What should we do in Afghanistan?

Keeping in mind the consequences of pulling out, yet having to deal with a corrupt government in Kabul if we stay, plus the ever present sanctuary in Pakistan, what should we do?

Get out and focus on defense here, not offense there.

I wish "change strategy" was an option...

kansaswhig said:

I wish "change strategy" was an option...

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What would you change it to? Aren't we doing COIN now?

I am afraid that there are no good options when it comes to Afghanistan, only options that are less bad. With the problems with the government there, and the cost of operations, being there is not a good thing for us. However, leaving would have a huge cost in both the message sent and in losing influence in that region, and in the dangers of leaving the Taliban unchecked. No matter what we do, we are going to end up regretting it I fear.

I, nor probably any one else here, has enough information to make a truly informed decision, but if I had to make one now with what I do know, I would go with the pull troops out of the country and do strikes with the Air Force and Navy as desired option. If there are no good options, go with the one with fewest US deaths I guess.

Whatever you do its another Vietnam.

reefedjib said:

What would you change it to? Aren't we doing COIN now?

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We are doing COIN now, or at least some version of it since we don't have enough troops. The problem is that we don't have the troops to adequately conduct COIN operations in an appropriate manner. We are half-assing it now, and with an additional five brigades, we would still be half-assing it.

Gotta switch to C-T, it's really the only option at this point.

I think we should increase troop levels with a major caveat. We should set up an intensive program to teach the Arabic. Maybe increase by 30k, but send 10k of them to a language camp for the first 6 months, then rotate them in and rotate another 10k troops out of the conflict into the language camp, and continue on with that until we have a large portion of the troops over there speaking the language. Also, I wouldn't give them any more troops until they come up with a clear plan for how we are going to get the country rebuilt asap. I'd do the same thing with Iraq. I'd rather spend twice as much to support actually rebuilding the infrastructure and get out in half the time than stick around militarily waiting for those buildings to rebuild themselves.

teamosil said:

I think we should increase troop levels with a major caveat. We should set up an intensive program to teach the Arabic.

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Afghans don't speak arabic...

Maybe increase by 30k, but send 10k of them to a language camp for the first 6 months,

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Great...where are these 10K troops going to learn all the languages required in AFG? Your plan is waaaaayyyyy to simplistic and idealistic. AFG is also regional, so they would have to know where they are going first to know what language to learn (Pashtun, Dari, etc)

then rotate them in and rotate another 10k troops out of the conflict into the language camp, and continue on with that until we have a large portion of the troops over there speaking the language.

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Not everyone can learn a second language. Especially on a constrained timeline. The army tests for this aptitude. There are folks who can't do it. Even for Soldiers who are vetted and sent to DLI, some still fail.

I'd do the same thing with Iraq.

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Little late for that...

kansaswhig said:

Afghans don't speak arabic...

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Oh, lol. You're right. I'd have them learn either Pashtun or Dari depending on where they would be deployed.

kansaswhig said:

Great...where are these 10K troops going to learn all the languages required in AFG? Your plan is waaaaayyyyy to simplistic and idealistic. AFG is also regional, so they would have to know where they are going first to know what language to learn (Pashtun, Dari, etc)

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Where would they learn it? What do you mean? They could be trained anywhere, no? Military bases, green zone, wherever.

kansaswhig said:

Not everyone can learn a second language. Especially on a constrained timeline. The army tests for this aptitude. There are folks who can't do it.

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That's balony. Many universities have language learning requirements to graduate and students take like 3 hours of classes a week for 2-4 of their years in college to pass them. 40 hours a week or more for 6 months would be loads of time.

kansaswhig said:

Little late for that...

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For which part? Rebuilding or language? Why is it too late?

I see "define the concept of victory in Afghanistan" isn't one of the options.

Nor is "do what is needed to secure victory, if the Messiah can ever get his incompetent ass around the effort of defining victory in the first place" an option.

teamosil said:

Oh, lol. You're right. I'd have them learn either Pashtun or Dari depending on where they would be deployed.

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We have an MOS for linguists. While I agree that it would be really helpful for Platoon and Squad Leaders to speak the local language, there simply isn't enough time for all the training involved.

Where would they learn it? What do you mean? They could be trained anywhere, no? Military bases, green zone, wherever.

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You would deploy Soldiers to the Green Zone to learn Arabic? Seriously?

In Garrison, we don't have the time to do this. Period. To be proficient speakers, the Soldiers would need to go to DLI. Now, with that being said, I did organize an Arabic speaking class for selected member of my battalion at my last duty station. The students were taught common Arabic (Iraqi dialect) phrases for likely tactical situations; Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1530-1700 and that was pushing it. They had other obligations, like knowing their jobs.

That's balony. Many universities have language learning requirements to graduate and students take like 3 hours of classes a week for 2-4 of their years in college to pass them. 40 hours a week or more for 6 months would be loads of time.

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Horrible analogy. We aren't college students with nothing to do all day. We have to train. Soldiers can't "take off" for 6 months learning a foreign language...where the hell are all these language instructors going to come from?

For which part? Rebuilding or language? Why is it too late?

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We have essentially done all we can do for Iraq, outside of helping them build a real military, unlike what they have now. Arabic would be helpful for that, but we should have thought of that years ago.

kansaswhig said:

We are doing COIN now, or at least some version of it since we don't have enough troops. The problem is that we don't have the troops to adequately conduct COIN operations in an appropriate manner. We are half-assing it now, and with an additional five brigades, we would still be half-assing it.

Gotta switch to C-T, it's really the only option at this point.

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Yeah, I understand that with 5 extra BCT we would still be half-assing it.

C-T = counterterrorism, right? Do you have any links that would explain it well? I am not familiar with it.

teamosil said:

For which part? Rebuilding or language? Why is it too late?

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We've already won in Iraq and that country's problems are being shifted to the national leaders.

reefedjib said:

Yeah, I understand that with 5 extra BCT we would still be half-assing it.

C-T = counterterrorism, right? Do you have any links that would explain it well? I am not familiar with it.

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Hey I'll do some research for you on it and get back to you with some good sources.

Primarily, C-T would entail intelligence-based targeting of Taliban and AQ leadership; with SOF, drones, etc. We are already doing this, to an extent.

It's different from COIN because we don't occupy the villages and cities. I'm not even opposed to occupying the major population centers, but we simply don't have the manpower to put a platoon in every village. We can't do it.

We could also have advisors to the ANA and ANP, which I am not opposed to either. Advisors serve a good purpose and report SECFOR progress (or lack of) to HHQ. Pertinent data they use when assessing HNF units for possible mission changes. Leaving the Advisors out with HNF is risky, but valuable.

CT is just the more plausible option at this point. We will fail if we try to implement full-on COIN.

kansaswhig said:

In Garrison, we don't have the time to do this. Period. To be proficient speakers, the Soldiers would need to go to DLI. Now, with that being said, I did organize an Arabic speaking class for selected member of my battalion at my last duty station. The students were taught common Arabic (Iraqi dialect) phrases for likely tactical situations; Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1530-1700 and that was pushing it. They had other obligations, like knowing their jobs.

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All the logistics for how they would find instructors, where the classes would be held, timing, etc, I'm sure could be worked out. I'm talking about increasing troop levels by 30k and doubling the budget to support language teaching and reconstruction. No need to figure out how it would fit into the existing budget or troop readiness time constraints.

kansaswhig said:

We have essentially done all we can do for Iraq, outside of helping them build a real military, unlike what they have now. Arabic would be helpful for that, but we should have thought of that years ago.

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Scarecrow Akhbar said:

We've already won in Iraq and that country's problems are being shifted to the national leaders.

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In terms of eliminating the old regimes we've maybe done all we can, but both countries are basically destroyed at the moment. If we leave them worse off than we found them, what the hell was the point of this whole thing?

IMO we can't leave with a clean conscience until the countries are not only stable militarily, but functional again. Until people have jobs, the schools and electrical grids are back up, the economies are working again, etc. I'd rather bite the bullet and get all that back at least to how we found it as fast as possible so we can get out of there with a clear conscience as soon as possible. If we just linger around with guns and never fix things back up we'll just continue to blow through money, we'll continue to alienate the population, we'l continue making more enemies than friends.... And for what?

For the short term, this explaination is about the best I can come up with.

Cordesman is usually pretty good, despite some differences I have with him.

The article is a long read, but well worth it.

U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan - - The Debate We Should Be Having

By Anthony H. Cordesman
Oct 7, 2009

The last few weeks have done at least as much to reveal the critical weaknesses in US strategic thinking as they have done to clarify them. We have become embroiled in a largely conceptual debate over whether we should commit ourselves to more troops and a “counterinsurgency” strategy, use of special forces and UCAVs to attack Al Qa’ida and other key insurgent leaders in a “counterterrorism” strategy, or rely on building up Afghan forces in an “anything but us” strategy. There also is a cadre of thinkers who advocate a loosely defined range of “withdrawal,” “no more increases,” or “Pakistan instead” strategies.

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Full Article

kansaswhig said:

Primarily, C-T would entail intelligence-based targeting of Taliban and AQ leadership; with SOF, drones, etc. We are already doing this, to an extent.

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That is something that I could support. To me, we are just routing out gang members, and putting thousands of troops on the ground is like sending an army of cops into a neighborhood to fight gangs. It seems like using intelligence and special ops teams would be more sensible in this "war". I also don't think we should be spending untold amounts of dollars rebuilding two countries.

kansaswhig said:

For the short term, this explaination is about the best I can come up with.

Cordesman is usually pretty good, despite some differences I have with him.

The article is a long read, but well worth it.



Full Article

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Yeah, I have always liked Cordesman. Great link, thank you. I have to quote a few things from it, but you should read it yourselves...

There are heavy stakes:

More generally, a strategy for the war in Afghanistan cannot be separated from the need for a regional strategy to help ensure stability of the nations around Afghanistan and Pakistan, and one that deals with impacts on the broader range of jihadist movements. It is unrealistic to talk of nearby “dominoes” falling if Afghanistan does. At the same time, it is equally unrealistic to ignore the fact that a US, NATO/ISAF, and UN failure within Afghanistan – and the creation of a Taliban-dominated nation or region – will not affect Iran and the Gulf, India, Central Asia, Russia, and China. We also cannot afford to ignore the fact it will give a powerful boost to Jihadist movements that now extend from Morocco to the Philippines and spill over into Europe and the United States.

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Define the mission:

It also needs to define the mission realistically The US may well be able to achieve its goals in the Afghan War if it is defines them in practical terms: This cannot simply be focused on containing Al Qa’ida and denying it the ability to carry out “international” attacks – important as this prime objective may be. Al Qa’ida is simply today’s symbol of a much broader, endemic, and enduring set of threats that are almost certain to emerge in new forms as any given movement is defeated.

The US needs to bringing broad stability and security to most of the Afghan population, to denying all Jihadists a new sanctuary, and help the Afghan government move towards economic security and functional levels of governance. Achieving less presents obvious, although not necessarily fatal, risks. If more is possible, it will be years before we can know this and raise our goals accordingly.

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Get the right resources:

it is absurd to try to decouple strategy from resources – particularly when one considers the complex range of resources that need to be involved in the Afghan conflict. They go far beyond US troop levels. They involve ISAF forces, US and allied civilians and aid workers, build-up and allocation of the Afghan national security forces, and the availability of credible Afghan civilian partners at the national, provincial, district, and local levels. They also involve the availability of such resources over a period of half a decade or more.

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The Afghan government is corrupt:

No strategy can succeed which does not accept the fact that the Afghan central government is corrupt and lacks capacity, that even the best Afghan ministries and institutions require constant support and aid, that provincial and district government suffers from similar problems and chronic underfunding, and that there is no meaningful local Afghan government presence in as much as 40% of the country. This makes the Afghan government as much of a practical problem for the US and its allies as the Taliban and Al Qa’ida.

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The Afghan Army is critical:

The Afghan Army is now virtually the only aspect of the Afghan government that has any popular respect and generally is free of corruption. It also, however, is already being churned out in ways that maximize numbers rather than quality; without adequate trainers, mentors, and partners; and with limited training at the level of integrated battalions – much less in ways that create larger and truly independent formations.

The Afghan Army is still a fragile structure and further rushing its expansion and the training process is dangerous.

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Police needs work:

As for the other elements of Afghan forces, the US and ISAF have wasted eight years creating an ineffective and corrupt mix of police forces that cannot survive and operate in hostile areas. As in Iraq, this effort was underfunded and lacked trainers relatively to the military. It has also been corrupted by organized crime, narcotics, and power brokers.

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Characterize the threat:

Properly characterize the threat and do so in a net assessment context: Until this spring, the US and its allies spent some eight years in denial and understating the scale of the threat. They focused on winning tactical battles and encounters while the Taliban and its affiliates focused on winning on a war of political attrition designed to make the US and ISAF leave, force aid efforts out of the country, undermine the weak Afghan government, and take control of the Afghan population and key territory.

Kinetics are important: they either kill the enemy or US and friendly forces. The political, security, governance, and economic struggle for the population, however, is what determines the outcome of this kind of war. The need to change the assessment of the threat to reflect this fact is clearly recognized in the McChrystal strategy document, and all other strategies must be based on similar judgments.

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On the counterterrorism strategy:

The public discussion of the “counterterrorism” strategy is even more decoupled from every aspect of the civil side of operations -- coping with the weaknesses in the Afghan government, and dealing with the problems in ISAF and the international aid effort. It also is curiously ill defined. Versions vary from little more than using UCAVs and few special forces to “plink” at Al Qa’ida in Pakistan, to a mix of far more intense strikes on all aspects of Al Qa’ida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan with something very close to the presently planned level of ground forces and aid efforts in Afghanistan, including the added troops that President Obama committed this spring.

It is difficult to discuss some of the most critical aspects of any effort to strike at Al Qa’ida and Taliban cadres, because such an depends so heavily on sensitive strike assets and aspects of intelligence fusion. It is far from clear, however, that such an effort can achieve enough scale to have a lasting impact without major forces on the ground or without expecting special forces to perform miracles and survive in the process. It is unclear why such strikes should be any more decisive than they have been over the last eight years in defeating Al Qa’ida and the broad threat posed by violent Jihadist threats. It is unclear how it can be applied to the insurgent networks that are now embedded in densely populated areas. Decapitation is wonderfully simplistic as a concept, but Tarantino will not write the script in Afghanistan.

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teamosil said:

All the logistics for how they would find instructors, where the classes would be held, timing, etc, I'm sure could be worked out.

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If you have been in the military, you could possibly comprehend why this would not work. Your plan is not feasible. 500 linguists? That are qualified and properly trained? Yes, DLI can facilitate that. American Divisions of Dari and Pashtun speaking troops? Can never happen. We already have those troops anyway...they are known as the ANA.

I'm talking about increasing troop levels by 30k and doubling the budget to support language teaching and reconstruction.

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Budgets are easy. Execution is not.

No need to figure out how it would fit into the existing budget or troop readiness time constraints.

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Yeah, actually that is what you would need to work out. There isn't time for it.

In terms of eliminating the old regimes we've maybe done all we can, but both countries are basically destroyed at the moment.

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I wouldn't call Iraq "destroyed" at the moment, considering where they were about three years ago...Afghanistan was essentially not a country prior to our arrival after 9/11. The government we installed is a debacle, but is it better than nothing?

If we leave them worse off than we found them, what the hell was the point of this whole thing?

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Good question.

IMO we can't leave with a clean conscience until the countries are not only stable militarily, but functional again. Until people have jobs, the schools and electrical grids are back up, the economies are working again, etc.

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I would love for naked porn stars to ride around on unicorns.

I'd rather bite the bullet and get all that back at least to how we found it as fast as possible so we can get out of there with a clear conscience as soon as possible. If we just linger around with guns and never fix things back up we'll just continue to blow through money, we'll continue to alienate the population, we'l continue making more enemies than friends.... And for what?

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Well, theoretically, reconstruction doesn't come without governance.

Governance doesn't come without security.

Security doesn't come without guns and money.

Can't skip steps 1 & 2 to get to 3.

Tough one, I know.

Versions vary from little more than using UCAVs and few special forces to “plink” at Al Qa’ida in Pakistan, to a mix of far more intense strikes on all aspects of Al Qa’ida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan with something very close to the presently planned level of ground forces and aid efforts in Afghanistan, including the added troops that President Obama committed this spring.
It is difficult to discuss some of the most critical aspects of any effort to strike at Al Qa’ida and Taliban cadres, because such an depends so heavily on sensitive strike assets and aspects of intelligence fusion. It is far from clear, however, that such an effort can achieve enough scale to have a lasting impact without major forces on the ground or without expecting special forces to perform miracles and survive in the process. It is unclear why such strikes should be any more decisive than they have been over the last eight years in defeating Al Qa’ida and the broad threat posed by violent Jihadist threats. It is unclear how it can be applied to the insurgent networks that are now embedded in densely populated areas. Decapitation is wonderfully simplistic as a concept, but Tarantino will not write the script in Afghanistan.

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Cordesman loses me here. He fails to acknowledge that much of AQ has been eradicated or left AFG. That is a fact. It didn't take SOF "miracles" to achieve this either. Targeting is what they do...they are good at it.

I also think the "decapitation" term is misleading. The old addage about terror organizations is that "if you cut the head of the snake, it grows a new head". True, however, we witnessed the incredible ability of SOF to rout AQ in Iraq, which of course is easier, but doable in AFG. Not to mention that the Taliban is not a terror organization. They are an organization that wishes to be the governing body of parts of AFG again, just as they were before. However, with a targeting campaign in place, AQ will not be able to seek sanctuary again. They will do so in Pakistan, because we aren't doing anything there. Nor will we. Can we trust the Pakistanis to?

This is what I recommend:
-SOF Targeting of AQ and T-Ban leadership
-AQ/T-Ban conferences to work out differences and air greviences (ala Anbar Awakening...try to bring them to our side)
-"Sons of AFG" program to recruit former Taliban fighters to our side (ala SOI in IZ)
-PRT reconstruction in the densely population centers
-Military Advisors at the BN level and above for ANA and ANP
-Civilian advisors/liasons for AFG Govt. officials (monitor corruption)
-Timetables with benchmarks to judge progress; both military and governance
-"Oil spot" COIN operations in troubled areas with NATO units

I need more time to analyze. Cordesman is brilliant, but he has his agenda.

This is from COL Gian Gentile, former CAV commander in Iraq and now Prof at USMA:

Counterinsurgency Cookie Cutter Doesn't Fit Afghanistan
The Iraq surge's "success" is a myth, not a foundation for sound military strategy
By Gian P. Gentile
Posted October 27, 2009

"Counterinsurgency" has become the new American way of war. A once obscure theory of internal conflict, it has become ubiquitous in military circles and dominates thinking on both current and future wars. Examinations and discussions of counterinsurgency theory pervade conferences, journals, study agendas, and even human interest stories about its chief exponents; journalists and pundits routinely toss the term about as if its meaning is well understood by all. More important, its precepts are being followed without serious inquiry or examination, and the U.S. military has become so enamored with the theory that it seemingly will not consider any serious alternative methods to achieve the president's objectives in Afghanistan.

American military leaders are in the business of providing options, not a single formula with questionable relevance to Afghanistan. Conflict is never an either-or proposition. There are always alternatives. Good strategy—linking means to ends—involves much more than tactics. China's famous military philosopher Sun Tzu got it right when he warned, "Strategy without tactics is the slow road to victory," but "tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Statements by self-proclaimed counterinsurgency experts that emphasize the imperative to protect populations and separate them from the insurgents, and win their hearts and minds through nation building, frighteningly sound like Sun Tzu's noise.

Such incantations do not withstand serious scrutiny and do not provide a way to assess the alignment of means and ends, the essence of strategy.

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Gian P. Gentile is a U.S. Army colonel, a professor of history, and head of the military history program at West Point. He commanded a battalion in West Baghdad in 2006. The views in this article are his own and not necessarily those of the Department of Defense.

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Full Article

kansaswhig said:

This is from COL Gian Gentile, former CAV commander in Iraq and now Prof at USMA:

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Good article. He mentions that CT is an alternative that will meet the political objectives. What are the political objectives?

kansaswhig said:

If you have been in the military, you could possibly comprehend why this would not work. Your plan is not feasible. 500 linguists? That are qualified and properly trained? Yes, DLI can facilitate that. American Divisions of Dari and Pashtun speaking troops? Can never happen. We already have those troops anyway...they are known as the ANA.

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I'm thinking about it on a different time scale. Maybe we need to just send more troops now and have a radically broader language training program up and running in 2 years or something. IMO we're not getting out of either war with a clear conscience in less than 5 years... Even then, only if we radically ramp up reconstruction.

I definitely appreciate your perspective. I was against the Iraq war from the start and had serious concerns about the scope of the Afganistan war from the start for pretty much the same reasons you're citing- the tasks of securing a country, replacing governments, rebuilding and establishing a working country are monumental. Maybe even impossible. But what irritates me is that the same folks who were ignoring those arguments when things were getting ramped up are now making those arguments themselves. IMO once you start a war you have an absolute responsibility to see it through not just to a military victory, but to a situation that is better than what was there before you started the war. People living there need to look back at the war and think "that was awful, but on balance I'm glad it happened". To start up a war then cut and run before you reach that point is indefensible. Best not to start the war, but once you do, you need to be in for the long haul. It sucks, I would never have wished this on the US, but we brought it on ourselves.

What I would do in both Iraq and Afganistan would be to add on two objectives- reconstruction and winning the hearts and minds. We give both of those lip service, but no real steps towards achieving them. To really reconstruct the countries means hundreds of billions of dollars in construction projects. Winning the hearts and minds means at the very least tens of thousands of Americans on the ground, speaking the language, and getting to know the people in positive ways. Those are massive goals, but that's what we bit off when we launched these ill advised wars.

I would like to see a massive reconstruction corp set up on the scale of the peace corp, bring in tens of thousands of non-combatants with experience in things like construction, city planning, economics, finance, computers, etc, have them work on major substantive projects to rebuild the countries, hire loads of Iraqis and Afgans to work on the projects, and make sure that all the Americans on the projects are speaking the language and working side by side with the locals. There really is no short cut to getting the population of the world there to realize that we aren't devils. You just need to provide them individually with exposure to Americans that speak their language and are engaged in some kind of positive, constructive, work that makes their lives better. That's the only way to really win hearts and minds. The people working in something like that would be taking serious risks to their lives to be sure so I would extend them veteran's benefits. I would use a significant portion of the increased troop numbers to try to keep those projects as secure as possible.

It'd be a long expensive road, but the alternatives are either to cut and run, in which case all we've done is screw up two countries and create tens of thousands of new terrorists, or to stick around with our limited scope mission for decades until the countries are able to rebuild the damage we did on their own. I'd rather sink more money in and get it over with quicker.

teamosil said:

I would like to see a massive reconstruction corp set up on the scale of the peace corp, bring in tens of thousands of non-combatants with experience in things like construction, city planning, economics, finance, computers, etc, have them work on major substantive projects to rebuild the countries, hire loads of Iraqis and Afgans to work on the projects, and make sure that all the Americans on the projects are speaking the language and working side by side with the locals.

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You need to read [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-New-Map-Twenty-first-Century/dp/B000BPG24M/ref=tmm_pap_title_0]Amazon.com: The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century: Thomas P.M. Barnett: Books[/ame]