19 Things Generals Can't Say In Public About The Afghan War
 

This originally ran on 9 Nov 2011 and again 29 Aug 2012 - any changes to these "truisms" since that time?

Richard

19 True Things Generals Can't Say In Public About The Afghan War: A Helpful Primer
FP, 29 Aug 2012

Here is a list of 19 things that many insiders and veterans of Afghanistan agree to be true about the war there, but that generals can't say in public.

• Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.
• We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.
• The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt.
• Karzai's family is especially corrupt.
• We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.
• But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.
• Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.
• Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe
• Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.
• Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn't end the fighting.
• The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.
• Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there's no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.
• Even non-Taliban Afghans don't much like us.
• Afghans didn't get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .
• And they're not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we're paying more and getting less than any other player.
• Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?
• The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.
• We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won't act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.
• The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...eSADA.facebook

The last two items are the ones that bother me the most. If we are going to fight, we should be allowed to do what we need to do to achieve the objective, as quickly as possible with as minimal lives lost as possible. I don't see the bureaucratic micromanaging of the situation by some of those who have never been in combat as what should happen. For this reason, i think military service should be a prerequisite for POTUS and VPOTUS.

You'd think we would learn after making the same mistakes over and over again, not to do this (nation-building). I guess we are politically insane (do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results)

Carter.

That would be true if the goal of the people driving the bus were actually nation building... But it isn't...

Unfortunately, the establishment of a functioning government is one of the three major goals of having an effective counterinsurgency strategy. In Afghanistan this may be the biggest obstacle to success and may not be attainable.

We were never able to achieve a stable functioning civil government in Vietnam. This allowed the Viet Cong to convince enough of the population that they would be better off on their side...they won the "hearts and minds". We won most of the battles but had no winning game plan.

In Afghanistan, there is a disfunctional government which can't even control the city where it resides. We don't control the "hearts and minds" of the populace because we are no less the "infidels". We hold no ground and are subject to ridiculous ROE. We win all the battles and have no strategy or goals. Lastly, no lessons have been learned from past experience ie Vietnam!

Nuke Islamabad, Kabul, Kandharhar and Bengazi. Make it so hot they couldn't even consider attacking us again. God help'em if they're slow learners!

I was there in '04, worked in Ghazni, Kandahar and Tarin Kowt. Those 19 statements applied then. Nothing has changed.

And some of us worked with the Afgans in the 1980's and if our reports were read then you'd see all 19 statements included and more....... We do not learn from history...

Next time the islamic terrorists hit us I say we just send bombers and drones, no boots on the ground.

Fixed that for ya :D

The comparisons to VN are astounding at the strategic level. As many have already said, we never seem to learn from history and keep pursuing the same strategies with the expectation of different outcomes - NUTS!

But maybe we are looking at this the wrong way? Disregard all the rhetoric about nation building, COIN, winning the war, advancing democracy, liberty for all,rah rah rah. What if the strategy is working and the outcomes, predictable and obvious by now to even the dullest of tools, what if these are, in fact, the desired outcomes?

After all, the amount of debt incurred to prosecute these wars has been huge. Makes me wonder. :munchin

Trapper John,

Do you actually think that the outcome in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is the desired end product? Is this the result of the "military industrial complex"or "chrony capitalism" feeding itself?

I think that politicians have a different yardstick they live by. For them to throw thousands of solders' lives away for the same outcome is sick and or criminal. If the outcome that we are getting is the same then the fault lays at the feet of the appointed generals and elected politicians. The emphasis is on "appointed and elected". Being appointed doesn't insure the general is technically proficient just political acceptable to whatever administration in power. An election is a beauty contest for lying scumbags. When you mix the two, any decisions they make together will assuredly be flawed over and over again.

Have you ever noticed when a war starts there's a purge of senior generals. These are the politically appointees who are incompetent and incapable of doing what their office requires. At the end of the war, politician again promotes/appoint politically desirable officers as a payback and the circular firing squad continues.

In the 1980's, I remember the process of appointing a new AG here. I knew all of the contenders well enough to know who were competent and who were not. The democrat governor appointed the only democrat and least militarily competent. The remaining contender were later forced to retire. I've been bitter toward the process of appointed officers since then.

Your thinking too narrowly. Think of the outcome in terms of economic cost - increasing national debt, or in terms of the societal effect - division and polarization. These are the much broader effects of policy. Maybe these are the desired outcomes?

Follow the money. ;)