I Can’t Believe We Are Losing To These Guys
by Vegetius
I Can’t Believe We Are Losing To These Guys (Full PDF Article)
“The greatest threat to the Afghan government is the Afghan government.” This was the conclusion of a report on the Taliban compiled in the 2005 by the Defense Adaptive Red Team (DART) for the Department of Defense. The report further went on to say that the Taliban are the slow learners of the Islamic fundamentalist world. The report predicted that, if the Karzai government did not reform itself, and if the Taliban ever became a learning organization, the Afghan portion of the Global War on Terror could get very ugly indeed. It is 2009; the Karzai government has not reformed, but the Taliban have. We should not be losing this war, but it now appears that we are losing. One is reminded of John Lovett’s Michael Dukakis character in a Saturday Night Live sketch during the 1988 presidential election. The faux Dukakis listens to an inarticulate pronouncement by Dana Carvey’s faux George H.W. Bush, and exclaims, “I can’t believe that I’m losing to this guy.” That is a fair analogy about where we are in Afghanistan today.
This war is not lost, but we need to make some major changes if we are to turn it around. This was the clear message sent to President Obama by his commander in Afghanistan in August and leaked by The Washington Post on September 21st. General McChrystal was making a clear case for more troops in his report, but lost in the uproar was a strong statement that the Karzai government will have to mend its ways. All the king’s horses and men will not help in Afghanistan if the Taliban are allowed portray their equally flawed governance approach as a viable alternative to the increasingly corrupt kleptocracy that the Karzai government has become.
As this is being written, there are reportedly several options on the table as alternatives to General McChrystal’s recommended approach of sending more troops and fully employing the counterinsurgency doctrine that worked in Iraq (FM 23-4, Counterinsurgency). Some of these proposed alternatives are good supporting tools, but they won’t work by themselves. McChrystal is right; there will not be an easy way to end this war. If the war is worth fighting, which the President said it was during the 2008 campaign, it is worth fighting properly. This piece suggests some specifics for turning it around in the manner that McChrystal suggests.
I Can’t Believe We Are Losing To These Guys (Full PDF Article)
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/297-vegetius.pdf
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Karzai Backers Want Troops - Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal. Senior Afghan officials, alarmed by the Obama administration's reappraisal of its Afghanistan strategy, said an increased US military commitment is needed to roll back an emboldened insurgency. They also cautioned about what they said would be dire consequences of any US attempts to edge out President Hamid Karzai. Results from a presidential election last month gave Mr. Karzai a majority, but allegations of widespread ballot-stuffing have stalled the confirmation of his victory and undermined his credibility in the eyes of many Afghans. These admonishments come after the top US and allied commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, warned that the war here may become unwinnable unless troop levels are raised and the momentum of insurgents is reversed in the next 12 months. The Obama administration has yet to endorse these findings, and has called for a review of the US-led war effort before making a decision on troop levels. Vice President Joe Biden in particular has expressed skepticism about the proposed troop increase. Senior administration officials said the review was necessary because the war plan that President Barack Obama announced in March was based on the assumption that the election would give Mr. Karzai new legitimacy.
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