What will our expedition to Afghanistan teach us?

[Dayuhan]

Winning is not preserving some government in power or destroying some threat to the same. Winning is when the % of the population who perceive themselves as stakeholders in the solution of governance grows.

With this I must disagree. Winning is achieving the goals you set out to achieve. Period, end of story. The percentage of Afghans who perceive themselves as stakeholders in the solution of governance doesn't have to be our problem or our business, and inherently is not our problem or our business.

I think Jon had it right from the start:

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.

Winning is achieving your goals, and the first step toward winning is to start with a clear, practical, and limited set of goals. A second step would be to stick with those goals and not go looking for new ones.

As far as lessons go, I think Jon had the first one right. Keep the goals clear, practical, and limited, and make sure everybody involved knows what they are and how they are to be achieved.

Lesson 2, for me, can be summarized as "know when to go". There is nothing to gain by getting bogged down in occupation and nation-building. When you occupy you become a static target that invites insurgency. When you embrace the chimera of "nation-building" you inevitably end up harnessed to a government that cannot stand, but that you cannot allow to fall. It doesn't work. It's not necessary. Better to leave while you're still scary, while you still have the initiative, before anybody can claim to have chased you out. That might not have been best for Afghanistan, but "fixing" Afghanistan was never our problem. Convincing whoever ends up running the place that provoking us is a bad idea was our problem.

If we're ever in an analogous situation again, I hope we can compel ourselves to go there with clear, practical, limited goals. I hope we can achieve those goals and leave. Faint hope, I know, but we all have dreams.

[jcustis]

You're touching on something that gets stuck in my craw consistently these days.

The notion that we must stay the course with disaster, so that allies believe we will follow through on a commitment/promise/partnership, tends to blind us to the truth that the disaster is overwhelming us.

That may have worked with Cold War containment strategies, but I do not believe it is valid for the small wars we have faced recently. Time to set that model aside.

[Dayuhan]

The notion that we must stay the course with disaster, so that allies believe we will follow through on a commitment/promise/partnership, tends to blind us to the truth that the disaster is overwhelming us.

I think before we talk about staying the course we have to talk about defining the course, and that brings us back to the goals. I have no objection to "staying the course" if the course is defined by a set of clear, practical, and limited objectives. If "the course" is defined as transforming Afghanistan into a western-style market economy democracy, we shouldn't even be starting on it, let alone staying on it... IMO of course.

[Bob's World]

As I stated in an earlier post, "punitive expeditions work."

But even if that achieves ones narrowly tailored goal of punishing for past acts and deterring future ones, that is not "winning."

The win I describe is not for the interloper, it is for those they would interlope upon. Not our job to create or even fund such a victory - but is good to understand what a true victory is.

[Dayuhan]

But even if that achieves ones narrowly tailored goal of punishing for past acts and deterring future ones, that is not "winning."

It is for us, and that's what we need to worry about.

The win I describe is not for the interloper, it is for those they would interlope upon. Not our job to create or even fund such a victory - but is good to understand what a true victory is.

Neither you nor I nor any combination of Americans can determine what "winning" is for anyone else. Like us, they "win" when they achieve their goals, and their goals are something they have to define. We can't do it for them. If we're talking about Afghans (or many others), the chances are that some of them will have goals that are not compatible with the goals of others. Those discrepancies are something they will have to sort out in their own way. That may or may not involve violence; either way it is not our business unless they ask us to mediate (fat chance) and we think it's in our interest to do so.

We need to focus on what we need to achieve, not what we want to achieve, and on ways to achieve those needs that are consistent with the time and resources we are willing to apply. Trying to define other people's goals is just going to create more trouble, and it's not going to make us any friends.

[Bill Moore]

As I stated in an earlier post, "punitive expeditions work."

But even if that achieves ones narrowly tailored goal of punishing for past acts and deterring future ones, that is not "winning."

The win I describe is not for the interloper, it is for those they would interlope upon. Not our job to create or even fund such a victory - but is good to understand what a true victory is.

Gradually we're returning to the Powell Doctrine, which was a doctrine born out history and non-emotional examination of our past adventures where we attempted to impose our way of life on others through various forms of coercion. The Powell Doctrine was intended scope expectations of policy makers, but unfortunately arrogance triumphed over reasoned decision making where we recognized our limitations.

COINistas like Nagl who are partly responsible for the U.S. wasting billions of dollars on these unreasonable expeditions without end continue to push for the implementation of failed approach and are apparently incapable of learning from our reason expeditions. Funny and sad in the same way because this is what Nagl accused the military of during Vietnam. Maybe the next best seller that influences military doctrine will be "Eating Soup with a Spoon."

The lessons I believe we need to take to heart are:

- Punitive operations work, even if their effects are transitory. They are often the best option unless it is feasible (not simply desirable) to address underlying issues.

- Before heading off to occupy a country and transform a foreign culture more to our liking we must do a cost benefits analysis. Transforming societies in small pockets like Iraq and Afghanistan does not address existential threats to our nation, in fact these expensive (financially and morally) expeditions distract us from what is important, and divert resources from the important to the unimportant.

- In rare cases where we need to oust an existing government and then occupy and transition to a new government we need to gain much better understanding of what is desirable and workable by the population instead of blindly barging in with an American vision of their future. Nations will evolve at their own rate when "they" are allowed to evolve.

Let's face if a nation like America existed before our own Revolution they would have been highly critical of our slow political development when it came to human rights (slavery), the right for women to vote, discrimination, etc. It takes both political space and time to evolve, and while you can impose with bayonets and leveraging financial tools, what you impose won't last.

[jcustis]

Maybe the next best seller that influences military doctrine will be "Eating Soup with a Spoon."

Post of the year Bill...post of the year!

As for the cost-benefit analysis, the problem we seem to have stems from the limited scope of people conducting the analysis.

When it is accomplished by people you brought into your administration, and doesn't have the sense to cast the net of assessment far enough, it's screwed from the beginning. I think it's double screwed if those people have never carried a weapon before in the service of their nation, because that tends to balance out the booksmart theory, in my opinion.