Killing Your Way to Control

From "Irregular Adversaries Hybrid Threats, An Assessment-2011":

"Given Al Qaedas need to operate from sanctuaries and in the shadows of the societies it targets, the organizations capabilities have always been difficult to assess accurately. It is believed that 10,000-20,000 extremists were trained in Al Qaedas camps in Afghanistan between 1996 and September
11, 2001. Yet, as few as 200 core fighters may have comprised the heart of the network. Several hundred "free-agent" foreigners, mostly Arabs and Uzbeks."

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"After the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, U.S. forces discovered evidence that Al Qaeda had conducted grisly experiments on dogs that were injected or gassed with cyanide--possibly a prelude to the use of the deadly agent against American targets."

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Speaking of al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies that killed 224 on August 7, 1998:

"Al Qaeda's responsibility for the attacks was determined quickly. The United States retaliated on August 20, when U.S. Navy destroyers fired 75 missiles, each costing about $750,000, at Al Qaedas training camps in Zawhar Kili, Afghanistan. The attack, code-named Operation Infinite Reach, killed at least 21 Pakistani jihadist volunteers and wounded dozens more. The operation did not deter or inhibit Al Qaeda, however. On October 12, 2000, two Arabs piloted a skiff toward a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, which was refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden."

JMA,

I do look at these things from a high level. For one, that is what I get paid to do, but more importantly there are thousands of Junior officers and enlisted who can provide far better input on tactical concerns. The tactical issues are real, but they are not the problem that we don't seem able to address.

Our problem is that we convince ourselves we must be in places to force some change on others in the name of our own security; and then we convince ourselves that we cannot leave until we have forced a set of conditions of our own defining onto that place and the people who live there. Guys like "Move Forward" are out there in spades stirring up irrational fears, and that does not help at all.

What I find interesting is that when one looks back at these situations after the dust has settled, invariable the fears of the intervening power that were leveraged to justify their actions turn out to look exaggerated or even silly in retrospect. Similarly, the grievance for action on the part of the insurgent become much more reasonable.

Most of the guys who post on this thread would be Taliban and fighting the Coalition if we were born Pastu in southern Afghanistan or Western Pakistan. (Or at least the half who were not a member of a tribe or family with patronage connections to the new government).

When one looks back at the American west, do you admire and empathize more with those who rode with Crazy Horse, or those who submitted and donned American clothing and religion to live on the reservation and eat government beef?

Will you respect more those who join a VSO program, accepting foreign money to patrol their own homes and clean their own irrigation ditches by a foreign occupier, or those who take to the hills and dare to challenge the most powerful military on earth that seeks to impose upon them a government and way of life they do not recognize and did not ask for?

Do such efforts really make Americans more safe? On 9/11 no Pashtu of the AFPAK region had any reason to work with AQ to bring acts of terror against Western targets. That is certainly not true today.

The intel guys got this one wrong (again). So did the policy guys, the generals, etc, etc. I don't know how many times governments have to keep going to the school of hard knocks to learn this lesson, but school isn't getting any easier.

"Control" comes at a cost, and the modern information age has elevated that cost considerably. We have a control-based strategy in containment, and it is unraveling because the rationale for it is long gone, and because those who are no longer willing to be controlled are also more empowered to do something about it. We need to shift to some form of "influence-based" strategy. We will find far more success when we are either largely neutral or helping people to get where they want to be than when we are actively acting to put or keep them where we want them to be.

Yes, the military can kill to control. Is that really the nation we strive to be? Does that create the world we want to live in?

Bob

Move Forward,

It is exactly those type of fantasies you mentioned that our Defense Contracting Complex loves, it justifies forever wars and defense massive spending, and we can continue to justify the lack of success by claiming that our crystal ball tells us it will be much worse if we don't continue to piss away billions of dollars in pursuit of a permanent solution (which is social, economic and political transformation) in Afghanistan. Makes a great fiction article for conspiracy theorists. I also love how downsizing is described as quitting from those who have interests there (that are not our national interests).

Of course we pulled out Somalia, Vietnam, and Lebanon due to casualties, it had nothing to do with our leadership coming to the realization that there was no military solution on the horizon, so it wasn't worth wasting more treasure and blood. No it must of been simply our tolerance level for casualties, yet I haven't heard a single legitimate complaint yet about our casualty numbers in Afghanistan. Of course, we all mourn them, but the real issue is a lack of a feasible strategy, and continuing to do more of the same that hasn't been working probably won't sell well to national leaders who have a much more pressing crisis with the budget crisis. None the less CNAS would love your logic, they'll use it to insist we continue to drain our armed forces in an effort to nation build. If we just try a little harder, spend a lot more money, and stay a couple more decades we really can transform the Flintstones into the Jetsons.

You could spin your story another way since you enjoy conspiracy theories. My conspiracy theory, the Pakistanis want us to stay involved in Afghanistan, so they are supporting the insurgents there and spreading rumors about terrible things happening if we downsize that some buy into. In the meantime we pump billions of dollars in Pakistan to maintain our MSRs, and Pakistan diverts a significant portion of those dollars to enhance their nuclear arsenal. Um?

Did not mean to make it seem like we were nuking India...rather Pakistan would.

"The US was forced to withdraw from Vietnam, the Lebanon,and Somalia because the collective political will to maintain combat operations evaporated when casualties become politically unsustainable."

58,000 dead Americans and nearly a million live ones tried to "mow the grass" for a decade in Vietnam...a conceptual failure never successfully refuted in the article. If search and destroy robbed us of so many young lives and failed so miserably, why would we advocate a return engagement?

Evaluate how effective raiding was in Mogadishu, Somalia. How effective were cruise missiles in Sudan and Afghanistan? How did holding up in high-rise FOBs work out in Lebanon? Did these problem areas go away by packing up and leaving at first problem or lobbing a few cruise missiles?

I can see it now. It's 2012 and because we prematurely bail from Afghanistan (because we did not surge there until far too late and then pulled the plug) leaving only SOF raids and airpower at Kandahar and Bagram. President Karzai gets irritated by a night raid and/or errant bomb and tells us to bail from those two bases. There is no airspace left for drone or joint manned flights. Pakistan increases cross-border shelling and Gulbuddin Hekmatyr starts his own from the outskirts of Kabul aided by the ISI.

The ANA retreat north to guard the northern alliance provinces, foreign fighters/Taliban/disguised Pakistani military mount a successful attack on Kabul and Kandahar. We can't bomb because it would cause civilian casualties. Game over, except for the civil war that spills over into the stans to the north.

Terrorist camps return on both sides of the border and in the stans. A chemical attack in Israel sparks retaliatory attacks against Pakistan. Israel attacks Pakistani nuclear installations with conventional Jericho missiles and F-35 strikes. Pakistan tries to nuke Tel Aviv but fortunately TBM-defenses limit the damage. Israel responds anyway. We are sucked in. Limited nuclear exchanges ensue to include with India....all because we couldn't be patient enough to handle 1600 dead Americans as we train to preclude 100,000 to a million stateside dead.

I actually agree with JMA, which is not common.

Let soldiers do what they are trained and equipped to do. If we need something else done, send people who are trained and equipped to do that. If we haven't got anyone trained and equipped to do what we want done, we should be asking whether we really want to get into a situation that demands capacity we haven't got.

I understand that the military didn't ask for the tasks of "building nations" and "installing democracies", and that people on the military side are grappling with the thorny problem of accomplishing tasks that never should have been given to them in the first place. I just hope somebody on the policy side will recognize, someday, that this is a very bad idea.

And of significant note, Ahmed Wali Karzai was just assassinated.

Much to do about the ensuing vacuum is being made right now on the news.

JMA,

Do not be "sad" if we come to realize that the military-heavy approaches to foreign insurgencies born of generations of foreign interventions for the purpose of securing the interests of that foreign power over any interests, governmental or popular, of the host leads us to smarter approaches.

The horse of insurgency is long out of the barn by the time such military efforts are required. By coming to a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of insurgency we are able to identify dangerous trends early and adopt small changes of civil governance or foreign policy at home, or encourage similar small changes with allied governments drifting into similar trouble where we have interests abroad.

The insights of Sun Tzu mesh in nicely with such approaches, as insurgency only becomes a conflict that looks anything like warfare when a civil govenrment has intentionally set upon a course that has pushed its populace into a corner where they feel they have no recourse but to fight.

By definition the military is sent into these situations with the mission of "beat the horse and put him back in the barn." The military needs to push back on that mission as iladvised and misinformed.

It is never too late to do the right thing. No amount of tactical "horse beating" by us, or a new corps of Afghan "horse beaters" in the form of the ANSF is going to stabilize Afghanistan or any other country. Plus, in this modern age "horses talk to each other." What we do in one country has major impliations in a dozen others.

This is not the time to double down on a bad bet.

bob

All of the following quotes apply to the perspective, the strategic perspective, that I have been attempting to convey. We must remember why we went to Afghanistan. It was not to defeat AQ, it was not to defeat the Taliban, and it sure as hell was not to build Afghanistan into a modern, democratic nation.

It was to make America safe by sending a clear message to the world that we will not turn the other cheek once provoked, and to exact a measure of revenge against the people who attacked us. Everything else has been mission creep, as intel bubba's worked up "threats" and plannners devised schemes to "win" and Commanders set out to "defeat the enemy", etc, etc.

This is serious business. This is not some boy's game or athletic event. Sure the instinct is to put one's head down and wade it with both fists, but we have to be smarter than that. We owe it to the nations we serve, the nations we serve in, to the servicemembers who serve under us, and to their loved ones who have entrusted their most prized possion to our care.

When its time to fight, fight hard and win. When its time to think, think hard and win much faster.

Listen to the words of Sun Tzu, and consider why once we didn't break contact and go home after the first round and allowed ourselves to become inveloped in a nationalist insurgency of another nation, why facilitating the reconciliation of the issues between the parties was the wise straegic move to take on....

(I'm not pointing fingers at any particular Generals or operational concepts for Afghanistan, but if the shoe fits, own it.)

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

"The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom."

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."

"There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited."

"Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory."

"Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."

"Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

ALCON,

As I browsed through a few pages of the Orbis Operations Sangin report, I came to realize that I might be driven to say, "Yes Wilf, we indeed have a problem."

When we frame the article against the context of future expeditions, then yes, I can see some of the relevance of the article.

I can also see that, as we often get hung up on splitting hairs at the Council when it comes to words and their meaning, the definition of "security" is really at the root of many of our subtle and slight disagreements.

jcustis, we are largely in agreement based on your last post. My reference to safehaven is directed at Pakistan which is a policy issue, and it isn't a complete safehaven. We do occassionally engage with our flying lawnmowers (UAVs), but not enough to seriously disrupt their activities or break their will. I will not bust out a Bn Cdr my name, but I did run into a brick with one who recently arrived (but served in AFG previously) who didn't conduct effective combat operations in his AO for two reasons (which I'll talk around for security purposes). First he said his mission was to protect something, and if he conducted combat ops in his region he would draw more attacks from the insurgents, and two he didn't have the forces available to do both, so even when he had good intelligence on good targets in his AO he decided not to pursue them based on his understanding of the mission, so by default he created a safehaven in his AO. The Taliban were aware of it and used it as such. That wasn't a policy issue, a strategy issue, but a resource issue and a calculus that Cdr developed based on his understanding of the priorities given to him. I'm not faulting him, but I suspect we have other safehavens (especially in the non-U.S. zones) throughout the country.

Bob, again I agree with the general thrust of your ideas, especially that our presence is what largely drives the resistance; however, I also think your arguments as stated are incomplete.

First is your assumption that this outlier segment of the populace would pursue a political "compromise" if there was one offered? While neither you or I will never know, I don't think Castro or Mao would have accepted a compromise and then laid down their arms. Mao was definitely about power, and it seemed Castro migrated to that stance (assuming he didn't start out that way). I think underlying issues are obviously most effective if you can get to the left of the problem (before the armed insurgency starts), but once blood is spilt it changes the dynamic psychologically and sociologically and I think history indicates that the insurgents have to be convinced they can't win using force before they come to the table and talk. I definitely think that is true in Afghanistan. I also think we achieved that in Afghanistan, but the problem at this point is "we" achieved it, while the insurgents still suspect they can defeat the Afghan government when we leave, so that gives them enough hope to keep on fighting. Obviously that is conjecture and opinion, but I have read comments by the insurgents that basically said that.

As for our doctrine/dogma, we of course are a foreign power in a foreign land attempting to achieve objectives that are in our national interest, so that paragraphy sort of left me questioning what you meant?

Oh, and since I was typing and missed it, I think iot's important to note that COL Jones once again breaks it all down and describes some of the key problems we face when anyone sides wholly with dogma.

There are forces at work and resultant issues that are well beyond the scope of the military to address. At the operational and tactical level, I see commanders trying to achieve a sophisticated balance, while avoiding outliers of a village massacre, shootings of unarmed detainees down by the river bank, and the random killing of civilians just because we know a pair of insurgents disappeared into a clump of trees or compound.

Bill M: "we also have created safe zones for the enemy to operate in relatively freely." I'm curious where this is happening, from a genuine concern to see what I am somehow not seeing. Also, are these safe zones ones caused by issues with our policy, or the limitations it imposes on our strategy? The military can do very little when the policy does that. If you are referencing the Tactical Directive, then I would vehemently have to say no, it does not create safe zones. We can still get in and among the people, and capture/kill the insurgents when they present themselves.

"Point three, Wilf argued that the main role of the military is breaking the insurgent's will to fight, he didn't argue that underline causes shouldn't be addressed (although based on his previous writings he may)."

Part of my response here was based on the history of his writing and thought. The argument he presents here, and the lack of clarity over some points, allows his article to drift into the dangerous area of a strawman argument. Like you, I think he ignores a range of realities on the ground and the ensuing nuances, to this article's detriment.

I could not quote the text in my earlier post, but Wilf's argument falls even further short with this statement:

"As stated, armies exist to alter the behaviours of other armies, or armed factions. If they are seeking to influence civilians, then they are engaging in political activity on
behalf of the Government. Seeking to "influence" civilians is not something
armies should seek to do."

We, as in the professional military fighting men and women inserted into the situation in Afghanistan, understand this, and we certainly wish we could do just as Wilf advises. The problem is that we can't, for the simple fact that the political apparatus of our governments, which one would expect are best organized and trained to do this sort of stuff...can't, won't, or don't do it quickly enough.

I don't think anyone seeks to influence civilians as form of military action, and engage in the often confusing, frustrating and messy work because we like the challenge of engaging in development, but we are forced to participate in other "soft" activities because we just so happen to be the only guy on the block too many times.

If anyone could show me a quote from a battalion/brigade commander who stated that it was more important to him to influence the population through economic development, governance initiatives, and development of the security forces, and at the same time stated that killing active insurgents and uncovering the supporters did not get him closer to achieving his mission, then I would shut up and say "Yes Wilf, we indeed have a problem."

I could care less what Nagle and Kilcullen say. Where does it resonate? Right now this article doesn't prove that the military, British or otherwise (at the operational and tactical level), has a problem in this regard when it is presented with insurgents who can be found, fixed, and finished. There are a host of other issues that are beyond the scope of this comment area to highlight, so "we" are by no means absolved of any responsibility to reflect on our performance, but at the tip of the spear, the boys are doing alright.

Justicus,

Conflict within a state is very different than conflict between two states; just as conflict within a family is very different than conflicts between members of different families. It is not the nature of the formations that matters; it is the nature of the relationships between the parties.

Bill M.,

There are two primary (and equally flawed) dogmas that prevail:

Dogma 1: Defeat the will of the insurgent through violence and one will break his will to fight, thereby ending the insurgency.

Dogma 2: Effectiveness of government is the problem, address this problem by building security force capacity, conducting development projects designed to bring greater services to the people, etc and one will address the drivers of discontent and thereby end the insurgency.

Or, I guess dogma 3: One must do both dogmas, with the military doing dogma 1, and then handing off to civil service and NGOs to implement dogma 2.

I disagree with all three. In my research and experience these dogmatic approaches are far too focused on the symptoms of insurgency rather than the root causation. These approaches were developed by colonial governments to return stability to some foreign land where those foreign powers were seeking to maintain their foreign influence/control over the government and people for some mix of economic and security interests. These same TTPs were then largely adopted by the US for the implementation of Cold War Containment strategies as well. What they miss are the issues of humanistic psychology that tend to always be woven into the human fabric where such conflicts/disputes emerge:

Perception 1: Some significant and distinct segment of the populace does not recognize the legitimacy of the government; i.e., its right to govern over them. This may be because it was form by some party or process that they believe has no such right to form government; or just as often because some set of factors has led a long standing government to drift away from its recognized base, often in ways that lead that government to act with impunity toward the people.

Perception 2. Some significant and distinct segment of the populace perceives that it is treated with less dignity and respect than other similarly situated people under the current government.

Perception 3. Some significant and distinct segment of the populace perceives that the rule of law as applied to them is less just than as applied to other similarly situated people under the current government.

Perception 4. Some significant and distinct segment of the populace perceives that they have no trusted, certain and legal recourse available to them to address government on such matters.

When we focus on violence and development we focus on symptoms. It is only through good luck that such efforts create enduring success.

In our current focus area of Afghanistan all four of these critical perceptions exist in spades and much of our current dogmatic approach serves to reinforce these perceptions far more than it serves to address them. We may well suppress the insurgent, but in so doing we are likely making the underlying insurgency worse.

Equally damning to our efforts in Afghanistan is our inability to identify the difference between the resistance insurgency and the revolution (recognizing that to some degree this always overlaps); and focusing our effort on the resistance while leaving the revolution to Karzai to address if he feels like it. Resistance cannot be resolved until the Revolution is addressed. Besides, as Former Amb Eikenberry's recent comments reflect, we see everything we do as goodness and light and vehemently refuse to acknowledge the dark side of our presence and activities as "occupiers" of Afghanistan. We fuel the resistance by our very presence to conduct the activities our dogmas tell us will resolve the insurgency....

This is the logic within the Jones Model that I admit I am singularly dogmatic about as well!

Cheers!

Bob

jcustis, I don't want to keep defending Wilf, because quite frankly I tire of the Clausewitz and conventional views and frequently disagree with Wilf, but if you read his article it is clearly focused on insurgencies, not conventional battles. Point two, the enemy does present himself in a targetable manner and while frequently we do target him when he does, we also have created safe zones for the enemy to operate in relatively freely. Point three, Wilf argued that the main role of the military is breaking the insurgent's will to fight, he didn't argue that underline causes shouldn't be addressed (although based on his previous writings he may).

My argument is largely phasing, there are locations where we initially limit combat operations where the insurgents are still strong and active and attempt to bribe them and populace with development. Development is not normally the underlying issue, and we have surrendered the upper hand willingly in pursuit of a belief based on dogma versus analysis. The dogma states that if there is economic development the insurgents will quit fighting. It isn't that simple, and it is just as faulty (if not more so) than the argument we can kill our way to control.

I know the right answer will vary in each location of each conflict based on a number variables that define the context, and I suspect that the right answer will never be one extreme, but also have witnessed the failure of our blind faith in using development to defeat an insurgency in various pockets of Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, all were unsuccessful if they were preceded by first obtaining the upper hand militarily.

It is well past time we move beyond using MOE based on how much money we spent, how many schools we built, how many miles of road we built, etc. to behavior changes.

GRND, your comments are spot on!

What the article highlights is Wilf's tendency to apply Clausewitz to the situation and grind out a black and white answer. When the battl
efields were full of troops formed up in squares, these edicts held plenty of sway, but the approached required today have to be more nuanced. The whole argument falls short due to the failure to recognize that if the
enemy presented themselves in any sort of targetable body, in a manner that allowed us to apply our skill while minimizing the risk to civilians, we would be doing more than our share of killing. What's almost absurd is the thought that neutralizing a threat to stable society implies that the threat is a man standing with a gun, intent on resisting the government. The threats are more numerous than that, and are what are so often discussed as underlying causes.

Bill M,

Not sure how accurate these numbers are, but this is consistent with other reports I have seen. Note the huge spike coinciding with the surge.

Bob

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92909

Bob,

All good points and I don't discount the complexity and the truth behind the truth for a minute. I never assume I have the whole picture, and hopefully those on the ground don't either. To gain understanding you have to challenge your assumptions constantly and seek those out who disagree with you, etc.

On another note, you mentioned the IDPs, how many are there (approx?) and what is their significance? Who is leveraging them? Is GIROA addressing this problem? How many Afghanistan refugees are in Pakistan? Same questions...

Bill,

Just a caution on "local leaders" supporting GIRoA. There is such a complex fabric of tribes and families and long-running conflicts at the local level, that this can be a misleading metric. One has to wonder if those who had sway in the region had to leave as the coalition Cleared, leaving control to previously supppressed party more than happy to sign on with GIRoA to gain the hand up. The large numbers of displaced persons (growing in recent years since we stepped up the Clearing operations) hints at this possiblility.

We know the Province and District Governors are hand picked by Karzai, and these men in turn will be looking to line up subordinate powerbrokers who will look to them for patronage to enact their will and collect their payments.

As I have said before, Afghanistan is arguably the easiest country in the world to conduct UW in, as there is always one half of the populace excluded by the current system already organized and ready to jump on board whatever bandwagon comes to town in an effort to reverse their fortunes.

We see what we want to see. I just urge caution as we are frequently misled by GIRoA officials on such matters.

Bob

Anon,

Good post and the debate on whether I have overstating the value of elite forces targeting terrorists (specifically AQI) is of course debatable and I can and have argued it comfortably both ways. I actually argued against this view a few years ago, but based on my experience a few years later in Iraq, I witnessed the impact of effective targeting operations which significantly reduced the level of violence, and speaking with prisoners who admitted they couldn't win due to our aggressive combat operations, etc. They were happy to be captured, because they were living in fear. When the violence was reduced due to removing the bad guys from the street, then local businesses starting opening overnight even without our help. If read my comments carefully, I am not advocating that killing is decisive, but simply enabling. If we (the host nation government and coalition) don't effectively follow through with effective development (rarely large multimillion projects, but projects that get people employed in a sustainable manner) and political engagement then the military success will mean nothing.

Your success in Helmand if I recall "followed" a very aggressive operation to clear the insurgents from the region, correct? Do you think the development and politically engagement would have worked if the Taliban were not suppressed militarly first? I don't want to speak for Owens, but I really think that was the jist of his article. As for the population being important, that is a no brainer and this is where Owen generally loses his audience. The population is critical; however, I think the population will trend to supporting the side that in their eyes is winning, and the skilled application of violence will definitely help create that perception. I'm a believer in development and political engagement when it is phased correctly and done intelligently (and we don't have a good track record since 9/11 for either, so hopefully Helmand is one of the few exceptions). I do not see any evidence that you can defeat or convince insurgents (their are individual exceptions, because their heart wasn't in the fight to begin with) to quit through political engagement and development while NOT fighting.

What pleasantly surprised me about your comments is that local leaders are working with GIROA. That is the ultimate key to success in each region (still won't win the war, we still have to deal the problem set in Pakistan somehow). If that is happening across the board then you are truly trending towards an honorable exit of U.S. forces, but as we all understand Afghanistan is much larger than Helmand, so the question now is why is working in Helmand (and other locations), and failing in other locations? Is it the strategy or the local dynamics?

Dayuhan, it runs counter to our military culture to say we can't or shouldn't. Of course we can do development (poorly), of course we can help stand up local governments (poorly), etc., so if that is the given mission we will tackle it. I suspect change will have to be driven by civilian leadership, and we need certain Senators to stop complaining that the President isn't listening to military leaders in the field. He is, but hopefully he is listening to more than just the military when he makes these decisions, and understands that our can do attitude doesn't always result in effectiveness in the field. Can do should be changed to can try, but I don't think that will fly :-).

JT, I suspect at least half of us on this forum have been to Afghanistan and many other locations beyond Afghanistan, and some of us still disagree with you. We had similiar debates in Iraq, and heard the same arguments that we couldn't kill our way out, but we did exactly that. Were there other factors involved? Of course there were, but the elite military forces were focused on a military task and it worked good enough to provide a decent interval for the withdrawal of most our troops. The Iraqis (not us) have serious issues to contend with, and while not the same our nation also had great challenges after the revolution (challenges that led to the Civil War). I'm not convinced a foreign force occupying our country would have prevented it (it may have delayed it).

Since you are convinced we can't defeat the Taliban with more controlled force, then what is your counter strategy? What is the military's role in that strategy? I remind you that before you start we have been trying the nation building approach for 10 years now, so if your proposed way ahead is more of the same, then tell us why it will work now.

In my opinion I think we can put the Taliban on the ropes with the application of more controlled force, but I don't think at this time (based on my dated knowledge) it is worth the cost if it will only result in a temporary victory. If the Afghanistan government isn't willing to rule and their security forces are not willing to fight then it will all be for nothing.

<i>This is not an issue of tactical failure. This is an issue of strategic ignorance.</i>

[rant]I'd take it one step beyond and call it an issue of stupid policy. The distinction is important because strategy is something the military devises, policy is not. If policy is stupid - if we choose to pursue goals we cannot achieve with instruments totally unsuited to the goals - then strategy and tactics will be compromised from the start. What we're doing in Afghanistan is akin to asking an engineer to perform brain surgery on a patient with a heart defect. It doesn't take an abacus to conclude that the prognosis isn't good.

This is of course a difficult problem for the military to address, as they are charged with implementing policy, not making it. The necessary policy adjustments might be advanced, though, if people inside and outside of the military would make make it clear, as often and as bluntly as necessary, that the current policy places the military in an impossible situation and is not likely to work.[/rant]

The critical point is that we send in BCTs to execute the only thing they can do, without realizing that it contributes little to the ends we seek.

This is not an issue of tactical failure. This is an issue of strategic ignorance.

THAT is much more a war crime than any civcas incident by soldiers simply doing the best they can to preserve their force while executing the mission they've been told to do.

Bob

JT,

I think your summary of reality at the BCT level reflects reality at a much larger level and I agree with it, but we apparently have opposing views on what it means.

The urban, rural terrain, population numbers in relation to security forces are common problems in most counterinsurgencies, as is the host nation security forces being poorly equipped and led. I have seen the same conditions in Central America, South and SE Asia and Africa, but in many cases COIN forces managed to overcame these obstacles and effectively suppressed the insurgents.

As for having an effective or legitimate partner, I think the Government of Afghanistan could argue that the U.S. is not a legitimate or effective COIN partner, because we are pursuing pie in the sky objectives and failing to effectively suppress the Taliban. Furthermore, by taking the lead in nation building we're undermining the credibility of government we should be empowering. The real summary is our standards are too high, and this is a situation where perfect really is the enemy of good enough. Our real challenge in my view is to figure out what good enough is, and then adjust our strategy accordingly.

It isn't your BCT's job (or shouldn't be) to re-engineer the political and social norms in your AO. The military's role is to defeat the insurgents (not the insurgency as Bob repeatedly points out, just the insurgents, because ultimately the insurgency will have to be defeated with political action which is not your job). This must be done before other measures can be implemented by the host nation government.

In my opinion you made a case for why political action won't work, because quite simply it doesn't exist and any political action your BCT facilitates will only have a temporary (if that) effect and is largely illegitimate. Distracting yourselves from the fight in pursuit of a political solution is a fool's errand in this case. Of course based on your situational awareness you can provide expert testimony to those in diplomacy and political sectors that need to address these shortfalls, but they are not your problems to solve, and they are distracting you from pursuit of the enemy.

I don't think Owen was arguing that a military strategy was the complete answer, but simply pointing out the obvious that you have to break their will to fight. That creates conditions for other measures (that you address) to be implemented for longer term (good enough) solutions.

If you think we need to stay there in force until they meet our standards of policing, rule of law, effective governance, etc., then you are signing America and its partners up for a very long and expensive mission with limited hope of success. Use the surge to fight the Taliban, and then we maintain a much smaller presence for the long term in hopes of moving towards a sustainable transition state where the Afghan gov can rule good enough.

No one is trying to simplify the overall problem to a military mission, but simply point out what the military's role is in this contest of wills. That doesn't mean diplomacy, development, etc. aren't essential in the long run, they are.

I suspect I will hear the excuse that the military if the only element with enough gusto to do the diplomacy and development, which is only true if "we" are doing it. Let the host nation government do it good enough. After all it is there country.

Quite frankly, and as much as it hurts to write this, some situations aren't winnable, or are not worth the expense of doing so. National leaders have to make hard decisions in this regard, but I don't think it helps when the military simply disregards their job of defeating the insurgents. It simply feeds the perception that this can't be won (whether it is true or not).

Bill,

Soft/smart/hard, etc; it makes little difference. When a foreign presence pushes against a populace unwilling to accept that univited presence, there will be resistance. The Northern Alliance is nearly as foreign, and perhaps more uninvited, than the Coalition. Point being, that for the resistance to go away the Government of Afghanistan must stop being a government of, by and for the Coalition/Northern Alliance and start being a government of, by and for the people of Afghanistan. ALL of the people of Afghanistan.

We must remember that there was little insurgency among the people for a couple of years following the fall of the Taliban. Afghan people don't expect much, or think much about government. The rural areas are largely what I call "self-governed." This was true of the Pashtun areas of Pakistan as well from what I have read. These populaces had nothing to "resist" against.

There was also little revolution among the exiled Taliban government. They were waiting to see what would happen, probably assuming that the US would soon pack up and leave, allowing the Afghan competition for political, economic, and patronage dominance to begin again. But we didn't go. Instead we enabled Karzai to rise to power in a sham of an election, we enable the Northern Alliance to establish themselves as a national government; and then, perhaps our biggest mistakes, we bought into the ideas of "centralized" goodness as being the cure to Afghanistan, enabling the development of the current constitution that fomalized the Northern Alliance Monopoly as the law of the land, and sought to disempower regional powerbrokers in favor of a centralized system of military and police with the sole function of helping this government exert its will onto the rest of the populace. (Thank you Amb. Eikenberry and LTG Barno...)

It was at this point that the Revolution began to ramp up its activities. In that capacity they sent junior leaders among the people to motivate, pay, and equip young men to help them prevent this tragedy for all not affiliated with the Northern Alliance. We responded by inceasing our efforts. We pushed against the resistance and the resistance pushed back. We pushed harder. It pushes harder. Meanwhile we left the Revolution alone, delegating that to GIRoA to resolve, and for Pakistan to address. Guess what? It was not in the interst of either of those two governments to either reconcile or arrest those revolutionary leaders and issues, so they did as little as possible, other than promise the US that they were getting right on it.

Meanwhile we were too busy focusing on the aspect of the insurgency we had defined as our mission, the resistance, continuing to inflame it by not understanding it for what it is, and by pitting more and more effort agaisnt it.

This is not rocket science, yet we brought rocket scientists to deal with it. This is "people science," for lack of a better term, but anyone offering such human insights has been shouted down, pillaried, or ignored.

As to "pleasing" the Taliban? Come on. You know you can't "please" your way to stability (Though more than anyone acknowledges, we have certainly bought a 'decent interval' or two over the past decade). No, this is about equity, respect and fair opportunity to compete legally. The nature of the politics of who prevails in such competition is no more my business as an American than is it the business of the nature of American party politics to any foreign party. How long would we tolerate a Chinese intervention to fix our financial system? Or a European intervention over the issue of pro-life/choice? Talk about insurgency...

We created a monopoly, we need to break the monopoly. That is all we need to do. What happens after that we can work with the victors to attempt to shape or influence to some acceptable degree, but largely not our call. The reistance will fade naturally when we stop providing them so much to resist against. Will this create a stable Afghanistan? Probably not, but stability through control and violence is no stability that I would want for my family to "enjoy."

As to AQ (the actual mission that we seem to keep forgetting)? They draw their sanctuary from the Taliban, and more importantly, the populace that the Taliban rises from and draws it support from. Quid Pro Quo. Evict or give us AQ, and we break the monopoly so that they can compete legally for opportunity in their own country. Seems fair. Better yet, what we are currently doing is failing and cost billions and lives. Trying my way is comparatively almost free. Worst case, it fails too, but does so in a way consistent with our professed principles as a nation and without putting our military in constant, senseless combat. They have bigger fish to get ready for.

Bob

JMA,

My question was directed at those who believe the recommendations in the article are 100 years too late. I know our military "can" do this, and if they can't they'll quickly reorganize, equip and train to do so. The obstacles to winning the way the author proposes are not that great in number, but they are significant obstacles. One is policy, although I don't believe in Afghanistan we are restricted by policy (could be wrong, but I think Congress and White House would be quite happy if the military was more aggressive). The American people in general would be happy with a more aggressive stance if we were not carelessly killing innocent civilians, but of course there would be some naysayers and since naysayers make more interesting media coverage than the majority they'll get excessive coverage, which may convince outsiders we don't have the stomach for this. We're a nation that likes winning, and are willing to do what is necessary if we think the cause is just. The other obstacle is our belief systems and the dogma created by the modern interpretation of hearts and minds doctrine, further reinforced by mindless statements like "we can't kill our way out of this", without really analyzying whether we can or can't. This is the obstacle that is restricting our action in my opinion.

Bob,

I think the smart/soft power directed at the resistance has completely failed, but disagree it is totally focused on the resistance. My main disagreement with your argument is that you assume all men will use logic, and simply lay down their arms and join the legal process if there is effective governance. Humans don't behave that way in the real world, and you repeatedly side step my challenges when I address that issue. Exactly how should the Afghan government reach out to please the Taliban? If the Taliban desire once again to oppress women and enforce their mindless form of shari'a law, etc., and this is exactly what Pakistan wants, what exactly is the compromise? I would argue there is none, and if we are serious about winning (I'm not convinced we are) the Taliban and their sponsors need to be defeated militarily.

We're trying to win this war the same way we're trying to fix this economy, which is applying ideological fixes that have been proven throughout history to fail.