76 Comments

1. Zenster:

Items cited in the Australian article suggest that even describing the conflict as the war in ‘Afghanistan’ is partly a misnomer. Much of the war is frankly in Pakistan.

Too right! When “Pakistan” is finally replaced with “Saudi Arabia”, we’ll all know that the Global War on Terrorism has begun in earnest.

Unfortunately the penetrating analysis of CNN only goes about that far

As an unnamed African general once said:

A man whose ambition goes no further than vaginal penetration is, indeed, a shallow man.

It’s safe to say that CNN is in a similar category.

We may have to be contented with the simple realization that something worked and move on with that imperfect knowledge in pursuit of the retreating enemy in Southwest Asia.

So long as Islamic hiney is being kicked, and kicked hard, I’m fine with that realization.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:17 am 2. Cannoneer No. 4:

We went to Afghanistan almost 7 years ago because Mullah Omar wouldn’t turn over Osama bin Laden. We put a tiny number of our best young men in the mud alongside of the mostly Tajik Northern Alliance and together indigs, SF and airpower brought down the Taliban regime. That was a great victory. Tora Bora and the escape of Osama bin Laden dimmed that victory so much that few remember it now.

We stayed after the fall of the Taliban for a number of good reasons, including strategic position on Iran’s eastern border, China’s western border, and Russia’s sphere of influence. Afghanistan was a basket case, and the brave Northern Alliance fighters seemed worthy of our assistance. A case can be made that America used Afghans as pawns in a proxy war with the Soviet Union, then turned its back on them while they sank into chaos, so massive American assistance was a way to make amends. And Afghanistan provided a great arena for a multi-national Special Forces Olympics.

America couldn’t declare victory in Afghanistan without the head of Osama bin Laden, so we rationalized reasons to stay. Overthrowing the Taliban and installing a friendly regime in Kabul was a good start, but that wasn’t payback enough for 9/11. Osama was supposed to be in Pakistan, a country we were calling an ally, so he was safe from us.

Saddam wasn’t safe from us. Going after him didn’t “distract” us from anything in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, by virtue of its land-locked, railroadless isolation, was always destined to be an economy of force operation. McCain and Obama can talk about sending thousands of additional troops, but neither of them can shorten the mileage from Karachi to Kandahar or Rawalpindi to Jalalabad, or escort those trucks through the war lord, mafia, and tribal roadblocks.

ISAF has a finite head count end strength cap based on the capacity of the Line of Communications to bring the beans, bullets and fuel forward. Everybody on that cracker line who is caveated to limited duty may as well go home, or move north and draw rations from the German base in Uzbekistan.

Only so many boots on the ground can be sustained through the Port of Karachi. How many of those boots should be worn by riflemen kinetically engaging the Taliban, and how many should be worn by Embedded Training Teams and Police Mentoring Teams teaching Afghans to kinetically engage the Taliban? We need no caveat troops on the head count, fewer shooters, more trainers.

The Surge in Afghanistan should come from Afghans. Somebody is going to have to twist Karzai’s arm into mobilizing turned Taliban and Pashtun irregulars and anti-Taliban lashkars. A Pashtun version of the Anbar Awakening, Sons of Afghanistan or something along those lines is what we need.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:26 am 3. wretchard:

I think al-Qaeda’s decision to engage America in Iraq will rank as one of the greatest strategic blunders of all time. They didn’t have to. Al-Qaeda could have preserved their legend by doing nothing.

Maybe America owes an eternal debt of gratitude to the MSM, academia and the entire liberal establishment for encouraging the Jihad to come out of the woodwork and materialize in Iraq, where, if movies like the Battle of Algiers was to be believed, America would find its graveyard. Instead the AQ was roundly, decisively and publicly beaten into a pulp by the very forces which the MSM was so sure were destined to defeat. Thank you so much MSM. Thank you. Thank you.

But maybe I should add that the MSM almost had us beat; almost stampeded public opinion into turning victory into defeat. Why the MSM didn’t succeed will be an historical problem on the order of why Hitler lost on the Eastern Front. Maybe God does bless America.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:54 am 4. _Jon:

As I recall, Afghanistan is several generations behind Iraq in terms of culture and advancement. Training and upgrading and organizing Afghanistan may take decades. And even then, it doesn’t really have an economically attractive situation to warrant that investment.
I think our best bet is to shelter it, protect it, nurture it, but not really _invest_ in it as we have Iraq. The return on investment just isn’t there yet.

Jul 22, 2008 - 5:16 am 5. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Tuesday Highlights:

[...] Next step in the great retreat (of al-Qaeda), the Afghan Campaign. [...]

Jul 22, 2008 - 5:36 am 6. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent…:

[...] Next step in the great retreat (of al-Qaeda), the Afghan Campaign. [...]

Jul 22, 2008 - 5:37 am 7. vb:

I don’t really like this boots on the ground vs human int type of analysis. Human int came partly because of boots on the ground and the way they were trained and deployed. It also came because the Iraqis had had enough time to see the realities of the AQ myth. There are many pieces in this success story, but ultimately it was the ability to fit them together, reassess and change tactics when needed, and plain old determination that counted most.

Jul 22, 2008 - 5:40 am 8. Marine 83:

Cannoneer No. 4 said

“A case can be made that America used Afghans as pawns in a proxy war with the Soviet Union, then turned its back on them while they sank into chaos, so massive American assistance was a way to make amends”.

I have never understood why this idea has come to be taken as gospel about our involment in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It’s not like the U.S. set the Afghanis up to fight the Soviets. They made that decision all by themselves. We just encouraged them in their endeavors with material aid and training. I would contend that as far as that war went we helped them far more than they helped us. The USSR was bound to crash soon with or without a loss in Afghanistan. As to pulling out after the war, we did exactly what the Afghanis wanted. They wanted to be left alone to sort out their own affairs. Even though that turned out badly for us in the long run, in retrospect we had no other option at that time.

I think the idea that we abandoned the Afghanis after that war is really just an attempt by the American left to indict U.S. foreign policy and help justify the 9/11 attacks. After all everything bad that happens in the World is the fault of we evil Americans.

Jul 22, 2008 - 5:59 am 9. papabear:

As is turned out, not only had the number of troops on the ground increased by 20%, but air strike missions had also increased by 400%. What’s more, air munitions released had increased by over 1000%, all since the beginning of the surge.

Perhaps the generals of the respective services should stop beating their chests, and look at the increased cooperation between ground and air forces in the Iraq theater

In order for the Air Force to hit targets, they had to have people on the ground finding out where targets were. And once you know where the target is, it’s lovely to be able to drop a bomb on his head within a few minutes of spotting him (and without giving away your position)

Jul 22, 2008 - 6:22 am 10. programmer:

I’m feeling confrontational today after a night of chasing elusive software bugs in cyberspace.

Wretchard says thank you to the MSM somewhat sarcastically. That crystallizes an idea I have been pondering for a while. Why doesn’t the Bush administation ever file charges of treason against the seemingly treasonous reporting of the NYT, for example. Rumsfeld, early on, stated that disinformation and information were necessary to win this conflict. In support of his initiative to create a “Ministry of Propaganda” or some such (I don’t remember the name actually proposed) he said words to the effect that the real truth of what informational battles were being fought would only be known long after the conflict was over. Maybe, just maybe, the MSM is really on the side of light against the darkness. Maybe they are playing deep game, spreading information that the Bush administration wants spread (and selling advertising at the same time). And frankly, for most journalists, bashing the administration is not a hard sell. They wouldn’t even have to know that they were helping in the long struggle. Sometimes the most rabid fanatics are the most easily misled. Political Akido, ie, the journalists seemed most eager to attack the administration, so they were given a helping hand. They just did not go in the direction they thought.

Hmmm, I better go lie down until this mood passes.

Jul 22, 2008 - 6:27 am 11. Benj:

Wretch – Not sure it matters that much – I’m all for MSM-bashing and you’ve earned the right…But I remember reading desperate posts at Iraq the Model (and B.C.!) in the summer before the Surge – everyday life in the Bag couldn’t have been much worse and there was no hope – besides “stay the course” – being offered by Bush et al – I remember getting emails from a kid who’d volunteered to go back for a second tour as a medic in Iraq – He was turned off by what he saw pre-surge – heavy empahsis on “checking the boxes” – fostering illusions of “handing-over” to IA…Point is not to disparage the real progress that was made in the pre-Surge years – just to say the dark times weren’t manufactured by MSM – and that the Admin’s approach often seemed marked a the willful obliviousness that was the flip side of their orginary hubris…

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:15 am 12. newtland:

Too clever by half? Meh …

Actually, I think the truth is simply we’ve got a mule-headed leader (thank God) who just flat tuned out the criticism and did what he thought was right and got pretty much what he hoped for.

Took longer than it needed to, but, like Lincoln, when he finally got the right general in place, good things happened.

If BHO doesn’t give it all away, we just might see Iran (like the Soviet Union before it) collapse under the weight of its’ own contradictions.

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:24 am 13. The Glittering Eye » Blog Archive » Afghanistan and Iraq:

[...] Fernandez nee Wretchard of The Belmont Club comments on the interrelationships between Afghanistan and Iraq: The strategic value of [...]

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:28 am 14. sirius_sir:

…dark times weren’t manufactured by MSM

Point taken. But I also remember a time when, to amplify on Wretchard’s comment, Afghanistan and not Iraq was to be our graveyard. Now according to Mr. Obama it is the central battleground in the War against al Qaeda. So after the “dangerous distraction” of Iraq (in which al Qaeda got it’s collective ass whipped) we are coming full circle. The difference being that those originally opposed to our going to Afghanistan now fully support it.

Obama says he will send two combat brigades from Iraq to begin with and do whatever else is necessary… The interviewer asks if he has any doubts, to which he replies: None whatsoever.

Hubris or audacity of hope? Or are they really two sides of the same COIN?

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:39 am 15. sirius_sir:

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll simply note the irony of the anti-war Left whose mantra was “Bring home the troops, because isn’t it terrible that our boys and girls are getting killed in Iraq?” are now panting to send them from the stabilizing situation in Iraq into the cauldron of Afghanistan?

These people are neither too smart nor consistent, but maybe that’s why things will eventually work out for the good despite their best efforts to derail them.

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:48 am 16. Andrew:

The one question I rarely hear asked is where would we be now if for the past five years AQ had been focusing their recruitment efforts on sending fodder to Afghanistan instead of Iraq? Seems to me that if anyone was distracted from the fight in Afghanistan it was AQ. Better we “bleed them white” in Iraq where we could sustain it and our logistics were less vulnerable.

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:53 am 17. RWE:

When flaky flacks like Kerry or Obama say that OIF was the “worst strategic blunder in history,” I want so much to ask them “Okay, and your strategy was…?”

But Sen Reid has explained that is an invalid question. They get to criticize but have no requirement to offer a viable alternative. Them’s the rules and they made them.

As for what it actually takes to win a war, few people have given it much thought, even historically. In terms of analyzing WWII even the most diehard opponents of strategic bombing will admit that tactical airpower was of immense value to the Allied armies advancing from both the West and the East.

But the main reason that the tactical air forces were so effective was that the Luftwaffe had pretty much forfeited the tactical game by 1944. And they did that because the strategic air attacks were bleeding them white. By late 1944 even the USAAF had figured out the game. Want to insure that the Allied fighter bombers could romp among the Panzers unmolested? Simple. Pick out a nearby German city and send in a heavy bomber force. The correct approach would be for the German fighters to intercept the fighter bombers and leave their city to its fate – but they could not do that and hold their heads up in public. So they split their available interceptors and lost both battles.

“Bleed them white” as we did to the Luftwaffe – Andrew, you have cracked the code!

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:57 am 18. Trent Telenko:

Wretchard,

A more accurate description than “Jon” Compton’s would be to say that Gen Petraeus changed the Rules of Engagement (ROE) and exploited previously gathered intelligence with the additional troops.

US Army and Marine boots on the ground provided the validated HUMINT targeting data, the ROE change (removing the layers of lawyers who previously had to approve attacks) for precision guided indirect fire weapons (Guided MLRS in most instances) killed the enemy in Urban areas, and the 20% troop increase allowed rotating temporary major troop increases in those urban areas the terrorists had been driven out of so the local warlords could effectively stand up their own security forces (”Concerned Local Citizens) to keep the terrorists from coming back.

The Air Force Role here was to kill the insurgents flushed into rural areas by the Army and Marines. Once disentangled from urban collateral damage considerations, the USAF’s full weight of “high collateral damage” 2000lb JDAMS could be used to kill the insurgents.

This was the small war equivalent of hunting down and killing a retreating column of trucks and addresses both the USAF claims of increased use of munitions and the total weight of munitions used in 2008.

Compton also said:

I had a long discussion there with one old timer who was very direct about the current situation at the Pentagon. He related that the perception of the Air Force among the other services and civilians was that they were arrogant. So much so, in fact, that it was hampering communication and cooperation with them.

I strongly bed to differ. The “Other Services” are speaking from cold hard truth.

Consider the following notional numbers:

Five strikes in six months. Twenty strikes in six months. Four hundred percent increase.

A ‘four hundred percent increase’ doesn’t mean anything without context.

Context like this observation from Strategypage.com:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20071106.aspx

The Bored Skies Over Iraq

November 6, 2007: The decline in U.S. casualties over the past few months has been accompanied by a sharp decline in U.S. Air Force combat activity. The enemy is not there anymore. They are dead, fled or given up the violent life. In the first nine months of the year, air force (including British) jets carried out 2,539 attacks (with bombs or cannon). That was up 43 percent from the same period last year. Activity peaked in August, when there were 303 attacks, but fell to 90 in September, and continued to decline in October.

One F-16 squadron has been here for two months, and has made no (as in zero) attacks. The pilots have been busy, however, constantly using their targeting pods to act as aerial scouts for ground troops. But they have not come across any bad guys the G.I.s couldn’t handle. The infantry have plenty of guided missiles and “smart” artillery (GPS guided shells and rockets) available. The pilots are beginning to feel unneeded.

What matters to the other services is the Army’s non-notional statistic from Iraq:

Only 20% of validated requests for available combat aircraft satisfied (aircraft were actually sent and dropped bombs.)

Only 50% of Predator requests satisfied.

Only one time in five that the Army called for
a. aircraft,
b. aircraft that were in the air or available to scramble and
c. asked them to drop bombs did they actually do so.

Doing some math, if the AF had done two in five of requests that would be an eight hundred percent increase.

Point in fact, the inability of the USAF to field the small diameter bomb on its A-10 and F-16 aircraft lead the Army and USMC to largely cease using USAF strikes in urban areas for 2006 and most of 2007.

The following data is from a 20 Aug 2007 post on strategypage.com:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/20070820.aspx

Note that the air force only dropped 177 smart bombs in Iraq last year (AKA 2006), and only fired 52 Hellfire (from Predators) or Maverick missiles. Activity is up this year, but still minuscule compared to past wars. So every smart bomb or missile counts, and accuracy is very important. Meanwhile, army and marine helicopters fired ten times as many missiles, as well as over 10,000 70mm unguided rockets and over 10 million rounds of cannon and machine-gun ammunition. This year, the air force is using a lot more Maverick missiles, and is borrowing laser guided versions from the navy.

The USAF’s inability to expedite SDB development to support the troops in contact lead to the service being embarrassed by the US Navy and Marine Corps via their deploying a reduced 30lbs of explosive fill in a 500lb JDAM bomb, see:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20071022.aspx

Add to that list, pre-surge, the following developments that infuriated ground troops and that didn’t even register with USAF leadership:

1) The post 27 Nov 2006 ban on 20mm strafing in Iraq due to the loss of an F-16C, piloted by Major Troy Gilbert

See:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20070404.aspx

and

2) The attempt to seize control of all UAV’s over Iraq through air traffic control issues

see:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20070328.aspx?comments=Y

to the point that the USAF insistence that Iraqi based Raven UAV’s file flight plans one day before the ground troops used them — effectively making their UAV’s useless to troops in hot contact who needed over head imagery right now.

This was discussed in Defense Industry Daily here:

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/field-report-on-raven-shadow-uavs-from-the-101st-01487/

With the following observation:

Crowded skies and lack of collision avoidance systems create serious issues for the RQ-11 Raven as well. Standard operating procedure mandates that Raven operators submit a flight plan 24 hours prior to desired departure, removing the UAV’s natural quick-launch role to respond to immediate questions or potential threats. These limitations will create serious issues for airborne UAVs unless they are addressed, with UGVs like “throwbots” et. al. as the likely beneficiaries at UAVs’ expense.

I strongly suspect that in addition to changing the ROA for artillery strikes, Gen Petraeus also changed those Air orce flight plan rules for hand thrown UAV’s during the surge.

So yes, the other services see the USAF as not being a team player, to the point of being a hindrance to the ground soldier in fighting and winning the war.

Jul 22, 2008 - 8:28 am 19. exhelodrvr:

Is it permissible to use the expression “bleed them white”?

Jul 22, 2008 - 8:37 am 20. spook:

Wretchard said: “Why the MSM didn’t succeed will be an historical problem on the order of why Hitler lost on the Eastern Front.”

The MSM didn’t have their Soviet agitators and money to whip up the anti-war crowd.

Jul 22, 2008 - 8:48 am 21. Alexis:

rwe:

Sometimes the press can ruin strategic plans.

The Battle of Verdun was an excellent strategic move for Germany — in theory. Germany would take Verdun, fortify it thoroughly, and then let the French generals rain men on it because of Verdun’s symbolic value to French pride. The German high command was not interested in taking or keeping ground, but in destroying the French Army.

German newspapers got in the way of the strategy. German newspapers focused so much of the public’s attention onto the Battle of Verdun that the territory around Verdun attained nearly as much symbolic value for Germans as it did for the French. And all that public attention made it politically difficult for Germany to tactically withdraw its forces from Verdun (as it was supposed to do), instead throwing Germany’s men into keeping this symbolic ground.

It is difficult for a faction to keep strategic discipline in the face of public opinion. Refusing to defend a city from firebombing is not an easily decision to defend from public opinion; if al-Qaeda had refrained from attacking American forces in Iraq, it would have lost prestige. Our enemies cannot bear to be called cowards.

It is easy to say “bleed them white”; that is what our enemies tried to do to us. And if they didn’t bleed our forces white, they did bleed American public opinion dry. To “bleed them white”, one needs to have a level of strategic discipline that is difficult to achieve in today’s media environment.

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:13 am 22. Eggplant:

Spook said:

“The MSM didn’t have their Soviet agitators and money to whip up the anti-war crowd.”

The MSM isn’t as powerful as it once was. Is it only because the Soviet Agit-Prop money has gone away? Reagan was a master at running circles around the jackals and hyenas of the MSM. Did the MSM lose street cred because of Reagan? It used to be that one’s main news sources were CBS and the New York Times. However I get almost all of my news from the Internet. If I see something political attributed to the New York Times, I normally skip over it because I assume it’s liberal propaganda. After I bought my house, I took down the television antenna and disconnected the cable (I’m a father and network television is bad for kids). It’s been years since I last watched CBS news.

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:19 am 23. frankhagan.com » Two Fronts, One War:

[...] Having been very publicly ousted from the critical Middle East, al-Qaeda and its allies probably hope they can rebuild their political fortunes and retrieve their legend in Southwest Asia. Unlike the period immediately after 9/11, when al-Qaeda was regarded as burgeoning force, the retreat to Afghanistan is fundamentally defensive in character one which preserves the possibility of future victory rather than representing an advance in itself. As long as the Jihad can hold out against the US coalition, even if they cannot regain Kabul, survival in a sufficiently distant place where they can plausibly claim miracles and victories unfalsifiable by direct experience might let them live to rise another day.From: Belmont Club [...]

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:27 am 24. sirius_sir:

Sen. Kerry was just on FOX News to explain that Obama was right to oppose the Surge because it really had no effect on stabilizing Iraq. No, that development was entirely due to the political decision made by the Sunni chieftans to engage all by themselves in opposing al Qaeda during the Anbar Awakening, while the Surge was meant to lead to political reconciliation of the Sunni population which, see, still hasn’t happened. So the Surge had and continues to have no effect. That is not to take anything away from our brave men and women who have done all we could ever have asked of them, except make any real practical difference. So to reiterate, we who opposed the war and supported the troops were right all along.

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:31 am 25. sirius_sir:

Someone needs to ask the obvious question: If the Surge didn’t work in Iraq, why does Obama think sending more troops will work in Afghanistan?

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:33 am 26. NahnCee:

Are the Taliban and Al-Queda one and the same? It seems to me that Taliban would have some home-town chauvenism going on, and we know how Al-Q likes to come into town and beat up on the locals.

If I were going to try an Afghanistan Awakening project, recruiting Taliban to save their country and shoot at the mean old (Arab) intruder Al-Queda’s might be a direction to go in. After all, we’re forgiving Iraqi murderers of American soldiers in Iraq so it’s not like the idea is without precedent.

Arab Al-Queda seems to have a different theology than pretty much all other Muslims. I wonder how it matches up Allah-to-Allah with Taliban’s version of fanaticism.

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:45 am 27. Frank:

I’m baffled by our military leaders who continue to think either or. The above biases of Army and Airforce shows their lack of overall appreciation of the strategic and tactical situation.

Why did the surge work? It wasn’t just the additional boots, better humint, and quantity of bombs. I think all of them played a role, but there was another factor that came to play as well, and is a classic military maxim – Timing! The time was right for the surge. The indigenous population was sick of Al-Qaeda and wanted to get rid of them. This enabled our military to drain Mao’s sea so the Al-Qaeda fish could no longer swim in it. We put the right concentration of force at the right place and at the right time.

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:53 am 28. sirius_sir:

It seems to me you can’t logically argue on the one hand that “our troopers are the problem” and then in the same breath say, “but sending more of them over here to this theatre will fix things.” In any case, that analysis completely misses the point that it isn’t the numbers anyway that matter so much as what you do with them. It also misses the point, which others have brought up that increased numbers bring with them a whole host a logistical problems.

Afghanistan can be fixed, but if Iraq tried the patience of the anti-war Left they haven’t seen nothin’ yet.

Jul 22, 2008 - 10:02 am 29. RWE:

Sirius: Saw on TV this morning that “violence is down by 80% in Iraq” and that attacks on supply convoys now involve a mere 1.5 %. If this is failure I would like to know what success looks like. The vast majority of the place is now almost undoubtedly far safer than those public housing areas in Chicago that Sen Obama likes so much.

To use the WWII analogy again, the Jihadist focus on the Tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan is not some glorious offensive on their part, but rather more resembles Hitler’s vow to retreat to the Nazi’s impregnable National Redoubt and rebuild for their eventual return. Only the most die-hard Nazis ever put any credence in that claim, and very, very few of them at that.

I guess I could do some research and see if the Allies ever took the Nazi National Redoubt “threat” seriously, but I don’t recall hearing that we ever gave it any thought.

Jul 22, 2008 - 10:05 am 30. Pasqual_64:

wretchard wrote:

>>Maybe America owes an eternal debt of gratitude to the MSM, academia and the entire liberal establishment for encouraging the Jihad to come out of the woodwork and materialize in Iraq, where, if movies like the Battle of Algiers was to be believed, America would find its graveyard. Instead the AQ was roundly, decisively and publicly beaten into a pulp by the very forces which the MSM was so sure were destined to defeat. Thank you so much MSM. Thank you. Thank you.<<

Zarqawi was in Iraq before the US invasion, and AQ didn’t need any “encouragement” from the MSM to see the strategic value of exploiting Sunni and Shiite divisions to win over whole cities to their banner. I realize it is loose invective on your part Wretchard, but it is stupid and betrays a twisted hate that clouds your judgement. No post that quotes from the Times Online should then condemn the MSM without a little more reflection.

Jul 22, 2008 - 10:06 am 31. wretchard:

and AQ didn’t need any “encouragement” from the MSM to see the strategic value of exploiting Sunni and Shiite divisions to win over whole cities to their banner. … No post that quotes from the Times Online should then condemn the MSM without a little more reflection.

The attack in Samarra took place after the “purple fingers” and is widely regarded as a phase change in the post-Saddam campaign. Before Samarra the MSM was talking about the triumph of the insurgency, of which the battles of Fallujah were supposed to be a part. But at a private talk I heard givn by a senior coalition officer some months ago the time before Sammarra was internally regarded as a moment when the coalition believed it was starting to get the measure of the insurgency. If you read contemporaneous press reports the change in the narrative after Sammarra was striking. No longer was the coalition going to be driven out by insurgents, it was going to be driven out by a civil war.

It is instructive in retrospect to examine just what conclusions some members of the public were reaching simply by reading the papers. At the time of the Fallujas I remember having a private email debate with a Scandinavian researcher, who was convinced, by tallying up MSM reports and readng between the lines, that the USMC had been decimated in both. Those types truly believed the US was hardly inflicting any casualties on the “fleeting” enemy, but killing large numbers of civilians. Somewhat later the Lancet would run a widely reported extrapolation proving that the US had killed off huge nmbers of people in Iraq.

It was all fantasy and yet yet were people who believed it. Where did they get this fantasy? You might be right in thinking that al-Qaeda was always prepared to start a civil war, but I think it is reasonable to argue that they too were getting dosed with this fantasy. We know they read the papers. One of the Jihad’s explicit objectives wasto run information operations. Insurgent units had video teams whose objective wasto generate material and infitrated tame local journalists nto stringing for the wires. It would be a miracle if they didn’t read their own press and maybe it sucked them into a feedback loop.

I remember writing after Sammarra that an attack by the minority on the majority made no logical sense; that it had to be a simultaneous admission of defeat on the part of the insurgency and a strategic catastrophe for them. It was obvious. How can you declare war on the Sh’ite majority of the country and hope it helped you? You’ll recall some people in al-Qaeda were warning of the same danger too. It was just too plain to see. Yet this suicidal strategy eventually became depicted as an act of supreme enemy brilliance, a conclusion which may have stemmed for our own systematic self-deception.

I think its impossible to explain how the success of the Surge could be such a strategic surprise for even well informed people like Kerry and Obama without examing the role of our self-reflection process as influenced by the MSM. We had somehow corrupted our own open source intelligence system and blinded ourselves. It is fortunate for us that Petraeus and his staff at least were looking at other metrics. It’s almost impossible now to recall how gloomy the atmosphere was after the mid-term elections. At the start of the Surge I had the privilege of interviewing members of the Baker Commission by telephone. The Baker Commission, if you will recall, was drafting ways to escape from the “quagmire” in which America was irretrievably engulfed. That was the measure of how deep the certainty of defeat was. What if we had done it? I’ll freely admit that I bought into many aspects of the perceived truth as well. My guess is that the AQ did too.

I am perfectly serious in claiming that some historian will eventually write a long scholarly book asking how we could have failed to predict that the Surge had a chance. People were so sure it would fail. It will be right up there with the failure to anticipate the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Now I understand the irony of having to quote the MSM to revile the MSM; to cite them for both for truth and falsity; aware that due to the rise of the Internet even this site may now be part of the modern MSM. I suppose I’m guilty. But I’ll accept that in exchange for the chance to suggest that AQ made the mistake of believing their own press clippings and it led them astray.

Jul 22, 2008 - 11:12 am 32. Teresita:

Sirius_sir: Afghanistan can be fixed, but if Iraq tried the patience of the anti-war Left they haven’t seen nothin’ yet.

The Left has more patience with Obama’s proposed Surge because Afghanistan really is about standing up a new democracy without the taint of “blood for oil”.

Jul 22, 2008 - 11:34 am 33. Pasqual_64:

I certainly see your perspective here, but am concerned that the term MSM has grown too elastic, especially over the last three years. I was reading a fair amount of coverage as to the Surge’s early successes in 2007, a Mickey Kaus seems to have been an early predictor of those successes. Are the Weekly Standard and Washington Post not mainstream media? WS editor William Kristol now writes for the New York Times! Max Boot writes frequently for the LA Times. VDH is widely syndicated. Are they to blame too? That would be silly.
Secondly, I would love to know what the internal debates were like within AQ over Zarqawi’s insidious little blood-fest in Iraq. I recall an organizational expert once saying that “in any bureaucracy over a dozen people, there is at least one person who knows the truth.” A truth that can be buried, no doubt, but one that is still there. Where dissenting voices silenced long before Zawahiri wrote his infamous letter telling Zarqawi to, for Allah’s sake, chill out a little?

Jul 22, 2008 - 11:34 am 34. exhelodrvr:

“new democracy without the taint of “blood for oil”.”

Without the fabricated taint of “blood for oil.”

You have to admit, the MSM does a pretty food job of “shaping the battlefield.”

Jul 22, 2008 - 11:41 am 35. Richard Fernandez:

Pasqual 64

The MSM is the public’s open source intelligence agency. Like any other intel shop it has analysts with different points of view. John Burns of the NYT for example, is an “outlier” in the tone of that newspaper, but he is nevertheless part of it. You rightly point out there were early predictors of success, but in an intel shop with large numbers of staff there will always be those who get it right.

But to take the analogy further, it is possible to speak of a “consensus” view even when there are dissenters. And is in this sense it is possible to use the term “MSM” without tarring everybody. The consensus view of early to mid-2007 was that the US was done for. As late as Petraeus’ confirmation hearings Andrew Sullivan was calling for Petraeus head for talking to a so-called right wing propaganda shop. There were ads denouncing General “Betray Us”.

Jul 22, 2008 - 11:52 am 36. NahnCee:

Pasqual – why are you standing up for MSM and trying to reform their rep? Even if you work for LA Times or NY Times, their fate(s) are even more written in concrete than the failure of the US Military in Iraq has ever been.

What difference does it make which specific individual works for which outlet, when overall, pretty much since 9/12/2001, the 5 or 6 big international newspapers and ABC / NBC / CBS / CNN *and* Reuters/AP have *all* been supporting the exact same meme(s).

Those memes can be summed up variously as “if it bleeds ,it leads” and/or “Iraq is just as much of a quagmire as Vietnam was, and America made a mistake going in and should leave immediately” and/or “Bush lied, people died”.

Just because John Burns has been doing consistently good work and Michael Yon *occasionally* gets printed by the dinosaurs does NOT excuse them for rushing to press with photoshopped pictures, supporting Palestinian lies about dead Dura’s, and hiring stringers who are terrorists themselves.

I think in calling Wretchard “stupid” in your attempt to turn his comments into something to salve MSM self-inflicted wounds, you’re outing yourself more than you realize. In doing so, you cast a dubious blight on everything else you have ever written so that the perception becomes not only “deranged moonbat” but “jealous ex-journalist”.

(And with a Frenchified name like Pasqual, you need all the help you can get from the get-go since we still are wondering if the French are allies with the rest of the west in our efforts to save our civilization.)

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:15 pm 37. Cannoneer No. 4:

The New Taliban Tactics Have a Catch

. . . the Taliban are trying to take down the road based NATO supply line, that stretches from the Pakistani coast into Afghanistan. These trucks are protected by lucrative security arrangements made with tribes that “own” the roads. These guys don’t like seeing this income threatened by a bunch of religious fanatics.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:19 pm 38. wretchard:

I did’t take any offense at Pasquale and have certainly made too many mistakes to have any illusions about my abilities. Reading some of my old posts is an embarassing experience. And many of those who thought Iraq would end in disaster did so in all honesty.

One of my forthcoming day jobs will be a small project as part of an independent business intelligence team and it is amazingly easy in that field to get things wrong. Even if you do everything right it is still possible, and even likely, that you will get things very wrong. Looking at the consensus-building function of the MSM, you can ask the dispassionate question: how can it be improved?

One way is to find some way to reduce the noise in the signal. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that the Petraeus advantage came from living, day in and day out, with his data set, which the shorthand of combat had reduced to its essentials. He had more because he had less, but it was the right “less”.

Maybe another area for improvement is being able to diversify wire service sources. Families of stories are generated by rewriting the same wire report. It might also help to create dedicated subject tracking teams in major news organizations. I’d like to see a map room at the NYT, with symbols on it generated from their own correspondents, with timelines and tables of estimates for activities. If the press is going to continue to act like a public open source intel agency, they may as well acquire the appurtenances.

Nor all this idle speculation. History never stops. Afghanistan isn’t won nor will it be the last battlefield in the war on terror. Maybe the worst crisis is yet to come. And yet we will be going into it with the same old creaky mechanism that analyzed Iraq. It’s a scary thought, akin to starting a new business with the same MIS team that nearly drove the parent company bankrupt.

But to repeat, I think Pasquale’s comments were all aboveboard.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:34 pm 39. Benj:

“The vast majority of the place is now almost undoubtedly far safer than those public housing areas in Chicago” – Maybe that hints why the cunning of history might be shifting priorities back to the domestic front – W. couldn’t have made diff here – no base that believed in gov intervention (outside DoD). But history is always in the making – Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop – so anyone who wants to gloat is going sound as silly as W. (”Major combat ops are over” – tell it to the Marines who took Fallujah!) OR Kerry…

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:36 pm 40. Old Blue:

Make no mistake; COIN is not an aerial campaign. Air supports COIN by being the combat multiplier when a small team makes contact with nasty bad guys. Period. The extra bombs would not drop without the calls for air. No aerial campaign is “classic COIN.”

The above being said with all due love for the zoomitroids. Especially the A-10 guys and the F-15E that escorted my convoy up the Tag Ab Valley when all the SIGINT said they were set to hit us at Landokheyl. The Strike Eagle convinced them that discretion was the better part of valor that day. We were the small team that needed that combat multiplier. We were the COIN operators and he was the BFH (Big Freakin Hammer) that we would use to smash the tough nuts.

BTW, it was the zoomie’s idea to escort us. They do good things to bad people, and they give us disproportionately large cajones for our small team size.

You cannot separate the HUMINT from the BOG. People talk because they trust that you will be there. The surge brought the HUMINT and the eyes-on to drop the extra bombs that show up on some general’s spreadsheet. But that spreadsheet or the F-15E didn’t establish the relationships with the locals; the good guys on the ground in that neighborhood did.

People will not tell you anything when they doubt you’ve got their back and the night letters are delivered with ease.

HUMINT is all about the warm and fuzzy. Jets are not warm and fuzzy like grunts are.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:37 pm 41. Cannoneer No. 4:

Marine 83:

A lot of the anti-Soviet muj’s abandonment issues were a guilt card to play on the Old Central Asia hands. Afghans are good at that. No amount of aid will ever be enough to repay the debt they want us to feel we owe them.

Military defeat in Afghanistan started the crack that shattered the facade of the Soviet Union. That the Soviet Union was bound to crash was suspected by many in the ’80’s, but whether it would crash before bringing much of the world down with it was questionable. The muj helped us. We helped them. We both wanted to kill Russians. Trigger pullers usually get more credit for kills than munitions suppliers.

Jul 22, 2008 - 12:47 pm 42. Old Blue:

I concur with my redlegged colleague.

We did drop the ball the first time around in A’stan. Truth is truth, we should suck it up. Did we OWE them? No.

Would have been smarter to help them? Yup, but we didn’t and we left it open. Bad things happened, and we could have done better. We should fess up and take responsibility and drive on. If we did more of that, we would be more credible. People make mistakes, and grownups own up. Let’s be grownups.

Jul 22, 2008 - 1:06 pm 43. Marine 83:

Cannoneer No. 4, I hear what you are saying and I agree with your above post.

Old Blue, I am not real sure what could have been done to help. Civil war broke out almost immediately following the Soviet pull out. Who were we to back? That mess finally sorted itself out when the Taliban won the civil war and gained power. I just don’t think that there was any way to involve ourselves. Without the benefit of hindsight I still say we made the best decision possible by steering clear of the whole mess.

Jul 22, 2008 - 1:24 pm 44. sirius_sir:

The Left has more patience with Obama’s proposed Surge because Afghanistan really is about standing up a new democracy without the taint of “blood for oil”.

That certainly explains the readiness to abandon the new, albeit tainted, democracy in Iraq.

Of course it helps that all that oil plays no strategic role going forward and the arid mountains of Afghawazuristan do. It’s good to hear the Left is now suddenly so principled. I remember a time when for many on that side even Afghanistan was a suspect cause.

Jul 22, 2008 - 1:59 pm 45. Old Blue:

Marine 83; Possibly. Many times there is no perfect response, and everything has consequences, either positive or negative, so at this point it’s hard to say what may have been.

The Afghans I worked with in different areas all had eerily similar descriptions and explanations for the events that followed the pullout of the Soviets. They all included a brief period of everyone, including the (Soviet-backed) Afghan Army, getting along, during which the ISI instigated some incidents to pit the factions against each other, followed by a massacre of Army troops, followed by backing the Taliban.

The Taliban never took the entire country; but they did take most of it including Kabul. They announced themselves the winner, but the HiG and Northern Alliance, to name two, remained players. Gulbuddin rocketed Kabul numerous times during the Taliban’s rule.

It’s interesting to get the Afghan’s spin on it. One consistent thing; they portray Pakistani interference via the ISI. Many Afghans hate Pakistan.

sirius_sir; Afghanistan does have oil and a bunch of natural gas. They also have huge deposits of copper and iron. Nuristan and the Panjshir’s biggest industries are gems, which they destroy a goodly amount of by using primitive mining (TNT) techniques.

Afghanistan is a closet wealthy country, but the closet is locked. All these years that other countries have spent developing and accessing their resources have been spent in battling the occupying Soviets and internecine warfare.

Helping the Afghans to unlock the wealth of their country and build their own industry would go a really long way towards reducing insurgency. Idle hands are the mullah’s workshop, you know.

Jul 22, 2008 - 2:37 pm 46. Lifeofthemind:

If we could flood a really large footprint into Afghanistan it should be followed by an influx of missionaries. Ideally most would be Buddhist since that is the last pre-islamic native religion. We should be unambiguously prepared to stay for at least 3 generations.

Jul 22, 2008 - 2:39 pm 47. RWE:

Okay, so in Afghanistan we are doing what? Blood for Air? Or Blood for Dirt?

We got air. We got dirt. I’ll take the oil.

Jul 22, 2008 - 2:44 pm 48. Old Blue:

LoTM; Please don’t take this the wrong way, but have you lost your mind? Proselytizing is a crime punishable by death in Afghanistan, and the intention to flood the country with missionaries of any sort would be the surest way to bring all the muji’s who are sitting this one out (there are many) into the fight.

On the other side.

There are some things that you shouldn’t even joke about. Don’t point guns at your face or at your buddy, don’t pop red flares in the middle of a TIC just for grins, and don’t talk about sending missionaries to Afghanistan.

Jul 22, 2008 - 2:46 pm 49. Lifeofthemind:

When we first took Iraq Paul Bremmer should have made it clear that we were breaking OPEC in the interest of the US. Oil should have been $25 a barrel with the profits divided evenly between cooperative Iraqis and the American treasury. Putin and the Iranians could have sucked eggs.

Jul 22, 2008 - 2:47 pm 50. Lifeofthemind:

Old Blue
I just think we need to change the game. They live and die for the concepts of honor and respect. OK, give it to them. The Taliban blew up the statues of Buddha and now they have to pay for the desecration. We can’t keep feeding this 7th century cancer and it will not stay quietly in 3rd world holes anymore. Maybe you think I’m just getting grumpy but I’ve posted enough that you and Wretchard and company should know I’m not nuts. It is just that I am thinking well of Lord Napier.

Jul 22, 2008 - 2:53 pm 51. Al_Batross:

vb said:
Human int came partly because of boots on the ground and the way they were trained and deployed. It also came because the Iraqis had had enough time to see the realities of the AQ myth.

Old Blue said:
People will not tell you anything when they doubt you’ve got their back and the night letters are delivered with ease.

Personally, I thought going to Iraq was wrong, but what was most definitely wrong was going with too few soldiers.
As people who already knew Iraq well had pointed out, Iraqi is a historically violent country and Iraqis have historically respected those who can deliver violence (”if a man has blood on his teeth, it is best not to ask whose blood it is”).
The lack of soldiers meant there was simply no way to protect ordinary Iraqis from the insane torrent of violence unleashed by the Saddamite, AQ, and other terror groups.
The lack of soldiers meant that the average Iraqi would see the terrorists as representing the strong horse, regularly delivering appalling and savage violence against those brave or unlucky enough to cross them.
What made the surge most definitely right was that it changed that perception. As terror was reduced, so more humint flowed into the tide of new manpower, technology and training running heavily against the terrorists.
Going to Iraq did, imho, come close to undoing Afghanistan. It can perhaps be compared with Britain’s WW2 transfer of forces from North Africa, where Italian forces were close to total defeat, to the aid of Greece, which could not be saved and where terrible losses were incurred. The reduction in the North African operation allowed time for Rommel to arrive with the Afrika Korps, and thus came close to costing Britain the war.
During the time spent struggling with a reduced Afghan operation, Pakistan has grown more chaotic, Iran more aggressive, the Taliaban have returned to operating in large (400 man+)units, and economic factors are now much less favourable than they were pre-Iraq.
The British Army may be close to wearing out in Afghanistan, but a US surge there might work in much the same way as it did in Iraq, by showing the strong horse, fighting like it means to win. Just don’t undo Iraq in the meanwhile, please !

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:02 pm 52. Wadeusaf:

While I believe the French army won the Battle of Algiers, the political will to accept that victory had the effect of making the whole effort a waste. What was taken tactically and practically from that engagement, was use and proved by Petraeus in Mosul in 2004 and 2005, and was loosely chronicled by Michael Yon. That was before the Autumn of 2005 when the marines in Al Anbar began to work with a Sheik whose people had enough of Al Qaeda and the especially sick Baathist pukes whose sadism was exalted under Saddam.

But included in the good work the ground work being done was the building of the Iraqi Army from scratch that included officers that could lead not intimidate, and an NCO corp that mirrored our own and were not just a caricature of a bunch of mule skinners. Change in the institution that retained all the residue of Saddam’s phobias was not an easy thing to accomplish. The pride of an Iraqi soldier in his unit, and the patriotism of individual soldiers toward a nation that is worth their sweat and sacrifice are as much a part of the picture as the coordination of human intel with the “Hand of Allah”, may it always find its mark.

There is so much ground work that was involved over a large stretch of time. I think it is important to note that not only do most American’s not believe MSM tools, but most Iraqi’s don’t either. Without their cooperation not any of the progress seen since the surge began would have been possible.

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:06 pm 53. Richard Fernandez:

While we can’t flood Afghanistan with missionaries we can at least do a better job of setting our own cultural house in order. Recently I’ve had some dealings with Copts, secret Arab Christians, etc and have seen the effect of their ideas affect Australian policy leading some politicians to take on the bureaucratic mafias which actually bias the immigrant intake against Arab Christians and for Muslims.

There’s quite enough to do in the West in these matters. Personally I’m convinced that unless we come to ourselves it will be quite useless to proseletyze abroad. The harsh reality is that the Christian missionary flow today goes from the Third World to the West rather than the other way. So in any case missionaries to Islamic countries are probably going to come from the Third World as well.

It’s amazing to think there are secret missionaries among the million Filipinos working in Saudi Arabia. And it’s the 21st century. But it’s true. The entire subject of the secret church in Islamic countries is a verboten subject to the Western intelligensia; but one day it will be accounted one of the most shameful and dishonest intellectual episodes of recent times. Betrayal begins at home.

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:08 pm 54. Benj:

Sirius – Just to ack that you’re right re yr recollection of Afghanistan and a good part of the academic left…I remember forwarding on a post from a Catholic missionary trying to communicate with pacifists over here telling them NOT to freak re bombs over Kabul – the good Sister was trying to explain (amidst the hard rain) that it had to be done…Still there were some libs who were ok on Afghanistan – Springsteen (who of course became Kerry’s troubador) comes to mind…

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:10 pm 55. sirius_sir:

Al_Batross, your comment concerning more troops initially bears some further reflection. I’ll counter with the observation that from the very first hours we had all the boots on the ground–not to mention firepower–in Baghdad to prevent the subsequent rioting post-occupation. As I recall it was Rumsfeld’s decision not to quell the disturbance with the kind of violence that you seem now to advocate. The question has to be asked, What kind of face would unleashing that kind of violence at that time have put on our presence? Imagine the media and Arab reaction. In retrospect I think the response to ‘not just do something but stand there’ was in the end more beneficial than not. But that’s still probably a judgment call and judgment is in the eye of the beholder.

Wadeseuf, your insight about standing up a reliable and ethical Iraqi Army goes to the central question about who in the end would rule. Would it be the Sunni thugs, the Shi-ite militias, us in perpetuity? Someone made the purposeful and hard decision to disband an irredemiably corrupt Ba-athist organ of control and replace it with something much better. Most people don’t appreciate what a monumental task this has been. An army is never defined by the common soldier, but by its officer corps. It takes years to prepare men to lead. Not to go too far afield, but I think it was William Manchester who noted one of Hitler’s more remarkable achievements was his preparation of just such an elite in the period between the wars. Once he had them, putting an army together was a relatively easy thing to do. But without that prior preparation (done, by the way, in contravention of the terms of the Versailles Treaty) the Wermacht would have been no match for the French, much less the combined power of the Allies.

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:47 pm 56. F451_2.0:

12:26 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada’s_role_in_the_invasion_of_Afghanistan

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:56 pm 57. Marine 83:

Old Blue. Not trying to kick a dead horse… but who would have been a prime target to the ISI? It would have been the good old US of A. What better way to create chaos in Afganistan. To my way of thinking inolving ourselvs in that mess would have led to a catastrophe along the lines of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, in which we were percieved as choosing sides in a civil war. I think we could have counted on the ISI to target the US for playing in what they percieved as their back yard. Just my 2 cents.

Jul 22, 2008 - 3:57 pm 58. Old Blue:

A sound officer corps is a necessity, and the lack thereof will instantly render a force nearly incapable of operations. An officer corps without an NCO corps is not nearly as effective. Most of the former Soviet client states sought help from us to recreate their armies in our model after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Platoon level is too large an element to be the smallest element capable of operating as a unit.

I volunteered to go to Afghanistan to train the ANA. After arriving in-country, I was unceremoniously reallocated, along with two of my Infantry NCO brethren, to the ANP mission. My dismay was complete. I viewed the Police mission as a backwater of the war. I had come to work with an element that would help win the war, not a bunch of raggedy ANP.

It turned out to be an awesome mission. Plenty of good Infantry stuff, too. Lots of tactical advising.

It taught me a few things. It made me realize that I had missed a couple of points in COIN. The army is a mobile force that moves about and “steps on” an area for a finite period of time, and then moves from the recently pacified area to the next hot spot.

As has been pointed out, the insurgents go underground or temporarily leave when the army arrives. They may fight if they choose, but they know that the army will leave at some point; most likely, anyway.

My experience brought me to realize that where there is consistent “professional” ANP presence, there is persistent security. Where the ANP are unprofessional, corrupt, and therefore hated by the people, there is no security unless the army comes along, and only then during their occupation of an area.

We have, in our national experience, been through this before; in our own history. We actually constructed laws to keep the army from being the primary law enforcement arm of our government.

While the ANA certainly have a key role in establishing security and stomping out grass fires and forest fires, it is the ANP who will keep the fire guard going.

I was dismayed to hear yet another general officer (the commander of the 101st,) state unequivocally his belief that the Afghan National Army was the key to a successful outcome in Afghanistan.

The ANA have a key role in securing the peace within their own borders, but I will cling to my unexalted position that until the guy in the village walking about with an automatic weapon is an ANP and always an ANP, and life with the ANP in control in the village is better than life under the Taliban, there will be no lasting security.

Soldiers have the same reaction that I did to the ANP mission; it looks like a bucket of yuck to an infantryman. It’s just not sexy warrior stuff, and we all envision ourselves to be the second coming of Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy was not hanging out with the Gendarmes, he was chewing up mortal flesh with a machine gun!

We have a lot of prejudices that interfere with making good decisions, but we ignore the neighborhood peace keepers at our own peril.

Jul 22, 2008 - 4:34 pm 59. Old Blue:

Really good point, Marine 83… without a major commitment, it would have been a pretty risky effort. Running in with troops right behind the Soviets would have been a difficult position at best.

Imagine the Soviet reaction.

Well, we made our choice. Now we deal with what is.

Jul 22, 2008 - 4:39 pm 60. Cannoneer No. 4:

Old Blue, did you ever have any dealings with the Afghan National Auxiliary Police?

The reason I ask is, my personal perception has been managed to believe that the phobia over war lord private armies locks us in to a painfully slow Focused District Development program of ANP professionalization and locks us out of putting to good use local, district, provincial and tribal irregulars.

Are you familiar with the Vietnamese Ruff Puffs, Kit Carson Scouts and Chieu Hoi program? Are these totally inapplicable to Afghanistan?

Jul 22, 2008 - 5:31 pm 61. cedarford:

Wretchard – Most military historians have no doubt who defeated Germany – The Red Army.

With the US, Brit, free Pole effrort contributory, same with US supplies. We helped the Soviets shorten their time to victory.

In the Pacific Theater, the US Navy submarine and surface force was adequate for victory even without the Marines, Aussies, Chinese, A-bomb, or the best General in WWII – Field Marshal Bill Slim beating the Japs in the India-Burma theater. The War would have ended if it was just Navy, with a starvation blockade and methodical destruction of Jap infrastructure by aviation bombing and naval guns.
But a victory maybe more arguable, not as clear cut as the Red Army’s victory.

********************
Lifeofthemind:
When we first took Iraq Paul Bremmer should have made it clear that we were breaking OPEC in the interest of the US. Oil should have been $25 a barrel with the profits divided evenly between cooperative Iraqis and the American treasury. Putin and the Iranians could have sucked eggs.

That would have put the US in a position of waging aggressive war mainly to thieve other nations wealth and natural resources.

Jul 22, 2008 - 6:30 pm 62. Charles:

Saudi Supreme Judicial Council head Sheikh Saleh bin Muhammad Al-Luhaidan comes out against bin laden. (A couple years ago he was urging saudis to go to iraq.)

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:02 pm 63. Old Blue:

Holy smokes! You know about the ANAP and FDD???? Yep, had a little contact with both of those. The Merry Men and I trained a bunch of ANAP, and Tag Ab was the first FDD district in the country.

I believe that the ANAP program is shut down, but there may still be a few around. They had a one year contract, basically.

One of the ANAP that we trained from Tag Ab a year ago gave up a Taliban mole in the Tag Ab ANP to me. The mole is off somewhere having another really bad day with more of the same to come.

Yes, FDD is painfully slow, but what a massive improvement in capability when they were done with it!

Tag Ab had been a district where the ANP were pinned down all day in their district center by the Taliban… just because they could. That happened the day that we arrived at Camp Dubs. Little did I know that we were going to work with the same guys. Those guys pretty much never left the house. Now they have a lot more vehicles, weapons, and better training. They actually go out and do missions. At least they did when I was there last. I think that the whole thing could be more efficiently accomplished. Thank God nobody’s asking me to explain how.

Still, the program is so painfully slow, replacing the whole district roster with ANCOP and taking everyone away for nearly three months… very elaborate, slow, and painful.

As for the rest, they have a chieu hoi type program. Come on it, renounce the Taliban and lay down your weapon, all is forgiven. Get a job.

We don’t need Kit Carsons… the ANP know the local terrain, including the human terrain. And we have terps, who are wonderful young men. They do change district police chiefs like they change underwear, though. The disgraced chief usually winds up a chief in a district in another province.

Yeah, I know.

You do have to be wary of the ANP when you first get to a new district, though. It takes time to read who might have an agenda.

To try to separate the chiefs from undue influence, the ANP chiefs do not derive their authority from or report to the governors or subgovernors. That does not mean that the governors do not exert influence. One even tried to bring forth his own candidate for chief of Tag Ab.

He had a habit of stacking his cabinet with “former” HiG. That’s to be expected, though. He was former HiG himself; part of the policy of political engagement to draw these guys into the process instead of trying to derail it.

Jul 22, 2008 - 7:36 pm 64. Cannoneer No. 4:

I’ve blogged some about the ANP.

Internal Defense and Development is the ticket out of there.

Somebody needs to write a book about the PMT’s. I envy you guys.

Jul 22, 2008 - 9:59 pm 65. Cannoneer No. 4:

Old Blue: FYI

Military Advisors: Red Headed Stepchildren?

Jul 23, 2008 - 3:35 am 66. Charles:

Here’s what sounds like a good review of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan by strategy page.

Jul 23, 2008 - 6:28 am 67. Old Blue:

Cannoneer; Thanks! Very good article, I’m formulating a comment for them. That’s a subject that I have strong feelings/opinions about.

Jul 23, 2008 - 7:43 am 68. Al_Batross:

sirius_sir:
Thank you for reading my comment. I was not meaning that there were insufficent troops to stop people running off with Baath property. Nor was I suggesting that force should have been used to prevent that, though now you mention it, allowing it probably did suggest weakness.
We were talking about sources of humint, and I was meaning that the lack of soldiers allowed really evil men to bomb, torture, rape and mutilate over a large part of Iraq, intimidating the general population and drying up the humint.
I am a total civilian, but I don’t have a problem with expressing an opinion on this because it is a moral issue and not just a tactical one. The first signs of that terror activity should have been crushed, mostly to show strength but mainly because it was the right thing to do, because it was wrong to leave the ordinary folk of Iraq so vulnerable.
While there many differences in the details between Iraq and Afghanistan, the big picture is the same. Show the strong horse, fighting like it means to win, because that is the right thing to do, both morally and tactically.

Jul 23, 2008 - 1:19 pm 69. Charles:

Sheikh Saeed/Abu Mustafa al-Yazid an Egyptian whom U.S. intelligence officials have identified as the al-Qaeda’s third highest-ranking official, sat for an interview with Najeeb Ahmad, a reporter for Geo TV. Geo TV is a private Pakistani television channel.

Jul 23, 2008 - 6:54 pm 70. Noocyte:

As usual, I have found the commentary over here to be extremely instructive. I’ve given much thought to the question of what exactly it would mean to shift the locus of COIN doctrine from the quasi-periodic space of Iraq to the chaotic domain of Afghanistan. I’ve found the (unsurprisingly) facile formulations of the Obama camp, with its unelaborated prescriptions for “sending in more troops” to be unnervingly unsatisfying.

While preserving the general principles of COIN doctrine, the specific applications to such a profoundly different AO as the Af-Pak theater will require such a level of sophistication and nuanced appreciation for the complexity of the battlespace that I shudder at the thought of the task falling to dilettantes.

I can only hope that the next occupant of the Oval Office will be canny enough to avail himself of the level of expertise and intelligence which is evident in the pages of this blog!

Jul 24, 2008 - 12:24 am 71. Cannoneer No. 4:

Modest goals for the other war

What can we do? Intensify what we’re already doing: Rely on intelligence, special operations and selective airstrikes for now. As long as we throw well-aimed punches and leave, Pakistan’s government will complain publicly but will accept our actions privately — and be glad of them.

The Taliban, or something like it, will always have a constituency in backward areas and among severe Islamists.

We shall never see a fully peaceful Afghanistan — not even with the long troop presence a durably positive outcome will require. Nonetheless, if the Pakistan haven problem can be solved, all the other problems can be managed. We won’t stop terror completely, but we can help the Afghans build a state that terror can’t reclaim.

Jul 24, 2008 - 4:54 am 72. Geeyore:

vb said:

“I don’t really like this boots on the ground vs human int type of analysis.”

My thumbnail heuristic is a bit sloppy but it works: keep an eye on the MNF-I press releases to see how they’re identifying troop engagements. Conventional U.S. forces are identified as such, while the remainder are ID’d as “Coalition forces”.

Before and during the Surge there was a noticeable uptick in the number of press releases mentioning “Coalition forces” in things like snatch-and-grabs, Predator targeting, and similar activities.

When I see those phrases and contexts, it’s usually a good bet that Task Force 77 (or 121 or whatever they are these days) has been out hunting again.

Jul 25, 2008 - 6:53 am 73. sirius_sir:

Al_Batross, I’m glad you elaborated and I would agree with the general tenor of your remarks. I do believe we had a moral obligation to secure the safety of the population once we’d entered upon this project. To my mind, that meant seeing it through to a successful completion. I can’t understand those who thought it better to leave, and leave the Iraqis to the tender mercies of the killers, than to stay and defeat our common enemy.

If we could have killed more of the enemy sooner I wouldn’t have objected. But somehow we got ourselves into a war where apparently the good guys weren’t supposed to do any killing. Which of course led to more deaths than required. I think part of the reason the Surge worked is that Petraeus incorporated a news blackout that allowed the things that needed to be done to be done. That, and embedding our guys among the population. After which it became a whole lot easier to gain the general population’s trust and cooperation, and thereby gain the human intelligence we needed to complete the mission.

Jul 27, 2008 - 2:59 pm 74. Cannoneer No. 4:

Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency really runs Pakistan.

Gilani’s ‘humiliating’ about-face

ISI fiasco

It was Zardari’s decision to control ISI

A state within a state

SALVO IN KABUL
- Democracy will not alter Pakistan’s strategic designs

The Paks do not fear the Americans. That needs to change. It probably serves American purposes to publicly proclaim love and appreciation for the gallant efforts of our valued “ally”, but the only thing they are really doing for us is letting us use their port, roads and air space. When they fall down on that job there won’t be much reason left to tread lightly with them.

Jul 28, 2008 - 9:19 pm 75. Belmont Club » The wrong place:

[...] and not the Middle East was the strategic center of gravity of Islamic fundamentalism.  In an earlier post I wrote: [...]

Jul 29, 2008 - 5:33 am 76. Toward A Better Debate « Strange Monkey Doll:

[...] and not the Middle East was the strategic center of gravity of Islamic fundamentalism. In an earlier post I wrote: “In the debate over whether America should have focused its initial response on [...]

Jul 31, 2008 - 10:43 pm

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