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    Council Member jcustis's Avatar
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    Default What will our expedition to Afghanistan teach us?

    Post up your top five lessons that you hope are gleaned from our long stay in AFG. Whether we have the capacity to grasp the lesson is important, but not critical.

    In no particular order, mine are:

    1) The national policy goals should be clear and concise, and the integrated plan to achieve them must be properly resourced. Make sure everyone understands the goals and the plan.

    2) We can't expect a tribal society to drink the democratic Kool-Aid just because we say so. The manner in which Karzai controlled the levers to choose provincial governors, and they in turn the district governors and the police chiefs, should have been a warning that our wants did not nest with reality. Those who benefit from his patronage won't be there to protect him when Karzai is strung up in a Kabul square.

    3) The FOB concept was another massive failure, considering the need to secure the population and obvious approaches that work.

    4) When the security forces you are training start turning on you, it is a clue. Pay attention and don't blame the victims.

    5) Our disregard for the nexus of drugs, narco-warlords, and the Taliban connection, prolonged the war. Good men died because possession of ten kilos of heroin didn't warrant action by the toothless courts, among other rule of law shortcomings.

    The bonus lesson is that we should have lived intermingled with the population. No commuting to work...no return to the COP at night for hot chow and a cot. If we really want to deal with rural insurgency, we've got to own it, every minute of every hour of every day. The insurgents do, and that's why they will prevail.
    Last edited by jcustis; 04-29-2013 at 03:19 AM.

  2. #2
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Maybe Take A Second Look At Nuclear Weapons

    William S. Lind in his article "4GW First Blow A Quick Look"(available in Marine Corps Gazette Archive" thought that a Nuclear Retaliation was a viable option in the first few days after the 911 attacks to show the little terrorist how a true Super Power would respond.

    I don't know if we should do this but it is worth a second look. We cannot keep spending what may amount to 3 Trillion dollars(A'stan and Iraq and GWOT) for Small Wars that we don't even win.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
    Post up your top five lessons that you hope are gleaned from our long stay in AFG. Whether we have the capacity to grasp the lesson is important, but not critical.

    In no particular order, mine are:

    1) The national policy goals should be clear and concise, and the integrated plan to achieve them must be properly resourced. Make sure everyone understands the goals and the plan.

    2) We can't expect a tribal society to drink the democratic Kool-Aid just because we say so. The manner in which Karzai controlled the levers to choose provincial governors, and they in turn the district governors and the police chiefs, should have been a warning that our wants did not nest with reality. Those who benefit from his patronage won't be there to protect him when Karzai is strung up in a Kabul square.

    3) The FOB concept was another massive failure, considering the need to secure the population and obvious approaches that work.

    4) When the security forces you are training start turning on you, it is a clue. Pay attention and don't blame the victims.

    5) Our disregard for the nexus of drugs, narco-warlords, and the Taliban connection, prolonged the war. Good men died because possession of ten kilos of heroin didn't warrant action by the toothless courts, among other rule of law shortcomings.

    The bonus lesson is that we should have lived intermingled with the population. No commuting to work...no return to the COP at night for hot chow and a cot. If we really want to deal with rural insurgency, we've got to own it, every minute of every hour of every day. The insurgents do, and that's why they will prevail.
    I need more time to reflect on this, but I thought the Army's white paper on the lessons learned over the past decade was way off the mark and mostly a self-serving paper to justify the Army's current vision. I have some initial thoughts on your comments.

    1. National goals must be practical, thus feasible. It is much better to under promise and over deliver, then over promise and under deliver. We achieved a lot in Afghanistan in short order, but my staying to achieve the unachievable it now appears to be loss.

    2. Most unconventional warfare adventures and military occupations result in failure because we pick and buy the easiest proxies to work with, not the best proxies, which generally over time backfires. The he's a bastard, but he's our bastard whether Karzai, the Shah of Iran, or the Contras may sound like realpolitik, but when you look at the long data it tells a different story.

    3. While U.S. forces may not be welcomed in the local villages, the FOB concept is flawed. I suspect we would see a different situation today if we picked another horse other than Karzai to ride AND we employed better tactics such as implementing something along the VSO program early in the war, and using general purpose forces to aggressively and persistently patrol the areas between the villages. Taking and holding (controlling) ground is as important as it always was. The enemy needs a degree of freedom of movement to operate, if you control the ground (and you don't from a FOB) you greatly reduce his effectiveness, especially if the VSO program is flushing out the shadow governments. While we evolved our UAV and man hunting tactics to a razor's edge, they ultimately failed to facilitate anything resembling a decisive tactical operation.

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    Council Member jcustis's Avatar
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    Not employing a village-based focus could have made it into my top five very easily. I could see the issue with that the day I started formal prep for my deploy there.

    I knew we were screwed the first time I got the sense that VSO was not considered in the capability set of general purpose forces. Yeah, great strategy implementation on that one...

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    Council Member Chris jM's Avatar
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    Without any great depth of thought or reflection, the few that jumped into my head:

    1) Vehicles are a means to an end, and should not become the end itself. There is a time and place for vehicle-based patrolling, but I am willing to bet that there is a proportionally greater need for dismounted patrolling in any type of operation. If we spend more time, effort and focus, both at the tactical/planning level and at the capability level (MRAPs?) on issues of vehicle platforms we need to do a reality check.

    2) Tactical lethality at the section/squad level matters. Our sections/squads should be able to finish a fight, not just suppress. Artillery is nice, air support is nicer still, but we shouldn't have to rely on it to win an engagement. Sections and squads need to be able to do more than just suppress with small arms, they need to be able to fire and manoeuvre to win. I think the USMC has taken a step in the right direction with the IAR and the Brit Army an even better step with their 7.62mm DMW in putting a precise, powerful rifle at the lowest tactical level. I'm interested as to what the XM25 offers, too (despite my initial cynicism around such a heavy, power and tech intensive weapon).

    3) Speaking the local language is very, very important. I don't think this is COIN specific, as I'm pretty sure the ability to talk with, gain info from and quickly direct locals would be equally important in a Cold War German battlefield, for example.

    4) Campaign planning is essential. Killcullen's 28 principles of COIN does not equate to a campaign plan, despite the widespread interpretation of FM 3-24 in many military minds. Being able to drag an end-state out of anyone, at any time, that relates to the real world (and not a powerpoint matrix as is all too often the case) is the starting point for assessing whether a campaign plan exists.

    5) Leadership is still about people. Powerpoint can't replace an orders group, an inspection or a CO's/OC's/Pl Comd's hour with soldiers.
    '...the gods of war are capricious, and boldness often brings better results than reason would predict.'
    Donald Kagan

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    Council Member Red Rat's Avatar
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    1) An insurgency is a political problem with a military dimension, treat it as such; understand the politics of the problem in order to understand the politics of the solution.

    2) Set domestic conditions early for a long commitment. COIN takes time, nation building takes longer.

    3) Build the police and judicial system first or at least concurrent with indigenous military capacity.

    4) In a failed state establishing a government with no capacity to govern is not necessarily a good idea. A government with no civil service and no educated middle class to become a civil service is a government in name only, then giving it autonomy but no capacity is inviting failure.

    5) Controlling the population is as important as securing the population.
    RR

    "War is an option of difficulties"

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    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
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    Nothing we shouldn't have learned from Vietnam, IMO. Or any number of other places. Sadly, I have great faith in the institution's ability to learn exactly nothing lasting from all this (except perhaps the desire to plan for fantasy war).

    Sorry if that sounds cynical, but just about everything listed here could have been gleaned from a good review of stuff that came out during and immediately after Vietnam. Or a close reading of the original Small Wars Manual.

    As for using nukes...there are other consequences far beyond just the desire to use the big one. I don't consider that a viable option in situations like this...no matter how much Lind may think they're useful.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Moderator's Note

    There is now a thread for 2015 called Reflections on the past (assessment of ISAF etc up to 2015) at:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=21570

    This thread which started in April 2013 and ended in May 2013, is fascinating to read now and thanks to those who contributed. Plus Jon Custis for starting it.
    davidbfpo

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