Leave Afghanistan Now
The burning of the Korans at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and the subsequent riots and murder of 5 NATO soldiers put all questions to rest about our future in the country. There is nothing more the US can gain in this war. Amid our apologies and groveling, our warped attempts to prove we are not imperialists, the Taliban and crime lords thrive, resting peacefully in Pakistan. And we still pace the floor like Hamlet churning the possibilities through Washington’s mushy head.
The cultural differences between the US and many Afghans are so great, they simply cannot be overcome in a manner that benefits in any meaningful way the US. The country is still largely run by thieves and criminals, and outside Kabul there is little true support for the US effort. Our national prestige is being drained away by the ridiculous “sensitivity” of Pashtun Muslims, whom seize upon any sleight as a reason to engage in mayhem.
Why are we still there? It’s time to leave, and let Afghanistan face the reality it created for itself. A future of crime, chaos, fundamentalism and misery. To the Afghan government and the Taliban: Keep your evil inside your own borders this time.To Washington: Stop embarrasing your nation and its troops with your equivocating and hand wringing. Bring back the pop-up targets you’ve provided for blood drenched, hateful Islamists.
Bring our boys home.
Sherman rolls in his grave.
We never learn because the elites in Washington don’t feel the pain of the battlefield.
Alexander in the Af-Pak War
America no longer has the will to fight and win wars. If our enemies are able to weather our airstrikes, we are wholly unprepared at nearly every level to place sufficient pressure on fanatical guerrillas whom find war a preferable state to peace. Never in history has an army enjoyed such a monopoly on firepower and mobility as does America, and yet been so unwilling to use it.
We are blessed by the geographical bulwarks of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and cursed with partisan demagogues in Washington who know little of military history or the culture of war. Perfectly willing to start a war, the politicians don’t want to hear what it takes to win it. No matter how much data multi-million dollar computer networks feed those in the Pentagon and Congress, few of the recipients of that data can feel our wars; the data crunchers and politicos can know the wars, but the visceral sensations of ground commanders and grunts will always be beyond them, as thus we can assume that almost all of their decisions will prove inadequate. When war does not fit into comfort zones or proffered theories, many believe we just need to try harder to make the theories work. Few would question the theories themselves lest horrible answers become truths.
Washington’s elites are safe when we lose. The 25 year old squad leader in Afghanistan is not.
The quaint mythologies of counterinsurgency theorems have us following a Yellow Brick Road paved by Non-Governmental Agencies and State Department aid money. We hoped that Oz was a place where suicidal zealots laid down their rifles and stopped making bombs in exchange for a school house and a new pair of shoes. When the curtain was thrown aside to reveal the Wizard, we saw his bloody hand raised skyward, grasping the severed head of the school teacher. And even when the sheer brutality and power of the Taliban terrorist revealed itself, we refused to believe what we saw. We prefer to think that all men want peace, that brutality doesn’t work, and that killing cannot be the answer. Convenient dreams for those in Washington whose greatest daily danger is a Tweeted revelation of sexual misconduct. We question ourselves whereas the men of old, seeing the world more clearly than do we, quickly identified the problem and dealt with it. Swimming is oceans of information, we find it more difficult to choose proper paths, but the ancient warriors of yore, though lacking technological aids—perhaps because he lacked those aids—instinctively discerned human psychology.
Enter Alexander The Great. Imagine for a moment that future technologies could spring the Macedonian king back to life and the modern social and political delusions that prevent decisive victories in war have vanished by the wayside. Now place Alexander in command of history’s most powerful military and charge him with defeating the insurgency in Afghanistan. First, we’ll have to listen to Alexander give us a history lesson. Contrary to revisionists whom extol the invincibility of Afghans fighters, Alexander was never defeated by the people inhabiting the land we now call Afghanistan. And then he would tell us that his tutor, Aristotle, wasn’t about giving peace a chance; the father of Western philosophy implored young Alexander to force Hellenistic ethnic supremacy upon the world of the barbarians.
To the Neo-Alexander, defeating the Taliban begins with an offer to meet insurgent leadership at the bargaining table. And here’s the offer: Submit or die. This language resonates with the Taliban at a far deeper level than does the current Coalition Force offers of reintegration and power sharing. A reasonable man, Alexander offers the Taliban their religion and way of life in exchange for their weapons. The sovereign lines of the Pakistani border mean nothing. They are semi-porous membranes that hold back American power and allow insurgents to move freely to and from their safe havens in Pakistan. In response to each suicide bomber making his way from Western Pakistan, Alexander orders biometric identification through DNA testing, and using covert CIA intelligence cells seeded throughout Pakistan, identifies the village from which the suicide bomber originated. The Macedonian orders B-2 bomber and Reaper drone strikes on all known Madrassas in the village. No apologies are offered for civilian casualties. The retributive strikes are timely and painful. The suicide bombers quickly transform from heroes to sources of great pain in the villages. Soon, being a suicide bomber is disgraceful, not honorable.
The terrorists resort to using their greatest weapon: The media. In response, all media embeds are ordered to leave Afghanistan. Journalists stream into North and South Waziristan, hoping to document American atrocities. Members of the Haqqani Network set up ad hoc repeater stations, hoping to broadcast propaganda from small, handheld Motorola VHF radios. America counters by dropping electromagnetic pulse bombs at random intervals into the tribal areas. These weapons destroy any modern electronic equipment, leaving journalists to their pens and notebooks and Haqqani insurgents to courier communications.
As for terrorist infiltration along the Pakistan border, Alexander knows that not every infiltrator can be stopped. However, it is possible to make crossing into Afghanistan too painful a gamble. Areas along the border are declared free-fire zones. Approximately 5 kilometers on each side of the border are free-fire; that is, since the areas are assumed cleared, anyone in those areas can be fired on. The 5 kilometer range allows for ranges of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and Haqqani Network rocket fire, such as which killed two American Soldiers at FOB Salerno in May of 2011 (with no punitive action taken by the US military out of respect to our Pakistani “friends”).
Entire villages will be held accountable for the actions of individuals that live within them. Villagers in Afghanistan always know what goes on within the village. Villages where US forces are attacked will be subject to curfews and those found to be involved in insurgent activity shall be given a field trial by US military officers and if found guilty, executed. Special Operations night raids and air assaults will be constant in areas infested with Taliban, al-Qaeda and Haqqani fighters. Protests by villagers about the night raids will be ignored, as most of these protests are spawned by agitated insurgents. The cooperation of local villagers is the goal, but America under Alexander will place the safety of her troops and the destruction of the insurgency above the safety of villagers. Civilian casualties will be avoided when possible, but local Afghans will need to provide intelligence and information to American forces in order to ensure that America kills the right people. Otherwise, the insurgents will merely use civilains as living shields. Cooperation will help both the Afghans and America. The “sanctity” of the people will no longer be assumed; entire populations can be just as evil as individuals. The terrorists will be held to the same standards that the US military is held. All war crimes will be prosecuted in the field if possible.
The shrines of dead al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters will be closely monitored by payed CIA informants. Sympathizers who come to venerate terrorist grave sites will be followed, and at a convenient time, interviewed and their biometric data entered into a huge data base known as BATS–Biometrically Automated Toolset. These people will be placed on watch lists, denied entry to US bases, and denied the possibility of serving within Afghan government security forces for 5 years. Individuals assessed to be of a higher threat level shall be denied access and government work on a permanent basis.
Alexander will reward the friends of America. India, the largest democracy on Earth, will be provided special trade rights. She has earned it. A full embargo of Pakistan will commence. We have treated our enemies better than our friends in hopes that our goodwill would bring them to our side. But they mistook our goodwill for weakness. Those who fought bravely beside us, such as Britain, did not get 4 billion dollar rewards, such as did Pakistan.
Every chance will be given to those in the Federally Administered tribal Region of Pakistan to formally surrender Siraj and Jallaludin Haqqani, the familial leaders of the Haqqani Network. America will make war for a better peace denied her by maniacs. Letters will dropped in each village in North and South Waziristan, telling the inhabitants to give up their weapons and submit to searches of their residences. Aggressive actions taken by Pak military units will result in 5,000 lb GBU-28 Penetrator Bombs being dropped on all Pakistani nuclear missile sites, which have been carefully tracked by the National Ground Intelligence Center and the National Geospatial Agency for years. Alexander–a genius at war–knows that this war will escalate. All wars escalate. But no one can out-escalate the United States Military.
Villages not wishing to submit to search will be given 24 hours notice to evacuate. Then the village will be razed by Fire Support Teams (FIST) utilizing 155 mm Howitzer fire and B-52 Arc Light strikes and tactical airstrikes under the guidance of Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) teams. Not only will there be no apologies for these actions, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) units will broadcast images of the destruction to other villages, warning them of the implications of resistance.
Anything less than the above guarantees an American defeat in Afghanistan. If our leaders cannot do what Alexander would do, they should save the blood of our Soldiers and Marines and bring them home. And they should never again begin or escalate a war for political gain if they don’t intend to win it.
My time walking through the Old Testament
I’ll be writing several entries on my blog about my experiences in Afghanistan. Look for it soon. It’ll include photos and several vignettes. Not everyone will like what they read; we screwed the pooch on this one.
Article by Dr. Scott Catino on Afghanistan
My friend and co-worker, Dr. Scott Catino, wrote this article about his observations here in Afghanistan. He and I work together at the Consolidated Stability Operations Center.
http://www.thoughts.com/martinscottcatino/afghanistan-and-the-valley-between-us
Bin Laden, COIN, and the absurdity of war without escalation
Recently, concerns have arisen about retaliatory attacks by al-Qaeda stemming from the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
This concern stems from the current small-wars counterinsurgency (COIN) meme; that by killing one enemy, you create 20 more. However, this idea should by no means be considered a maxim. Essentially, recent COIN methodology hoped for war without escalation, something that Clausewitz found to be absurd. Clausewitz states that almost all wars must escalate:
“War is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force. Each side, therefore, compels its opponent to follow suit; a reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes…To introduce the theory of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity.”[1]
But we know there is a limit to that escalation, otherwise history would have known only one war and it would have consumed all of humanity. The question is always: What is the enemy’s breaking point?
To illustrate the necessity of escalation in war, let’s picture two men arm wrestling. As the match begins, one man—let’s call him Joe–thinks he is much stronger than the other (Steve) and doesn’t wish to humiliate or hurt his opponent, but does want to win, so Joe exerts only a percentage of his maximal possible force. But suddenly Joe realizes that Steve is stronger than Joe expected, that his opponent actually seems to be giving it his all and doesn’t seem at all to care if Joe loses face in the masculine battle. Joe cranks up the force, feeling a bit stupid at underestimating his opponent. Steve senses Joe’s increased intensity, and he, too, leans into the match, his face turning a darkening red. Now Joe again applies more pressure, and for once he sees Steve’s arm begin to move toward the table. Steve is still giving it his all—his will is not yet broken—but he simply doesn’t have the power necessary to bring Joe’s arm down. Finally, Joe senses victory and gives it everything he’s got. As Steve’s wrist moves to within an inch of the table, Steve sees that defeat is inevitable and that further resistance will only bring pain. Steve’s arm goes limp and Joe wins.
Consider the above analogy with no escalation. Both men would sit at the table forever. The parallels to war are obvious. Some may say that it is desirable that neither side escalate. This is only the case if the war is not a shooting war, otherwise the killing would continue albeit at a slower rate, but for a much longer time. At some point, one side’s will is sure to waiver. It is highly unlikely that neither man in the arm wrestling match would choose not to escalate his use of power. If neither man wanted to win an arm wrestling match, why did they take part in the first place?
The fallacy is that a war can be won without escalation. If there is no escalation, it is not a war; it’s an intellectual debate.
Yes, killing one man may indeed create 20 enemies. This doesn’t mean the one man should not be killed. Killing him would only be a mistake if analysis showed the enemy capable of out-escalating the killer. There are a number of factors that dictate the level to which an enemy can escalate and many of them are not directly related to military strength. In any case, no nation or enemy can escalate ad infinitum. To worry that al-Qaeda can escalate forever and always grossly overestimates their power and the constant media messaging hinting as al-Qaeda’s plots for revenge provide the terror group with moral courage. It’s been said that America can’t kill an idea. That’s true, but also moot. America needs only make the actual practice of harmful ideas more painful than mere thoughts. The COIN argument that killing one enemy makes 20 also shows itself to be overblown when we think about the effect of al-Qaeda and the Taliban killing one of our service people; do 20 more American soldiers magically sprout on the battlefield? After enough deaths in a fight, do some Americans not begin to ask: Is it worth fighting on? Losing soldiers has a real effect on our will and combat effectiveness. It is the same with our enemies.
Of course, escalation need not take place at all costs. There comes a time when the negative results of escalation outweigh anything that can be gained from it. That, too, is the same for our enemies. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) learned the cost of its Total Terror campaign and it also underestimated the ability and will of America to escalate. AQI poisoned the sea in which it swam by killing too many Iraqi civilians and then America destroyed the insurgency by killing a lot of terrorists. The violence in Iraq dropped dramatically.
Will al-Qaeda plan revenge attacks for bin Laden’s death? Probably. Would al-Qaeda have attacked the United States or other Western nations if bin Laden remained alive? Absolutely. But in the end, al-Qaeda, like Japan at Pearl Harbor, banked on a knockout blow that it simply didn’t have the power to deliver. Both escalated without giving thought to America’s ability to match and surpass her enemies’ violence. To fret reprisal and hold back America’s power just as al-Qaeda strands ready for collapse will only empower terrorists and allow those almost dead to regenerate, to mock their betters in a war they know they can’t win without our help.
[1] Clausewitz, On War, Pg. 76.
Three Cups of Tea shatters into a Million Little Pieces
When I first arrived at Bagram Airfield in 2010 to begin my year-long tour in Afghanistan, Army leadership immediately implored me to Read Three Cups of Tea by Craig Mortenson. It was the way forward, some said. But a fellow intelligence analyst whom I trusted had little good to say about the book. He’d been to Afghanistan and Iraq for several combat tours and he told me the book gave the wrong picture of what was really happening on the ground.
People kept talking about the book, so I took it upon myself to at least learn the author’s thesis. I did some digging and didn’t like what I found. I admit to never reading the book, primarily because much of what I read about Mortenson gave me the impression that he is a huckster with a genius for identifying useful idiots. And indeed, I believe his book created a whole host of acolytes in the military, bulwarked by starry-eyed 23 year old State Department employees who truly believe that if only we throw billions of dollars in the general direction of Islamist fanatics, the insurgency will melt away.
Instead, many of those billions have been wasted, and in many cases provided the Taliban with bullets and bombs. And we kept on making the same mistakes for years. Only now are we beginning to come around and remember that not all men want peace; as Vladimir Lenin stated:
“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.”
In many cases, while our military should have been concentrating on the basics of counterinsurgency in underdeveloped nations (building social structures and trust) we were building redundant structures of concrete and stone that often fell into disuse. When we should have been providing the friendly tribes with the ability to fight the insurgents, in many cases we fawningly erected near useless buildings that could not be maintained, hoping that these would act as scarecrows to the Taliban. Instead the development projects acted as a light to a swarm of hornets. The insurgents moved into many areas where development took place without first clearing the land of guerrillas and began a campaign of punishment and retribution amongst local villagers. Because of this, we lost the trust of some tribesmen. We built inanimate objects and ran away, forgetting that in warrior, tribal societies, it is not material goods that are most important, but the display of bravery, loyalty and honor. It was immoral to ask these villagers to reject the insurgency without providing them with the means to fight it because a well will not protect anyone from a Kalashnikov.
If the recent allegations about Mortenson are true, he lied about what he did in the mountains of Pakistan. But that is not where the damage to our efforts was done. The damage is in the implied effects of Mortenson’s possible fictions; that we can fight terrorism merely by engaging local populations and giving them things, that we don’t really need America’s warrior class in Afghanistan. I saw this attitude with my own eyes even amongst our military, where COIN became a euphemism for never firing a rifle.
Mortenson’s good intentions, if he had any, were not enough and they have cost lives. Apologists for Mortenson (and they are legion), say that even if there are some parts of Three Cups of Tea that are not factual, the thesis of the book is true. That thesis, they say, is that we should be respectful of other cultures and treat people decently even while we fight our wars. Is this new American doctrine? Is it not common sense that we should not create any more enemies than is necessary to defeat the insurgency? This way of thinking was expounded by a much more qualified man than Mortenson in David Kilcullen’s, The Accidental Guerrilla. The effects that Three Cups of Tea has had in our war may be quantifiable by looking at the number of reviews written on Amazon—almost 3000. The Accidental Guerrilla is only worthy of approximately 70 reviews, and yet Kilcullen was the personal advisor to David Petraeus in Iraq. And I don’t suspect that many USAID people have read Kilcullen’s seminal work.
I cannot help but make the comparison between A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey and Three Cups of Tea. The writers of both books targeted a very specific audience and told them everything they wanted to hear about humanity. Mortenson has now admitted that parts of his book are “compressed versions” of what really took place. People who wanted pleasing answers were drawn to Frey’s and Mortenson’s stories and in both cases people in very high places were made to eat their share of crow. Fortunately we have moved forward from easy answers in Afghanistan. Since General David Petraeus took over, he has repeatedly communicated that there is a counter-terror aspect to all counterinsurgencies. Money, though still a weapon system, is a precision weapon, not a Rolling Thunder bombing campaign that makes things worse. In the south, the Taliban is on the run not because of tea time so much as the tough fighting of our troopers who treat locals with respect and decency, discover their underlying needs, and yet hunt America’s and Afghanistan’s enemies relentlessly, killing or capturing thousands of hardcore Taliban fighters.
Not exactly the stuff of Oprah’s Book Club.
Knowing the rules
I read an article written by David Killcullen, one of the world’s top counter-insurgency men. He stated that the populace in a counter-insurgency want to know the rules that have been set in place for them. They want to know their boundaries, what will bring punishment and what will bring reward.
I believe that one of the biggest failures of the last 8 years in the war in Afghanistan is the lack of effort in reporting the real reasons and intentions for America being in the country in the first place. Since General Petraeus took over, there’s been a concerted effort to rectify this, but there’s a long way to go.
As Washington Post writer, David Ignatius points out, according to recent polls, Afghan haven’t a clue as to why Americans are in their backyard.
Nature abhors a vacuum. And so it is with information and propaganda. Whenever Coalition Forces fail to fill information gaps, we can be sure the enemy will oblige. Add to this the propensity of people in the region to believe the wildest of mythology–a neck-tie is a secret symbol of Christianity, Osama Bin Laden is a CIA operative–and you have a formula for unending war. Many Afghans, since they may not have even heard of 9-11, can only assume that America is in-country to do what every other invader has tried to do: Become a colonial power. And since America is primarily a Christian power, we must want to destroy Islam, too. No Afghan tribe that believes these things will ever fully support our efforts. And we need full support if the people are to be the eyes that find insurgents, not just a level of support that takes our money and goes about enabling the Taliban. The Taliban aggressively speads its message and rules through Shabnamah or Night Letters as well as face to face contact. The message and rules? Cooperate with the Coalition and you die. The Taliban has won the information war in to this point in Afghanistan. After researching the subject for an intelligence paper I wrote, I believe it is the number one reason that this war has lasted so long.
In a land rife with illiteracy, getting the word out is a huge task. But it is doable. When I visited a refugee camp in Afghanistan, I saw 25,000 inhabitants whom were ripe for Taliban picking. I made sure when I spoke with the camps leader to ask him why he thought America was in Afghanistan. I also told him that he needs to tell all of his people that America is here to fight al-Qaeda and trans-national terrorists, that American soldiers don’t want to spend years in his country; they want to go back to their family and friends. But we needed his help.
Every leader that interfaces with various tribes in Afghanistan should have a list of things that they tell the people. On that list should be an explanation for American presence and the rules that the people are expected to follow: Do this and we help you. Do this and we kill you or arrest you. The messaging should also include a laundry list of all the horrible things that the Taliban does, and a negation of the myth (propagated as much by Western media as the Taliban) that Americans kill more civilians than the insurgents do. All of this should be SOP with every engagement.
What I think of the war in Afghanistan now
After having spent four months in Afghanistan and seeing much of the war from the inside, some may wonder if my opinions of the efficacy of fighting there have changed. In short, they haven’t changed much.
While I do see the benefit of having some foot print in the country, I also see that the country’s leaders and outside influencers in Pakistan are playing both sides in hopes that when the US leaves, the Taliban won’t have any grudges. Their actions form a self-fulfilling prophecy and enable the Taliban to continue maintaining some legitimacy.
I want to dismiss the myth that Afghan fighters are incredible guerrilla warriors, able to defeat our troops because of their years’ experience in this kind of fighting. In fact, the Taliban and Haqqani fighters get severely smashed every time they confront US troops. Obliterated. I’m talking 40 bad guys dead, and 0 US dead on several occasions since I’ve been in the country. The way they kill our troops is by paying some dupe with no job to plant a bomb on a road and then detonating it as we ride by.
So why can’t we win? I have several opinions on this. First, we must define what winning is. I think in some ways, we have won. Al-Qaeda is almost non-existent in Afghanistan. The Taliban in many areas is reduced to a loose crime syndicate. And America is still a great place to live. If we read the memo that directed then-General Stanley McChrystal on the objectives of this war, the goal was to “degrade” the Taliban. We’ve done that.
But the one conclusion that I’ve come to that means the most to me is this: Democracy is a reward. Democracy is not a cause, it is the result of doing the right things. The people of Afghanistan have not earned Democracy because they refuse to change the way they do business. And they must suffer the consequences. The people of Iraq have earned the right to reap the benefits of Democracy (much to the chagrin of the Left) , as they demonstrated in the Anbar Awakening. To ask that Democracy be the cause that brings success to Afghanistan is like buying a teenager a new BMW in hopes it brings him a sense of responsibility.
I must point out that General Patraeus has made it clear we only need to make Afghanistan “good enough”. We don’t need to make it Switzerland, as he quipped. He is absolutely correct, and I do think that a good enough Afghanistan is in reach. But until the problems in Pakistan are dealt with, good enough is not possible. Our military leaders know this.
This is not a military failure. The military has defeated the Taliban on every battle front, though I don’t think we’ve been nearly aggressive enough. There’s also the problem of defining the enemy himself. Any guy can pick up a Kalashnikov and call himself Taliban, just as any person could now call himself a Nazi. So when do we know the Taliban has been defeated? The problem at this point, does not have a military solution. It is a Rule of Law problem and the result of cultural failure. The military part of the problem had been solved. The puzzle that remains is the endemic collapse of stabilizing social structures within Afghanistan. Chaos begets chaos. Corruption fathers corruption.
The War on Terror has not been a failure. Al-Qaeda suffered a massive strategic defeat. It’s plans are consistently disrupted, its fighters arrested or eliminated, many of it’s leaders killed or facing trial. The Taliban barely has a corporeal existence in Afghanistan, but its ghost remains in the form of criminal gangs and warlords. There are very real and positive results that’ve been gained from ignoring the defeatists. And we should continue to fight Islamic extremist. It is a fight that will continue in some form for the rest of our lives. That does not mean it’s not worth fighting. And the whining of the Left over this fight will also continue. We should throw them a couple of bones, like allowing gays in the military or legalizing pot. And then we should ignore them.
Our lesson should be that nation building while under fire is a bad idea. You don’t fix social structures while the enemy shoots at you. You smash the enemy, grab as much power as you can, than build. In most places you have to let everything burn out before you move in, and that can take generations.
The fact is, we’ve reduced the threat to America by fighting in Afghanistan. We just shouldn’t be giving the teenager a new car.
Quick Post: Jalalabad
My team and I flew off to Jalalabad. our job is to evaluate Surkh Rod District, which is just outside of Jalalabad. Jalalabad is a model city. ISAF commanders want to use the “Ink Blot” method to slowly build off from successful municipalities. So our job is to find out what’s right with Surkh Rod District, and what can be replicated in other districts.
I can tell you right now that the difference between Surkh Rod and Sayed Abad, a place I travelled to about 6 weeks ago, is astounding. In Sayed Abad, we took mortar and rocket fire every night, and Taliban fighters engaged one of our Route Clearance Teams right outside a FOB gate. Sayed Abad is an insurgent stronghold, and I’ve assessed that the overall state of the insurgency can be measured by what is occurring in the district.
Surkh Rod is host to some of Afghanistan’s cultural elite, whom bring money and business to the area. From what I’ve seen, all the talk about greed and corruption that come with the business world is simply a way to ignore the true power of business: It keeps people busy, let’s them hope for a better future without using a rifle to get it, and it feeds people. Where people don’t work, read or have roads to travel on, they kill to pass the time. Where they do have those things they fight only to keep them.
Signing off for now.
Afghanistan
I arrived in Afghanistan almost two weeks ago, flying into Bagram Airfield, then moving to Kabul and finally back to Bagram.
I was transported by semi-covert convoy from Camp Julian to ISAF HQ. I’ll leave the description of the vehicle that I travelled in out of this writing for security purposes. Armed men, contractors working in one of the world’s most unstable countries packed in around me, each carrying Serbian M-92s, 7.62mm, shelled in body armor, sleek Oakleys covering their eyes. We moved through streets packed bumper to bumper with cars and shoulder to shoulder with people. Garbage floated everywhere, piles of random junk stacked high on the sides of the road, craters from IED blasts gaping at us.
I gained a sense of hyper-alertness. Only a few months prior, insurgents killed several officers with a Vehicle-born IED just down the road from where we were driving. Though our vehicles were non-descript, the people somehow knew who we were. I could tell by their looks. I know that look from my days as a cop. The simmering distrust, the envy, the sniggering smile. They knew we were ISAF.
Every few hundred meters we would get sought in a knot of traffic, the bearded driver would swear. “Why’s he taking this fucking route?” Referring to the vehicle in front of us. Every time we stop, I watch for bulging robes, wires sprouting from sleeves, and stumbling gate and blissfully high face of an insurgent, high on heroin, ready to visit paradise. My doors combat locked, the heavy, hidden armor of our vehicles..can it resist a suicide bomber up close? No way. I know better. I imagine a holy warrior, perhaps only a few days prior a dirt farmer, striding up to my door, my last vision: his thumb depressing a plunger. I’d be blown out the other side of the vehicle, my insides liquified if my body held together at all.
We stopped. We raced. We clenched our weapons. But Kabul only winked at us. At anytime she could kill us. But not today. It would be too easy, no fun. Better to play with the mouse before it dies. As we drew closer to ISAF headquarters, it was as if the chaos and dirt melted away. I saw the Afghan police officers suddenly appear pressed uniforms, where only a couple of kilometers before , they appeared dishevelled, unshowered. A sense of calm and order arose as we approached the NATO base. It was an oasis from the anarchy that grips Afghanistan.
Since then, I’ve flown Blackhawk to several districts. What’s the war like? Well, let’s just say that American power and ingenuity are plainly evident on our bases, but Afghanistan’s tribalism, warlordism and primitive state rule the hinterlands. Behind our walls, we are invincible. The foolish man who hopes heroism will come in the form of an arching mortar round into an American base is quickly annihilated in a shower of 30mm cannon, belched from the nose of Apache gunships. Sometimes, they manage to get in, but their losses are catastrophic and for the most part, the insurgents have given up attacking our bases.
But the roads are a different story. Kidnappings, murder, theft. These are the tools of the Talib highway man. And don’t think of this as Taliban against NATO. It’s NATO against Chaos. Just because a man is Taliban or HIG does not mean he kidnaps foreigners for ideological reasons. He may just want money. He may be doing the bidding of his boss who wants regional control.
They are a giant mob, and we’re the cops. The mob is feeding on its moment of freedom, on its rage, rolling itself into a juggernaut-snowball. Only order–any order–can stop this. I don’t know if we can “win”. but I sense that if we leave, hundreds of thousands of civilians will die in the struggle to fill our vacuum. And we won’t be left with anything that amounts to a peaceful, liberated Afghanistan.
COIN operated politics
Suppose a child is misbehaving. He or she repeatedly throws a fit when told it’s time for bed. A single mom, tired and reminded daily by Oprah-esque talk shows that children should never feel pain, decides that the best course of action is to offer a cookie to the child just before bed. 
She has just made her life more difficult and taught the child that misbehavior brings concession and reward. Now the child will throw fits and get cookies.
This is exactly what some (mis) interpretations of FM 3-24 (The Army field manual outlining counter-insurgency operations) brought us. I knew our efforts in Afghanistan were all but lost when, a few months back at the beginning of the McChrystal surge, I heard a Marine officer tell a reporter: “If I kill one civilian in the course of killing 10,000 insurgents, I’ve just made my job here tougher.” My jaw dropped. You’d think America never won a war by killing its enemies. The sheiks take our money and cooperate with the Taliban. They know that no matter what they do, we’ll be nice. So now America is the exasperated single mom.
It is our politicians who’ve politicized our military, not our generals. We laud civilian control, but ignore that it is in fact the generals who are the experts. While they do not make policy–nor should they–they should be listened to. But they hardly ever are until it’s too late. The case of General Eric Shinseki is the obvious lesson. He told Congress we needed “several hundred-thousand troops”. Then he got sent to the locker room.
So we moved from Rumsfeld’s ”Shock and Awe” (EBO, or Effects Based Operations), which hoped laser-guided munitions would make people drop dirty Kalashnikovs, to COIN. Both offer dreamy visions of near-bloodless war. In the first case, we can destroy our enemies’ “critical nodes” and make him combat ineffective. In the second case, we can give billions of dollars to locals sheiks and never have to pull a trigger. In both cases people forgot to refer to the history books. German bombing didn’t kill English determination, and American and English bombing of German railroads and ball bearing factories, while helpful, did not stop the Wehrmacht–only a titanic wave of soldiers from both sides of the Rhineland did that.
The politicization of military operations has many deleterious effects, but the most prominent is “either/or” thinking and rhetoric. We must either protect civilian populations at all costs (even at the cost of losing) or we must carpet bomb villages with no military value. Those are the only two options to COIN operated politics. The Marine officer’s statement about 10,000 insurgents vs. 1 civilian is classic either/or thinking (ideology really).
It seems that our mid-level officers misinterpreted the COIN manual. During the Iraqi surge under General Patraeus, airstrike frequency massively increased. He understood that while killing innocents is undesirable and hurts our effort, he also understood that being overrun by al-Qaeda was a much more direct route to getting our rears–Read: heads– handed to us. And he understood that ultimately his responsibility is to the American Soldier. Politicians value votes much more than Soldier’s lives. If they only understood that even under the best conditions, COIN offers only long wars, which are politically unsustainable. One statement that Patraeus made in recent testimony before Congress is that counter insurgency does not prevent us from actively targeting terrorists for destruction. One politician, encapsulated by either/or, asked why we don’t go to a pure counter-terror strategy.
A thousand history lessons cannot blunt the razor-sharp arrogance of theoreticians. While they give us romantic platitudes about the genius of Hannibal, Scipio and Napoleon, they’d have us believe that–just like the failed McClellan–we can go about victory by circumventing attriting the enemy. They hate William Sherman because his methods were not nice. And yet they cannot give me an example of any wars won with bribes.
It’s time to negotiate with the Taliban
Some intelligence reports are showing cracks in Taliban resolve. Captured Taliban fighters say they are concerned for their safety should the Taliban stop fighting. Others wonder what the Taliban place in the political theater will be. There are even some hints that the Taliban founder and leader Mullah Omar wants peace in Afghanistan.
Corner a rat, and suddenly it becomes a lion. Most people acknowledge that the Taliban is evil by any Western measurement. But it is not possible to exterminate every last Taliban fighter. What is possible is to apply enough pressure so that the Taliban accepts Kabul authority. Always give your opponent a way to escape honorably, not for his sake, but for your own.
I believe the Taliban is looking for an end to the fighting. There are several reasons we should come to the table with them. First, in this kind of war, even victory seems hollow. We can declare victory, but how do we measure that? There will be more bombings, more assassnations. In a formal diplomatic setting, we could actually get Taliban leadership to sign papers declaring to all the world: We Lost.
Secondly, it’s common knowledge that people will fight harder if they think they face extermination.
And lastly, it shows good faith on our part. Only by bringing together all aspects of government power can we win and maintain credibility. We must maintain military pressure while opening the diplomatic pressure valve. The message of diplomacy should be clear: Kabul rules. If the Taliban fails to submit to rule of law, they will face death. If they choose the action they choose the consequence.
It may be the case that we will have to police the Kabul government as much as anyone else. Still, at least we know where to find Hamid Karzai.
FIFA to die for
The Religion of Peace is at it again.
It just wasn’t enough for the Taliban to kill a seven year old boy as retribution for telling the location of planted IEDs.
Radical Islam is now turning its rage upon the world’s most popular sport, soccer. Somali militants killed two people for watching soccer, and say they will do harm to anyone else who dares watch the sport on tv.
But the organized madness of Islam continues to fool the West. Our enemies’ viciousness will outstrip our generosity and wish for peace.
Where we went wrong in Afghanistan
It is said that those who try to do everything well will do nothing well.
In Afghanistan, we tried to do everything well, and have gotten marginal results. Instead, we should have concentrated on rooting out the insurgents, killing those unwilling to surrender, and then leaving behind a small detachment at Bagram.
The school building and electrical grid construction only slowed our progress, gave more targets to the Taliban, and spread thin our assets. We simply cannot rebuild a nation in the middle of a war.
Our lack of concentration has cost us dearly. If only we’d narrowed our focus, we’d already be done, and saving billions of dollars and hundreds of Soldiers’ lives.
Afghanistan: Let the bodies hit the floor
A recent incident of friendly fire in which German troops killed Afghan troops riding in unmarked trucks highlights the problems in fighting this war.
How many insurgents did US Marines kill in the Marja invasion? No one knows, it’s classified. But every friendly fire incident or errant Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone will be reported with excruciating precision.
The primary thing we stand to lose is national prestige, and every friendly fire incident and civilian death chips away at American hegemony. If we win, well shouldn’t a superpower beat a group of illiterate, rag-tag geurillas? If we lose–perish the thought–every backwater despot will want a chance to strut his stuff on the world’s stage.
We should make public enemy body counts. Since Vietnam, the United States has made it policy that it not release body count numbers. As General Tommy Franks stated: “We don’t do body counts.”
I believe it’s time we did release body counts. Americans need to see why our Soldiers are dying, even if it’s only to show that we’re at least making others pay for killing us. Moreover, America needs to show who is actually killing the most civilians. In Iraq for instance, al-Qaeda killed civilians by the thousands, every year of the war. And yet we allowed some in the media and many activists to run with the numbers when it came to civilian deaths. They spun the story to read that America actually killed those innocents. America’s fault was that of failing to exert enough power, not of exerting too much power. And for that catastrophic mistake, we reaped the whirlwind. We tried a quarterback kneel with more than two minutes left in the game, then fumbled and watched our opponent run the ball back for a TD to tie the game. Slapped awake, we sent thousands more troops in clamped down on lawlessness, something we would have done as second nature fifty years prior.
There is of course, no option but victory. The resentful leftists who hoped America would fail in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been discredited. The best way to silence any criticism is to win. Please see how the citizens of Paris reacted when the Nazi goose-stepped through the Arc de Triomphe.
Doctor, your patient is here to see you.
A woman rushes into a hospital emergency room, pushing a figure in a wheel chair. The woman is frantically calling for a doctor. The person in the wheel chair is covered in blankets so that no one can see what he or she looks like.
Ignoring the triage nurses, she rushes into the surgical area.
“Where’s Dr. Anderson? I need to see him now. He’s the best in the world. I read it in a magazine. I need to see Dr. Anderson now!”
The woman fends off any attempts to calm her down, all the while maintaining a hard grip on the wheel chair.
Finally, Dr. Anderson rounds a corner, a nurse briefing him as he walks. He nods then regards the frantic woman.
“What is it, ma’am? Calm down. What’s going on?” Dr. Anderson asks.
The woman speaks through her sobs, gasping after every three or four words.
“I found my father, just a few minutes ago. He was in his bed. He’s really bad, really really bad. I didn’t call the ambulance because I was sure that only you could help him.” She stops crying and finally meets the doctor’s eyes with her own. “You’re the best. World famous. Help him.”
The doctor reaches forward and tugs the blanket away from the upper torso of the seated figure. When the blanket falls away, it reveals a hairless skull, skin blackened and pulled tight, black swamps where eyes should be. Lips swollen and purple.
Even the hardened nurses looking on gasp in horror.
Doctor Anderson covers the shape with the blanket, then says: “Ma’am. You’re father is dead. Even I can’t help him now.”
America is the world’s greatest doctor. Afghanistan is the dead man. The fact that the man is dead does not mean that the doctor is not great. As this new report to the pentagon states, the Afghan Army is a walking dead man, and we simply cannot raise the dead.
So, intelligence analysts briefing Pentagon officials calls Afghan Army members, “Unmotivated” and says that nepotism and corruption make the goals of the US military “impossible”. Soldiers don’t show up. The strength of many battalions is 40-50% of what is reported.
Shocking.
War Deniers
George Orwell said that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it.
The left has a way of helping us end wars: They deny they even exist. They’ve mocked the term: “Global War on Terror”. It was a denial of its existence. They fail to see or even feel, the boiling hatred of Wahhabism. And when they do, they join the Wahhabists in blaming America.
Islam is being swallowed by the ultra-violent sects. If it were not so, a man could not walk into a mosque, detonate himself in the name of Allah, and fail to rouse anti-extremist fervor amongst Muslims. Instead, there’s barely a murmur. There are however a few speeches given by the War Deniers assuring us that: “This isn’t really Islam.”
What is it then?
We can destroy the Taliban, but we can’t change Afghanistan
The Taliban has no chance, and never did, against aggressive American attack. But if we think the corruption which is endemic to Afghanistan will magically disappear, we’re fools. If we believe the tribalism will evaporate, if we dream that a populace with over seventy percent illiteracy will suddenly flower to learnedness, well, we’d best wake up.
Intensity vs duration
I thought up a pretty good analogy of why the Afghan and Iraq Wars took way too long, and not until we “surged” several times and changed our tactics, did we see real results.
Let’s compare the wars with exercise physiology.
In exercise, two important factors are intensity and duration. As the intensity of your training goes up, the duration must go down. It’s the difference between walking for an hour and sprinting for an hour. You simply can’t do the latter. Too much intensity. Or, you can do 6 repetions of curls with a 50 lb dumbell and your bicep may reach exhaustion. Then try doing pinkie finger curls. You could probably reach 500 and keep going; very little intensity.
And guess what? Intensity trumps duration when it comes to reaping athletic and health benefits. That’s right, Eight, twenty second wind sprints has more hormonal and physiological impact than running five miles. More bang for the buck. As a matter of fact, if you don’t have enough intensity, you’ll see virtually no changes in your physiology.
Same goes for war. Either go hard, or go long. Can’t do both. And if your opponent goes hard when you try to go long, guess who wins? He does.
We tried to fight these wars with too little intensity. We needn’t have begun carpet bombing civilian populations or lighting huts on fire. We did however, need much more closing with and destroying the enemy. We couldn’t take the pain of an intense sprint (read: the pain of CNN reporters interpreting every action as American attrocity), so we’re still doing a funky race-walk. And we looked stupid just like race-walkers do. Our politicians chose to take the most well educated, well equipped, most physically fit infantry in the history of any war (yes–we’re better than the Greatest Generation–our politicians don’t know it, but we do) and make them sing kumbaya.
Only, the Taliban doesn’t know kumbaya. They know how to fight pretty well though.
Al-Qaeda no longer needs training camps
I’m hiding in Honduras
I’m a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan ~Lawyers, guns and money; Warren Zevon
The stock argument for our current involvement in Afghanistan is that we must prevent the country from becoming a training haven, as it was in 2001, for al-Qaeda operatives.
MuhammedAtta moves through aPortland Maine airport on 091101
This argument no longer holds water. And when we look at the actual situation in 2001, we can see why a full scale invasion was not needed.
Here, in President George Bush’s speech to Congress in 2001, he lays out the US’ demands of the Taliban government. The Taliban is never asked to leave power; only to hand over terrorists, allow the US access for inspection and close training camps.
Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough. The United States respects the people of Afghanistan — after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid — but we condemn the Taliban regime.
It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists.
By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban:
– Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Qaeda who hide in your land.
– Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned.
– Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country.
– Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities.
– Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.
These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion.
The Taliban must act and act immediately.
They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate. I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.
That was then. Al-Qaeda no longer needs open ground training camps at which to film its propaganda. Indeed, armed drones have made such terror play grounds an anachronism. What al-Qaeda needs is people, money and hate.
Terrorists training for large scale attacks in remote caves is a myth. The modern terrorist must be computer savvy, and blend in with a targeted populace. Major Hasan was only able to kill 13 US soldiers on a military base because he was one of them. The most dangerous jihadists are educated people, not those wielding rusty Kalashnikovs and sporting 3rd grade reading abilities.
The very event that spurred the invasion of Afghanistan–The 9-11 attacks–was carried out primarily by jihadists who trained and planned the attacks in Western countries. The Hamburg Cell, led by Muhammed Atta, met, discussed jihadist motivations and made contact wth al-Qaeda, all while German intelligence surveilled their two-bedroom apartment on Marienstrasse. Atta received his education at an American university in Cairo,Egypt. Bin Laden chose the bulk of the hijackers from a group of usual suspects: Unmarried, young, poorly educated. All but one hailed from Saudi Arabia. These men did not need to think–they only needed to wield box cutters, then die. They did train for a period in Afghanistan, but they employed no serious technical skills gained in this training.
According to the 9-11 Comission Report, between $400,000 and $500,000 was spent training and preparing for the 9-11 attacks. The majority of this training was carried out in Western countries,using Western institutions. In other words, we need only follow the money.
President Obama should seriously reconsider the poor arguments made for continuing or escalating the war in Afghanistan. The war is not “Over There”. It’s right here.
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