The former UK top soldier adds
Ex-CGS General Dannatt weighs in with his viewpoint:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...mys-hands.html
I do wonder how the CGS (2006-2009) can say this (below) when our strategy in Helmand Province since 2006 is labelled "mowing the lawn" as soldiers fought over the same patch of ground again and again.
Quote:
There is an increasing awareness that this is a conflict truly conducted among the people – the people are the environment, the background to everything that the military is doing. We also know that it is a conflict that is about the people – about the people's hearts and minds, as we seek to persuade them that there is a better way of life than falling, once again, under the repressive extremism of the Taliban.
More puzzling is where this fact comes from:
Quote:
The Helmand poppy crop, for example, was down by about a quarter last season.
I suppose the General was saying this to the government whilst serving and I've seen this said IIRC by others (probably critics of the government):
Quote:
So of course we need to win the hearts and minds of the people in Helmand. But perhaps more critically, we also need to win the hearts and minds of the people of this country, too. The biggest threat to our success in Afghanistan is not the Taliban, but a loss of will by the people at home to see this vital task through.
From my comfortable "armchair" faraway I shall now be reckless. I am not convinced 'hearts and minds' really applies in Afghanistan. The time to win that if it ever did apply has gone or is about to.
It is an Interesting Book
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Uboat509
I was just watching an author interview on CSPAN-2 with Sarah Chayes. She is a former foreign correspondent for NPR who reported from afghanistan during and after the fight for Kandehar and then stayed in Afghanistan to run an NGO. She seems to really have a finger on pulse of Afghan society. She has a book out called "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban." During the interview she had some fairly sharp criticism for Karzai for his failure to remove the various warlords from power. She does not seem to be some shrinking violet bleeding heart. When I get some time I will have to check out her book.
SFC W
The book covers both before she left reporting for NPR, as well as after when she starts up a woman's NGO in Kandahar, , which speaks to her having a large set of ovaries, to say the least. Her financial support is from the Karzai family. It does not offer anything new in a macro sense to people who are already familiar with AFG; her run-ins with the US forces and others, such as trying to get on KAF, and the bureaucracy she deals with, are at least entertaining. I think it is useful both to help disillusion anyone about hope for the future here, and to overcome prejudices about NPR reporters (mine have greatly diminished :)).
Maj Gen Mackay's paper on UK military in Afghanistan - full text
Moderator's note: see Post No.2
Ladies and gents
I wonder if it might be of use if I provide a link to the full text of this paper. None of the media reports I've seen have given a link to it, or provided a title which one can Google. I've managed to dig it out, however. Timely stuff, given the recent release of Maj Gen Flynn's work. Though I've not had the opportunity to read it thoroughly yet, I would guesstimate that Maj Gen Mackay's paper is the closest publicly available UK equivalent, though it isn't J2 centric.
http://www.da.mod.uk/publications/sf-publications and select the second link down.
For those unfamiliar, find some background here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8439945.stm
Scathing review by former advocate of being there
An article by Christina Lamb in 'The Spectator', which is a scathing IMHO review of the UK presence in Afghanistan.
Link: http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/al...-targets.thtml
(One particular part is on the ANP thread).
Helmand Province Sept '09 review
An open source review of the situation, dated September 2009, which I'd missed of Helmand Province, where the UK (with allies like the Danes) has concentrated its attention and now the junior partner to the USA: http://www.understandingwar.org/repo...sponding-enemy
Helmand Operation Announced in Advance
The following is from The Times of London, February 4, 2010. One wonders why this operation is being announced in advance--perhaps it's being done in deference to the advocates of information operations, or some such rationale. Unconventional thinking has its place, and in the aftermath of 9/11 much was said about the need to think "outside of the box"--in hindsight what we got was a series of decisions made with little thought about the probable consequences.
Quote:
In an unusual departure from conventional military policy, the coming operation has been briefed to reporters in advance.
Speaking at the Ministry of Defence, the director of communications for operations in Afghanistan, General Gordon Messenger, said that the coming offensive would feature British forces in "a central role".
"Helmand is at the heart of General McChrystal's plan to demonstrate decisive success against the Taleban insurgency," said General Nick Parker, speaking from Kabul.
However, it is understood that US Marines will form the majority of the forces in the push.
The unusual openness from the military reflects a shift in strategic thinking driven by the US commander, General Stanley McChrystal, from a strategy focused on targeting and killing the Taleban to one rooted in the protection of the population.
"The plan is to do it in the least aggressive way possible," General Messenger said. But he added: "Clearance operations by their very nature are high risk. We can't discount a fight and we can't discount casualties."
The entire article can be viewed using the link below:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7015193.ece
I think the principal reason for announcing the operation
is, as was done in Fallujah, to allow the civilians in the town to leave. I imagine that several other towns will follow at about quarterly interval ending with Kandahar at the end of next year...
Some of the lesser committed bad guys will also leave and as Wilf says, will then return -- but those will not be the hard over zealots so that's no big thing. He's also correct in that it is not an ideal strategy but lacking troop numbers (which the west doesn't and won't have) it's a reasonable alternative.
That Western troop strength problem is not going away and thus, hopefully, future politicians will make more informed decisions and avoid such operations which are a residual not of Cold War thinking as many pundits (and a few Posters on this board. Yes, Bob... ;) ) like to say but really of WWI / WW II thinking -- the western military personnel systems are not the only thing stuck in a time warp. So too is training -- and, obviously, 'strategic' (read mass armies and balance of power politics) and even so-called 'operational' thought (a flawed concept unnecessarily adopted from two Armies which are no more...). :rolleyes:
Sort of correct -- it was hashed out here, pro and con,
to an extent back in October. Almost 30 posts worth:LINK. That thread is one I recall, it's been discussed off and on.
My point on it was and is that the US army had not used that 'level,' that it was adopted during the heyday of 'The USSR will clean our clock unless...' (a line I never believed. FWIW, neither did Barry McCaffery among others). We were in love with all things German and the USSR was allegedly ahead of us in many ways. We see how that ended...
As Tom Odom said on that thread, it was created to give the Corps some tasks -- and as I said, it was an early 80s justification to retain the Corps which some senior folks had wanted to disappear in the mid 70s...
All I can see that it has accomplished is giving us LOO (for whatever benefit one sees in them) and further complicating the MDMP... :rolleyes:
That and we still have the Corps. Keep it, I guess -- but either it or the Division should go -- unless, of course, one needs those flags to justify spaces...