Afghanistan - Again!

According to news reports, General McChrystal has asked for an additional 80,000 troops for Afghanistan for the "Optimal Response." Failing that he will settle for 40,000 troops for a "Middle Ground" reponse. The problem is that neither figure is realistic for a counter-insurgency.

As Frank Rich recently pointed out, General McChrystal's boss, General Petraeus, has written that a counter-insurgency strategy that has even a chance of succeeding will require 20 - 25 soldiers for every 1,000 people in the population of the nation at war. Given that Afghanistan has a population of almost 30,000,000 (that's THIRTY MILLION), the minimal troop level (using 20 per 1,000, is 600,000 troops.

In Vietnam we had over 550,000 troops in an area far smaller than Afghanistan and we were never able to stabilize the place. The local Afghanistan government is at least as corrupt as was the South Vietnamese government, so we really can't count on them contributing much to stabilize their own country. Think about how truly difficult it is to create an army. If we are really, really lucky we might see a competent force of around 200,000 Afghani troops after a 5 - 7 year development cycle - but don't count on it. In Vietnam we learned that you can make a person an E-5 anytime you want to, but it takes 3 - 6 years to develop a Second Class Petty Officer. And one needs a really competent corps of E-5 through E-7 enlisted people to have a successful miltary. Likewise with officers. You can give any fool a Colonel's Eagle, but it takes years to develop a competent Officer Corps of Captains, Majors, Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels.

But in the end, bringing long term stability and peace to that poor country (we really can't call it a nation) will be the responsibility of the people and government of Afghanistan. So what, then, is our best option - one that helps them to help themselves at relatively minimal risk to our own forces? It seems to me that it would be a rather minimal option.

We're stuck with being there because we got ourselves sidetracked into Iraq by a man who had a vendetta to satisfy, so we can't just abandon the people and place. But we need to do what we can to secure the main population centers, work diligently to get a reasonably honest government in place, and train an Afghani army to take the battle to the countryside. Those Afghani forces need to do the grunt work, slowly (very slowly) at first, then with increasing efficiency and alacrity as they gain experience. Some of our troops will be at risk as they work alongside the indigenous forces, but their role must be advisory, not combat leading, not manning the "front lines" (which don't exist, anyway).

That, it seems to me, would require some increase in the level of US forces, but certainly not 40,000 - 80,000 more. We can secure the cities. Any more than that and training puts our troops at an unacceptable level of risk with little or no real prospect for long term success. It also lets us develop timelines for achieving measurable success. If the people and government of Afghanistan refuse to play their part in this, then a drawdown and disengagement are the only recourse. But let's not wait until the casualty lists get long enough to cause the American public to lose faith in the ability of our military leadership to come up with actual workable solutions. This beats the daylights out of simply adding more, then more, then more troops to a deteriorating situation.

Truth in advertising: I was actively involved in the Vietnam conflict (getting ready to go there, being there, just having left there) from March of 1966 through December of 1971 (with four combat tours). I was an Ensign, USN, when I started and a Lieutenant Commander, USN, when it ended. It was a bottomless pit and, yes, Afghanistan has the ability to create the same kind of trap for us. Not in terms of a high casualty rate (although it could get quite bad), but in terms of sucking us into a black hole from which escape will be painful and injurious to our valiant fighting force.

My fear is that our military leadership, which is a wonderfully capable combat leadership, cannot see beyond "the military counter-insurgency option." In a place as vast and difficult as is Afghanistan, military projection of U.S. power won't work. Only indigenous forces that understand and live in that culture stand any chance at all, and even that chance has a non-zero probability of failure. Our probability of failure is probably at least an order of magnitude higher.
Pray for a wise choice by President Obama and his advisors.

Sleep well and God Bless All. TAD+

The Black Hole Named Afghanistan

From my perspective, we seem to have two choices in Afghanistan. One is bad, the other is worse. The "bad" choice is to boost the number of troops on the ground by 40,000 or so, as General McChrystal seems to be asking. Given the terrain and the historic mistrust of outsiders by the people of that sad nation, it is doubtful that an additional 40,000 troops will "accomplish the mission." With that addition, we might, just might, be able to bring some semblance of calm to some of the cities. But, then again, nobody really knows, do they?

The "worse" choice is to try to get along with the troop numbers we have (or even a reduced number). That means to surrender the rural areas to the Taliban and to try to tolerate or limit the ability of the Taliban to spread mayhem in the urban areas. But it leaves us in a "force protection" posture in which we have little or no influence over what goes on throughout the country. We would simply hunker down for the long run - and believe me it would be a long run!

Even the "bad" option of boosting the number of troops in country will put us in a situation in which the "end of the tunnel" lies so far in the future that we will see no light there for years to come.

As for the question, "Is Afghanistan another Vietnam?" the answer has to be "Yes and No." It is not Vietnam in the sense that 200 soldiers are NOT being killed each week. That situation will likely never come to pass. It is not Vietnam in the sense that the men and women serving there are having to slog through swamp and jungle. But it is like Vietnam in that we are becoming co-dependent with a government that is weak and corrupt and not likely to change. It is Vietnam in that the enemy has safe haven just across the border and recieves support and encouragement from the people, the government, and the armed forces of other nations in the region (Pakistan's IIS, the Saudi Arabian people, and, potentially, the government of Iran).

I fear that neither the NATO armed forces (which means mostly the good ole U. S. of A.) nor our diplomats will be able to even begin to effect the changes needed to bring stability to Afghanistan. The best we can seem to hope for, at this point in time, is to bring relative peace to the cities and stasis outside of them. We can hope and pray that the additional Afghani forces we are training prove, in time, to have at least a minimal capability to defend all of the nation's territory; the capability AND the will. But it will take eight to ten years to bring them to a fully trained and ready status - they are, after all, a third world nation. Creating a modern army from that start is not impossible, only extraordinarily difficult. Those are not happy thoughts.

God Bless All this evening. TAD+