Why are we still leading missions, instead of supporting Afghans conduct them?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kill-capture/j
Frontline did a special on Kill-Capture missions addressing the pro's and con's, many of which we debated endlessly on SWJ. The arguments for most sides are valid, but what jumped out at me from the coverage was the discussion between the locals (the 101st hit the wrong target due to inaccurate intelligence) and Afghan security forces accompanying the 101st. Even though they realized it was the wrong target they went ahead and searched the tribal leader's house in a pretty rough fashion, and since they found some small arms ammo (imagine that in Afghanistan) they used that as justification to detain him (he was released a few hours later). These mistakes happen all the time, because as Bing West points out we don't understand their language or customs beyond a superficial level. The ASF were put out with the Americans and their arrogance and clumsiness in handling this situation, and the locals wanted to know why the ASF let the Americans do this.
That is the million dollar question concerning Afghanistan. Why are we still leading missions, instead of supporting Afghans conduct them? They can do it their way, and their way will probably be better than ours. We are seen as occupiers and all the CMO and development in the world won't change that as long as we're conducting combat operations. I think it is long past time we take a step back and reassess. We don't need to be fighting their insurgency, we need to enable them to it their way. We may not like the results because the metrics won't be immediately observable, but over time we'll a change for the better if it is met to be.
What Bill and Bob said...
The answer to the 'why' is all too often simply a combination of ego and careerism. :mad:
It needs to be forcefully halted and that has to come from the top. Good luck with that...:rolleyes:
Like Bob's guy said -- "...it's their war."
"right" and "wrong" is complicated
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Originally Posted by
carl
Is this one of those times where the insurgent is right and the government wrong?
Carl,
We can agree that neither of us want to live in a Taliban-governed Afghanistan; but if I were a Pashtun I sure as hell would not want to live in a Northern Alliance-governed Afghanistan either.
We have, by our very presence and nature of our engagement, enabled Karzai and the Northern Alliance guys to be much more self-serving than if we had let them sort it out for themselves. There is no way they could have produced the current constitution with it's codified exclusion of anyone seen as contrary by Karzai is a deathknell for there ever being any kind of stability, as half of the populace not represented by the Northern Alliance has absolutely no alternative but to conduct illegal challenges to the current regime or live in powerless poverty.
Karzai has made his bed though, and once we jump out of it to run home I suspect he will find it hard to get a good night's sleep in it. My concern is not for Karzai and his cronies though, it is for those much lower who we have convinced to put their faith in us. The big guys will take the money and run, but the little guys will suffer hard.
Unless.
The big unless is unless we stop backing one side to the exclusion of the other and instead take a more neutral role to oversee a negotiated settlement that leads to shared governance under a new constitution. What happens after that? Who knows, but at least we will have give those who trusted us at the local level a fighting chance to avoid a vengeful backlash.
Sadly, collaborators rarely fare well from any history of any conflict I have ever read.
You're correct, you caught my shorthand try...
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Originally Posted by
Steve the Planner
I believe what you referenced as "careerism" is actually a structural and organizational problem inherent in major deployments.
While there's a degree of pure careerism in a few cases, more often it's as you say -- though I'd suggest it is not restricted to major deployments but is actually a bureaucratic imbed in the institutions that are the Armed Forces. In my observation, all four services and USSOCOM have the problem (so does most of the US government)... :(
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One soldiers are on the line, and measurables are attached, on many levels, to the responsibilities to perform, accomplish, effect something, then the whole concept of "their war" goes out the window.
Also true and IMO the usual result is indicative of the fact that we significantly over emphasize the use of metrics and measurables. They have a place, no question but we constantly misuse the idea. :rolleyes:
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That core question of "strategic patience" runs contra to short tours and management by objectives.
Very true -- and an indictment of our archaic personnel policies, still geared to 1917 from whence they came...
Those short tours are operationally deplorable and the far too brief time spent in specific assignments is a fatally flawed personnel management practice. Both lead to mediocre to poor performance all too often by too many units. The Services all owe a huge vote of thanks to the kids who make the flawed systems work better than could really be expected.
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Personally, I think it requires a huge amount of leadership skills (from the top) to avoid the inevitable---Bob has troops one the ground who are at risk, the risk continues until "X" is accomplished, Bob becomes "responsible" for "X."
True. That leadership is IMO too often lacking. Most often due to institutional constraints and not personal failings.
In that last paragraph, you synthesized what some in the Army refer to as "On the spot corrections" (one of the biggest leadership errors ever...) and of which others have said "I see a problem, I own it and must fix it." That gets carried forward to the old 'Pottery Barn rule' fallacy. The senior person who sees a problem where none exists or fixes a minor problem is not forcing or allowing the chain of command to work properly, is interfering with the development of subordinates and is providing a lot of entertainment for the Troops who know what is supposed to happen and see that it does not. All that usually due to the risk of being caught short (a far greater risk in the eyes of many than is combat risk...). That parenthetical was the driver for the 'careerism' tag...:wry: