COIN

The Atlantic asks a number of pundits if the U.S. will win in Afghanistan.  More specifically:

"The Obama administration's stated objectives in Afghanistan are to deny al-Qaeda a safe haven, prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the government, and build up Afghan security forces in order to transition U.S. combat forces out of the country by 2014. Based on the current strategy, do you think that the Obama administration will achieve its goals?" 

Admittedly, I'm cherry-picking some of the statements, but you can read their full context at the original article.:

Andrew Exum

I believe Afghanistan may be a case in which the president's policy will succeed but not the strategic goals associated with that policy. 

Jamie M. Fly

If the war is lost, it will be lost in Washington, not on the battlefield. Our men and women in uniform can succeed, but only if they are given the resources and time to do so.

Gian Gentile

That botched strategy has sought to achieve very limited policy aims--the reduction of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan--with a maximalist operational method of armed nation building. It represents the death of good American strategy and a waste of good American blood and treasure.

Candace Rondeaux

The Taliban are unlikely to overthrow the Afghan government wholesale but they don't have to for the White House strategy to fail--it already has.

Dave Maxwell testified last week before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.  The topic was "Understanding Future Irregular Warfare Challenges."  The prepared testimony transcript can be found here and a video of the testimony here.

In reaction to public criticism that the military was unprepared for what followed after the defeat of the Iraqi military and destruction of its government, the military embarked on a rapid doctrinal development effort that resulted in the famed FM 3-24 as well as new concepts and forces laid out in the 2006 and 2010 Quadrennial Defense Reviews. By 2008 the Secretary of Defense issued an instruction (DODI 3000.07) that brought together Unconventional Warfare, Counterinsurgency, Foreign Internal Defense, Counterterrorism, and Stability Operations under the umbrella of Irregular Warfare.

But with this came the proliferation of new terms and concepts that were (and remain) redundant and of little additional value. Examples of such terms include Security Force Assistance (SFA), Building Partner Capacity (BPC), Train, Advise, and Assist (TAA), Organize, Train, Equip, Rebuild/build and Advise (OTERA), Stability Security, Transition, Reconstruction Operations (SSTRO), Provincial (originally provisional) Reconstruction Teams (PRT), and Military Transition Teams (MiTT), again, just to name a few. In addition, re-establishing Irregular Warfare as one end of the spectrum of conflict has also led to the rise of new terms to describe conflicts other than state on state high intensity maneuver warfare. Although a number of these terms were being put forth prior to 9-11 examples of the names for war and conflict included not only Insurgency but also Asymmetric Warfare, 4th Generation Warfare (and 5th as well), Hybrid Warfare, Network Centric Warfare, and a host of other rather esoteric terms such as “post-heroic warfare,” “matrix warfare,” and “holistic warfare.” And we should not forget the Chinese “Unrestricted Warfare.”

If Clausewitz were alive today he would repeat what he wrote in the 19th Century:

“Again, unfortunately, we are dealing with jargon, which, as usual bears little resemblance to well defined, specific concepts.”

But Clausewitz also wisely remarked that before you embark on war you have to determine the type of war to be fought. Unfortunately this wise counsel has been focused on naming rather than understanding the war.

The NY Times has posted a 5:35 video on Afghanistan through the eyes of LTC John Darin Loftis, a public information officer, Pashto speaker, and victim of the ministry shootings on 25 February 2012.  The video can be found at this link.  Highly recommended.

In comments at a university appearance in Ohio, Gen Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) stated that COIN is a "math problem."  While the article likely removes much of the context, the quotes are nonetheless memorable.  Emphases are mine.  Read more of this story from Mary Ellen Hare at the Newark Advocate.

Is counter-insurgency viable if it requires a groundswell of troops, asked a student, alluding to McChrystal's own request for additional troops.

"The answer is mathematical. .... History teaches us that to succeed, we need 20 security forces for each 1,000 people. Afghanistan has 28 million people, so that would require 500,000 security forces. In Iraq we had too few troops and the insurgency was too thin. It ... (counter-insurgency) is the only way because you have to change the attitudes of the people."

"When we retaliated with Tomahawks after our embassy was hit in Afghanistan, President Clinton said we were 'not at war,' but if we had been on the receiving end of those missiles, we might have seen the situation differently. If there is no risk to us personally, war becomes too easy, and those actions affect our relationships with other countries."

Ryan Evans offers a scathing indictment at Foreign Policy's Af-Pak Channel of the op-ed penned by Bruce Reidel and Michael O'Hanlon.  The below sentences sum it up, but you should read the rest found here.

The mission and objectives O'Hanlon and Riedel envision are of the never-ending variety: creating a viable, stable nation where none has previously existed. They also ignore their former, wiser caution on the future of the war. ... Two years later, reading their article on "finishing the job" in Afghanistan (which recycles the same old arguments) it is clear to me that O'Hanlon has not fulfilled his promise to call for a re-assessment, and Riedel has not been frank about our lack of success.