We didn't have a plan from the start...
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.
Interests trump niceties...
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Originally Posted by
AlexTX ret
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.
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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...
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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.
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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...
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... 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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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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.
Looking for examples of what not to do as a comparison...
Steve the Planner said:
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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 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 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.
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 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
Handbook For Nation Building
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...dustrial_state
Iraq Organization Sources
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
Let's Plan Something Together????
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
Who filled the role in Afghanistan?
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