Obama's Afghanistan

The President has made his decision.  Now it's up to the generals to make the most of it before the liberal dems sound retreat, and you know they're just itching for that bugle. 

A lot of ink has been spilled on the speech, here and around the world.  The men at Blackfive and Ralph Peters at The NY Post have the best take.

As always when I want the straight gouge, I head over to Blackfive, one of the best military commentary sites, imho.  They didn't disappoint...

MCQ had this to say:

if I'm the Taliban I'm absolutely exultant about what I've heard. And I'm immediately into planning a disinformation campaign that will paint the rosiest possible picture in 18 months time.

Meanwhile, my forces are basically on R&R for duration (or concentrating in Pakistan) while I sit back and wait out the withdrawal. And when that last C-17 is wheels up out of Bagram, I'm headed into Afghanistan in force.

Given that speech last night, they must finally believe that Allah truly is on their side now.

Uncle Jimbo, another Blackfive writer, chimed in:

While Grim and I were watching last night this was the best laugh line.

And going forward, the Pakistan people must know America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan’s security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.

After the guns have fallen silent? Oh that is rich. These people have been shooting at each other since guns were invented, before that they were stabbing each other, before that bashing each other with rocks. After the guns have fallen silent? I’m not holding my breath.

Those are our soldiers out there; let's pray for a good outcome.  Inshallah...

More Reading:
Ralph Peters (He Flames Obama!)
Der Speigel (German Doubts)
Der Spiegel (More German Doubts)

What Next in Afghanistan?

Counter-Terrorism or Counter-Insurgency?  Good People Disagree 

Ralph Peters, a good and patriotic retired Army Colonel with lots of active-duty contacts, disagrees with General Stanley McChrystal's proposed strategy.  Peters is a keen military mind from the General Sherman "War is Hell" school of war fighting who supports a Counter-Terror strategy for Afghanistan that involves less troops and more predator strikes.  His criticism is respectful, giving full props to the general.

Such debates and reasoned disagreements are productive, especially for us non-experts who want the best for our troops and our country.  We need to hear from all responsible corners while tuning out the chickenhawks on the right and the "General Betrayus" screaming idiots on the left.

PRESIDENT Obama faces three options in Afghanistan. Hints from the White House suggest that he's going to choose the worst: a non-decision decision.

The McChrsytal Plan: Surge 40,000 more US troops from a weary Army to renew the failing effort to apply our counter-productive counterinsurgency theory -- which attempts to cure cancer with herbal tea.

The Biden Strategy: Focus ruthlessly on the destruction of al Qaeda and its auxiliaries across the border in Pakistan or wherever they may appear in Afghanistan. This is the counter-terror practice that's worked for 3,000 years.

The "Vote Present" Strategy: Send a token increase of 10,000 or so troops, make cosmetic changes to the mission, try to please everyone partially -- and kick the can down the road.

The evidence on the ground, the lessons of history, and our real security needs strongly favor the Biden approach, but giving Gen. Stan McChrystal the full surge he wants would be far better than "more of the same, with new slogans."

I don't know what to think for sure, but I tend to side with McChrystal because he's the guy on the ground responsible for 100,000 US and coalition troops.  However, Peters does make a good case that though a brilliant tactician and operator, perhaps the general is missing the bigger strategic picture. 

Those quick to criticize McChrystal as a "touchy feely" enemy coddler need to remember he is a Green Beret who has also been through the grueling Army Ranger School.  He spent five years in Iraq hunting down high value targets.  Saddam Hussein and Musab al Zarqawi are his most famous trophies.  His efforts were also key in forging alliances with the Iraqi Sunni Sheiks and turning them against Al Qaieda.

Trade-Offs

There are no crisp, clean solutions here.  If there were, there would be no disagreement.  His emphasis on protecting the locals and being more judicious with airstrikes has been criticized by Peters and others for causing more troop casualties. 

McChrystal wants to erase the locals' perception that we are indiscriminate bombers who care nothing of their life or property.  Blackfive, a blog of military experts who come from the trenches, has an excellent article on General McChrystal's Tactical Directive.  Read it here.  

McChrystal is a special operator so he brings that mentality to his strategy. It includes getting out of the armored personnel carriers and integrating with the locals to protect them and peel them away from the embedded bad guys.  This too will surely bring more casualties, but the counter-insurgency experts say this will eventually pay dividends as the locals grow to trust us and provide intelligence needed to find and snuff the terrorist interlopers.

Part and parcel of this, also criticized by the right more than the left, is the prospect of rehabilitating Taliban fighters willing to lay down arms. 

This is not a stated part of McChrystal's plan, but it goes hand in hand with counter-insurgencies.  Making nice with Taliban fighters who lay down their weapons, rehabilitating them, would be far from unprecedented.  We just did that in Iraq.  The FMLN and the Sandinistas, Central American leftist guerrilla movements we helped El Salvador and Nicaragua defeat in the 1980's, are now unarmed political parties in their respective countries. 

We didn't even attempt to dismantle Noriega's political party after the Panama invasion.  It also helps to recall we did not kill every last Nazi and Japanese Imperial soldier.  We prosecuted the criminals and rehabilitated the remainder, who reintegrated with society.

It's Us against Them

The ultimate aim is to split Al Qaeda from Afghan society and kill them or drive them from the country.  It's us against them, and McChrystal want the "Us" to be the Afghan people and our ISAF forces.  McCrystal's "Them" are the Taliban fighters and Al Qaida. 

This is not how things shake out right now, but he believes a patient counter-insurgency strategy can get us there.  Stay Tuned.    

WaPo - McChrystal Plan
NY Post - Ralph Peters
Blackfive - McChrystal's Directive
FT - McCrystal

Lessons from 20th Century Wars: Go Big or Go Home

There is no such thing as a humane war. Indulging in such fantasies, with CNN enforcing the rules, has made the world a more dangerous place.

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition. (Source: Jonathan Landay, a real battlefield reporter for McClatchy)

David Warren, trenchant thinker and writer from Canada, observes that "The Second World War was the unfinished business of the First World War."

Germans were left with the possibility of believing that they hadn't really lost the war, that they had been somehow cheated at Versailles, that in the upshot of their military aggression they were somehow victims not perpetrators...
This is precisely what made the Hitler phenomenon possible in Germany. And it was the bitter experience of 1945 -- the unconditional surrender of Germany, in the ruins of Berlin -- that ultimately cleansed the German nation of militarist ambitions.

Is is no longer possible to just go in and completely wipe somebody out in a fiery, bloody carnage. Gotta protect their dignity, can't kill any "innocent" civilians whose skirts the "brave fighters" are hiding behind. Nobody gets their ass beat anymore, and that's the problem.

We rained down fiery hell on Germany and Japan, followed up by an allied land invasion, full occupation, and execution of the guilty. Look at them now... They don't wanna fight no more.

War is Hell
That's how you take the fight out of people. A little inhumanity up front saves a whole lot of it down the road.

That is what General Tecumseh Sherman meant when he said "War is hell." He believed it should be hell in order to teach the belligerents a harsh, bloody lesson that would make them think twice before starting something again.

Ralph Peters explains:

It isn't just that war is hell. It's that war must be hell, otherwise why would the enemy ever quit?

We are no longer permitted to visit hell upon our enemies. They can take us on and live to fight (and brag about it) another day. We had better learn to pick our fights: Go big or go home. Otherwise, we're just wasting peoples' lives.

Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell, lone survivor of Operation Redwing, said it best:

If you don't want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.
-- Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal, from Lone Survivor, p. 313

Further Reading:
Newsweek - McChrystal
WaPo - Rajiv Chandrasekaran
NY Post - Amir Taheri
David Warren
Byron York - Afghanistan

Media Ignores Iraq Progress

I'm a big Ralph Peters fan. He really lays the wood to the media for (purposefully?) ignoring good news or any progress in Iraq.

" Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating."

Read it here.


Enjoy!

CENTCOM Happenings: Ralph Peters Analysis

I like Ralph Peters. He's a retired Army Intel Officer who as a civilian has spent a lot of time in Iraq looking things over for himself. He is not a blind cheerleader: He really laid the wood to the Bush administration over their pre-surge ineptitude. He is a big fan of the surge, and can expertly explain why. Here he explains the personnel changes going on in CENTCOM and why they bode well for our efforts the Middle East. General Petreaus's star keeps rising. A good read.
Enjoy!