The Case for McChrystal's Plan

The Case for McChrystal's Plan
The Foreign Policy Initiative has produced a very helpful fact sheet that makes the case for a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan. Read it here.

Just Send The Damn Troops Now or Bring The Other Ones Home NOW

There are two options: fight or retreat. Half-stepping is what gets good men and women killed for no good reason. (You have no idea how much control I am exercising right now)

This is the result of lawyers and cowards being in charge. Zero is a do-nothing coward. A moozie loving, half brained lawyer twit with absolutely no business being in the position he is in.

New York Times -- In 3 Tacks for Afghan War, a Game of Trade-Offs

Another four American troops have been killed by enemy bombs in Afghanistan in the past 24 hours. That’s the backdrop as President Obama gets ready for his final decision-making push on his goals for the war after 12 weeks of reconsideration.

Writer Elisabeth Bumiller looks at the plusses and minuses of the three plans that apparently have survived the process. It’s a useful guide and clearly written. She also clearly is betting on the middle option.

“Should Mr. Obama send 20,000 troops, military analysts say, there would probably be no fourth brigade to use around the country, and parts of Helmand and the east would receive few if any additional troops. With this number, Mr. Obama would expect a greater contribution of troops from NATO allies (about 35,000 troops from other NATO countries are currently in Afghanistan). Much of the American mission would focus on training.

Administration officials estimate the cost of sending 30,000 more troops at $25 billion to $30 billion a year and the cost of sending 20,000 troops at $21 billion a year.”

In Memory Of and In Humble Appreciation For the Sacrifices Made

We will not forget.

Featured Video: "Remembering SGT Joshua Brennan
KIA 26 October 2007
Korengal Valley, Afghanistan

Give Them What They Need or Bring Them The Hell Home

Vets For Freedom Petition

We, the undersigned U.S. war veterans and patriotic Americans, petition you with one simple request:

Listen to the commander on the ground in Afghanistan—General Stanley A. McChrystal—and provide him with the troops he says he needs to win the war in Afghanistan.

By accepting the troop recommendations of General McChrystal—and his boss General David Petraeus—we have a chance to turn the war in Afghanistan around. This is a moment in history we must not miss.

Like General Petraeus in Iraq, General McChrystal is an outside-the-box thinker who thrives in the ambiguity of asymmetrical battlefields. Like General Petraeus in Iraq, General McChrystal has the right strategy—a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan.

In 2007, General Petraeus was given the troops he needed (the "Surge") to win, and Iraq has turned around—resulting in dramatically lower U.S. casualties, a more stable Iraq, and a drawdown of American forces.

General McChrystal—and all our brave Soldiers and Marines on the ground—deserve the same chance to win in Afghanistan. They deserve the additional troops needed to turn a winning strategy into a winning result.

We fully acknowledge that the war in Afghanistan has been tough, and is currently headed in the wrong direction. And as you have said, it has been under-resourced, under-funded, and under-manned for years. You have also said that it is a war we must win. We agree on all fronts.

Unlike Iraq, there was consensus at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan that America must be successful in toppling the Taliban and dismantling Al Qaeda, for the safety of our country. Eight years later, the consensus on the war in Afghanistan is fractured; however we believe—as do you—that the need for victory has not changed.

During this time of domestic uncertainty and global threats, winning the war will require steadfast Presidential leadership; a Commander-in-Chief who is unwilling to be swayed by lagging poll numbers or party leaders who want to block troop increases.

Now is the time for your leadership. If you listen to commanders on the ground, give them what they need, and stand behind our warriors in Afghanistan—we will stand with you. If you don't, and would rather fight the "war of necessity" with one hand tied behind our back, then we will loudly object.

Many—in fact a majority—said the war in Iraq was "unwinnable," yet our troops persevered and turned the tide. Despite the drumbeat of detractors—on both sides of the aisle—this is another war we can win. But we must act now.

We owe it to the Marines and Soldiers slogging it out with insurgents every day to get this right. If we do, they'll fight, they'll persevere, and they'll win. If we don't, we are setting them up for failure. No less than America's greatness—and the legacy of America's finest warriors—is at stake.

Heritage Morning Bell

The admistration needs to fish or cut bait, as my buds over at Blackfive have so eleoquently stated on numerous occasions. This half-assed approach will only get more Warriors hurt or killed.

Obama Must Lead On Afghanistan
On March 27th, President Barack Obama followed through on one of his core campaign promises and announced a New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that included sending an additional 21,000 troops to the region. Speaking from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Obama explained:

"Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban — or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged — that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can. …But this is not simply an American problem — far from it. It is, instead, an international security challenge of the highest order. Terrorist attacks in London and Bali were tied to al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, as were attacks in North Africa and the Middle East, in Islamabad and in Kabul. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or African city, it, too, is likely to have ties to al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. The safety of people around the world is at stake.”

So according to President Obama, victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan is not only essential for the security of the United States, but for “the safety of people around the world.” We couldn’t agree more, which is why it is so alarming to learn that President Obama is considering a different strategy advocated by Vice President Joe Biden. Just as Biden opposed the successful surge in Iraq, Biden now opposes a surge in Afghanistan, instead favoring withdrawing most U.S. troops leaving only special forces and predator drones to strike al Qaeda cells. Biden was wrong about Iraq and he is wrong about Afghanistan. Heritage fellow James Phillips explains:

The war in Afghanistan cannot be effectively waged merely with air power, predator drones, and special forces. In the late 1990s, the Clinton Administration hurled cruise missiles at easily replaceable al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, but this “chuck and duck” strategy failed to blunt the al-Qaeda threat. The Bush Administration’s minimalist approach to Afghanistan in 2001 was a contributing factor that allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from his mountain redoubt at Tora Bora. Afterwards, Washington opted to focus narrowly on counterterrorism goals in Afghanistan–rather than counterinsurgency operations–in order to free up military assets for the war in Iraq. This allowed the Taliban to regroup across the border in Pakistan and make a violent resurgence. The “small footprint” strategy also failed in Iraq, before it was abandoned in favor of General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the surge of American troops, in early 2007.

Despite this record of failure, some stubbornly continue to support an “offshore” strategy for landlocked Afghanistan today. But half-measures–the hallmark of the “small footprint” strategy–will not work. Precise intelligence is needed to use smart bombs smartly. Yet few Afghans would risk their lives to provide such intelligence unless they are assured of protection against the Taliban’s ruthless retaliation.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates seconded this analysis this Sunday telling ABC News’ This Week:

I think that most people who — the people that I’ve talked to in the Pentagon who are the experts on counter-terrorism essentially say that counter-terrorism is only possible if you have the kind of intelligence that allows you to target the terrorists. And the only way you get that intelligence is by being on the ground — getting information from people like the Afghans or, in the case of Iraq, the Iraqis.

And so you can’t do this from — from a distance or remotely, in the view of virtually all of the experts that I’ve talked to.

The security of the United States and the “safety of people around the world” depend on President Obama ignoring Biden and listening to Gates on this particular point. But listening to Gates will not be enough. The American people are unsure about which strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. According to Gallup, 41% of Americans favor withdrawing troops from the country while 41% favor increasing troop levels. Gallup’s Frank Newport adds: “The data indicate that Republicans do seem willing to support Obama should he make a decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. On the other hand, Democrats seem willing to oppose Obama in this case.”

If anybody can convince liberals to support victory in Afghanistan it is President Obama. Health care is important. But so is national security. According to the Washington Post, Obama has scheduled at least five meetings with his national security team over the next two weeks to reexamine the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. When this review is completed, the President should announce his decision in a nationally televised speech. He should explain to the American people what is at stake in Afghanistan, why it is necessary to make continued sacrifices to defeat distant enemies there, and why the war is not only necessary, but winnable. President Obama’s March troop surge has not even been implemented yet. The President needs to win over his own party in Washington before U.S. forces can defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The War in Afghanistan

The War in Afghanistan
Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 3:38 PM

NATIONAL REVIEW
BING WEST
Along the Durand Line, Northeast Afghanistan
The view from the Karir Pass on the Durand Line separating Afghanistan from Pakistan is spectacular. To the west, a river meanders toward the city of Jalalabad. To the east, Pakistani towns lie amidst emerald green swaths of farmland that stretch to the horizon. I am accompanying Lt. Col. Mark O’Donnell, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 32nd Infantry Regiment, and his scout platoon on a visit to the Pakistani outpost, 100 miles northeast of Kabul. Although their post has a panoramic view, the Pakistani soldiers say they haven’t challenged anyone crossing the border. They explain that they cannot even visit the nearby Pakistani village, because the Taliban would kill them.

Because the Pakistani (and Afghan) border forces aren’t up to the job, the mission of the 1st Battalion is to control an 80-mile section of the border. But the Durand Line runs for 1,600 miles. Looking down on the valleys on both sides gives an impression of the vastness of the challenge. After leaving the Durand Line, I visit the seasoned French 10th Mountaineer Brigade, operating in the mountains and valleys east of Kabul. I ask their commander what the critical strengths of the Taliban and the ten other fundamentalist gangs opposing him are. “Watchers and information manipulation,” he says, succinctly summarizing the security problem.
By “watchers,” he means the network of sympathizers and sentries, including women and the ubiquitous goat herders, who warn of the approach of NATO forces. When I accompanied patrols with Viper Company of the 26th Infantry Regiment in the Korengal Valley, the interpreters could hear the watchers reporting our movements over handheld radios. The fundamentalists took inaccurate shots at us from 600 meters away and then ducked into ravines when our A-10 jets appeared. This system of over-watch has enabled the enemy to control their casualties in their mountain strongholds, while in the villages their spies intimidate the people, preventing the flow of information to friendly forces.

When I accompanied a U.S.-Afghan army platoon to make a rare arrest in a thriving town north of Kabul, hundreds of unsmiling Afghan males with folded arms gathered around us. Some muttered “feringhee” (foreigner) as I walked past. Well, I was wearing my Red Sox cap in a cricket-playing nation. But who was watching them? “I don’t know what’s in their minds,” First Sgt. Jason Rivas said, staring back at the dispassionate crowd. “I do know the Taliban owns the night. They come and go as they please. We’re rarely out here, and everyone knows when we’re coming.”

Maj. Jason Dempsey, the battalion’s operations officer, showed me pictures of teenagers placing boulders behind U.S. vehicles so they cannot turn around when under attack. The Taliban and other opposition groups appeal to a mixture of tribal jealousies, xenophobia, and Islamic fundamentalism. Yet instead of issuing a nationalist rallying cry to discredit the Taliban, Afghan president Hamid Karzai emphasizes civilian casualties caused by American air attacks. “We don’t have the moral high ground,” Karzai said recently, while comfortably ensconced in a TV studio in Washington, D.C. A weak leader likely to be reelected for another five-year term in August, Karzai is politically tone-deaf. He reinforces the disinformation campaign of the Taliban, instead of developing messages that undercut theirs. Despite little fighting and very low casualties by Afghan or other historical measures, his administration has lost ground to the Taliban and like-minded fundamentalists. A shadow government has gradually emerged in large swaths of the rural areas.

In response, over the past year, the U.S. military in Regional Command East, around Kabul and to its north and east, has adopted the Petraeus model from Iraq and deployed over 100 U.S. and Afghan companies in outposts among the population. This maneuver has reestablished some control, as evidenced by a drop in violence affecting civilians. But the Americans are still foreigners controlling a population that, fearing retribution, rarely offers information that identifies the fundamentalists. In Iraq in 2007, Gen. David Petraeus presided over a shift in Sunni attitudes that led to a steady flow of information against al-Qaeda. Nothing similar has happened in Afghanistan. Until the local population decides to inform, the government in Kabul faces a serious problem.

In Regional Command South, including the key poppy-growing centers and the city of Kandahar, the security situation is worse. But 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines are surging into that area to clear the populated zones and then turn over the task of population protection to Afghan forces. By the fall, they can be expected to push back the Taliban. But what happens after that? How will Kabul solidify the gains?

On May 11, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replaced the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Changing commanders had less to do with redirecting strategy than with strengthening teamwork. In March, President Obama had announced a new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy that sounded like a continuation of the Bush policy. At that time, Bruce Riedel, Obama’s point man on Afghanistan, stressed that the president had laid out “a strategy” and that “it’s not intended to be a campaign plan.”
Not picking up on the clear signal that a campaign plan was necessary but still missing,

McKiernan failed to produce one. Petraeus, when in Iraq, had issued clear letters of his intent to all the soldiers. In contrast, McKiernan did not share his vision with his soldiers. He remained aloof and detached from his troops and from Washington. So Gates, in a shift that showed the power of Petraeus behind the scenes, selected some aggressive but compatible personalities. McChrystal had worked closely with Petraeus, Gates, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Because they are comfortable with one another, these four men share perspectives candidly. Soon there will be five: Adm. James Stavridis has just been appointed NATO commander. For the past three years, he has served as U.S. commander for Latin America, dealing with the drug wars. That experience is critically needed in Afghanistan, which is a major opium producer.

Gates must insist that either Mullen or Petraeus provide an objective risk assessment, independent of McChrystal. By way of analogy, every corporate board of trustees has an assigned risk assessor. Some senior general must remain detached enough from the day-to-day diplomatic and military crises in Afghanistan to warn if the strategy writ large is going awry.
As for the military campaign plan itself, it has still not been written. “Our mission,” Gates said, “requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders.” Does that mean that the deployment into outposts was a mistake — or that the Marines are wrong to try to clear the populated areas and then transition population protection to Afghan forces? No: The basic concepts appear sound. But operations are proceeding at a slow pace, because the size and bulk of each unit leaving the bases is large in order to minimize casualties.

So what “new approaches” should be included in the campaign plan? The first step is to agree that the goal is not to win, but to turn the war over to the Afghans. Many — perhaps most — Afghans have become accustomed to letting America and NATO do most of the fighting for them and deliver economic improvements. At the same time, they want to keep their distance from foreigners, accommodate the fundamentalists, and cling to the tribal values challenged by modernity. How do we put Afghans in the lead in their own country, to settle their own differences, while not losing the country to fundamentalists intent on attacking us?

There are two basic options. First, we can put more resources and urgency into the standard counterinsurgency approach. Militarily, this means recruiting more local militia at the village level. Once the overt Taliban fighters are pushed out of a populated area, a force has to come in to impose order, and that includes arresting seditionists. The traditional solution would call for improving the wretched police and installing American civilians to advise (and supervise) the district and provincial officials and thus strengthen the sinews of government. This approach would take several more years and several hundred million dollars not yet budgeted.

The second approach is more radical: strengthen the Afghan military as the backbone of government. Since the war cannot be won by killing the fundamentalists, they must be separated from the population. That is not happening. The U.S. holds about 600 prisoners in Afghanistan. Another 400 are held in the central Afghan prison. The number of enemy fighters imprisoned is absurdly disproportionate to the violence and intimidation — and amounts to a severe critique of intelligence and police effectiveness.

The enemy lives somewhere; it needs housing, food, transportation, resupply, etc. We have not trained Afghan units to acquire and run agents at the village and district levels, and to arrest the supporters of the fundamentalists. Our Special Operations Forces and CIA do a good job with the high-level enemy operatives, but the lower-level agents are walking around free and without fear. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and 13,000 Americans were arrested under martial law. There must be a similarly stiff penalty for sedition, and knowledge among the population that the Afghan government has agents, a net of informers, a military that makes arrests, and adequate prisons.

The U.S. should fund a pension plan to allow the quick retirement with dignity of a raft of superannuated Afghan officers who are performing poorly but have no means of living if they retire. In return, the U.S. should insist on joint U.S.-Afghan promotion boards for Afghan military and police officers at the company command level and above. As it stands now, our advisers can tell which leaders are poor or corrupt — but they can do little about it.

The police cannot function without a military umbrella, but the military can function as police. Instead of moving frequently, Afghan battalions should remain for years in one locale, so they become acquainted with the local politics. The police should be placed under army control. The army can also supervise the services supposedly provided by district and provincial officials.

This is a step back from the democratic model by which the Eastern European nations emerged from Communism. It points toward Turkey or Pakistan, or Mexico until recently. The American goal, however, is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming again a sanctuary for Islamic fundamentalists. The Afghan army, the nation’s most respected institution, is already working hand in hand with our military and offers the fastest means of reducing our burden in that country.

Legacy of the Second-503 BCT 173DABN

The men and women of Second Battalion 503D Regiment 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade (Sep) have left lasting memories of their 15 month deployment to northeastern Afghanistan.

In addition to the memories they keep of their fallen brothers, they have left monuments to the sacrifices made in the shape of a better life for the Afghan people. Better medical care, better roads, clean water supplies, and most of all, the chance to become educated. The oportunity to learn, as we do, free from fear of reprisal from sadistic monsters who place women below cattle in stature. Twisted humans who believe they are superior and enforce that superiority through acts of barbarism and terror.

The Second 503 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade (Sep) left their mark on northeastern Afghanistan, "Enemy Central", by building schools.

One of the first opened last week.

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (August 20, 2008) – For the children of Bagram Village Girl’s High School, August 19 was the start of a new semester. Students filtered through the gate the same as any other school day, but were surprised to see their school had changed since the end of the last semester.
Thanks to the efforts of the Afghan government and U.S. forces, the school reopened with three new classrooms, running water, a fresh coat of paint, new desks, and a wall surrounding the perimeter.
“You can see a lot of difference in the students’ faces,” said Naqeeba, administrator and headmaster of the school. “The students are good here without help, but we see that our government cares about us. It’s been a month and a half since they came to our school and asked what we needed, and since then we have seen good progress.”
The five-year-old school has seen few improvements since opening, but hard-working students have made the school an academic powerhouse in the area.
The school received an award from the Parwan provincial minister of education for its record of having the most students graduate and advance to higher education.
“When the Taliban was in power, it was illegal for girls to go to school, but we never forgot how important it is to educate all Afghan children.
This school used to be housing for Russian pilots, but the government of Afghanistan helped us make it usable as a place of education.” Before the Soldiers left the students to their learning, they helped teachers and local officials pass out backpacks with school supplies to the students.
“A lot of families can’t even afford to buy paper or a pen for their children,” said
Subhanallah, a teacher at the school. “We don’t have a lot of money, but I see a bright future for schools in this area. What matters most is the students are interested in studying and learning, and the people here see the value in education.”