Connect The Dots

(Please excuse my lateness in weighing in on this... and in fact for not posting much lately. Lots to see and do lately, changes coming about, and I hope you keep checking back, as I will be able to discuss those changes openly soon, and they will have a significant impact on this blog.)

Michael Cohen is proving that he is still the guy who just can't connect the dots. His interest regarding COIN doctrine is bordering on a fetish, and his desperation to discredit the doctrine is palpable. As I've said, this is self-defeating. Cohen's primary advocacy dovetails very nicely with the capabilities that need to be developed in order to successfully shepherd Afghanistan and Pakistan through this very troubling and dangerous period of history in Central Asia. It boggles my mind that this man is so frightened that he literally loses his ability to reason, grasping at straws ranging from COL Gian Gentile's writings to Celeste Ward's article in the Washington Post cautioning an overcommitment to COIN.

Neither COL Gentile nor, from what I can gather, Ms. Ward really seem to agree with Mr. Cohen... he just gloms on to any argument that he finds remotely supportive. Desperation and fear are the mother of many inventions, most of them decidedly unhelpful, but the cowardly logic of Michael Cohen is reaching the point of ridiculousness. It seems to have become something of a mission for him to discredit the doctrine and its practitioners, which is peculiar given Mr. Cohen's self-admitted lack of any specific military knowledge. The natural question that one would have is, "What value is Mr. Cohen's opinion on the subject of military doctrine?"

The answer would be, "Absolutely none. Mr. Cohen has nothing of value to offer on the topic of military doctrine."

Why, then, would a man with absolutely nothing to offer... and knows it... on a subject such as warfighting doctrine suddenly be chiming in with vigor against the only doctrine that has even been remotely credited with any success in the insurgencies that we find ourselves embroiled in currently?

He's secretly a North Korean operative that has undergone plastic surgery and was implanted in a think tank in order to derail the United States by offering the worst possible advice imaginable.

I'm just kidding. But, on this issue Mr. Cohen is just about as helpful as a surgically altered North Korean in a Washington think tank. He is motivated not by any desire to see the current foreign policy objectives of the United States achieved, but in fact by a desire to see them fail. To that end, he advocates stridently against the propagation of COIN doctrine, even though he has absolutely no value as a military commenter. Why would he be afraid of success in Afghanistan?

Many seem to view COIN as the future of war and based on the "success" of COIN in Iraq, they seem to believe that the United States is uniquely positioned to do it . The question for many COIN-danistas seems to be not whether and when we should do counter-insurgency, but how the US can do it more effectively...

...The military needs to be making clear to the civilian leadership precisely how difficult counter-insurgency can be and why they should think twice about trying to implement such an approach....

...As I've written here many times the clearest and most unambiguous lesson that we should draw from the war in Iraq is that we should never get involved in such a war again - and that any benefit we accrue from invasion, occupation and nation-building will almost never be worth the cost.

*NOTE TO COHEN: It's COINdinista... just like Sandinista, but with "COIN" instead of "Sand." Let's get our terminology right, okay?*

So let me get this right... COIN seems to be successful in Iraq (although Cohen will also, when convenient, side with those who say that it wasn't in any way responsible for any success in Iraq,) Cohen is and always has been opposed to the war in Iraq or any similar action in the future... and so he feels that he should interfere with the military so that no counterinsurgency will ever be attempted again.

Of course, that was a few days ago. Here's what he said last night:

While there are signs of political reconciliation occurring on the local level and across the country there is a real question as to whether Iraq will turn into a stable country or will it turn in a violent and more deadly direction. While those of us who vehemently opposed this war would like nothing more to be proven wrong - and see a prosperous and stable Iraq rise from the ashes - that possibility is seeming more and more uncertain these days.

No, Sir; I don't believe that he would like to be proven wrong. I've shown Michael Cohen he was wrong before. He doesn't like it. I'll probably get another whiny personal email from him for posting this. No, I don't think that he does want to be proven wrong... because here's the very next paragraph he wrote...

So, the next time you hear a commentator talk about the success of the surge or the effectiveness of counter-insurgency tactics or what worked in Iraq can work in Afghanistan or that "the security situation is manageable" in Iraq be very dubious. What we are seeing today in Iraq is pretty compelling evidence that the institutionalized political reconciliation, which was supposed to accompany the US surge in 2007, is not occurring at a pace that inspires confidence.

As another matter of humor, Cohen quoted Juan Cole in that post. Talk about dubious. Oh, Cole is on target sometimes, I'm sure... but how can you tell? When an "academic" is as politically driven as Cole, it's hit or miss. He wouldn't admit that he was wrong if God were to explain it to him personally.

Here's the biggest problem that I've got with Cohen, and Cole, for that matter; they claim to analyze, but their analysis is politically motivated. It has nothing to do with getting the analysis right. Sometimes they are close, sometimes on, sometimes waaaaay off. There is no consistency, because the answer drives the question. That is not intellectually honest nor is it in the best interests of the country. Cohen, and his ilk, want what they want... and they are willing to say anything to get it. It's the old, "The end justifies the means," argument in action.
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AFJ; Breakfast Of Champions: Part 1

This month's Armed Forces Journal, the journal of the American flag officer, published two articles that I cannot believe that they put between the covers of such a publication. The first of these is "Refusing battle, the alternative to persistent warfare" by COL(R) Douglas MacGregor. COL MacGregor argues that the United States, by failing to have a clearly defined purpose, method and end state when applying its military has bound itself to destroy the very society that this military was born to protect. This is not his only argument, but the one upon which the rest of his essay is based. The essay itself is incredibly flawed, which makes me question the editorial staff of AFJ.

More after the jump.

As alluded to in the title of the article, COL MacGregor advocates refusing battle as a grand strategy, pointing to the troubles that our military has had in the past few years in closing the deal; accomplishing the foreign policy goals of the civilian government. For this the Colonel blames the previous administration and the strategy itself, calling upon the current administration to set a new course of conflict avoidance that sounds so wonderful and peaceful that it's almost too utopian to resist. It makes one want to plant daisies and wear woven hemp sandals. It is also filled with flawed analogies, and the basic premise is in reality a call to the Obama administration to adopt Weinberger/Powell Doctrine as national policy. There are, as always, the simple questions. Which end of this dog wags the other? Does the military try to tell the civilian masters when it is appropriate to use military force? Who decides when to refuse battle? Is the answer to always refuse battle, no matter what the cost?

The Bush legacy in foreign and defense policy presents Obama with a stark choice: Will we continue to pursue global hegemony with the use of military power to control and shape development inside other societies? Or will we use our military power to maintain our market-oriented English-speaking republic, a republic that upholds the rule of law, respects the cultures and traditions of people different from ourselves, and trades freely with all nations, but protects its sovereignty, its commerce, its vital strategic interests and its citizens? This essay argues for the latter approach; a strategy of conflict avoidance designed to make the U.S. more secure without making the rest of the world less so.

In historically demonstrating his argument, COL MacGregor uses two inherently flawed analogies. In the first he likens our situation to that of General Lee when he found himself decisively engaged at Gettysburg. His argument is that Lee should have refused battle. Okay, tactically that would probably been a good thing for Lee to do. Question: How does this relate to modern man as we know him today? Answer: It does not. Lee was engaged in a war. If he refused battle that day, it would have been to accept it on ground of his own choosing or at least much more advantageous to him. Lee had invaded the North and was seeking to sever Washington from the nation that it was the capitol of; a thrust at the heart of the Union. He was seeking battle. While the Colonel makes a good point that Lee accepted battle at a poor time, how this relates to our current situation is not so clear.

His second analogy relates our current situation to the quandary the British found themselves in at the advent of WW-I. He argues that the British should have refused battle on the ground in Europe, being safe upon their island homeland from the end results of any terrestrial battles and possessing a mighty navy. This, he argues, would have maintained the standards of living of the British citizen and avoided the dissolution of the British Empire. Again, this analogy is miserably flawed and simplistic. It also fails to answer the question of what would have been Britain's future across the English Channel from a Europe learning to speak German. It also fails to recognize that while WW-I may have contributed to the end of the British Empire, there were many other factors that doomed imperialism in the 20th Century and that the avoidance of British entry into WW-I would not likely have staved them off as well.

It may have had an entirely ugly outcome for the British, and ourselves, but we shall never know, because there is no historical model, nor can anyone accurately predict what the world would look like now if the Germans had taken an abandoned France, Belgium and Holland and established a German Empire that spanned Europe in 1916. There is little doubt in my mind that Germany would have overwhelmed a solitary France, as even with massive British help all the two could manage together was a fragile stalemate on the Western Front.

Regardless, I found the analogy to be ridiculous. COL MacGregor also assumes that the British did not fully realize their predicament and had they had the sense of asking just one more question, they would have refused to participate and therefore would have salvaged not only their empire, but the riches of the Commonwealth. Oh, wait, they never would have needed a Commonwealth, as they would still be a global empire. Poppycock.

Britain fought a war that cost the British people their national power, their standard of living, and, in less than 20 years, their empire. Had anyone in London’s leadership stopped to seriously examine what outcome (end-state) it was they wanted to achieve with military power (purpose) and what military capabilities (method) were at their disposal to do so, it is doubtful they would have reached the decisions they did.

That is because, assuming Colonel MacGregor is calling this one correctly, the entire British cabinet was full of idiots. Had they seen how ludicrously simple it was to make that easy decision, they would clearly have agreed with the Colonel and saved their empire. For the lack of such pragmatic genius in that chamber, the empire was lost.

What the article boils down to is a massive excuse for the difficulty that the United States Military in general, and the Officer Corps in particular has had in taking responsibility for doing their jobs, which is to accomplish the goals set for them by their civilian masters, with the overwhelming support of the population, and to properly advise that leadership as to what the needs of the mission would be and the military doctrine necessary to accomplish it. The article is put forth as some kind of educational tool for the Obama administration to learn that either the military itself should be the determiner of when and where to use military force or that President Obama should learn how to determine where and when a short, sharp, decisive action can accomplish the foreign policy objectives of the United States. All other confrontations are to be assiduously avoided, and that should be the stated policy of the United States.

The lesson is a straightforward one: When national military strategy fails to answer the questions of purpose, method and end-state, military power becomes an engine of destruction not just for its intended enemies, but for its supporting society and economy, too. Regardless of how great or how small the military commitment, if the price of victory is potentially excessive, then the use of force should be avoided. After all, the object in conflict and crisis is the same as in wrestling: to throw the opponent by weakening his foothold and upsetting his balance without risking self-exhaustion.

In other words, "Dear Mr. President, please use military force only when it is easy and clearly defined. Please do not give us any hard jobs. You may never be sure when the leadership of your Armed Forces may not have the mental flexibility to learn how to accomplish your task, and so we will fail while blaming you for not using us properly. In fact, Sir, please don't use us unless our shores are directly threatened with an invasion by a classic nation-state peer competitor. For everything else, please threaten our enemies with assured nuclear destruction (or some other form of undefined "attack") and leave us to our peacetime garrisons, where we can tout our superiority without ever having to prove it. Thank you, your officers."

Once again, the specter of Vietnam is raised.

The Johnson administration’s decision to intervene with large-scale conventional forces in Vietnam rested on this delusion. Even worse, President Lyndon Johnson subscribed to the idea that whatever military action the American government initiated, it was inherently justified on moral grounds, even if, as in the case of Vietnam, the military action turned out badly for the U.S. Tragically, Johnson’s wish-based ideology made retreat from inflexible and irrational policy pronouncements impossible when they no longer made sense.

Later he adds this.

American military interventions have routinely violated this line of reasoning. In Vietnam, American military assistance failed for many reasons, chiefly because the Saigon government was thoroughly corrupt and indifferent to the security of its own people. All the military might at America’s disposal, whether the North Vietnamese military enjoyed sanctuaries in neighboring states or not, was never enough to rescue the incompetent South Vietnamese government from its eventual conquest by North Vietnamese communists.

Any time from here on out that a military officer raises the specter of Vietnam, he should be summarily slapped and given a timeout on a chair in the corner. I've got news for the Colonel; the military lost Vietnam as surely as the President or the American people did. It wasn't the Soldier's fault; he fought well and hard. It was the leadership's fault, because they never did learn how to fight a counterinsurgency, just as they are resisting it today. Vietnam failed because our military and our civilian leadership cannot wrap their minds around the concept that firepower is not the answer, and that propping up a corrupt regime without working to make it responsible and accountable to its own people will never work.

Oddly enough, the British brought Malaya out of a similar morass. The only ones who are bigger screw-ups against insurgents than us are the Russians. In several books, the United States in Vietnam is used as an example of how not to do counterinsurgency.

We are making similar mistakes now. The Officer Corps must take responsibility for not predicting that toppling the government in Iraq would result in anarchy and a power vacuum that would naturally end in civil war and insurgency. Our Officer Corps and our State Department must take responsibility for not projecting the power forward with the proper training to fill that vacuum instead of showing off our conventional prowess in the ultimate manifestation of the Weinberger/Powell Doctrine, trying to keep it short and sharp, which fails to take into account such events. Instead they advocate choosing to "refuse battle," which is a wonderful idea until your president tells you to go and do a job. Our Officer Corps and our State Department must take responsibility for not understanding that one cannot just have an election and the most popular former warlord will somehow become a master administrator, flawlessly organizing a government devoid of the traditional graft and corruption that results from tossing a bunch of former mountain fighters into cabinet-level posts in a country bereft of any real infrastructure or institutional memory of good governance. Our Officer Corps must take responsibility for a culture which has failed to properly train Soldiers and leaders in counterinsurgency doctrine and the tactical practice of the types of actions on the ground that will have a positive effect on what COL MacGregor describes as an impossible situation. GEN Petraeus proved in Iraq that COL MacGregor is full of beans. MacGregor ignores this completely and resorts to Vietnam, the ultimate example of the obstinate refusal of American officers to adapt and learn; their continual attempts to apply conventional firepower without attempting to establish unconventional superiority. COL MacGregor functions from a position that these situations are impossible to resolve and therefore inappropriate as national objectives.

The fact is that COL MacGregor has no idea of whether or not the United States Military can accomplish the national objectives using the proper doctrine. MacGregor can cite examples from two past centuries as if they did not leave gaping holes in the analogy and sound quite learned, but that does not make them germane, nor does the underlying premise, making excuses, make them any more useful. In the meantime, adequately executed and adaptive counterinsurgency in Iraq has resulted in the possibility of a stable self-governing post-Saddam Iraq. Go figure. MacGregor does take a spirited poke at Petreaus's success later, though.

Today, America’s economic woes along with the larger world’s unrelenting drive for prosperity creates the need for new choices in national military strategy. The most important choice Obama must make is to reject future, unnecessary, large-scale, overt military interventions in favor of conflict avoidance; a strategy of refusing battle that advances democratic principles through shared prosperity — not unwanted military occupation.

Here is where COL MacGregor seems to recognize the influence of globalization, and he begins to speak of respecting other cultures like some kind of zen master.

As a declaratory goal of U.S. military strategy, conflict avoidance is not merely a restatement of deterrence or a new affirmation of collective security. It is a policy stance that stems from a decent regard for the interests of others, regardless of how strange and obtuse these interests may seem to Americans. It is an explicit recognition by Washington that no one in Asia, Africa, the Middle East or Latin America wants American troops to police and govern their country, even if American troops are more capable, more honest and provide better security than their own soldiers and police. The question for Americans is how to translate the goal of conflict avoidance into operational strategy: What will the U.S. do if it is not compelled to fight?

Conflict avoidance would appear to require action on several levels. First, conflict avoidance requires that America continue to maintain the military power to make a direct assault on U.S. and allied security interests unthinkable and then pursue peaceful relations with the peoples of the world, so the danger of war involving the world’s great military powers is reduced and contained.

What of terrorism? Still avoiding the subject of non-state actors, The Colonel speaks to terrorism.

This strategy does not change America’s policy stance on Islamist terrorism. The exportation of Islamist terrorism against the U.S. and its allies must remain a permanent red line in U.S. national military strategy. Governments that knowingly harbor terrorist groups must reckon with the very high probability that they will be subject to attack. However, long-term, large-scale American military occupations, even to ostensibly train indigenous forces to be mirror images of ourselves, are unwise and should be avoided.

So the solution is merely to attack your enemies, but more in a punitive expedition; or perhaps without any expedition.

America already has a surplus of military power for this stated purpose. American nuclear power is overwhelming, and any state or subnational group that contemplates the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. or its allies understands that nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in general have “return addresses” on them with ominous consequences for the user. American conventional military power is no less impressive when it is employed within an integrated, joint framework that exploits capabilities across service lines.

Oops, there it is. The "N" word. This is going to be as succinct as possible; to this writer, any national policy objective that includes the use of nuclear weapons is either a failed policy or a policy of failure. I've got another "N" word for the Colonel; NO. Weapons of mass destruction, on 9/11, included airliners. If someone tries to tell me that four rounds fired that resulted in over 3,000 casualties were not weapons of mass destruction, I'm going to stop listening because that individual is obviously cracked. So the response to that would have been to nuke Afghanistan.

No. Pretty simple; no. I'm sorry, Colonel, you're going to have to figure out how to do your job in unconventional war. I'm sorry that nuclear weapons are but two things; a deterrent to nuclear attack and a final suicidal vengeance weapon if the first goal fails. Conventional superiority? Sorry that it's not the Fulda Gap. Guess what? The Fulda Gap never happened. I'm sorry that it's not Desert Storm, but that didn't solve all of our problems, either. If men who held the rank of Colonel and above had figured out what would have been needed to do the job right from the start, it's very very possible that Iraq never would have become what it was, and that Afghanistan wouldn't be struggling now. This proposed policy is simplistic, overly reliant on overwhelming firepower, and maintains a dreamily wistful vision of classic military asskicking blended with a flower-petal dispensing foreign policy which would somehow placate the world and make it magically safer.

Second, conflict avoidance balances the need to make the U.S. secure against the danger of making the rest of the world less so. Instead of defining events around the world as tests of American military strength and national resolve, and rather than dissipating American military resources in remote places to pass these alleged tests, the U.S. should define its role in the world without feeling compelled to demonstrate its military power. Otherwise, the U.S. runs the risk that other states, not the U.S., will dictate America’s strategic agenda.

That sounds great, but as many times as I read it, the more it just doesn't say anything. It sounds like what my son's mother tried to tell him about dealing with a bully at school, which eventually had my son feeling personally powerless and trapped. When I gave him permission to stand up for himself, he did and, without having to actually perform violence, the bullying stopped and my son's "definition of his role in the world" took on a decidedly positive tone. The fact of the matter is that we are the biggest kid on the block, and as such we will be poked, taunted, and prodded from time to time. Because of our conventional superiority, that goading will most often take the form of sneaky, terrorist activity because nobody in their right mind is going to challenge us with a direct conventional threat. It's not other states that are going to set our strategic agenda, it's more likely to be non-state actors with capabilities to strike that used to be the exclusive domain of states capable of power projection. Huge hole in the analysis.

Third, when the U.S. confronts crises and conflicts, American armed forces should be committed on terms that favor the U.S. where the use of military power can achieve tangible strategic gains for the nation. As Churchill argued in 1909: “It would be very foolish to lose England in safeguarding Egypt. If we win the big battle in the decisive theater, we can put everything else straight afterwards. If we lose it, there will not be any afterwards.”

Well, it seems that the empire was threatened prior to WW-I. Yes, it would be nice if everything were clearly cut-and-dry. I would like to hear what a tangible strategic gain would be for this nation. Land? Natural resources? Would ensuring security be a tangible goal? Would it be appropriate for the civilian government to decide what a strategic goal for the United States would be? As the Colonel would argue otherwise, our sitting government in 2001 decided that there was a strategic goal in Afghanistan and in 2003 it decided that there was a strategic goal in Iraq. I really didn't think that the objectives set were all that ambiguous. I do think that they were not expeditiously achieved by those given the missions. They achieved, in each case, half of the mission, failing the rest.

America’s decision to garrison Iraq after its initial goals of removing Saddam and eliminating WMD were achieved added little, if anything, of strategic value to American security, but the presence of so many conventional American forces did present America’s enemies in the Muslim world with an opportunity they would have otherwise missed: the chance to directly attack U.S. forces, damage American military prestige and exhaust American economic resources while strengthening their own. By the beginning of 2008, the most serious unanticipated outcome of this exposure was a monthly bill of $12 billion to maintain U.S. forces in support of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad that was and is effectively tied to Iran.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has become a co-belligerent for the various factions and peoples — Kurds, Turks, Iranians, Saudi, Sunni or Shiite Arabs — struggling for power inside Iraq. These realities explain why the Bush administration was reluctant to remove large numbers of troops from Iraq. The current status quo is not merely fragile, it will not survive the withdrawal of U.S. military power.

He's right, you know. We should have turned around and left right after toppling Hussein. That would have been best. I'm sure it would have worked out much better. I'm sure that between the Iranians and al Qaeda making a power grab closer to their homeland, Iraq would have quickly stabilized.

No, the current status quo will not survive the abrupt withdrawal of military power. Here's a bell-ringer; what damaged American military prestige was sending conventional forces into a situation that was conventional for one month, followed by unconventional/asymmetric for years, and we never trained them for the unconventional. They developed coping mechanisms, and we helped them with that, but we to this day do not train our young Soldiers and leaders in COIN. That is a failure on the part of senior military leadership, not the civilian government that gave those officers their orders.

Arguing about the objectives that the civilian administration set is useless. Those objectives were set, and the Officer Corps went to work; planning, recommending, publishing orders and making coordination. The military leadership failed to possess a doctrine, and they failed to train for the contingency of having to deal with the end result of decapitating two nations. Now, one can argue ad-nauseum against those goals, but those are just excuses for not seeing it coming and pretending that the Weinberger or Powell doctrines would somehow save the military from another asymmetric challenge, having determined in their warrior hearts that they would never again have another Vietnam. It wasn't the President that harmed American military prestige; it was our military leaders. The results are manifest. It's not the job of senior officers to determine national military policy. It's their job to execute it. You don't choose the mission; the civilian government does. It's the military's job to get the job done, not tell the civilian government later that it's all their fault.

Although that tactic did work after losing Vietnam. What the hell... let's try it again!

In consideration of what to do next about Afghanistan’s rapidly deteriorating situation, current discussions in Washington are dominated by people who advocate increasing force levels and plunging these forces into Pakistan’s tribal areas. Yet a more sober analysis suggests the real problem with Afghanistan resides in Kabul, another corrupt and ineffective government unworthy of American military support.

"Unworthy of American military support?" Another slapping, another timeout. That "real problem" residing in Kabul didn't even exist when we went in there. We helped them set that up. We screwed that up just as surely as they did, and we helped to topple the Taliban regime for our purposes, not theirs, overwhelmingly supported by the American people. How arrogant to determine that they are unworthy of our support. Again, it's an excuse. It has been written many times on this page that the military isn't the best instrument for many of the tasks of nation-building, but this could have been done a ton better. It took us five years after entering Afghanistan to publish counterinsurgency doctrine, and over two years after that doctrine was published, there are still COIN horror stories being written in Afghanistan by field grade officers who should be experts in it and junior leaders who are completely untrained in the doctrine. In the meantime, we have senior leaders publishing essays in a magazine designed for our Generals and Admirals excusing such failures with trite advice for our civilian government about what they must do to prevent such challenges in the future? In what parallel universe does this make sense?

The key questions missing from discussions in Washington about Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 include: Where is the legitimate government that asked for help from the U.S. in defeating the internal armed challenge to the government’s monopoly of control over the means of violence and political power? Legitimacy is not exclusively a function of elections. Legitimacy is also defined by a government’s competence to win and hold power in ways that benefit American and allied interests.

What part of we did it for our purposes, not theirs is unclear? There have been dissident groups inside and outside of Afghanistan asking for help for over a decade. Did we do this for them? Not just no but hell no. We did it for us. We did it because we were mad, and we did it because the longer we let the Taliban provide a happy home for al Qaeda, the less secure we were. We did it because a non-state actor capable of global power projection knocked down two of the largest structures in the world in the middle of one of our largest cities and punched a hole in the Pentagon, something that no state actor had ever been able to do, no matter how much they had wished they could. Conventional power projection in the form of 63 cruise missiles had done nothing more than anger al Qaeda and inspire them to show us what a cruise missile could really do. Our civilian government, overwhelmingly supported by the American people, decided that regime change was the order of the day. Everything past that has been a series of poor executions, not on the part of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, but of leaders who have not mastered the art that is their profession, because this particular application doesn't suit them.

Treating conflict avoidance as a declared strategic goal should give pause to those in Washington who think counterinsurgency is something American military forces should seek to conduct. For outside powers intervening in other peoples’ countries as we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, so-called counterinsurgency has not been the success story presented to the American people. Making cash payments to buy cooperation from insurgent groups to conceal a failed policy of occupation is a temporary expedient to reduce U.S. casualties, not a permanent solution for stability.

American military forces do not seek to conduct counterinsurgency. As a matter of fact, we've got tons of military officers who absolutely want nothing to do with it. We still don't train properly for it, certainly not down to the Soldier-level, and we are still rank amateurs at its performance. On top of that, we've got senior officers writing about why we should never have done it in the first place. That's what I call a recipe for success. As Andrew Exum of Abu Muquwama has pointed out, no one who really understands COIN is an advocate of seeking opportunities to use it. The problem is that we are currently in a position where we need to do it, because the alternative sucks, and we are too busy making excuses for ourselves to do the job that has been handed us by our civilian government.

The choices the new president makes among various military missions will ultimately decide what national military strategy America’s military executes. Of the many missions he must consider, open-ended missions to install democracy at gunpoint inside failed or backward societies along with unrealistic security guarantees to states and peoples of marginal strategic interest to the U.S. are missions America’s military establishment cannot and should not be asked to perform.

Cannot. Well, it appears that question's been decided. This would be when it needs to be pointed out that the military establishment has not been asked to perform anything; it has been ordered to.

This essay is a shortsighted pseudo-intellectual protest against the responsibility of our leadership to figure it out and accomplish the foreign policy objectives of our nation. That includes training for the doctrine that is the only doctrine that makes sense when you are embroiled in a fight against an insurgency, which would be counterinsurgency, and getting the damned job done. The Colonel laments that his big three conditions on the use of military power, purpose, method and end-state, have been missing from the current conflicts. It is submitted that the military was in fact given these conditions, and has continuously failed to achieve them, causing the end-state to constantly have to be reevaluated, making it seem as if there were in fact no strategic goal expressed from the start. Even in Iraq, the goal of establishing a new government and leaving it in control of the country was pretty clear. The same goes for Afghanistan. Purpose and end state were there; method is up to the military leadership, and of all the big three, that has been the one most lacking. Like a child faced with a daunting task, we keep hearing, "Why? Why? Why?

What senior officers of the United States Military need to be encouraging our civilian leadership to do is to do their part in the counterinsurgency, to pony up the civilian development and governmental mentoring to assist in ridding the Afghan Government of corruption and get an actual economy started there. Instead, the premier journal of the American Flag Officer, Armed Forces Journal, publishes this attempted explanation of what the military is really for, giving excuses and setting forth the caveats of the "new military deal."


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International Crisis Group Report On The ANP

This is the second report from the International Crisis Group that I have read, and comparing it to last year's, there are but a few changes in the overall picture. Some of those changes are due to recommendations that have been implemented (although those changes were not necessarily implemented due to the ICG report.) Numerous articles have been written in the mainstream media concerning the report, each with its own synopsis. Each synopsis seizes upon the conclusion drawn from the report, which is that the ANP are too busy fighting the Taliban to enforce the law and that the major military driver, the United States, views the ANP only as additional combat forces.

The substantive areas of the report are spot-on. The report points out that the ANP are rife with corruption and that public confidence in the professionalism of the ANP is extremely low. These assertions are, from my personal observations, correct. The report also leaves its lane a bit to delve into the Afghan Judiciary, which certainly needs some delving into and is appropriately addressed for its dysfunctional relationship with the ANP. The report points out that there is a battle for corruption that occurs when a suspect is detained, with each of the two branches (Executive and Judiciary) vying for their piece of the bribery pie.

The Judiciary is another subject all its own, but we certainly do not have anything resembling a grip on it and we truly need help from other (successful) Islamic countries with functioning judiciaries. This may provide opportunities for engagement; again, a totally new subject.

The observations of fact about the ANP are correct, and I found myself cheering the report on these issues. However, the shortcoming of the report lies in the commission's complete and total lack of understanding (and rightfully so) of COIN. Why does this make a difference? Because the ANP are a linchpin in the COIN fight. Unfortunately, some senior officers do not see this, but a simple perusal of Galula will show that local authority and governance is necessary in the absence of military forces.

The ANA can only take care of so much battlespace. The insurgent tends to leak away from areas with robust military presences, unless that area is necessary to their survival, such as the border areas and the infiltration routes from Pakistan. In areas where there is no such necessity, the insurgent enemy will tend to vacate areas that are stepped on by the Army, the way that water vacates a puddle when a foot lands in it. As with the puddle, when the foot is removed, the water seeps back in; and so do the insurgents.

The Army cannot be everywhere at once, and so the local guarantors of security are the ANP. By this doctrine, the only doctrine that is relevant, the ANP have a key counterinsurgent role. This role does not absolve the ANP for their responsibility in general criminal law enforcement, but rather falls under it. Galula points out that insurgents need to be criminalized. Criminalization of the insurgent brings several beneficial effects, but in order to criminalize the insurgent, there must be a rule of law to begin with.

In the clear, hold and build strategy of counterinsurgency as practiced in Iraq, for instance, the Police can and should participate in all phases. Participation in the Clearing Phase is actually necessary, as the national law in Afghanistan forbids searching of private residences unless it is done by ANP. ANP must be present, at a minimum. This is something of a nod to our Posse Commitatus, in my opinion, designed to prevent abuses by the Army. While the presence of the Army is not necessarily mandated in the Hold and Building Phases (but may be required due to the local situation,) the ANP begin to take the primary role in providing local security. This includes normal law enforcement activity.

When civilians think of the ANP, they tend to think of civilized countries where the only job of the Police is to enforce civil law. This is not the case in Afghanistan, or in any country where there is an active insurgency. The ANP resemble the law enforcement arms in western countries very little in their tasks and armament. While lightly armed compared to the Army, the ANP are excessively armed by any other measure. ANP carry automatic weapons, belt-fed machine guns, and RPG's, which function more as hip-pocket artillery than as the anti-tank weapons that they are designed to be.

The ANP are more like frontier deputy marshals in our own "wild west" days. They are often running into heavily armed criminals, whether they be insurgents or smugglers. When they make contact or are contacted, they are most often in small groups and usually outgunned. They are also often static, such as at checkpoints. This leads to the much higher death rate as compared to their Army counterparts. Make no mistake, though; they are killed by criminals. Even the Taliban are basically criminals.

Let's put this into US terms. In the United States, if someone were to run about killing policemen, what would we call them? Criminals. If someone were to (as some drug gangs have done) establish themselves as a local governing body and impose their own rule of law, what would we call them? Criminals. If someone were to refuse to obey the lawfully elected government, declare it to be illegal, and attack governmental offices, officers, and institutions, what would we call it here? Criminal. It is no different there. These are criminal acts. What do we do with "insurgents" here? We label them as criminals and we lock them up for a very long time. It doesn't matter to us whether their beef with the government is financial or political in nature here in the United States; here they are all just criminals and are treated as such. Timothy McVeigh thought he was an insurgent. He wasn't. He was just a murderer; a criminal. He was treated as such by the people of the State of Oklahoma. He wasn't captured by the Army, he was captured by law enforcement.

Insurgency is an internal problem, and therefore a criminal problem. The Taliban could each lay down their arms and take part in the process. They could vote. They could run for office. They could participate. What's the difference between any of the Taliban and Tim McVeigh?

There are more of them.

Afghanistan is trying to move on in the post-Taliban era. No longer an authoritarian theocracy, this country has ratified a Constitution and has held successful elections. Now, burdened with the detritus of 30 years of warfare and the lack of any real institutional memory of how to govern, this nation struggles to survive. The ANP are, again, key to the development of a healthy country. Are they treated as such?

Uh, I'll take "No" for a thousand, Alex.

The ANP are the bastard children of the Islamic Republic. Our own Army didn't want the ANP training mission, again preferring the ANA mission; at least it had the word "Army" in it. The organization I belonged to fell under the ARSIC-East. I heard it said at an ETT team leader conference that even though General Cone said that the ANP were the main effort, he didn't agree and the ARSIC-East's main effort would remain with the ANA. If I had disobeyed my commander at that level it would have been my butt, but I suppose that at that level there were gentlemen's agreements or something. The point is that the ANP are and have been lower on the priority list for training and mentoring, though we have seen what all of that can do for the ANA.

Six years ago the ANA were scarcely better than criminals in the eyes of the people. They often did things that the ANP are known for now; shaking down the populace for money, corruption on an incredibly grand scale, nepotism, clannish cronyism, thievery and misdirection of government assets... the ANA were champs of all of that behavior. Now the ANA are widely trusted and looked up to by the population. Their stock in the eyes of the people has risen immeasurably. My ANP were threatened by local village elders during an operation, "We like the ANA. We respect the ANA. When the ANA leave, you are through."

Telling.

I also saw the ANP Colonel that I was mentoring taking care of law enforcement calls while engaged in a major combat operation. Arrests were made, referrals to prosecutors made. I then witnessed the same erratic behavior from the Provincial law enforcement system that the ICG report details. On the first day of the operation, one of my cohort's team captured the Taliban S-2 (Intelligence Officer) for the Tag Ab Valley. Major find, eh? Yep, what a coup; right up to the point where he got to the provincial prosecutor.

The Provincial Governor (brand spanking new one, too) had him released. By the next day, he was leading 60 Taliban all over the Tag Ab Valley trying to kill us. I cannot express my admiration for the Afghan Judiciary and the current Provincial governance structure. During the same period, I was personally asked to intervene by an Afghan mother. Her son had been declared innocent by the court in Kabul, but she couldn't get the Provincial Government to release him, although she had copies of the decision in her hands.

They wanted a bribe to release him, and she couldn't afford the bribe.

This is why the Taliban, the criminals, are making headway; because it doesn't take much to out-govern such a government. All of these problems are fixable, though. If you had seen the ANA six years ago, you would have thrown in the towel. However, it's going to take a renewed effort, some re-delegation of responsibilities on the part of some of our non-combatant or sub-combatant allies (those countries with national caveats on use of force or employment of armed forces) into roles that don't require combat except in self-defense but can seriously impact governance, and potentially some help that is not currently being sought or used, such as to rework the Afghan Judiciary into something resembling a fair and honest system.

The ICG report hits the nail on the head with its depiction of the institutional flaws of the ANP, but misses the mark with its stress on removing the ANP from the counterinsurgent role. This is an honest mistake, though, made from the viewpoint of an organization that doesn't understand that criminalizing insurgents is part of the only strategy that will secure success in Afghanistan, and the fact that where the Army isn't, the ANP are static and are the government's first line of contact with the people and their rightful guarantors of security, just like they are here in the States. The report's recommendations for reforms and accountability are excellent. Overall, it's a good document and well worth a read.

Parking tickets are a long way off for these folks. Think 1870's in our own West.
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And The Winner Is... Substance

I differed with Andrew Exum of Abu Mukuwama in my review of Nir Rosen's article in Rolling Stone detailing his "embed" with the Taliban, which turned out to be, I thought, totally lacking in substance. It was more a tale of how his life was in danger as he was shuttled about by "Taliban" underlings. He in no way delved into the subjects that Ghaith Abdul Ahad, an Iraqi journalist who is published in The Guardian this week, plumbed thoroughly. Ghaith Abdul Ahad blows Rosen clean out of the water and shows Rolling Stone up for the pop outlet that it is, rather than a serious source of information.

Ghaith Abdul Ahad has produced an excellent look at some insurgents who have their act together. They know what they are doing. Read the article for a quick course in Insurgency 101. Qomendan Hemmet is the real deal. Qomendan is a spelling of a word in Dari that sounds to me like "Commandan" and means, "Commander" or "Commandant" depending on the usage. It is a title, not a name. Often Afghans in government service will refer to a commander as "Qomendan Sahib" as a way of being respectful of a commander. The Talib Qomendan explains the simplicity of the message that he is carrying and illustrates the difficulties facing the coalition in his area, which is in Wardak Province. Wardak borders Kabul Province to the west and southwest, and has been an area that has become more and more a focus of violence since 2007.

It doesn't matter what the location, though. Hemmet explains to Ghaith Abdul Ahad in relative detail how his insurgency is working and what his aims are. Is he cocky? Sure. You could say that he is cocksure of himself; or of his enemy's inability to block him in the achievement of his goals, which are simple and clear.

"The Americans have installed hundreds of Afghan policemen, they patrol the street all the time, but they can't control it." ~ Qomendan Hemmet

This is the message of the Taliban; it is simple, it is clear, and it is easier to give as an impression than it is to thoroughly disprove as a fact. That, my friends, is IO that is consistent with operations, goals, and capabilities. They mean what they say, they say what they mean, and they do what they say.

There is more consistency with a directly focused insurgency.

Mullah Muhamadi, one of Hemmet's men, arrived later wearing a long leather jacket and a turban bigger than all the others. "This is not just a guerrilla war, and it's not an organised war with fronts," he said. "It's both." He went on to explain the importance the Taliban attached to creating a strong administration in the areas it held: "When we control a province we need to provide service to the people. ~ Ghaith Abdul Ahad, The Guardian

This is echoed by another Talib in Ghazni. Sounds like these guys have read Galula, and whether or not they know it, they are students of Mao. Establish a shadow government and prove their legitimacy by providing service to the people. Outgovern the government. A discussion of whether and how they are achieving this goal is another subject, but there are definitely gaps in the government's legitimacy large enough for shadow organizations, like courts, to provide such services to the people.

"The main two problems we deal with in the Taliban courts are bandits and land disputes," Abdul Halim went on. "When we solve these problems we win the hearts of the people." ~ Maulawi Abdul Halim, quoted by Gaith Abdul Ahad, The Guardian

There was nothing nearly so illuminating in Rosen's piece. We are jaded with "hearts and minds," but the Taliban are living it. Those of us who have seen the shortcomings of the government of the IRoA at ground level know what the weak points are; the failures to govern effectively that have left the door open to the hated Taliban. Between these failures and the failures on the part of NATO and ISAF to effectively mentor the fledgling government to overcome these shortfalls and our failure to live up to our promises as far as reconstruction is concerned leave Afghans willing to consider alternate governance. But the Taliban?

Even the Taliban realize that they have a PR problem, and they address it.

"We went from the jihad to the government and now we are in the jihad again. We have learned from the mistakes we committed. Lots of our leaders have experience in the jihad and in the government. The leaders are the same leaders but the fighters are new and they don't want to be like those who ruled and committed mistakes." ~ Abdul Halim, quoted by Ghaith Abdul Ahad, The Guardian

These guys are not idiots. They know an opportunity to present their case when they see it. Sure, Ghaith Abdul Ahad and The Guardian provided them an outlet. I'm not slamming them for that at all. On the contrary, all of the stuff that I and others have been saying about insurgents, insurgency, counterinsurgency and the state of things in Afghanistan are being confirmed here from the other side. Yes, the Taliban got to paint their picture, but this article is valuable in shedding some light on the fact that these guys are no slackers, nor are they mysterious unbeatable Taliban. They are still Taliban.

These Taliban are also telling us how to beat them. It's all there; and it sounds a lot like what veterans of the campaign have been saying. No deep imponderables... except how to master ourselves.

Nir Rosen's bit in Rolling Stone had all the depth of a small soap dish. In fact, his inability to correctly identify the NATO member country whose armored vehicles roared past his position on Highway 1 was only one indication of the overall weakness of his portrayal of the situation and the insurgents. It was a story of personal intrigue, not an article of substance about the insurgents or insurgency. Ghaith Abdul Ahad did an actual work of journalism, and the difference between two articles that are so similar in intent is a world in breadth.

Two similarly themed articles; one in a newspaper, one in a flashy pop magazine, and the winner is the one with substance.

Rolling Stone really stepped on it. They should have hired Ghaith Abdul Ahad.
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