that conclusion.

You could say that ME extremism is in a sense a reaction to the last few centuries of relations between the Muslim world and the West (more colonial Europe than the US), but that's a fairly general conclusion, and to an extent all political reaction is a reaction to history. I certainly can't see any evidence to justify the conclusion that extremism is a reaction to US policy.

(oops, "fight is won", not "one") Time for that second cup of joe...

Bill M. - A couple of thoughts on comments made in your last post:

I would argue that actually it is the West struggling to sustain a Status Quo of Western dominance and influence over the Middle East; and that it is AQ's UW efforts regionally, and dozens of loosely affiliated local nationalist insurgent efforts that are working to escape that status quo of direct and indirect Western control and influence.

Now, I will agree that we certainly rationalize our actions by pointing out and countering the extreme ideology employed by some in their efforts (those who study insurgency understand that as an insurgent one must take an extreme position that will require moderation once the fight is one. In the US we had to dump the wartime articles of Confederation due to its excessive and dangerous form of Democracy for the much tempered version in the Constitution. Similarly China, Vietnam to name but two, backed off from excessive expressions of Communism to adopt more tempered realistic approaches to survive the peace). I see no reason, based on a study of history in general, and insurgency in particular, to not believe that "radical" Islam is little more than a ramped up version necessary for the fight, but that will rapidly fade once efforts to throw off overt Western domination are achieved.

In the short-term is getting rid of Saddam's dictatorial and the Taliban religious extremist regimes good? Arguably, yes, in the short-term; but this gets to Dayuhan's persistent point: What right does the US and the West have to provide an alternative shaped by our interests and values?

We cannot escape the fact that we went in because we were angry and wanted revenge for the attacks of 9/11 and to deter states from supporting similar attacks in the future. Bush was right in his famous Carrier announcement of "Mission Accomplished" that is so often mocked.

The big reality is probably that the more we work to "fix" these countries and to sustain pro-western governments that are widely recognized as being poor champions of civil rights with their own populaces; the worse we make the actual problem that led to the series of terrorist attacks that peaked with 9/11. We can't hold this tide back with military force forever, nor can we stem it through imposition of US and Western Values, Development, Rule of Law, Security Force Capacity Building, etc. Those are all band-aids designed to PRESERVE the Status Quo, not advance past it.

No, the extremist reactions coming out of the Middle East are a RE-action, not an Action. If we really want peace and stability in the Middle East (and I believe that is a noble and worthy goal), we need to honestly assess how our policies and actions contribute to that instability and focus on modifying our own behavior first, before we expend ourselves working to modify the behavior of others.

In the "Ends-Ways-Means" construct I would argue that our Ends are largely fine; but it is our Ways and Means that must be updated for the world we live in today. We can do this, we can prevail, but we first need to realize that it is easier to pull a rope than it is to push one.

I said we went there to attack those who attacked us, not that we stayed there to attack those who attacked us. Why we stayed, and why we would want to impose our notion of "development" - and why we would perceive a Kabul-centered government as "development" - is a good deal less clear, and I suspect, as I stated above, that what we're doing there now has less to do with helping Afghans than it does to do with satisfying our poorly understood, presumed (thanks Ken) domestic political imperatives.

Bill C.

I like the way you framed the issue, because it is clear to all of us who served there that we're fighting to advance development/human progress against those who value the status quo (whether that is traditional or not); however, that does that make the situation more complex than WWII, on the other hand our policies may simply be more naive and not achievable via the use of military force?

Dayuhan, we're well past of attacking those who have attacked us, and if you have been Afghanistan it would be clear we're attempting to do more than attack Al Qaeda. As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced the war in Afghanistan is about AQ anymore. I'm not sure anyone really knows what it is about, but we stay for humanitarian reasons fully realizing what will happen to thousands, if not millions, of Afghans if we leave.

<i>Should we say that military forces and police forces have been used extensively -- not just today -- but throughout history; to advance "development/human progress," and to deal with those "insurgents" who would value "tradition" more heavily (and fight back accordingly)?</i>

Why should we say that? I don't think we're applying military force anywhere today to advance development or human progress, not can I think of any cvase in the past where military force was used for this purpose. Neither can I think of a case in which insurgents are fighting for tradition. No point in trying to frame a conflict in terms that don't reflect reality. I really don't see how "development cvs tradition" applies at all... we're not fighting for development, and our antagonists are not fighting for tradition.

<i>Given this context, and these examples, how might we compare the complexity/difficulty of military/police efforts made along these development v. tradition lines; as viewed next to our efforts made during the Second World War?</i>

Again, I don't see the suggested context as relevant to actual circumstances. If we look at WW2 and current conflicts from a purely American perspective, there is one similarity: both are a response to attacks on us and perceived threats to us and our interests and allies. Not necessarily rational or well considered responses, but reactions nonetheless. Of course comparisons between the two are of marginal utility: the nature of the attacker, the nature of the attack, and the nature of the response are different enough to make comparison pretty futile. Not even apples and oranges, more like apples and basketballs.

With the exception of the first two paragraphs the article wasnt that bad (nor that good in my opinion). The first two paragraphs demonstrate that the author doesnt have a firm grasp on history, much less military history. The sad part as Gian and his supporters point out is that many of our military practitioners also have an insufficient understanding of military history. I think most historians would agree that WWII was by far our most "complex" war, and was far more complex than simply closing with and destroying the enemy has some have implied. There was far more "irregular warfare" involved in WWII than in todays conflicts, and there were far more complex and dangerous (strategically) important political issues involved than in todays conflicts.

As for military officers needing to have political skills, when hasnt that been the case? It is less so today than it has been historically, since there is more emphasis one keeping the military in its martial box. One need only to review our history in the Philippines in the early 20th century, or involvement in conquering the West, our involvement in the various conflicts in Central America and the Caribbean.

Having served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and several other locations, I personally find these wars very challenging because they were my challenges to wrestle with, but I refuse to engage in the arrogance that my brothers burdens still in the fight are anymore challenging than in previous conflicts. In my view the majority of difficulty were dealing with is trying to implement unrealistic policy decisions. Were experimenting with a new global political correctness that has little correlation to the way the real actually works. Creating democratic governments is not the answer in all cases. We have simply given a form of legitimacy to two illegitimate governments (Iraq and Afghanistan), and now are befuddled about the way forward.

The soldiers who invaded Europe certainly faced a more difficult task in terms of personal danger. Casualty figures for combat units in WWII are soberly staggering. The Generals? Not so much.

They knew exactly what the measure of success was. Push the Germans back until you linked up with the Russians. Then all they did was essentially execute one massive frontal assault, bombing and shelling the hell out of everything in front of it, while feeding an endless supply of raw troops and supplies into the back of it. Leadership? Bradley fired what, some 15-18 Divisional and Corps Commanders because they couldn't push the frontal assault hard enough in their respective sectors? That's not leadership. (Patton fired just 2 or 3, and at least one was because Bradley ordered him to do it.)

By contrast, our Generals today still don't know what the measure of success is; or rather how to apply military force to achieve it. This is indeed a challenge that did not exist in the big conventional wars between nations.

Ken makes some great points in his first post. Personally, I believe bad systems produce bad results, and for my money the "senior rater profile" system of officer management is a cancer that kills the soul of our officer corps. It creates a false objectivity that is based in risk avoidance and nurturing how one's boss likes them over all other concerns. Not the two traits I think are most important in a combat leader. (See afore mentioned Gen Patton above; or guys like Nimitz and Ridgeway that Ken mentioned) Better to be a little less "objective" and design a system that selects for the traits we really need in our leaders.

So, upon creating an uncreative, risk-adverse force, that is focused on keeping bosses happy over caring for troops and mission; we then hand them a problem that is arguably not really a military one at all, that they had no training or understanding of, and then wonder why they don't achieve rapid results? I really don't wonder about this much at all, frankly I am surprised at how surprised others appear to be about it. What else would one expect?

There are many lessons to be learned from our current challenges, so long as we keep our "thickskin" on and look at them objectively. If this drives changes to our personnel system, and training and education, good. Right now most analysis appears to be focused on superficial issues, and most changes being promoted are probably either superficial as well, or headed in the wrong direction because we focused on where the 'headfake' of the problem is headed, rather than the bellybutton. Or because we're trying to understand the new game in the context of the rules of the old game. Both approaches are dangerous.

Bill C:

Why on earth would anyone want to transform Afghan society? Even without considering the very small probability of success, what benefit could there possibly be that could begin to justify the trouble and expense? Unless we assume that the people making the decisions were simply off their collective rocker (admittedly a possibility), we have to wonder why they would even consider such a thing.

I don't think "societal transformation" was ever on the agenda. It seems to me the original goal was as Gian suggests: disable, disrupt, and defeat AQ. Once committed, though, domestic political imperatives, and to a lesser extent global and NATO political imperatives, required that we drape our intervention in a cloak of benevolence and noble purpose, hence the shift to democracy promotion and nation building.

This would explain a number of things, among them the bizarre construct of an Afghan Constitution that seems wildly inappropriate to Afghan society. I don't think it was ever intended to please Afghans, I think it was designed to show America and the world that we are installing something that they recognize as "democracy", and thus that we are really the Good Guys after all.

I don't think this is a very smart way to go about things, and I suspect that it's going to come back and bite us solidly in the backside. I do think, though, that this is pretty much what happened: no grand global strategy, just a chaotic attempt to satisfy domestic political imperatives.

Mr Harris,

I understand the analogy you're trying to make as an attempt to learn about current adventures in nation-building but the correlation is a false one. Europe/Japan after WWII was an entirely different situation and environment than Afghanistan and Iraq during OEF and OIF.

The Axis powers had suffered a total defeat at the hands of the allies and surrendered unconditionally. The economic plan to rebuild western Europe and the military occupation to provide governance were, for the most part, welcomed by the recipients of such aid. That gets back to suffering a total defeat in war. It also gets back to the Allied Control Council not having to redefine or re-engineer their culture and system of government to something that was totally alien to them. For Germany to accept democracy and all its trappings is not the same as trying to force Iraq and Afghanistan to.

In other words, regarding your statement, Germany, Japan, or Italy weren't in a position to argue over the necessity or theory of what we were trying to do - nation build - simply because of that unconditional surrender. It was accepted because they knew what was required as far as economic recovery and governance for their nations to evolve to the next step would be. Nation-building happened 'after the fact' of a total military defeat. What we are prosecuting now in Afghanistan is <i>armed</i> nation-building on a populace who has neither the intent or desire to see and accept what the overall goal is. To a large extent, they're not in the same state as post-war Europe, ready to move on and be guided there from an economic and social point of view.

The Marshall Plan had it right; reconstruct what was destroyed, build and stabilize new economies, provide interim governance for a people that have basically the same understanding of governance as you. The plan was successful because the military and political conditions required for it to take root, the total defeat of an enemy in war, was accomplished.

The same, on all counts, cannot be said about Afghanistan but we're forcing largely the same program there. The result this is having? We're having to force the reconstruction; force the economic rehabilitation; force the governance - all on a population who doesn't want us giving them a new system of government, a new socio-economic culture based on 'high-efficiency American models,' or political reintegration with anybody. Thus, our military forcing the issue and implementing it anyway. We're forcing all these things while the insurgency is in full-swing and even the fence-sitters or non-supporters of the insurgency are still highly critical of us being here and forcing our 'help.'

We're hinging our success on OIF not on the total defeat and/or surrender of AQ (why, if I remember correctly, had something to do with us being there in the first place), but on the 'rehabilitation' and reconstruction of a country who doesn't want us here to begin with. It would have been like conducting the Marshall Plan while Hitler was still in Berlin or trying to implement SCAP policies and a new Japanese Constitution while Tojo was still in Tokyo. There were certain precursors necessary to both things being successful in the long term. Those precursors and the environment which nation-building can take hold are not present in Afghanistan.

Germany, Japan, and Italy were already nations as we understand the concept of nation. We didn't need to build "nations", all we were rebuilding was the physical infrastructure. That's an engineering challenge, not fundamentally a political challenge.

Trying to build a "nation" as we understand the term in a place where the basic qualities and expectations of "nationhood" are either absent or completely different from those we understand is a very different problem, one I'm not sure we've the capacity to manage.

I've said this before... nations aren't built, nations grow. We can't build a nation, any more than we can build an oak tree (though certainly we can destroy either). If we insist on order we are as likely to obstruct the growth of nations as to assist it: the process of growth is at times inherently disorderly.

I do not think it is possible for us to build a nation for someone else. We may be able to help them to cultivate one, but that's a different challenge requiring a different approach, one which (in my possibly less than humble opinion) we might do well to examine.

Put yourself in the position of a commander in Afghanistan, faced with the politics of Kabul, the politics of DC, the politics of the media, the politics of NATO. about a million online backseat drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks who All Know Better, a nebulous and shifting set of goals, a very shaky commitment to an uncertain policy and a pile of other complications. There might well be times when you wished you could chuck the whole pile and go assault a beach, or invade a continent, or some other thing that you were actually trained and equipped to do. That doesn't necessarily mean the latter tasks are easier or less complex, it's just a natural reaction to a nasty and frustrating situation.

As always, pundits make too much of this stuff, and I don't really see any point in trying to compare the difficulty of one nasty and frustrating situation to the difficulty of any other nasty and frustrating situation.

Ken:

<i> I do not fully agree that asking an Army to build a nation is outside the bounds of rationality but it certainly is using an extremely inappropriate tool for the job. </i>

I was thinking that using an extremely inappropriate tool for the job is completely outside the bounds of rationality... but then I've not worked for the US Government, so perhaps I expect too much!

<i>Counterinsurgency is not the graduate level of war. Middle School perhaps with all the jealousies, intrigues, foolishness and pettiness that implies. </i>

Possibly it's just a different specialty within the field, not necessarily harder or easier, lesser or greater, just different.

Gian:

<i>Disable, Disrupt, Defeat AQI there to prevent AQI from using Afghanistan as a base to attack the US. Doesnt that sound pretty straightforward too? </i>

It does sound straightforward. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line the task morphed into "establish a democratic Kabul-centric government in Afghanistan that is capable of defending itself, maintaining order, and winning the loyalty and support of the multiverse of Afghan populaces, and do it without losing any of our guys, without killing any civilians, without wasting any money, without agitating the media or or domestic audience". That's a bit more complex. What's harder, kicking a 50 yard field goal through a goalpost that stays still, or kicking a 25 yarder through a goalpost that's dancing all over the stadium? Take your pick. Different challenge, different headache. I wouldn't want to have to do either.