Exum: Take your sweet time, Obama

kansaswhig · 10-28-09, 10:34 AM

For those of you unfamiliar with Andrew Exum, he's works for CNAS (think tank) and helped draft Gen. McChrystal's report to the President that was recently released. He's a counterinsurgency expert and former Army officer with combat tours in Iraq and AFG with the 10th Mountain Divison and the elite Ranger Regiment. He also wrote the book "This Man's Army" a few years ago. He is the creator of the very prominent COIN blog Abu Muquwama.

Exum penned this for the Daily Beast today:

Take Your Sweet Time, Obama

Excerpt:

Quote:

First, any strategic planning process starts with a series of assumptions. If any of those assumptions prove false, the plan has to be revisited. A combination of the disastrous Afghan presidential elections and the bleak assessment of the war effort delivered by Gen. Stanley McChrystal have perhaps convinced President Obama and his advisers that some of the assumptions they used to conclude in March that a counterinsurgency strategy represented the best path forward were no longer valid or perhaps never were. (In the interests of full disclosure, I served on the team that researched and helped to craft Gen. McChrystal’s report. My comments here do not reflect the opinions of either Gen. McChrystal or his command.)

Second, while working in Afghanistan this summer, we quickly arrived at the conclusion that the weakness or predatory behavior of the Afghan government represented as great a threat to mission success in Afghanistan as do any of the country’s insurgent groups. The Obama adminstration has, I believe, some leverage at the moment, which it could use to affect the composition and behavior of the next Afghan government. As long as Afghanistan’s ruling politicians—Hamid Karzai especially—think the United States might reduce its commitment to Afghanistan, they could be willing to accede to U.S. demands on key ministerial and provincial-level appointments. Just as an Afghan government consisting mainly of those politicians thrown out by the Taliban in 1996 would spell continued insurgency and mission failure, a more inclusive and competent Afghan government would enable the success of a counterinsurgency strategy.

In Afghanistan—as in Iraq and Vietnam—U.S. military officers and diplomats have dealt with host-nation governments whose composition and behavior has often been at odds with U.S. objectives and interests. So while countless memoranda and manuals exist instructing U.S. servicemen on how to wage counterinsurgency campaigns at the operational and tactical levels, there is currently little guidance for how U.S. policymakers should use leverage over its Afghan partners. The Obama administration, if it's clever, will try to figure out the best way to use its leverage over Karzai and other Afghan politicians. And in that effort, they deserve time to succeed.

Korimyr the Rat · 10-28-09, 10:44 AM

Doubt that we will use that leverage to our advantage. That would violate the supposed principles of self-sovereignty and democracy that our actions in Afghanistan are intended to uphold. Such an effort would fail at home because it would be undermined by well-meaning idiots who simply do not understand how the world, especially the political world, works.

Rather like what happened in Vietnam.

10-28-09, 10:44 AM	#2
Korimyr the Rat Despotism for Dummies Mod Team Member Join Date: Feb 2006 Last Seen: Yesterday 08:31 PM Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming Posts: 6,207 Thanks: 2,025 Thanked 3,886 Times in 1,922 Posts Gender: Total Awards: 1	Re: Exum: Take your sweet time, Obama Doubt that we will use that leverage to our advantage. That would violate the supposed principles of self-sovereignty and democracy that our actions in Afghanistan are intended to uphold. Such an effort would fail at home because it would be undermined by well-meaning idiots who simply do not understand how the world, especially the political world, works. Rather like what happened in Vietnam.
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