Afghanistan

[chris_gerrib]

So, a blogger at Information Dissemination asked If a few burned Korans and the actions of a single mentally unstable individual can set back a theater level military campaign by "months if not years" as suggested by Dan Cox, how sound is the judgment of the civilian and military leaders who pushed this course of action? How sound is the judgement of political leadership who went along with it?

Here's my answer. For the non-military, 'COIN" stands for 'counterinsurgency' - the tactics and strategies used to defeat a guerrilla war. My answer:

COIN works in one of two ways. The first way is via "hearts and minds" - persuading the population that the government is worth supporting. In that case, COIN is like a political campaign. In a campaign, if, for example, your candidate gets portrayed as a bumbler, then he can do 99 things right but the 1 wrong thing he does leads the news broadcasts. So, "hearts and minds" is inherently fragile.

The other way COIN works is the "Indian Wars" theory. This is based on what the US Army did in the 19th century west of the Mississippi. There, after 30 or 40 years, one side simply wore out the other. Similar events occurred in Guatemala and Honduras during their civil wars. In that case, the time frame is similar, and I don't think that's a coincidence. You need to fight for a generation or so to "persuade" one side or the other to just quit.

Our problem in Afghanistan is this - we have three choices:

1) Get out
2) COIN - for however long it takes
3) ??? (I suppose '???' could be the Ottoman Solution - look at one of our soldiers cross-eyed and we kill you and everybody in your village.)

There's no real stomach in America for #3, and #1 is perceived as what allowed Afghanistan to become a base for Al Qaeda in the first place. So, we tried #2.

We can't have a real discussion about policy in Afghanistan because our political system is broken. If the system worked, the questions we should ask are:

- What do we want to accomplish in Afghanistan?
- How much resources do we want to allocate to Afghanistan?
- Can we accomplish the stated goals with the resources available?
- If not, what can we accomplish with the resources available?

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I didn't recognize Unlike some other countries, they were harboring terrorists who did organize a fairly massive attack on the USA as referring to Iraq, because I was handicapped by the awareness that Saddam Hussein actually did offer shelter and support to Al Qaeda. I'm also handicapped by my knowledge that Saddam committed numerous acts of war against us between the end of Desert Storm in 1991 and our 2003 invasion. I am not blessed with the armor of your ignorance.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Saddam's support of Al Qaeda was never alleged to be more than superficial - one meeting with Mohammed Atta does not constitute support. Since that meeting is in dispute, I'd say the evidence of "shelter and support" is pretty thin.

Yes, Saddam did violate his ceasefire agreement after 1991. It's debatable whether the best course of action would have been containment or invasion.

In any event, Dave's primary point (and which I agree with) was that Afghanistan was both more directly responsible for and more of a threat to the US than was Iraq. Nor was Iraq "going anywhere" - we could (should) have made sure we were finished in Afghanistan before jumping to Iraq.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

While it was fairly crappy for his people, containment was basically working.

If we want to have "we must do it for the people" discussion then I'm up for that and I agree, and when are we cleaning house in Zimbabwe?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

What you choose to armour yourself with is entirely your own problem Jordan. It still doesn't make it true.