Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal didn’t give away much on the pending Kandahar offensive in today’s presser at the Pentagon, predicting a “difficult” fight against a “smart” insurgency that constantly probes for openings where it can slip fighters into villages and towns and intimidate the local population through assassinations and “night letters” under the noses of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.
Special operations units are targeting insurgent networks and leaders in Kandahar, he said, prepping the terrain for the coming offensive. But he cautioned against expecting a D-Day like offensive. That’s not how wars amongst the people are fought, he said, channeling a bit of the Rupert Smith; fighting a war in the middle of somebody’s home isn’t easy.
He plans a gradual “rising tide” of security that will, over time, convince the local people to side with the Afghan central government against the Taliban. “They have to see it to believe it, but they can’t just see it once, they have to see it until they believe it’s durable.” The people remain to be convinced, he said.
“A counterinsurgency effort is long term, it’s a process, it’s not an event.” He described a classic counterinsurgency ink-blot strategy: “The intent is to create security bubbles or security zones that expand until they’re contiguous.” He said the change in security in the Helmand river valley since the American led offensives there has been nothing short of “dramatic.”
While Kandahar has a heavy insurgent presence, it was safe enough that he and Gen. David Petraeus took a stroll through the streets buying bread the other day, he said.
– Greg Grant
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Well at least he can articulate exactly what 'victory' in Afghanistan looks like, and has a plan to get there. Whether it'll work out like that given religious/tribal situation there, I'm not optimistic. And no I don't have any better ideas, sometimes there is no solution, trying is as good as it gets.
AAK.. The solution and your so called "victory" is very simple. We will stabilizer the region and allow governing power to preside. The law of the land should stand for the betterment of the people, not the persecution. While it doesn't not have to be and will not be an American model, a "Pakistani" model will suffice, and will be better than the obvious alternative if we left tomorrow.
". . . convince the local people to side with the Afghan central government against the Taliban." Goo luck on that one, from what I've heard and read the central gov't. there isn't very well trusted over there because it's corrupt as all hell. I don't think that there's an overabundance of love for the Taliban or AQ but neither do they care for Karzhai and in Kandahar they don't care much for his brother. Sadly, if we can't clean up the Afghan government and get the people to trust it then I don't think that we can ever truly win over there.
Good Morning Folks,
A word that has fallen out of the 2010 US DoD Dictionary, Is Win. We now have the ambiguous term “victory”. What is victory, i leave the word in lower case because it is not defined.
The use of Spec.Ops. has changed for a decisive blow to the enemies ability to make war to doing reconnaissance observations and reporting them back to a chain of command that is at best indifferent to what is reported. The missions given to these very expensive and highly trained and motivated men and women could just as done by some elderly bird watchers, what they see would be handled no differently then that of Spec. Ops.
In short the 1,300 flag officers in our military have no interest in winning wars any more, it is unprofitable to the officers in retirement. They are far more into knitting, like knitting their ties to Think Tanks, the Media and defense contractors who offer seven and eight figure retirement incomes for peddling their individual influences to their former colleagues who get the checks signed. The current conflicts are I’m sure considered beneath them, they are holding out for the big one. Only problem is the lacking of a big enemy.
It is of note that the two commanders in Afghanistan general’s perareus and mc crystal spent the week in Virginia Beach fantasizing about what a future war might look like. Nobody bothered to remind these two “leaders” that they have a 100K Army in the field, oops I mean garrison, and they are losing the war in Afghanistan, but their own admissions, that is getting bored standing “cleaning their guns”. Where are their leaders?
Since the Army in Afghanistan has been doing the same thing for months, nothing, no one noticed that the two big dogs weren’t to be seen. An historical note here. Bored Armies get restless, a restless Army will find ways to relieve their boredom. If I have to say any more to finish this though the United States is in big trouble. The latter years of the Vietnam conflict will seem like a walk in the park, Afghanistan has far more drugs and opportunities for bored soldiers.
Some way. some how President Obama and Sec. of Defense Gates has to find some officers that feel it is their duty to Win a war, get rid of these 1.300 sticks of careerist bureaucratic deadwood and get those officers into Iraq and Afghanistan.
The option of staying with the status quo is simply unthinkable.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Tell us how to Win. Tell us how these over-thinkers should Win, given most Afghans will always have greater allegiance to their tribe than any central government. Karzai or not Karzai is irrelevant. A large percentage HATE any foreign presence. Building a school? Hate you still. Women now going to school? Hate you even more.
Religious extremists, drug dealers who don't give a sh!t about islam, tribal leaders who will ally with anyone for convenience, then switch as and when they need to. How do we 'win' this? What decisive blow can be actioned? Even in theory, what is this 'decisive' action?
It's been 9 years, blaming Obama is ridiculous.
Good Evening Folks,
To “Tell us how to win?”. Well I guess you start off with getting a 100K Soldiers/Marines off their butts in garrison and into the field. You give them orders to, as the old manual use to say: “Find ‘em, Fix ‘em, Fight ‘em and Finish ‘em”. I know it’s an old concept and has not been taught to our current senior leadership in the military, but it has worked before. Winning wars is still the desired outcome for the United States. Settling for some kind of “victory” is pure Bull Sh**.
Just to give a definition of winning in war, since our senior military leadership has never seen one. Winning Wars is to find, engage, and kill the enemy and destroy his/her means, ability and will to fight. It is dirty, bloody, messy, there will be some collaterals killed.
Collaterals will be killed because, but lets have the guts to say way, it is their country men/women, whom they support, who want this war, if they would turn away the “hated” Taliban/al Qaeda the Taliban and al Qaeda would have to lay down their weapons and there would be no collaterals killed. This is not blaming the victim for their own death, it is the nature of war, with out the support of collaterals the Taliban/al Qaeda couldn’t fight.
General should know the above, but ours don’t.
We have about 100K in theater the bad guys by our own generals admission have no more the 8K. Do the math. But for our soldiers to win they have to get out into the field, al Qaeda and the Taliban are not so dumb as to bring on a needless fight with the United States. What is missing in Afghanistan is leadership. We have generals that are totally confused and have no plan, no idea of how to deal with these enemies. Could anyone of you out their imagine a WW I or WW II General say we are losing the war even on December 8th. 1941?
There are men and women in the officer ranks who have been in the fight and have definite ideas of how to win but they don’t wear stars.
To President Obama, fire a few hundred of our flag officers and get men and women, we have them in uniform already, in there who want to fight and win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. General’s Petareus and Mc Crystal are not doing the job, fire them. They lack the fire in their guts, they lack even the desire to win. Victory is not winning. Only winning is winning. This is not basketball where there is always another season this is war, there is no second place.
To “Tell us how to win?’, did I answer your question?
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Yes and no. I think you are mistaken about pretty much everything.
This isn't WWI, this isn't even vietnam. But even with that lesson, you think more & more troops are the answer?
You're right in that seeking out the enemy is the right thing. Would have been good several years ago, 'cept the was that dumb war in Iraq using all the resources. And the EU who Fully Support This Just War…but ummm our helicopters are urgently needed in their base hangers & stuff, they'd get dusty & worn out over there.
You're arguing the architects are idiots, but the 'surge' that they;re currently implementing is the right thing? What is the difference? It is the right thing, should have been done years ago, and is the same search & destroy ethic you proclaim.
But search & destroy will not work in isolation. it;s playing whack-a-mole. The bad guys just f-off to the mountains or pakistan. Didn't work so well in that other endless conflict either.
Accepting civilian casualties sounds fine, but it breeds hatred. Once again, learn something from Iraq. Brute force is good. But not enough for long term governance. Hunting & killing is NOT the end. You cannot kill them all, and your tactics just breed more.
The idea that collateral damage/civilial deaths is not a big deal is BS. What did we learn from iraq?
I'd also like to point out that the US has now been in Afghanistan longer than the Russians, and have accomplished far less. When the Russians were in Kabul, women drove cars, wore western clothes, went to a Russian built and funded university to study to be doctors and lived in Russian built apartment buildings.
The US has built massive military bases complete (up until recently) with fast food outlets for the troops and a few schools, many of which have been closed due to Taliban pressure.
The US has also repeated the same military mistakes the Russians made, but their casualties are far fewer. There are lots of reasons for this, better weapons, better protection, better medical evacuation and care, but the main reason is fighting style. The Russians fought up close, the US makes contact and then withdraws and calls in air strikes or artillery. This ends up with a lot more innocent Afghans killed and a lot more local resentment to the occupation and their not very well strung puppet government.
Good Afternoon Folks,
To: “Yes and No.” How the two world wars of the 20th. Century ended is very applicable to Afghanistan today.
In WW I the Allies settled for a Victory, a few humiliations toward the the Germans such as imposing a Peace Treaty in a railroad car and sending the Kaiser into exile then pulling out the allied troops from German soil, and extracting large war reparations, but left Germany most economically and politically intact, after all they had to pay all that crushing debt. We all know what followed.
After WW II it seemed the allies learned there lesson and at the end of of the war crushed Germany economically and politically in effect Germany no longer was a
sovereign country. Germany was made to throw away over 500 years of militarily aggressive history and culture and then start over again. Slowly after 50 years Germany has reemerged as a single sovereign country. This is called winning.
To clear up a couple of things. I did not favor the surge either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. In the case of Afghanistan I though then and still do we had the numbers in countries to eradicate the Taliban as well as al Qaeda. What we didn’t have and still don’t is the aggressive leadership and the will to win the war in Afghanistan or in Iraq.
You mention search and destroy. I know this tactic very well form first had participation in S&D sweeps. Although I don’t think they apply in Afghanistan, they did in Vietnam and a dirty little secret is they were very effective. They did clear out the area of the enemy and as long as the Americans were in the area or even just the threat of the Americans coming back, the area remained free of enemy activity.
It was when the political decision was made and we turned the area over to ARVN that the enemy felt free to go back in and why not many of the ARVN troops were shall I say less the 100% loyal to the Saigon Government. A point here don’t believe all the CW about the Vietnam that is accepted as truth.
The subject of collateral deaths and property destruction is important, I’m not sure what lesson from Iraq you are referring to?
If the enemy uses “collaterals as human shields and they are killed, who’s fault is? The notion that American soldiers and marines lives are secondary to collaterals is the real BS. It use to be rather clear that those who provided aid, comfort and protection to the enemy were the enemy.
When some collateral, throws a three year old collateral under a tanks thread to try and make a convoy slow down so it could be ambushed, I was in a convoy where this tactic was used, its not fiction, what is to be done. The Taliban are using kids to plant IED’s/EFP’s that kill Americans. You make the call.
In Afghanistan the Taliban is able to plant IED’s/EFP’s because they have time and excellent intelligence on where were and when we are coming out of our lavish base camps and going. The Taliban are calling the shots and determining the time and lace of attack, not the United States.
War is messy and both side end up paying the “Butchers Bill”, the use of collaterals as combatants is a tactic of the Taliban and should be dealt with as such.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Supposedly, there were 'many lessons learned' in Vietnam? That is apparently nothing more than a hackneyed phrase, rather than any truism. How many years did it take in Vietnam, to add all of the 58,000 plus names to that black marble wall in D.C., before we as a nation banded together and pressed all of our elected leaders to cut off all funding for that failed tragedy of a no-win war? With the current no-win insurgent wars raging in both Afghanistan and Iraq, what are we currently doing or what have we been doing differently in these two theaters than we did in Vietnam ? General McChrystal and others deliberately leaked his supposed 'secret plan' to 'win' in Afghanistan to Bob Woodward and others, in order that he could place President Obama into a box (read this week's Newsweek article on same), who was of course attacked by all the war hawks for 'dithering' (who of course have never served, but wave the false flag of their supposed 'patriotism' all the time!) President Truman fired MacArthur for daring to do something quite treasonably similar in Korea as McChrystal has done. President Obama should fire McChrystal and any others who do NOT completely go along with the civilian leader of our military, that is President Obama. We as a nation, cannot continue to go down the very same mine or I.E.D. laden roads we have in the past, expecting any different outcome, as that is surely another definition of further insanity!. NEGOTIATING, with the estimated by many 200 or so real Taliban in Afghanistan, along with NEGOTIATING with all the local war lords and cutting the puppet Karzai out of 'all the poppy action', are the only steps that will end this quagmire and will result in the TOTAL pullout of all of our troops. Sticking to the timetable set by President Obama to pull ALL of our troops from Iraq is the only way forward in Iraq ! Needlessly pouring any more red American blood into the sandy soils of Afghanistan or Iraq, followed by any more red cents, makes NO SENSE at all ! Dwight Thomas Powers' aka Marchmarine17
Good Morning Folks,
There were no lessons learned in Vietnam. The best commentary on Vietnam is by a retired military officer who said that: “The war in Vietnam existed only in the American mind.” The same can be said for the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
The old argument that applied to Vietnam once it became apparent that we were not going to win anything and in fact entered the conflict under falsehoods was that we are to involved, and can’t quite now.
Of course, as in Vietnam, the people who now support this position of national vanity in Afghanistan have nothing at steak nor have paid any price for the follies of going to war against the Taliban. In fact more then likely they have economically or politically benefitted for there wars.
Like the war in Vietnam there is no evidence supported reason(s) for us to be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. That the Taliban are bad people is not an American problem, it is an Afghanistan problem, if it is a problem in Afghanistan. Either case we have no business interfering.
Nor was there any reason(s) that could be supported by undeniable evidence for the US invasion of Iraq. That Saddam Hussein was a very, very bad man just is not a reason for going to war and over throwing an elected government.
The media and entertainment industry has shrouded the war in so may myths that any truths were long ago killed. If you repeat something that is untrue long enough it becomes a truth, then it becomes a leap of faith and a religion.
To end with one aging peace activist said recently with a sigh. “We gave Peace a chance, and we didn’t like it.”
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner