Step 1 in Afghanistan: Avoid the Rerun

One of the first problems Petraeus is going to have when take over Afghanistan is to set conditions which prevent a rerun of the dynamics that ruined Afghanistan across the 1990s.

To that end, he'll have to put a leash on Pakistan by hook or by crook:

Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.

In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.
Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset. In a sign of the shift in momentum, the two Pakistani officials were next scheduled to visit Kabul on Monday, according to Afghan TV.

Despite General McChrystal’s 11 visits to General Kayani in Islamabad in the past year, the Pakistanis have not been altogether forthcoming on details of the conversations in the last two months, making the Pakistani moves even more worrisome for the United States, said an American official involved in the administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan deliberations.

Translation: Hey Karzai, nice country you got there, be ashamed if something should exploit long standing ethic tensions happen to it.  And Pakistan's support of the Pashtun insurgency (Taliban) is causing a lot of bad blood between ethnic groups, setting up a similar situation to the one the Soviets left behind in 1989:

The leaders of the country’s Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities, which make up close to half of Afghanistan’s population, are vowing to resist — and if necessary, fight — any deal that involves bringing members of the Taliban insurgency into a power-sharing arrangement with the government.

Alienated by discussions between President Karzai and the Pakistani military and intelligence officials, minority leaders are taking their first steps toward organizing against what they fear is Mr. Karzai’s long-held desire to restore the dominance of ethnic Pashtuns, who ruled the country for generations.

About a month ago, I predicted that Afghanistan was headed down the same path as South Vietnam:

After the U.S. withdraws - and between the president's commitment to a July 2011 time-line and mounting U.S. casualties our withdraw is a near certainty - Afghanistan will suffer a similar fate to that of South Vietnam. Pakistan will play the role of both the Soviet Union and China as they fund, train and run logistics for whatever rough coalition of Taliban forces has the best chance of taking Kabul whole. Meanwhile, I expect the Karzai administration to continue to flounder through one scandal after another while they burn through whatever cash and equipment we leave when we go and ultimately share the fate of Dr. Najibullah at the hands of the Neo-Taliban.

So what can be done to avoid this outcome? How can Afghanistan be saved at this point? Here are a list of three possible options the Obama administration has right now:


1. Acquiesce to Pakistani control of Afghanistan, call it a victory and go home.
 
2. Acquiesce to Pakistani control of Afghanistan, announce that Pakistan has gotten what it wants and is now in control of Afghanistan and that any terrorist attacks from either Pakistani or Afghan territory will be considered a direct attack by the Pakistani military and will earn a nuclear response on Islamabad.

3. Work with Russia and India to rebuild the Northern Alliance, overthrow Karzai and hope that we can find an Uzbek or Tajik who will rule the Pashtuns with an iron fist.

4. Normalize relations with Iran.

My pick is options 3 and 4. One of the core advantages Pakistan has over the U.S. is that they are our primary route for getting supplies and troops into the country. This is because Pakistan has the best deep water port in the region. If we were to normalize relations with Iran, that would open up an entirely new route into Afghanistan would allow us to make life a lot harder on Pakistan, by declaring them a state sponsor of terror and assassinating every ISI or Pakistani Army agent we find in Afghanistan. We could also sponsor a U.N. security resolution demanding Pakistan acknowledge the Durand line as the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, thus making Pakistani incursions across the border an act of war.     

The challenge at that point would be to find someone to rule Afghanistan. I would imagine we should be able to find a Tajik general who would be willing to ruthlessly rule over the Pashtuns - maybe to the point of cleansing a large percentage of them - with an iron fist. While this may sound like a cruel solution to a westerner, its probably the only way Afghanistan will ever be brought under control. And, not for nothing, but what's at stake is the safety and security of a large percentage of Afghans, because the Taliban is the worst outcome, especially for females living in Afghanistan. But the Taliban is a Pashtun insurgency, so if the Pashtuns aren't ready to turn against them they might have to share in their fate.

 

This is what happens when you pal around with terrorists...

Everyone has seen this video, I'm sure. Everyone has also heard a lot of the bullshit emanating out of people like James Fallows, who is a serious journalist and should know better. He should never compare the acts of troops under fire to the torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib.

This is what I see: Two journalists got a lead on a hot story - they were going to have the chance to hang out with a group of Mahdi Army guys. At that moment, these particular insurgents were involved in a battle with the 1-8th and 2-16th of the American 2nd Infantry Division. The ground pounders called in air support, which was delivered via an Apache helicopter, and the helicopter crew made a call - the best call they could possibly make given the information at their disposal - to engage a group of armed men operating in a region where the ground units were reporting fire. The insurgents were armed with AKs and RPGs, which can be clearly scene in the video. Later, a unmarked black van appears, several men pile out of the van and picked what appeared to be a wounded insurgent and also begin collecting weapons. The aircrew then requests, and is given, the green light to destroy the unmarked van.

I don't see anything in this video that violates any sort of Rules of Engagement or Rules of Land Warfare. The black van was not marked with a red cross or a red crescent. The journalists did not report their position  to the U.S. Army ahead of time. To the best knowledge of both the ground units and the aircrew, all of these men were insurgents setting up an ambush in the path on an American infantry unit.

Being a war correspondent is risky. I have a great deal of respect for the men who do the job, but correspondents know the risk. They know - especially in an insurgency where the combatants don't wear uniforms - that they could be mistaken for insurgents themselves. They know - or should - that air power, mortars and artillery are all inherently indiscriminate and if you are standing beside a target you might get killed. While its a tragedy that these two journalists were killed in combat, it is not a war crime, and the ultimate responsibility for their death rests, not with the U.S. military - which as the video demonstrates goes out of its way to confirm a target before engaging - but with the journalists themselves, who willingly put themselves in harms way in pursuit of a story. 

Mr. President, you are holding 11 - and you always double down on 11..

Barack Obama could learn a lot from Vince Vaughn in that scene.

Obama could learn the value of "doubling down" in Afghanistan.

Doubling down (i.e. approving McChrystal's request for 40k troops) isn't just about about a properly resourced COIN strategy anymore. Increasingly, Obama decision is about signaling to our allies in the region that we're serious about staying.

Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban—even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama's public agonizing. Meanwhile, fundamentalist elements of the Pakistani military, opposed to the recent crackdown against local Taliban, are also taking heart from developments in Washington. This is how coups and revolutions get started, by the middle ranks sensing weakness in foreign support for their superiors.

Obama's wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India's geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with bush, Obama's dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington's indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan. So, too, other allies far and wide—from the Middle East to East Asia, and Israel to Japan—will start to make decisions based on their understanding that Washington under Obama may not have their backs in a crisis. Again, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama only plays to such fears.

And Obama has already signaled to other American allies that they may be on their own when the wolf - or bear- comes howling at the door. 

I Don't Have to Write About Obama's Nobel Prize...

Because I can't say it better than Tom Friedman already did:

All that said, I hope Mr. Obama will take this instinct a step further when he travels to Oslo on Dec. 10 for the peace prize ceremony. Here is the speech I hope he will give:

“Let me begin by thanking the Nobel committee for awarding me this prize, the highest award to which any statesman can aspire. As I said on the day it was announced, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.’ Therefore, upon reflection, I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all.

“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, to liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi fascism. I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers and sailors who fought on the high seas and forlorn islands in the Pacific to free East Asia from Japanese tyranny in the Second World War.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American airmen who in June 1948 broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin with an airlift of food and fuel so that West Berliners could continue to live free. I will accept this award on behalf of the tens of thousands of American soldiers who protected Europe from Communist dictatorship throughout the 50 years of the cold war.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American men and women who are still on patrol today in Iraq, helping to protect Baghdad’s fledgling government as it tries to organize the rarest of things in that country and that region — another free and fair election.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the thousands of American soldiers who today help protect a free and Democratic South Korea from an unfree and Communist North Korea.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the American men and women soldiers who have gone on repeated humanitarian rescue missions after earthquakes and floods from the mountains of Pakistan to the coasts of Indonesia. I will accept this award on behalf of American soldiers who serve in the peacekeeping force in the Sinai desert that has kept relations between Egypt and Israel stable ever since the Camp David treaty was signed.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the American airmen and sailors today who keep the sea lanes open and free in the Pacific and Atlantic so world trade can flow unhindered between nations.

“Finally, I will accept this award on behalf of my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived at Normandy six weeks after D-Day, and on behalf of my great-uncle, Charlie Payne, who was among those soldiers who liberated part of the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald.

“Members of the Nobel committee, I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know — and I want you to know — that there is no peace without peacekeepers.

I agree. And I'd like to add that I hope Obama understands that in order to make peace he will have fight his own party in order to shrink the Gap and grow the Core.

Obama Wants to Get Pakistan Right; Congressional Democrats Don't Care If American Soldiers Die

Tip of my hat to President Obama on Pakistan.


On one hand, he wants to get tougher WRT the allocation of American aid (he wants to see it isn't used to build a big war force to fight India).


On the other hand, the president wants to offer a quid pro quo with greater economic connectivity to the U.S. in form of special economic zones within both Pakistan and Afghanistan.


This is an extremely good idea that will save lives, create jobs and grow the Core.


Unfortunately, the Democrats care more about appeasing their union overlords then they do about American grand strategy:

A bill sought by Obama to boost trade by establishing special economic zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan has stalled in the U.S. Senate, partly over concerns about labor standards as well as worries within the U.S. textile industry.

I am forced to conclude that Democrats in the senate do not care about winning in Afghanistan. If they cared about winning they would care about shrinking the Gap and growing the Core. They do not. And since they don't want to win but also don't have the balls to cut off all funding for the war and order the troops home, I am left with the only remaining logical conclusion: senate Democrats do not care about American soldiers.

If senate Democrats cared about American soldiers they would either give them the resources they need to win the war or bring them home.

Americans of all political inclinations should support Obama's plan to use a carrot and stick to bring Pakistan into the Core. This plan shows real grand strategic thinking from the Obama administration and will make America safer and wealthier.

Americans of all political inclinations should oppose the senate Democrats who will throw the U.S. military and the Pakistani people under the bus at the behest of their Big Labor masters who seek to create a worldwide Soviet Comintern.

I hope the check from the AFL-CIO was worth it you bozos.

The Worst of Both Worlds: Planning to Fail in Afghanistan

The NYT is reporting that president Obama is looking for a "middle way" on the debate over Afghanistan.

Oy vey.

The middle way will fail.

Obama's natural instinct as a consensus builder is failing him here. I've made it clear that I support going long and big with enough troops to control the population, but I think a compromise (not enough troops to defend the population, enough troops to make easy targets) is the worst of all possible outcomes. If you don't want to commit to winning don't stick around; send in the Terminators and be done with it. Yes, that would be an incredibly stupid move from a grand strategic point of view. It would be incredibly ineffective - it would be the Powell doctrine on crystal-meth - it would cost lives in Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, India and Russia and it would have nothing to do with building a future worth creating. But continuing with the status quo is also extremely counter-productive and will cost American lives and prestige.

We need enough troops to build trust on the ground or our endeavor will fail. But if we are going to fail anyway we might as well minimize American casualties.

There is only one reason to stay in Afghanistan: to put Afghanistan on the glide path towards becoming a functioning member of the SCO. This is essential to our national security because expanding the Core and shrinking the Gap is imperative to our national security. We have to regionalize this conflict by making partners of China and India. And American troops have a key role to play in both protecting the population and training Afghan security forces in the mean time. And both of those jobs are manpower intensive. 

I hope the president realizes this.

The Song Remains the Same: Obama vs. the Pentagon

This reminds me a lot of what we saw in the 1990s WRT Clinton and the military. Whether it was DADT or Bosnia, mistrust and second guessing (in both directions) clouded the relationship and occasionally harmed American foreign policy, like the time Colin Powell wrote a letter to the editor in the NYT predicting that a military operation designed to stop 100,000 Bosnian Muslims from being raped, tens of thousands from being murdered and hundreds of thousands from being locked in death camps would certinally turn into a quaqmire from which there would be no escape.*

*We subsequently won the war in 2 weeks. It was the closest Powell ever came to being right.


So now it begins again. Last week somebody had the temerity to ask General McChrystal his thoughts on the probability that various strategies being bandied about may succeed or fail. And he had the audacity to answer honestly and objectively, based on nothing more than his 20+ years of professional experience and the most up-to-date orders he has received from his commander and chief.

The Obama/McChrystal plan is classic counterinsurgency and focuses on protecting the Afghan population while strengthening Afghan security forces and government. McChrystal was asked about a "counterterrorism" strategy that would purportedly contain al-Qaeda with much lower numbers of American troops, casualties and other costs. McChrystal did not try to force the president's hand on whether to increase the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan. The general critiqued an option that is at direct odds with Obama's policy and conflicts with the experiences of the U.S. military this decade. That is not fundamentally out of line for a commander.

It important to remember in this debate that Obama has not made any official decision on a new strategy for Afghanistan. As far as anybody knows, Obama still plans to fight "the good war" and beat the Taliban.

But that hasn't stopped the cadre of armchair commandos from trying to muzzle the opinion of the professional.

McChrystal's view -- that a strategy employing fewer resources, in pursuit of more limited goals, would be "short-sighted" -- is something the White House needs to hear. He is, after all, the man Obama put in charge in Afghanistan, and it would be absurd not to take his analysis of the situation into account. But McChrystal is out of line in trying to sell his position publicly, as he did last week in a speech in London

I don't think McChrystal was trying to "sell" his idea so much as he was trying to give an honest answer to an honest question. For what its worth, his answer was almost identical to the answers I heard from a room full of experts- civilian, military, and retired military - only a few days before.

 It's clear that one thing that is happening here is that Obama, once again, is asking a question publicly without knowing the answer ahead of time. McChrystal wasn't sitting in his HQ in Afghanistan inventing cold fusion or something; his formula for troop increases was based on a careful study of both a history of COIN, stretching back to Indian fighting on the frontier, and the current reality on the ground and the nature of the Pashtun insurgents and AQ. The bottom line: Obama should have had a pretty good idea about what McChrystal was going to recommend before he even asked for the recommendation, and if he knew he wasn't going to want to increase troops he should have said so upfront. If he knew he was going to outsource his grand strategy to Biden, he should have said so as well.

It's also clear and unfortunate that this debate reflects residual antipathy that arose between the military and American liberals/Leftists during the Vietnam war. The animosity between  those in uniform and their civilian commanders created a "stabbed in the back" myth that took hold within the officer corps in the shadow of Vietnam and led the military to completely forsake its COIN capability in favor of the Powell doctrine so as to avoid ever being betrayed by the politicians again.

I just hope Obama realizes that his actions in the next few months will continue to affect policy long after he has been impeached for losing the war left office.

 

Obama 2012: Some really early thoughts....

LFP = Light Foot Print, meaning drones, CIA paramilitary operators and SOCOM

The above chart represents my guess, as of right now, about how the different scenarios will play out for both Obama's choice on Afghanistan and the economy.  I've come up with three scenarios (good, bad and ugly) for each and handicapped Obama's reelection chances if each scenario comes to pass.

On the economy:

Three words: jobs jobs jobs.

As you can see, my ugly scenario involves us heading into approximately January/February 2012 with unemployment =/>10%. Under this scenario, Obama might as well step aside and give Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb a shot at the presidency, because he will be unable to even campaign. Also, he'll be able to do whatever he wants in Afghanistan and it and won't matter, because with an economy in that condition no one will be paying attention to Afghanistan. I find this scenario the least likely of the three.

My bad scenario has unemployment hovering somewhere between 6 and 10% basically for all of Obama's first term. My gut tells me we stay on the high side of that range, maybe an average of around 8.5% for Obama's whole first term. But the absolute unemployment rate probably matters less than the trend line in early 2012, and if the president can catch a couple of lucky breaks he could make the "morning in America" argument if unemployment is dropping from 8.5 or 9% in 2011 down to 7 or 8% in 2012. Indeed, after four years of suffering such a rapid drop will wind up looking very refreshing to most Americans.

In the bad (and most likely) scenario, the economy is just bad enough to make the race against (insert not-Palin here) competitive but just good enough to make reelection possible. In this scenario Afghanistan could matter a great deal if it is handled wrong. First, if Obama goes with my bad Afghan scenario and either completely withdraws or leaves behind just Spec Ops guys and killer robots, maybe, just maybe, the American people will be so sick of war and so happy with the relative economic gains that they will be willing to overlook the Republicans attack on Obama's "surrender"* to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

What will not fly under any circumstances is the status quo "ugly" scenario that basically kicks the can down the road on the COIN vs. outsource-it-to-killer-robot decision and allows enough troops to stay in the country to provide decent targets to the Taliban but not enough to really protect the population. This is the situation we are in now and it is untenable, even if some bloggers think we have the option of waiting.  My sources say we have to shift from "don't worry we're leaving" to "don't worry we're staying" or we will never build the kind of relationships we need to fight the Taliban.

Finally, I have an across the board "good scenario" in which unemployment drops back down the 2005-06 or mid to late 1990s levels. Under this scenario, Obama could win pretty handily even if he leaves Afghanistan to the Terminators and the Taliban and he will be almost unbeatable if he orders a successful "surge" style COIN strategy that stands up local militias to fight the Taliban all over the country.

I've made it clear that I believe Obama should support General McChrystal's recommendation and order a full on COIN strategy (based on what I heard at the COIN conference we need ~30 battalions - 30k troops) that both protects the population and begins embedding American forces with their Afghan counter-parts. But I'll admit there are plenty of risks, not the least of which is that the Afghan government could continue to be plagued with corruption and allegations of election fraud which would make it very difficult to counter the Taliban's argument that Karzi's regime is the corrupt tool of the imperialist west. It's also possible that Pakistan could continue to hedge between the U.S. and a Pashtun (read: Taliban) government in Afghanistan which would allow the ISI to continue to build their "farm team" for the coming war with India in Kashmir. Both AQ and the Taliban would love to see another Mumbai-style (or better yet 9/11) attack inside India that will be linked back to the ISI and force America to choose between the two south Asian states.

At home, the war appears to be loosing support but I say ignore the polls for the time being. The Republicans are basically in favor of increasing the troops in Afghanistan and that means that both Obama and whoever his opponent will be in 2012 will own this war (to see how this plays out in a national elections Google, Kerry, John: Voted for it before I voted against it). So unless Obama is worried that Cindy Sheehan and Micheal Moore are going to run against him, I don't think the negative polling on Afghanistan will have any real negative consequences if he decides to go with the high end of McChrystal's recommendation. In fact, Obama should be hoping for such a confrontation, because a public slap-down on Micheal Moore would probably boost Obama's approval among moderates and independents.   

In conclusion, I believe Obama has one path on the economy and two paths on Afghanistan if he is going to seek reelection in 2012. On the economy, the most important factor will be putting America back to work, but he can win without achieving "full employment" so long as the the unemployment numbers are trending down by 2012. In Afghanistan, Obama can go big and long or go home, but the status quo both in terms of troop strength and strategy is unacceptable and will cost Obama the presidency in 2012 no matter what happens to the economy.

*This depends on who he runs against. I'll deal with this in another post.

Steve Coll is missing the forrest for the trees...

I like Steve Coll. His book Ghost Wars:The Secrete History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, is probably the best single volume on both Afghanistan and American foreign policy. But he is missing a number of a salient points in his recent blog post comparing the U.S. COIN strategy in Afghanistan to the Soviet COIN strategy:

Then, during the late nineteen-eighties, faced with a dilemma similar to that facing the United States, the Soviets tried to “Afghan-ize” their occupation, much as the U.S. proposes to do now. The built up Afghan forces, put them in the lead in combat, supplied them with sophisticated weapons, and, ultimately, decided to withdraw. This strategy actually worked reasonably well for a while, although the government only controlled the major cities, never the countryside. But the factional and tribal splits within the Army persisted, defections were chronic, and a civil war among the insurgents also played out within the Army, ensuring that when the Soviet Union fell apart, and supplies halted, the Army too would crack up and dissolve en masse. (I happened to be in Kabul when this happened, in 1992. On a single day, thousands and thousands of soldiers and policemen took off their uniforms, put on civilian clothes, and went home.)

Finally, during the mid-nineteen-nineties, a fragmented and internally feuding Kabul government, in which Karzai was a participant for a time, tried to build up national forces to hold off the Taliban, but splits within the Kabul coalitions caused important militias and sections of the security forces to defect to the Taliban. The Taliban took Kabul in 1996 as much by exploiting Kabul’s political disarray as by military conquest. The history of the Afghan Army since 1970 is one in which the Army has never actually been defeated in the field, but has literally dissolved for lack of political glue on several occasions.

The first point he misses in this post, but does deal with in a post he made a few days later, is that the U.S. was actively working against the Afghan (or Soviet puppet, depending on your point of view) government right up through the early 1990s. The weapons and training given by both the U.S. and Pakistan intelligence services went a long way in bringing down the Afghan government.

Ironically, another point he makes in the second post is that the American effort to stabilize Afghanistan, after we decided to stop funding the insurgency, was only an, at best, half hearted effort (I think Bush 41 was a dud; complete lack of strategic imagination on a number of issues; handled the Soviet collapse well).

With all of this in mind it stands to reason that we are in a much better position then the Soviets were for the following reasons:

#1. There is no super power supporting the Taliban today. In fact, both India and China seem to be playing a constructive role. And of the U.S. is committed (for now..)

#2. The Pakistanis have a very different view of Taliban than they did of the Mujahadeen.

To expound a bit on point #1, the world has really changed since the 1980s. Back then India was a basket case, China was a less developed country, the Soviets were still the Big Bad and the U.S. wanted a good relationship with Pakistan to hedge against an Indian/Soviet alliance and as a nice place to spy on China and Russia. By the mid 90s we decided we cared about Pakistan's bomb and slapped them with a nonsensical sancations regime that would last until the 2001 and we decided we didn't care at all about Afghanistan.

Today its all changed. China is a growing economic power that needs two things, resources and regional stability, and a stable Afghanistan may just help them achieve both. India is economically joined-at the hip to both China and the United States and we aren't going anywhere when it comes to South and Central Asia because of our relationships with those two countries.

Pakistan, which has oscillated back and forth on being a basket case, is a less sure ally today then they were in our proxy war against the Soviets but they are clearly scared to death of the Taliban, and, unlike during the 1990s, we've completely forsaken the notion that Pakistan is somehow sovereign and we run raids into the Swat valley with alacrity.

In conclusion, we are not rerunning the Soviet mistakes on Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was opposed by the whole world; the U.S. invasion is currently supported by 41 countries. The Soviet army wasn't much better than the Afghan army; with tales of widspread desertion and drug use among Soviet conscripts its a wonder they were able to hold out as long as they did. The U.S., on the other hand, has a large and extremely well trained volunteer force that has a great deal of experience dealing with COIN missions in the last few years.

How this guy got to be a professor of anything is beyond me....

This video clip describes how I feel reading the latest tripe from Bacevich.  And you know, there is never a sock full of horse manure around when you need one.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to a global counterinsurgency campaign. Instead of fighting an endless hot war in a vain effort to eliminate the jihadist threat, the United States should wage a cold war to keep the threat at bay. Such a strategy worked before. It can work again.

Where oh where do I begin?

#1. Endless global counterinsurgency? Bullshit. The COIN campaign is hardly global; its focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan - and only certain regions of Pakistan. How he gets "global" from that I don't know. If he's referring to Iraq then maybe he didn't notice a salient fact about Iraq: we won.

#2. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger "what's the number for the Islamic world"? I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of America to Muslims around the world. Please know that many non-Muslims in the U.S. are non-the-less informed about Islam and we understand that the very idea of an "Islamic world" is offensive and that there is at least as much diversity of opinion about the nature of the relationship between God and man within Islam as there is within Christianity. Sorry.

#3. The high tech American way of war is discredited? If by discredited you mean so successful that the U.S. took down Iraq in 3 weeks and has achieved such a lead in kinetic capability that there is no one in the world even building a force to compete with us, then yes, discredited is a good word. Seriously, when was the last time anybody had the guts to send a fighter against an F-15? When was the last time anybody had the guts to challenge our sea power? We are fucking these dudes up with killer robots. Got it? We don't even have to waste the time to send a human anymore, we'll send a Terminator to get you. And that's what this guy calls discredited? The only problem with our military capability has been that we have won wars way too fast for our military civil-affairs and civilian aid agencies to catch up. But that capability is improving.

#4. What role did "containment" play in the Cold War, anyway? I would say exploiting fissures within the "communist world" was at least as effective, and maybe more effective, than "containment".

#5. Decapitating strikes. Right. We did that in the 1990s and now there's a big hole in the New York skyline. My single biggest beef with this strategy is this: what did we lack in our strikes against AQ leadership in the 1990s? Actionable intelligence. What did we lack against Iraq in 2003? Actionable intelligence. How do you get intelligence? You have to build relationships on the ground. The Taliban, which hides AQ, is a primarily Pashtun insurgency that hides among a Pashtun population. To find the Taliban we have to engage with the Pashtun people, and the only way they are going to trust us enough to talk is if they know we can protect them from the Taliban.

#6. Perfect our society for competition? Will somebody get this guy a copy of The World is Flat? This guy was in the army for how long and he never noticed they have T.V. in other countries? People in the Gap WANT the connectivity - the Takffaris want to sever the connection. Besides, there is NO poverty in America when compared with the poverty in Afghanistan.

The really scary thing about this article is that there are kids at Boston University whose only exposer to IR or American foreign policy is going to be the class they take from him. I feel bad for those kids.

Blogwriter for Iphone sucks: Or: My experience at the COIN conference

COIN CONFERENCE

I tried to update this blog during the COIN conference, but unfortunately, Blogwriter for Iphone sucks. I was unable to update effectively from the Counter-Insurgency Leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan Conference this past Wednesday.

Still, I have to say the conference was both great and more than a bit worrying.

The event was well organized and featured a list of experts that included Eliot Cohen, Tom Ricks, Bing West, Bob Kaplan and General Patraeus. I was impressed with all of the presentation and found the level of candor, especially from the active duty marines who were both presenting and asking questions in the audience, to be impressive. Everyone was completely upfront about the Herculean task the U.S. is involved in Afghanistan and the tremendous costs that will be associated with victory. The conference was hosted by the Marine Corp University, and the very existence of a conference like this demonstrates the Corps' commitment to being a learning organization.

The problem is that, as much as the conference demonstrated the Marine Corps as a learning organization, it also revealed the civilian bureaucracy and elected officials may not be.

The first bit of truly bad news came from Bing West, author of the outstanding The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq, who had recently returned from Afghanistan. West showed pictures and short video outlining one of the major problems with operation in Afghanistan as they are currently undertaken: the coalition is not finishing any fire fights. The average engagement is taking place at ranges in the 400-600 meter range (side note: I can speak from personal experience as a civilian target shooter that this has to be pushing the 5.56mm round to its absolute effective limits) and the enemy is calling all the shots; they are deciding when to make and break contact and they are able to move a lot faster than the their American or Afghan Army counterparts. And every single soldier and marine, active or retired (about 12 or so throughout the course of the day) made the same statement about COIN - the first rule is to win the firefight. We are not winning the firefights in Afghanistan. The only way to win is to call on indirect artillery or air support, and General McChrystal has recently asked coalition forces to limit their use of air strikes to reduce collateral damage. This has puts the coalition in a position where the enemy is in control and West reinforced this point by putting up a picture of the mountains of Afghanistan and stating that every convey, whether U.S. military or Afghan government, is being watched from the mountains. I was reminded of the line from the Billy Joel song "Good Night Saigon": "We ruled the coastline, and they held the highlands."

Another issue which came up repeatedly was the need, in a COIN operation, to build trust between the U.S. and local forces. Several senior officers, active and retired, offered examples of the way in which these relationships had been crucial in aligning the coalition of forces that made the Surge in the Iraq so successful. The problem is that this sort of relationship building is not going well in Afghanistan. General Barno (Ret) reported that he is constantly asked by his counterparts both in Afghanistan and Pakistan whether or not the U.S. is going to abandon them, again (the first time being after the Soviets left). He said that we need to change our mindset from, "don't worry, we're leaving," to "don't worry, we're staying." This forces everyone who does business with us to hedge their bets, which is why the Pakistanis are reluctant to come down too hard on their own Pashtun insurgency, because they see it as their back bench to use in a future conflict with India in Kashmir. And with the U.S. bound to pull out (in their estimation) the Pakistanis figure we will be backing India in any future conflict between the two countries - it's a good bet by the way - and we should be arguing with Pakistan that if they became more like India - more economically connected to us - they would be in a better strategic position, but I digress.

That point of mistrust, not just between the Afghan and Pakistani forces and American government but also between the military brass and the civilian leadership here at home was palpable throughout the conference. One speaker after another made it clear that the civilians in D.C. simply do not understand what sort of promise is being made when they say they are willing to fight a nation-wide counter insurgency. One marine officer suggested that 30 more battalions (~30k+ troops) will be needed. And just about every speaker mentioned that the relationship between the U.S. and Afghani governments must be reexamined, that we must use the leverage we have over the Afghan government to gain the power to fire bad leaders in the, not just the Afghan government, but also the military. Also, the U.S. must be willing to embed American forces with Afghani forces and as it is not only does that not happen, but Bing West reports that he's seen units that were partnered with Afghan units pulled when the region gets too hot. A corollary to that point is that American units are currently sequestered on large bases (in the interest of "force protection") sometimes as far as 90 miles from the villages they are tasked with patrolling. This is a violation of one of the first principals General Patraeus articulated when he got to Iraq: don't commute to work. Counter insurgency cannot be conducted on a part-time basis, but currently the average area of Afghanistan that's patrolled at all is patrolled for just 30 minutes a day. This makes it impossible to control the population and difficult to learn any actionable intelligence, to say nothing of the added danger of being on the road (and therefore exposed to roadside bombs and ambushes) for more hours each day. Several officers made the point that the U.S. must shut down the big bases and send the troops out to live among the population.

In Washington today the concept of "offshore balancing" or counter-terrorism are all the rage, the suggestion being that the U.S. could get the job done in Afghanistan with just special forces and predator drones. Alternately, some suggest we should just focus on Pakistan, where the real "danger" exists because its an unstable country with nuclear weapons. All of these notions were kicked around at the conference and the consensus was not optimistic about either one. The Taliban is a Pashtun insurgency, and so only by engaging the Pashtun population can the insurgency be defeated. And the same Pushtun insurgency that fuels the Taliban fuels the Pakistani Pashtun insurgency, so the notion that Afghanistan or Pakistan is an either/or proposition is ludicrous.

The U.S. may not have any "good" options in Afghanistan right now, but perhaps the least bad option is to do with Afghanistan what President Bush did in Iraq in 2006; trust the generals and double down on a full scale COIN campaign. President Obama needs to understand that whatever short term political gains may be had by withdrawing or drastically drawing down troops would quickly be overshadowed by the instability in the region and by the incredible publicity win it would represent for Osama Bin Laden. And believe me, if he draws down, Obama will be the man who surrendered to Bin Laden in 2012 against Mitt Romney whether that's a fair assessment or not.

And not for nothing, but victory is possible in Afghanistan. As Eliot Cohen pointed out: there is a danger is hubris but their is also a danger in cliche's. It is entirely possible that the people who lived in Afghanistan 100 years ago are very different from the people that lived there today, and its important to remember that millions of Afghan civilians do want (and have) their daughters in school. One of the speakers at the COIN conference was the director of Radio Free Afghanistan, the most popular radio station in the country, who reported on receiving thousands of letters from Afghan civilians thanking RFA for being on the air and providing the Afghans with an object source of news as well as entertainment.

The good news is that the U.S. Marine Corps, and the military as a whole (though to lesser extent) is a learning organization. The skills sets and experience which are needed to beat the Taliban exist in our military at a level that would have been unheard of in 2003. From "strategic corporals" right through the chairman of CETCOM, everyone involved understands what is needed to win and the only question that remains is whether or the civilian leadership will be willing to give them the tools they need. For democrats in the House and Senate the temptation to quit will be very strong, but remember, a pull out virtually guarantees that Obama will be a one-term president. I promise the American people will not forgive a anyone who surrenders to the Taliban, whether that person serves in the House, the Senate or the White House.  The American people will, however, forgive a long and difficult slog (see: President Bush's reelection in 2004) provided we have a leader who is willing to stand before them and explain in no uncertain terms why this is a battle worth fighting. President Obama should plan such a speach, before both the American people and a joint-session of congress, as soon as possible. Because, at the end of the day, leadership in counter insurgency must come from the top.

Polemics != Science

Once upon a time, Paul Krugman was serious economist. He did serious research in the area of international trade and eventually won a Noble Prize.

But those days are long past. Paul Krugman has abandoned his roots as a serious social scientist and has devolved into the intellectual equivalent of Rush Limbaugh.

Social Scientists attempt to use basic scientific principals to gain greater understanding of human behavior, be it in the psychological, social, economic or political spheres. A social scientist strives to make testable, positive observations about the phenomena he is studying. For example, in his 2007 book The Conciseness of a Liberal Krugman makes positive claims about the impact of Republican economic policy on the wages of the average worker - specifically, he claims that the so called "Treaty of Detroit" between the UAW and auto manufacturers led to a steady growth in wages of the average worker.

Now, as it happens, Krugman is probably wrong about his claim.

However, social science is a process that is not always only about being "right" or "wrong" - everyone makes mistakes in their conclusions occasionally, but what is important is that the claims must be positive and testable.

Krugman has moved way beyond the bounds of science. Today he makes wild claims about whatever he saw on CNN the night before.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

The problem with trying to link the work of one crazy person with some sort of supposed "movement" afoot is that crazy people do crazy things whenever they feel like it. Because if a Democrat in the White House "caused" a "crazy right winger" - whatever that mean - to go crazy then how would that explain the murder or a Jewish radio host named Alan Berg during the Reagan administration?

Furthermore, how would that explain a shooting at the White House during the Bush administration?

Beyond the acts of lone gunman, all this recent focus on "Right Wing Terrorism" is nonsense anyway. While acts of "Right Wing Terrorism" seem to spark all sorts of comments from the likes of Paul Krugman there is little concern about the ongoing resource based insurgency going on within our inner cities.

I wrote about one such insurgency in my chapter in the upcoming 5th Generation Warfare Handbook, and occasionally the media reports on it in bits and pieces, but rarely do we get the full story.

Anyone who was truly concerned about "domestic terrorism" and actually knew anything would ignore both the words of idiots like Glen Beck and actions of crazy lone gunman and would instead focus on the need for a concerted grand strategy for Urban COIN in America.