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Steve the Planner
05-13-2009, 09:45 PM
On May 12, 2009, USIP held a conference: The U.S. Occupation of Iraq: What Lessons Should be Learned?

The lead speakers were James Dobbins (Rand) and Stuart Bowen (SIGIR). Also present (and valuable contributors) were Dr. Gordon Rudd, Keith Crane (Rand), and Paul Hughes (USIP).

Summary:

Mr. Dobbins introduced a new Rand study on the history of the CPA: Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=2256).

Mr. Bowen discussed SIGIR's publication: Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=6656).

Both brought interesting observations of what went wrong and why in Iraq reconstruction. One of the more interesting comments by Mr. Bowen, in response to a question about State's new Coordinator for Reconstruction & Stabilization, was that it was "still borne." He went on to describe the weaknesses in its creation, authority and structure.

If Bowen is correct, no one should hold their breathe waiting for S/CRS to come on line. His recommendation was that Reconstruction won;t get serious and effective until an Office of Reconstruction is set up outside State and DoD. (Should we hold our breathe?)

Dr. Rudd really brought an interesting perspective. He pointed out that the US's strongest experience was in "liberation" (such as in Italy, France, etc.), and that, perhaps, a focus on that model might have been more appropriate (how to support and reinforce a civilian government). His suggestion that we study those "liberations" for lessons was a unique contribution,

While reinforcing that the military does not want the role of reconstructor, he questioned why, in Iraq and Afghanistan's civilian surges, the US government has not approached actual civilian associations like the associations of civilian city and county managers. Instead, the "civilians" are just foreign service officers and military assignees. Where are the real civilian experts?

I was at an American Planning Association (APA) Conference in Minneapolis last month, and asked why they had not been engaged in the reconstruction effort. They indicated that, although they have a strong presence in Washington, they had no contacts to DoD, State or USAID--- the largest professional association for civilian planning and management couldn't break into the loop.

It's always interesting to watch civilians in these audiences groan as the foibles of CPA and Hard Lessons are explained---as if the high-level mistakes are so obvious and frustrating---but, at some point, it starts to get old. Like when, after all these years, nobody has any serious solutions in progress.

How do we get serious about civilian reconstruction?

Steve

Benjamin Walthrop
05-13-2009, 10:53 PM
Kaplan's Department of Everything Else. I agree in principle of the need for an "Office of Reconstruction" (don't like the name but that's just a quibble) IF (and that's a very big if) we as a nation see the need for these activities going forward. The expertise should be drawn from the civil governance and planning expertise that exists around the country (an example being the APA). Where I diverge from Mr. Bowen's narrative is that I believe this organization can and should be stood up under the State Department.

Ken White
05-13-2009, 11:49 PM
WORKED. Until Clinton and Maddie dismantled it.

So did USIA -- also dismantled.

:mad:

MikeF
05-13-2009, 11:53 PM
WORKED. Until Clinton and Maddie dismantled it.

So did USIA -- also dismantled.

:mad:

The decision to move USIA into the State Department makes me want to start doing drugs-specifically LSD. Then, maybe I can understand that rationale.:cool:

v/r

Mike

John T. Fishel
05-14-2009, 01:35 AM
was Jesse Helms' doing. He insisted on dismantling it. USAID is more complex. From a major organization with its own experts and professionals it gradually became a contracting organization providing funds to NGOs for projects. This began in the Reagan years and escalated to the present.

Cheers

JohnT

Steve the Planner
05-14-2009, 01:36 AM
I believe it was Paul Hughes (USIP) who suggested that it stay in State but with the caveat that State, in order to prepare to engage in the modern environment for which contingency ops may be more typical than not, will have to be completely restructured from top to bottom to do it.

As somebody just back from the 2007/2008 civilian surge in Iraq and with Afghanistan on the horizon, it seems like these kinds of ideas (rebuild State and or USAID), are possibly good ideas, but, by the time they could happen, would be ready to deal with a problem that may already be in the rear view mirror.

I just don't get comfort from the idea that the US public is going to let this type and tempo of activity/spending/risks continue for too long. So, where is the urgency to streamline some actions that could happen within a real-time schedule?

Steve

Ken White
05-14-2009, 04:28 AM
an existential war and Iraq is not that. Be happy Iraq is getting greater realtive priority than did Viet Nam -- things could be worse...

Still it is annoying that a little bit off focused effort could be easily achieved and pay good dividends. Not likely to happen, Congress likes to play silly games about (1) party superiority and (2) reelection -- the needs of the nation come in a distant fourth after their State or District. .

The public -- the majority of it -- is not the problem; a few in the public, the media and Congress can be problematical but I suspect the new Prez has got at least two years free credit.

jcustis
05-14-2009, 06:17 AM
Unless a review from the OMB hits the wire concerning waste, fraud, or abuse, the public has little knowledge of how reconstruction happens., and it would seem right now to not care.

BayonetBrant
05-14-2009, 01:35 PM
Dr. Rudd really brought an interesting perspective. He pointed out that the US's strongest experience was in "liberation" (such as in Italy, France, etc.), and that, perhaps, a focus on that model might have been more appropriate (how to support and reinforce a civilian government). His suggestion that we study those "liberations" for lessons was a unique contribution,


While our strongest recent experiences were in "liberations" I would argue that from 1776-1890s we did a whole LOT of nation-building... namely, ours. It was the military that mapped, garrisoned, cleared, bridged, and secured the open frontier. To say that "we don't do nation-building" is to ignore the history of the US. To say that "we don't do nation-REbuilding" is somewhat accurate.

However, I'd argue that Iraq/Afghanistan is a hybrid of the two. We are rebuilding some infrastructure, but we are also building many new institutions for the first time. That is a significant challenge, and one that everyone seems to be running from because they seem to know it's all going to go wrong and don't want to be stuck holding the bag.

Steve the Planner
05-14-2009, 03:53 PM
Ken's point. A little bit of focused effort could be easily achieved and pay good dividends. Nothing is ever perfect, but if you miss a few big ones, or the cumulative effect of a lot of little ones....well, there you go.

I don't think Dr. Rudd was arguing that Iraq was a straight up liberation game, but that were lessons to be learned from that.

In the planning/public administration profession, the little bible is a book called "Implementation." (Authors: Pressman and Wildavsky). It explains their efforts to rebuild Watts after the LA Riots. Full faith and credit of the US Gov (Economic Development Agency, ie Great Society), and buy in from State and local. They explain the unsuccessful fiasco by outlining theories as valid today as then---interagency, for example. On the complexity of joint action and the compounding probabilities of failure, they not that if there are 100 yes/no points and 99% probability of success (a yes) at each point, the cumulative 1% risk is 100%: failure is assured. The book is chock full of the lessons learned then, and forgotten today.

In Iraq, we had a post-Ottoman cultural and governmental structure which had been subject to several major, but half-hearted revisions, reforms over the Two Arifs and Baathist periods. But, underneath it all, it stayed the same---always defaulting to what it knew. Not that different from the US Gov---change the parties but the "system" remains the same.

There, we came with little understanding or appreciation of the system, and set about building a new one (that didn't go all that well, and probably exceeded our time and investment horizon). Another strategy, built around "liberation" techniques, would have been to get the old system up and running, and work to redirect it and transition it to something else. Maybe Turkey was a decent model of a post-Ottoman society that was more compatible with US interests, whereas a half-implemented New England style "democracy" was not.

At the USIP Conference, there was a report where a professor used Iraq to test the theory of whether structure of government is essential to democratic outcomes, ie, whether we had to replace the GoI structure to change the outcomes. His conclusion was, I believe, that it made no difference. Personally, I think he used the wrong data set---studying the Baghdad-centric national government of pre and post TAL instead of using a more fine grained model of government that accounted for services distributed down to the people (local, provincial, and national)--- but, I don't disagree with the conclusion.

But, in my opinion, a successful Iraq, in the end, is going to be based on how it delivers services and prosperity to people, and not on the yardsticks of outsiders. Hopefully, they will devise a basically functioning structure, as we arguably have, and continue to fix/improve, over several centuries of trial and error.

Steve

Steve the Planner
05-17-2009, 08:24 PM
Spent Friday night at Clyde's in Tysons Corner with my Iraq Braintrust.

Between drinks, we discussed the recent WSJ article: Learning a Hard History Lesson in 'Talibanistan' (May 14, 2009) , a sad tale about the external impacts of constructing a new base in Karezgay (Zabul Province), but, in the process, destroying the underground canals (karez) on which area farming depends.

"The karez "are the linchpin of their entire civilization here," says Capt. Paul Tanghe, who advises the Afghan National Army battalion in Karezgay."

In the recent USIP Conference on Hard Lessons, they talked about the billions in mis-directed reconstruction spending---on schools, infrastructure, etc..., but there was not a one of these folks who had solutions. Nor, because their focus is on higher-level programs rather than field-based process, did they really get it.

All it took was what planners & public admin folks routinely do: a scoping process. Followed by a simple site-specific planning/engineering process.

I'm very familiar with the capabilities of a D9 Dozer, and what happens when somebody says "build me a base, fast." But there must be a way to malke small improvements that can make a big difference. (I hope?)

Without some kind of mid-level planning structure, we are always just "doing stuff" like a school here and a school there---pretty soon you built 2800 of them (and spent billions of US taxpayer money doing it), but you don't have a school system, or a well-understood process of how these schools are supposed to be financed, staffed, and maintained into the future.

Lessons to learn.

Steve

Jedburgh
05-17-2009, 09:58 PM
....I'm very familiar with the capabilities of a D9 Dozer, and what happens when somebody says "build me a base, fast." But there must be a way to malke small improvements that can make a big difference. (I hope?)....
Here's a piece written three years ago; Analysis of the Karezes at the Gardez FOB (http://gfipps.tamu.edu/PRT-Support/Karezes/Analysis%20of%20the%20Gardez%20FOB%20Karezs.pdf). See page 4 for the discussion of small improvements, pages 6-8 for photos of the Karez, and pages 9-12 for diagrams and costs from a previous Karez improvement project.

Steve the Planner
05-18-2009, 12:14 AM
Jedburgh:

Shades of Iraq. Every time I found a problem in Iraq in 2008, I could find a report that laid out a simple solution, that often involved local practice (let the locals clear it out).

Usually, the answer was ignored in favor of a USACE project that had been in progess somewhere for the last several years.

The more things change...

Steve

goesh
05-18-2009, 01:49 PM
As a civilian on the side, I was always amazed at how the Republican Guard was touted to be top notch but then all of a sudden, the whole Iraqi Army was nothing but a bunch of cowardly bunglers and it would take many years to get them trained and ready. This seemed a glarying contradiction along with the notion of shock and awe somehow unfolding in densely packed urban areas. Give 'em rubble or give 'em respect I thought, then there was the matter of tens of thousands of young men standing idle on the streets. I always figured the logistic minds that could sustain an army could also figure out ways to get these guys off the streets without killing them. Germany and Japan were essentially turned to rubble and in 50 yrs. they became big players on the world scene so some lessons were available. Perhaps the only real measure of a great leader like General P. if found in his ability to open the gates of innovation and creativity and initiative for the lower echelons of the rank and file so that some good stuff flows up instead of only shi* flowing down. I think the Conventional is eternal and static and can only be tweaked from time to time by the emergence of certain types of leaders and some of it may simply be the luck of the draw.

Steve the Planner
05-19-2009, 02:49 PM
goesh:

As near as I can tell from the news media, there are some very effective Iraqi generals living outside of Iraq (Jordan, Syria, etc...), and the US was, in fact, in negotiation with them to stay for the transition (like keeping the AIG executives who knew where all the bodies were buried?). But, they left, so it's pretty hard to judge the real alternatives.

The Embargo years certainly had an effect on the military, as it did on the economy at large, shifting a lot of otherwise productive capabilities to black market activities, so, between Gulf Wars, were the best and brightest going into the military, or into the more profitable sector?

Hard to tell. But one thing that amazed me was how they kept any of it (the economy or the military running)---even as just a shell---for so long. The amazing thing, in studying the Iran-Iraq War is not the strategic or tactical brilliance, but the ability to muster so many fighters in such historically bloody battles. So I don't discount Iraqi ingenuity and potential, even if, at the last, the military used the Irish strategy (run away to fight another day).

Steve

reed11b
05-19-2009, 07:42 PM
was Jesse Helms' doing. He insisted on dismantling it. USAID is more complex. From a major organization with its own experts and professionals it gradually became a contracting organization providing funds to NGOs for projects. This began in the Reagan years and escalated to the present.

Cheers

JohnT

Ahhh, yet another "success" for privatization! :rolleyes:
Reed

Steve the Planner
05-20-2009, 11:13 PM
SWJ Blog's new article: Perspective on the Systems Perspective
How Army Special Forces Can Use Existing Systems within the Operational Environment
by Major Michael Longacre, Small Wars Journal

Major Longacre makes a great pitch for systems approaches to planning and basic infrastructure (road, electrical systems). Couldn't have said it better.

Civilian planners are trained in looking at systems, linkages, and connections. Leg bone's connected to the tail bone, etc...

Unfortunately, no one is focusing on this stuff, as evidenced by DoD, DoS, and US AID hiring postures. No planning advisers advertised for Afghanistan. Instead, planning is just a sub-heading within overall advisory positions.

In Iraq, State reconstruction strategy was focused on province-by-province, and the military was focused on battlespace-by-battlespace. There was no big picture. No planning.

Sounds like the same thing will happen in Afghanistan. Oh, well! So much for small changes that could create big improvements.

Steve

reed11b
05-21-2009, 12:21 AM
In A-stan, province by province may not be a bad thing. The 'Stan lacks the history or infrastructure of a strong central government that Iraq had. Grass roots projects to bring up quality of life that the recipients can appreciate is more important then having big projects that make good press. However if the provincial governments chose and advise the projects then the graft will sink $$ in big a big way and possibly alienate more locals. Just my 2 cents.
Reed
P.S. Focus for us has to be military in nature regardless. If Karzai asks for funding for a national highway plan or something, I think we owe his country the support, but for planning on our national level, security first, security second and security third.

Steve the Planner
05-21-2009, 02:27 PM
Reed:

Reconstruction: Fixing what's broken.

Development: Making something new. (with the caveat that the pioneer usually gets all the arrows).

Problem is that Congress is funding $7 billion for State/US AID plus a half a billion in CERP Funds with a goal of obtaining some substantial economic and societal transformations---something new and different---whatever that may be.

So, what is it? How is it going to work? How is it going to survive? How is the money going to get out of the capital and down to real people?

I've heard big ideas like turning opium into commercial flower production. OK, but where is the refrigerated storage, and just-in-time delivery service to European flower markets. Seeds, bulbs, fertilizer, high-volume irrigation, power, transportation systems.

And the dumb question, whether for flowers or any other regional or national transformative effort, needs to be asked: If it could be done profitably, why isn't somebody doing it already?

If the answer is "but for the instability", or the lack of a critical infrastructure component, that's one thing, but if we are talking about re-engineering a sustainable change in a challenging region with minimal resources and infrastructure, I sure hope somebody is looking at this systemically, or it is just a waste of time and US taxpayer money (and a lot of lives).

The big question I have, at a regional and provincial levels (and trickling down to local) is whether a viable strategy can be put together to make substantial changes that will transform the current situation?

What are the pieces? How do you connect them?

More than anything, the hundreds of empty, abandoned, unstaffed, unequipped, or never completed schools and health clinics in Iraq should have taught us that throwing things at a wall to see if it sticks is not really a plan, and isn't likely to work.

Steve

reed11b
05-21-2009, 04:27 PM
Schools and health clinics fall under the "good press" column. Hence my focus on benefits the recipients can appreciate. In more rural areas of A-stan, that might be clean water or fixing irrigation. As far as plans to revitalize a national economy, most big plans have historically enriched a few and had little to negative impact on the majority of the population. A-stan may need a locally based economy for stability and build from there. World markets are not always the best option. I did read somewhere however that India used to be a major importer of Afghan agriculture, perhaps which could be a start point for outside currency?
Reed

Steve the Planner
05-22-2009, 01:17 AM
Reed:

Agreed about schools, clinics. Much of it has been window dressing with little sustainable benefit---other than pr. Water and irrigation is job one, period.

Funny you should mention India, land of the 198o's Era Green Revolution. Lots of wells to spawn agricultural expansion---until the ag aquifers failed. So, yeah, they imported food from Afghanistan.

Now, without driving the need for much fuel imports, what can be done to create a significant enhancement for sustainable irrigation that could, together with trade movement solutions, drive a solid internal and external market.

Saddam and the Baathists were big on socialism until they found out that the more the government put into agriculture, the less output it got. So it pursued land reform and agricultural privatization to some success, but the effort got swamped with too many other factors...

Steve

Ron Humphrey
05-22-2009, 03:23 AM
Reed:

Agreed about schools, clinics. Much of it has been window dressing with little sustainable benefit---other than pr. Water and irrigation is job one, period.

Funny you should mention India, land of the 198o's Era Green Revolution. Lots of wells to spawn agricultural expansion---until the ag aquifers failed. So, yeah, they imported food from Afghanistan.

Now, without driving the need for much fuel imports, what can be done to create a significant enhancement for sustainable irrigation that could, together with trade movement solutions, drive a solid internal and external market.

Saddam and the Baathists were big on socialism until they found out that the more the government put into agriculture, the less output it got. So it pursued land reform and agricultural privatization to some success, but the effort got swamped with too many other factors...

Steve

Are we sure there aren't some applicable lessons from the farming reforming efforts in europe after the industrial revolution.

AlexTX ret
05-22-2009, 03:41 AM
I think the major crisis is that we went into Iraq with only aggression on our minds and in our planning. Our plan was to take Iraq apart and then leave. The problem is that our post operation command group found it's position was trapped by a country that had been reduced to rubble and had no way to act cohesively to start to rebuild itself. There was no post op planning other than all troops leaving the country except for some minor troops attached to the embassy and other US interests.

However, all too soon we realized that if we didn't do something, Iraq would collapse into something worse than Saddam Husien. We would lose the country to civil war. Or worse, Iran would have been over the border the minute we stepped out. So confusion reigned. And we have never been able to act cohesively since then. I saw it in so many countries that the US operated in. From 'Nam trough Central and South America then Africa, we never learned to rebuild what we destroyed in our interests.

I'm less sure about Afganistan. However, all that I've heard seems to follow a similar plan. We went into get Bin Laden and didn't realize the cost of disrupting the country's goverment. Though the Taliban aren't saints either, we should of thought ahead of time what we would do to revitalize the country and its people. We're supposed to have such a hard nosed policy on drugs. Yet we didn't have a clear mission in how to deal with the opium cultivation.

The sad part to all this is that in the end, the Communists won the hearts and minds in Vietnam. And even to this day, Russia and China know to develope the country's infrastructure first then it will become more receptive to their policies. They're doing it all over the world and we stumble around in Iraq. Kind of sad.

I guess the best way to put it. You live in a bamboo hut with a dirt and mud floor without electricity or running water. Your mother has as many children as she can just to have a couple live to adulthood. The reigning party hates you for ethnic reasons and the sad part is that it will never get better. Then one day a group of well fed, well educated men and women come into your village and promise they will help you get running water and electricity. They will make your sister or brother a doctor or an engineer. All you have to is fight for your freedom. Sound familiar? I lived with it everyday during tours of duty in Vietnam. And we weren't the good guys.

So we can talk so eloquently about this group and that not doing its job. This party and that party will do such and such. But in the end it's the people impoverished by our actions that suffer and learn to distrust us if not worse.

Sorry for the blowup, I read on another forum about it sometimes being carthartic. But it hurts to see us unable to get our heads out of our nether zones and find ourselves everyday untrusted by most of the world. Of course we're not the first. There were the British all the way ro the Romans. Though I have to say that the British and SAS did a bettter job in Malaysia than we've been able to do anywhere.

Ken White
05-22-2009, 05:45 AM
The sad part to all this is that in the end, the Communists won the hearts and minds in Vietnam. And even to this day, Russia and China know to develope the country's infrastructure first then it will become more receptive to their policies. They're doing it all over the world and we stumble around in Iraq. Kind of sad.The only sad thing is that we are hamstrung by domestic political constraints -- China and Russia do not have that problem. I wouldn't trade...

Not to mention they are not doing as well as you seem to imply. ;)
And we weren't the good guys.You and I obviously went to different wars there... :confused:

We weren't great and we -- the Army -- made many mistakes but we were the good guys. we were dumb -- Clyde was mean. There's a difference.
So we can talk so eloquently about this group and that not doing its job. This party and that party will do such and such. But in the end it's the people impoverished by our actions that suffer and learn to distrust us if not worse.I've been wandering here and there in the world since 1947 and we were distrusted then and have been ever since. Nobody trusts the big guy -- until they need him -- they'll take all he'll give and then go back to rampant distrust. Way of the world. We are distrusted because we do what all Nations do, look out for our own interests. We are fortunate now to be big enough to do that better than most; that breeds resentment. That's okay. We are no more disliked now than we were in 1955 or 1975 -- probably more liked now than iin '75.
...There were the British all the way ro the Romans. Though I have to say that the British and SAS did a bettter job in Malaysia than we've been able to do anywhere.Not at all. You cannot compare Malaya to any of our little forays -- The British WERE the Government there; we're always the uninvited guest. Totally different deal. Nor did the SAS accomplish all that much in Malaya. They did great in the later Confrontation but that wasn't the Malayan Emergency.

reed11b
05-22-2009, 04:40 PM
Reed:

Agreed about schools, clinics. Much of it has been window dressing with little sustainable benefit---other than pr. Water and irrigation is job one, period.

Funny you should mention India, land of the 198o's Era Green Revolution. Lots of wells to spawn agricultural expansion---until the ag aquifers failed. So, yeah, they imported food from Afghanistan.

Now, without driving the need for much fuel imports, what can be done to create a significant enhancement for sustainable irrigation that could, together with trade movement solutions, drive a solid internal and external market.

Saddam and the Baathists were big on socialism until they found out that the more the government put into agriculture, the less output it got. So it pursued land reform and agricultural privatization to some success, but the effort got swamped with too many other factors...

Steve

My big caution would be to avoid making a few wealthy and then either not helping or even worsening the conditions of the rest of the population. I feel that small community based economies are the place to start, and that they will grow into larger competive economies on there own. If funding the central government is the goal, then do the pipeline and tax it or find another non-agriculture based source of income.

AlexTX ret
05-23-2009, 08:34 PM
The only sad thing is that we are hamstrung by domestic political constraints -- China and Russia do not have that problem. I wouldn't trade...

Yes, I agree that the price of living in either China or Russia would be a terrible price to pay. Nor do I think what these "2nd world" countries are particularly humane or ethical in it's treatment of other nations. And there is always an interest there that only benefits China and Russia.


Not to mention they are not doing as well as you seem to imply. ;)

Well, there is some truth in this. Russia has two problems. Lack of money because of the fall in the price of the barrel of oil. They made some choices that were ill advised last year and they're coming to roost now. Putin finds himself in a serious political problem and will have to do some quick and decisive damage control to survive.

The second problem is that it seems that since Putin can't save the economy, he is rebuilding the military to project Russia's power just as countless leaders of Russia have done in the past. These two problem will cause problems with all the countries that look to Russia as the counter to the West.


You and I obviously went to different wars there... :confused:

Actually it could be myopia on my part. After the first two tours in which I learned that I loved command of fighting units, I found myself picked for other duty. I wasn't stuck in the rear but I wasn't in command, at least not of a line fighting unit. I became very involved with the rural Vietnamise. There I saw a lot of the calousness perpetuated by the the South Vietnamise goverment with our our blessing. This didn't make the NVA saints, in many ways they were far crueler that we could think of to the indigionous people, expecially to those villages that showed approval or depended on our goverment for protection.

As for today, I hear reports that the present Vietnamise goverment is no better and continues the persecution of the rural peoples.

However, we were supposed to be more noble than that. We were a nation that gloried in the beneifits of freedom. Well, in 'Nam, we were no better than the French. And I think it in the end, it cost the US a part of its soul. At least for a long time.



We weren't great and we -- the Army -- made many mistakes but we were the good guys. we were dumb -- Clyde was mean. There's a difference.I've been wandering here and there in the world since 1947 and we were distrusted then and have been ever since. Nobody trusts the big guy -- until they need him -- they'll take all he'll give and then go back to rampant distrust. Way of the world. We are distrusted because we do what all Nations do, look out for our own interests. We are fortunate now to be big enough to do that better than most; that breeds resentment. That's okay. We are no more disliked now than we were in 1955 or 1975 -- probably more liked now than iin '75.Not at all.

I will agree with this, at least in part. However, even if the enemy was lying, it gave a great quanity of the people hope. We had the power to make those dreams come true for the people. We just chose not to do it. So we were supposed to win the hearts and mnds of the people without doing anything that would put any conditions on the US Government. I realise that Johnston was also fighting the war on poverty which was taking large sums of money back here in the States. But we should never have become involved if we weren't serious in improving the life of all the people of Vietnam.


You cannot compare Malaya to any of our little forays -- The British WERE the Government there; we're always the uninvited guest. Totally different deal. Nor did the SAS accomplish all that much in Malaya. They did great in the later Confrontation but that wasn't the Malayan Emergency.

Yes, they were the goverment but they did many things that we could learn from them (The British then) that we could apply to Iraq or Afganistan today as we try and win the hearts and minds of those countries now.

We need a comprehensive plan. No one in the last administration had a serious clue and it showed. At least there is a good sign. The President seems to not be willing to tie our troops to a politically induced artificial timeline to please the liberals. But it isn't about the soldiers left in the wars, we should of never gotten in the first place. We need to think through why we got in these wars in the first place and own up to the fact we were the ones that toppled their goverments. If it was for Iraqui Oil then accept that fact and go on. However, we should also realize that we have a moral and ethical duty to repair what we did to these countries in a fit of agression.

For if we don't, we will end up with the same Civilian/Military disconect that we had after Vietnam. And we will once again prove that we are not to be trusted. (we supported Saddam until it became inexpediant to do so, then we toppled his goverment.) Being the Big Boy of the block comes certiain responcibilities too.

Ken White
05-23-2009, 10:02 PM
Actually it could be myopia on my part.Or on mine; my last tour was in '68 sdo I saw nothing that happened after that. One can read but it's not the smae as being there.
There I saw a lot of the calousness perpetuated by the the South Vietnamise goverment with our our blessing.Wasn't there so cannot say but from what I've read and heard it was more lack of knowledge than blessing. I suspect that one year tour effect had at least a little to do with it...
However, we were supposed to be more noble than that. We were a nation that gloried in the beneifits of freedom.Ideally that's correct, accurately and objectively, I think not. Some here certainly agree with that but the realities of any foreign involvement make the ideal difficult to sustain.
Well, in 'Nam, we were no better than the French. And I think it in the end, it cost the US a part of its soul. At least for a long time.I'm not at all sure nations have souls. Whether anyone likes it or not, nations really have only interests. Not to say they cannot be altruistic in pursuit of their interests but those interests will always rule...
... But we should never have become involved if we weren't serious in improving the life of all the people of Vietnam.That was not why we became involved. We became involved as a result of Eisenhower signing a treaty that said we would (even though his Army Chief of Staff advised against doing so) and then the Brothers Kennedy went looking for a nice little war to boost the US economy; they picked Viet Nam. All this revisionist garbage about Kennedy deciding to withdraw is just that; Johnson merely implemented plans already in the works-- other than the Tonkin gulf incident, that was his creation; he then decided he had to outdo Kennedy for his legacy...

So there was never any intent to make life better for the Viet Namese, it all hinged on US domestic politics. Not too noble at all.
Yes, they were the goverment but they did many things that we could learn from them (The British then) that we could apply to Iraq or Afganistan today as we try and win the hearts and minds of those countries now.Not really; we cannot do the effective things they did for two reasons -- we aren't the Government in either Nation and those governments will not allow us to do that -- we could bulldoze them (as we could have Viet Nam) but the cost in US domestic public opinion is too great. So would the cost of doing some of the non government but purely military things they did. Forcing people into secure villages will not work; the Afghans aren't as passive as Malays -- neither were the Viet Namese as passive as Malays. Malaya is a terrible example to use for any COIN effort on several levels.
But it isn't about the soldiers left in the wars, we should of never gotten in the first place. We need to think through why we got in these wars in the first place and own up to the fact we were the ones that toppled their goverments. If it was for Iraqui Oil then accept that fact and go on. However, we should also realize that we have a moral and ethical duty to repair what we did to these countries in a fit of agression.We can disagree on all that. The issue in both cases was retribution. The only oil issue was to NOT disrupt flow to the world in a major way; we want China and India to have all the oil they want. Afghanistan was for 9.11; Iraq for the 22 years of increasingly dangerous probes emanating from the Middle East (to which four former Presidents had failed to adequately respond, thus encouraging the attacks to continue -- and to escalate).

Very few westerners seem to understand that; the folks in the ME and South Asia understand it. So do the Asians -- that's why their objections have been muted in comparison to Europe and South America. Toppling governments, introducing western norms and all that is a side issue. The good of the Afghan or Iraqi people are a side issue. This was about US interests, pure and simple. We -- the Army -- may have screwed it up a bit but basically both were needed and will accomplish their intended purpose -- to deter attacks on the US on its own soil (Afghanistan) and on US interests around the world (Iraq).
For if we don't, we will end up with the same Civilian/Military disconect that we had after Vietnam.I missed most of that I guess; no question the academics and the left leaning felt disconnected -- tough munchies and their problem IMO -- but most Americans did not.
And we will once again prove that we are not to be trusted.Well, we did prove that in post WW I, in WWII, in Korea, in Viet Nam, in Somalia and in Kurdistan in '96. Bush 43 did not succumb to that malaise and he rather shrewdly locked his successor into several things so we'll have to see if we pull another departure debacle. I hope not.
(we supported Saddam until it became inexpediant to do so, then we toppled his goverment.)Not really. We supported Saddam as a counterweight to Iran -- toward whom we have not had a rational policy since 1976 -- and the USSR who were courting Iran. Once the Gulf War ceased, he was on the nasty list. We did a lot of not nice things during the Cold War but I believe the world is better off for most of them. Saddam was on the nasty list after 1988 and should have been toppled in 1991 -- but Scowcroft and Bush 41 didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do that -- been a lot easier then than it was in 2003.
Being the Big Boy of the block comes certiain responcibilities too.Sure does -- and being nice is not one of them.

I strongly agree we should intervene less and work to improve both our intel and diplomacy as a preventive; wars need to be avoided -- I'm just not sure our governmental system with changes ever 2, 4, 6, and 8 years is able to do that. I also agree that we have not done some things well (largely due to said governmental system) but we are where we are and we are disliked and distrusted by many if not most; been that way in my observation for a good many years. When you get to that point, respect (accompanied by a soupçon of fear...) is vastly preferable to love or admiration.

Surferbeetle
05-25-2009, 08:14 PM
A couple of decades ago I took a class in comparative politics which focused upon India, China, and Europe...which made for a pretty interesting mix and comparison. I am rereading one of my text books from that class: India, Government and Politics in a Developing Nation by Robert L. Hardgrave Jr. and Stanley A. Kochanek and this took me back to thinking about centralized planning.

I have bumped into the Five Year Plan concept in a number of interesting places academically and out in the real world. Engineering Planning Cycles, GSA Contracts (http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_OVERVIEW&contentId=8101&faq=yes), Iraq (http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2009/pr090520.html), USSR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plan_(USSR)), and of course China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_China) and India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_India).

A quick wikipedia run gave the following for '1966 in Afghanistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_in_Afghanistan)'.


Thanks largely to the intelligent use made of the aid given by the U.S.S.R., the United States, West Germany, Britain, China, and the World Bank, the internal economy of the country made good progress.

The first five-year plan, which began in 1956, aimed at encouraging agriculture, especially irrigation. Experience showed, however, that progress in these spheres could only be partially achieved as long as internal communications remained primitive and the natural resources of the country were largely unexplored. As a result, the major effort was diverted to the construction of roads and airports, and to the systematic investigation of sources of water supply and of mineral wealth.

During the course of the second five-year plan, conditions became favourable on many economic front. Promising deposits of natural gas and of iron ore were discovered; the power available for industrial use icreased dramatically; and the extension of irrigation led to substantially increased agricultural production.

In Afghanistan, as in many other underdeveloped countries, however, this rapid success led to the emergence of new problems, unforeseen in the original planning: inflation of prices, difficulties over foreign exchange, and an unhealthy reliance on large-scale external aid for the easing of current domestic shortages. The indications are that the third five-year plan will aim mainly at consolidating what has already been achieved rather than at any new major advances.

Steve the Planner
05-26-2009, 04:14 AM
Reed:

"My big caution would be to avoid making a few wealthy and then either not helping or even worsening the conditions of the rest of the population. I feel that small community based economies are the place to start, and that they will grow into larger competive economies on there own."

Now, you are thinking like an economic geographer. There has to be some kind of economic basis (or comparative advantage) that can be played out to make a place viable, and jobs sustainable, and its starts with a focused view on local economics and what folks can do for themselves. (the farm, the village, the community, then the province, region, and nation).

Worldwide, Brazil is the hands down master of frozen chickens---they can clean everybody else's clock in price. But, what about the fresh chicken market (typical of lower level economies,folks just don't trust it unless they kill it themselves), and vast areas where refrigeration is spotty and unpredictable, or transportation is not linked to fast, economical world trade system? Even with a big competitor, there are still niches.

Helping local people find those niches, and support them in exploiting them is a big piece of what we can do for them. We have the eyes, the mobility, and the logistical muscle to bootstrap things that locals in a war zone just cannot stumble onto themselves, especially with an oppressive and or dysfunctional higher government.

Two pieces I have been struggling with for a while:

1. Most societies have a large public and private sector, and the military is a small box, and nobody should even see or hear much about foriegn affairs folks except that they are out trying to promote your country or something.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we have nothing but military (and armed to the teeth security), and almost no private sector. The public sectors that do exist are highly in-effective and corrupt, but usually working closely with the military and foreign affairs types.

So how much of the problems in these societies might actually be created by and sustained by a military/foreign affairs bureacracy which has inadvertently, and probably incompetently, stumbled into a role as societal managers? Did they do more harm than good?

My analysis of MNC-I/US AID agricultural programs in Iraq (buy everybody a new tractor, bongo truck and center pivot irrigation system whether they could sustain it or not) looked very much like the types of socialist/communis- inspired five year plans that destroyed ag production in those countries. Even Saddam was abandoning that approach as ineffective, but we took it as our main strategy.

2. If all economic viability extends from local activities (farming, trade, mining, rug making, whatever), and a national economy is really the sum of the local activities, how are our failures in Iraq and Afghanistan related to the fact that most of our efforts are at the national (and central government) level?

Does adding more short-cycle federal civilians (highly trained in whichever bureaucracy they come from) do anything to foster economic viability at the local level, or just reinforce the failing.

To the Surf Bum with the beautiful surf buggy, last week was the 100th National Planning Conference in DC. In 1909, engineers, business interests, government types, and social activists got together to develop US civilian planning processes (not soviet style central planning) that laid the foundation for modern US plan-based planning, budgeting and delivery of, to name a few, building inspection and standards, safe and sanitary housing, a coordinated system of national, state and local roads, safe municipal drinking water and sewerage systems, and a common planning framework for minor things like electricity, communications, emergency response and public health networks, etc..., etc...

Among planning's biggest accomplishments was the establishment of planning processes WITH local input and constituencies, metrics basis, means-end tracking, uniform government accounting standards, and plan-based budgeting (CAFR), and general fiscal transparency. It is the boring methodical stuff that finally brought an end to the Tammany Halls that drove most US corruption, and, while it doesn't end corruption or ineptitude, assures that one day such behaviour may come to public scrutiny---the biggest check and balance.

Civilian planners also learned a long time ago that a plan never survives first contact with reality without being open to change, adaptation. Planning is a structured process to approach problems and goals systematically, but "The Plan" is only a framework within a bigger, more interactive and multi-layered process of measured, monitored and iterative goal-seeking. Otherwise, our highway system today would be designed for the steam carriage that, in 1909, drove the President to Inauguration.

Recent international development conferences have pointed to the crying need for US civilian planning assistance to help lay the basic infrastructure and planning framework for many countries (including Iraq and Afghanistan) to bolt forward into the 21st Century. But I never heard any requests for the type of stuff that is being played out by the US reconstruction and post-conflict gang.

What is being offered by the US under the civilian surge in Iraq and Afghanistan has nothing to do with what the US Civilian Planning Community does. So it probably makes a lot of sense to research Soviet and Maoist top-down central planning, since that is what is being applied by the US in these little wars. I wonder if they will have as much success with it as those who created it?

Steve

Surferbeetle
05-26-2009, 05:11 AM
Steve the Planner said:


To the Surf Bum with the beautiful surf buggy, last week was the 100th National Planning Conference in DC. In 1909, engineers, business interests, government types, and social activists got together to develop US civilian planning processes (not soviet style central planning) that laid the foundation for modern US plan-based planning, budgeting and delivery of, to name a few, building inspection and standards, safe and sanitary housing, a coordinated system of national, state and local roads, safe municipal drinking water and sewerage systems, and a common planning framework for minor things like electricity, communications, emergency response and public health networks, etc..., etc...

Steve,

This past week I caught a PBS special about John Nolen, City Planner (http://www.livingplaces.com/people/John_Nolen.html) and his excellent work in San Diego, which I occasionally have the opportunity to enjoy and appreciate. One of these days I will need to wrangle myself an invite to one of these planning conferences....if nothing else I will be shamed into moving from MS Project to Primavera :D

My MBA showed my that stochastic calculus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_calculus) was not just for forecasting/planning hydraulic/flood engineering problems but that it also works for financial engineering problems (when applied by adults with some semblance of common sense and morality). Socialism certainly tried to give planning a bad name, but it failed. As an example the costly (in lives, hopes & dreams, and of course money) 'Great Leaps Forward' have given way to 'Chinese Capitalism' an on-going journey which is thoroughly examined in my weekly Economist (http://www.economist.com/printedition/).

None-the-less it can be a educational experience to examine a train wreck...why in fact did the train leave the rails and where were the rails headed towards? How would have Mahatma Gandhi's ideas about "decentralized political and economic structures rooted in India's rural villages..." benefited the population as compared to Nehru (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru)'s socialist ideas or Patel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardar_Vallabhbhai_Patel)'s capitalist ideas? Who filled the comparable roles for Afghanistan? My book on India is a fourth edition...Amazon tells me Hardgrave and Kochanek have published a seventh edition.

I was hoping that perhaps you had a open source planning reference for Afghanistan or Iraq (each Soviet clients at one point) so that we could examine the state planning train wreck from a historical point of view and perhaps work on a compare/contrast with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

Best,

Steve

slapout9
05-26-2009, 05:28 AM
A couple of decades ago I took a class in comparative politics which focused upon India, China, and Europe...which made for a pretty interesting mix and comparison. I am rereading one of my text books from that class: India, Government and Politics in a Developing Nation by Robert L. Hardgrave Jr. and Stanley A. Kochanek and this took me back to thinking about centralized planning.

I have bumped into the Five Year Plan concept in a number of interesting places academically and out in the real world. Engineering Planning Cycles, GSA Contracts (http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_OVERVIEW&contentId=8101&faq=yes), Iraq (http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2009/pr090520.html), USSR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plan_(USSR)), and of course China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_China) and India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_India).

A quick wikipedia run gave the following for '1966 in Afghanistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_in_Afghanistan)'.


Beetle, read about John Kenneth Galbraith's work with India he was president Kennedy's Ambassador there during his administration and he had much to do with planning there Economy. Also try studing physical Economics NOT monetary economics....nothing but perverted banking polices.

Steve the Planner
05-26-2009, 01:37 PM
Ran into Iraq historian Phebe Marr at a USIP function. She is updating her book, Modern History of Iraq, soon.

Unfortunately, as I told her, my copy of her present book is so coffee stained, dog-eared and written in that I am embarrassed to ask her to sign it. But if you take that book, from the top down, a lot of the bureaucratic and national shifts can be hallmarked (various land and ag reform movements, industrial investment, etc...), so it is a good start point.

From there, I don't think anyone recent has a decent bead on PHYSICAL economics except to follow the Min of Planning's CoSIT reports, and a lot of more recent open source tracking.

I have a few contacts on the ground that usually paint an opposite picture from the "happy talk" government reports, but what I always find interesting is that, despite challenges, folks always try to find their way through, often in informal, barter, local trading, or underground economies that is where most of the action is. In most instances, these patterns and successes follow older patterns, and ingrained logic---it is a lot easier to follow and support those patterns than create new stuff.

One time, despite terrible bandwidth, I downloaded all the US AID Annual Reports from Iraq. Each year since 2003, they describe the economic problems, the plan they developed to address them, and the number of tractors (or center pivots, etc...) they needed to accomplish success. Then they reported on how they had, during the course of the year, executed the plan successfully (Mission Accomplished and the contract payment reciepts to prove it). Then came the next annual report, which identified the economic problems, the steps they planned to take to address them, and so on and so on. Bureaucratic junk. (It still galls me when I hear these types recounting the number of schools, clinics, tractors, etc... as if any of that produced anything with traction).

In Feb 2008, everybody around MND-North was anxiously awaiting a McKinsey Report (via Brinkley) that was supposed to identify the economic way forward---a real economic redevelopment plan. Unfortunately, when it arrived, it was like so many other wasted government consulting contracts. Economic Geography 101 applied from a desk in Washington to a country far, far away. So, you have to take most of these sources with a grain of salt (or less).

Official unemployment in Iraq, for example, ranges from 18% to 40%, depending on who is reporting it for what, but you really have to understand the unofficial economy against a background of government support (food rations, etc...), and sectoral impacts (teens vs. middle aged, etc...) to figure out some type of human condition element---number of destitute, number of satellite dishes, cars, etc... Nobody has it down yet.

Absent any credible sources for metrics, I liked to watch the truck traffic along Route 1---volume, source, content to get windshield info on what was going on, and how much of it. To a trained observer, a Blackhawk is a great way to study land use, ag production, track droughts, etc...

Anything for metrics...

Steve

slapout9
05-26-2009, 03:22 PM
Beetle,Steve the Planner, try this "The New Industrial State" one Galbraith's most important works in my opinion. A little old but the basics are there. Even has a 5 Rings analysis of an organization, for Real. Let me know what you think.


http://abridge.me.uk/doku.php?id=the_new_industrial_state

Steve the Planner
05-26-2009, 06:29 PM
Slapout9: I hadn't expected so lengthy a reading assignment, but it provided an interesting walk in the past.

In grad school, I was studying Frederick Taylor and Industrial Efficiency stuff, but traveling from DC to NYC regularly---right past all the abandoned Taylor-Era industrial wastelands. Both were pressed hard into my pysche.

Interesting how our perceptions of the Industrial State, or corporate America, changed so profoundly since 1972. How the sterling accomplishments of ATT for communications could only have been achieved/maintained by them having a monopoly.

His interesting point was, I thought, about when Industrial America gets so embroiled that it begins to see itself as an extension of the government---then abdicates responsibility. Shades of Lehman Brothers...

Problem with an old school economist writing on the emergence of the technocrats, as if they were a separate class from government and business they work in, was lack of understanding about the intrinsic relationship between technology and productivity. Naive but understandable in those days.

Now, everything we rely on is so interdependent that the interdependencies are almost invisible (until you have a New Orleans flood or grisd meltdown).

Steve

slapout9
05-26-2009, 06:38 PM
He also failed to see the impact of banks(monetarism) controlling all the money thus stifling physical economic capacity. He wrote alot about it in later years though.

Surferbeetle
05-27-2009, 04:31 AM
Slap & Steve,

Thanks for the references...I am currently moving through the enjoyable Galbraith link and will have to chase down a copy of Phebe Marr's book Modern History of Iraq.

With respect to Government Agencies, Germany, China and Capitalism I ran across this article on the online German Newspaper Stern tonight: Chinesen wollen Opel mit allen Jobs (http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/:Vierter-Interessent-Chinesen-Opel-Jobs/701910.html)


Da waren's plötzlich vier: Einen Tag vor der entscheidenden Sitzung im Kanzleramt taucht ein weiterer Interessent für den kriselnden Opel-Konzern auf. Der chinesische Autohersteller BAIC hat dem Wirtschaftsministerium offenbar ein äußerst verlockendes Angebot vorgelegt - angeblich soll kein einziger Job in Deutschland verloren gehen.

My quick translation:


And then it was suddenly four: One day before the decision-making meeting in the Kanzleramt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Chancellery) another interested party surfaced in the brewing crisis of the Opel-Group. The Chinese auto manufacturer BAIC publicly presented the business ministry an extremely tempting proposal - apparently not one job in Germany will be lost.

So apparently Fiat (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11090197), Magna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_International), BAIC, and Ripplewood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripplewood_Holdings) are now all duke-ing it out for the good pieces of GM (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-is-gm-worth.html)...

Best,

Steve

Steve the Planner
05-27-2009, 04:48 AM
Surferbeetle:

The really interesting Iraq histories (and probably for AfPak too) are the Cambridge Archives. They have all the British Colonial Reports.

Used them through UN in Baghdad, but they are so cool (for history geeks) that you can easily get lost in reading the 1880's era handwritten local consul's journal of trying to collect taxes from bandits up past Khanaqin, etc...

You can buy a whole set for like $3,000, but I suppose some university has a set somewhere in the US---or ought to get a copy since we are so closely "walking in their footsteps."

I'm more interested in tracking the post-Ottoman villayet systems (walayets in Afghanistan), and the associated districts and subdistricts. All the same basic structure. Must mean something.

Steve

Surferbeetle
05-27-2009, 05:56 AM
Steve,

Lord Kinross' The Ottoman Centuries, The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire is on my history bookshelf and has been getting a workout of late...haven't run across the cambridge archives for iraq before...3 grand!...good grief charlie brown, maybe if I hit the lotto :) I'll check the library this weekend.

Steve

Steve the Planner
05-27-2009, 07:08 PM
CFR has a new on-line pub: Nourishing Afghanistan's Agricultural Sector (May 26, 2009), where Greg Bruno describes the amount of "tripping over ourselves" that is going on there.

He references Col. Dan Harris's (Texas Army National Guard's agribusiness development team in Ghazni Province), observation of our "drive-by" approach:

"But perhaps the most common concern is what some experts say are competing agendas and a lack of coordination among donors, governments, and agencies. "It's a mess to be quite honest," Pain says. "Basically, everyone has been going their own way." Col. Harris, who is two months into a year-long tour, says the lack of communication between the Ministry of Agriculture in Kabul, the district office of agriculture in Ghazni Province, and non-Afghan organizations is hindering progress. He says he didn't even know the United Nations had an aid program in his sector until reading about it in a U.S. Department of Agriculture newsletter about other Ghazni Province programs. "I call them drive-bys," the colonel said, explaining how he typically learns about the agriculture-related work of other agencies in the province. "Somebody will drive by and say, ‘Hey, we heard such and such an organization is here,' or ‘Hey, do you want to go along on a mission with us somewhere?" Unless the coordination problems like these are solved, Harris says, "all that time, money, and effort will probably amount to very little.""

Little changes (like planning together?) that, it seems, could make a big difference.

Steve

Steve the Planner
05-30-2009, 04:36 PM
Beetle made a big point:

"None-the-less it can be a educational experience to examine a train wreck...why in fact did the train leave the rails and where were the rails headed towards? How would have Mahatma Gandhi's ideas about "decentralized political and economic structures rooted in India's rural villages..." benefited the population as compared to Nehru's socialist ideas or Patel's capitalist ideas? Who filled the comparable roles for Afghanistan?"

My big dumb idea (probably shared by a lot of other folks on the ground at different times but always lost in a dust storm) is that we have a huge advantage over locals in being able to see what's going on around their country, and source out and re-target resources and, under some billets, getting a chance to synchronize some of this stuff for their benefit.

I always thought that, for stabilization and reconstruction, somebody needs to be sitting at the big table (mil/foreign affairs) whose sole purpose is to be an advocate for the civilians (not just the politicians and made men). A properly developed civilian advocacy process (or maybe a bypass loop between them), from the top down to locals, is the only way to take what we know and do, and use it to create propulsion for the locals to find their next level of stability.

Finding a productive job for your son, or shoes for baby, or a meal and some water is the key to S & R, and defeating bad influences.

Instead, we seem to have a lot of disconnected elements, programs and activities that, when you add them up, go nowhere, to help real folks put things back together.

A big problem in these conflict zones is that, by the time we all get there, it's not just the impact of our arrival, but, usually, a twenty year pattern of disruptions and conflict that sowed the seeds of why we had to go in the first place. With lesser life spans than us and not a lot of written records and repositories of collective wisdom, 20-30 years between "how things used to work OK" and today is an impenetrable gap for locals trapped in a conflict zone.

They don't necessarily know, for example, that ancient regional irrigation canal systems existed, but had to be maintained by organized work parties coordinated on a regional basis to deliver sustainable wheat production (despite droughts). They only know about local, recent and immediate things.

Sure, our imagery can detect the systems, and map them, and, with a D9, we could probably reopen them in a heartbeat. But, in most circumstances, we don't have a process geared to identifying them, developing strategies, or work with them to create a process for reopening and sustainable maintenance.

In April 2008, I attended a US Conference at Al Faw where folks from around the country were trying to identify the old canal systems in order to develop piecemeal work projects, but they didn't know where they were. Fortunately, we had just located them in older map sources, and could make them available. But that was in year six....

Not to denigrate the folks that were trying, but look at the system failures that got us to that point (short term assignments, constant rotation, Tower-of-Babel like silos and stovepipes, and disconnected programs operating without an overall strategy or coordination.

I sit in all these "Lessons Learned" symposia that the think tanks in DC are putting on, and all they talk about is the inter-agency turfwars, budget fights, contract disputes, and Inside the Beltway bureaucratic fights---but they never focus on the big picture: coordinating our efforts to deliver solutions to the local population, and effective implementation of those solutions. How is this stuff going to get done? Who is doing it in Afghanistan (for Afghans)?

That's my rant for the day. Good question, Beetle.

Steve

Surferbeetle
05-30-2009, 07:17 PM
I sit in all these "Lessons Learned" symposia that the think tanks in DC are putting on, and all they talk about is the inter-agency turfwars, budget fights, contract disputes, and Inside the Beltway bureaucratic fights---but they never focus on the big picture: coordinating our efforts to deliver solutions to the local population, and effective implementation of those solutions. How is this stuff going to get done? Who is doing it in Afghanistan (for Afghans)?


Steve,

When one is on the mat or in the ring solely trying to muscle ones way through the match failure is not far behind...you have to be able use your opponents mass to your advantage in order to win...that and a bit of ruthlessness at the appropriate moments :D SOF work uses this type of judo/MMA thinking in order to work with the population to achieve common objectives and defeat common opponents.

COIN warfare is population focused, and we are in a COIN match. Throughout the fight we need to understand four basic things in order to win:

1. The mass of the civilian population of Iraq and Afghanistan outmasses the opposing forces, and whomever can add the mass of the population to their side outmasses the opposition.
2. America does not have enough serving native/trained speakers of Arabic, Dari, and Pashto who have professional credentials in politics, planning, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and who understand the cultural context of the problems and solutions intertwined in the conflict.
3. GoI and GoA have native speakers of Arabic, Dari, and Pashto who have professional credentials in politics, planning, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and who understand the cultural context of the problems and solutions intertwined within the conflict.
4. Hunting bad guys is equally as important as stabilization operations.

My AAR of our match so far is that we are highly skilled at # 4 and need to hit the gym hard in order to work more on #’s 1-3 if we want to win.


I always thought that, for stabilization and reconstruction, somebody needs to be sitting at the big table (mil/foreign affairs) whose sole purpose is to be an advocate for the civilians (not just the politicians and made men). A properly developed civilian advocacy process (or maybe a bypass loop between them), from the top down to locals, is the only way to take what we know and do, and use it to create propulsion for the locals to find their next level of stability.

Finding a productive job for your son, or shoes for baby, or a meal and some water is the key to S & R, and defeating bad influences.

Instead, we seem to have a lot of disconnected elements, programs and activities that, when you add them up, go nowhere, to help real folks put things back together.

We cannot do this alone. See # 1, # 2, and # 3.

A mixed team heavy on local actors and light on multinational advisers at the 'big table' orchestrating the plan at village, city, region/province, and country would certainly benefit from a simple and defined portfolio of national objectives agreed upon by the populace. This might be as simple as defining the following metrics:

1. W % unemployment by demographic/employment specialty sector
2. X # of security incidents/population size
3. Y kw-hours of electricity/per family/day
4. Z liters of water/per person/day


Steve

Steve the Planner
05-30-2009, 07:54 PM
1-3 are bang-on.

1. The mass of the civilian population of Iraq and Afghanistan outmasses the opposing forces, and whomever can add the mass of the population to their side outmasses the opposition.
2. America does not have enough serving native/trained speakers of Arabic, Dari, and Pashto who have professional credentials in politics, planning, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and who understand the cultural context of the problems and solutions intertwined in the conflict.
3. GoI and GoA have native speakers of Arabic, Dari, and Pashto who have professional credentials in politics, planning, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and who understand the cultural context of the problems and solutions intertwined within the conflict.

The strength is in learning to work with GoA so that they can do their part. Why, for example, isn't an appropriate Afghan the intermediary?

Are the wrong voices being heard? Or the right voices silenced? Or, as likely, does the American Bureaucracy move so fast and busy that it forgets who its audience should be, or bewilders the hell out of them.

Problem I have is that when we start throwing billions everywhere without focus or metrics, we may be muddying up the water hole too much---induced corruption, bureaucratic confusion, collateral damage, etc...

So how to get the Afghan voice to the surface????

Steve