Winning the War in Afghanistan

[carl]

Florida, enjoying the climate and learning to fly (not take-off or land ... just fly).

Hamburg, Germany, feigning to study engineering.

KSM and OBL were in Florida and Hamburg, I didn't know that.

[Ken White]

Anything Mr. Rumsfeld says is primarily intended to make Mr. Rumsfeld look good. In this case it is "See! If we'd done what I wanted to do we wouldn't be in this mess."

Easy for you to say. I believe the reality is different and I for one certainly agree with what he wanted to do in 2001 versus what anyone says today. Regardless, it is a fact that had we not stayed...

There was no chance we weren't going to stay in Afghanistan in some measure after the anti-Taliban forces kicked out the Taliban with the help of US airpower. It was felt that one of the primary reasons 9-11 came was because AQ found a congenial home in Taliban run Afghanistan and one of the primary reasons Taliban was running Afghanistan was because we stopped paying attention to the place after the Soviets left. So we were going to stay on.

I understand the thought process on the part of the "fpe," its hangers-on and fellow travelers that led to our staying. I have no question that going into Afghanistan in 2001 was really necessary, not just desirable -- and that on both strategic and tactical bases. We went in the and the guys did well and then, as I said "Unfortunately, G. W. Bush, good Christian he, was convinced by a number of the humanitarianly inclined foreign policy 'elite' ( "fpe" - lower case, advisedly...) in Washington to stay and bring a failed State into the World Community." That was a poor decision, understandable on the face but wrong on the strategic merits in almost all senses. I've been watching and participating in that foolishness for a good many years. It is terribly flawed logic and does more harm than good, almost always.

The "fpe" and it's allies are some conflicted folks. They espouse humanitarian interventions to protect the locals from themselves and then want to dictate how said locals behave. Fascinating. To say we, the US should dictate to folks that certain "...things should be done as we wish you to do them is in your best interest and that's why we came here to save you" would be knee slapping hilarious if it weren't so sad and didn't do so much damage to the US and to the locals the "fpe" crowd wants to save. I become more convinced as time passes that all that is less about 'saving' others than it is about dictating to others how they should behave in a "Nanny knows best" mode and an effort to make themselves feel better.

Other nations have a right to their interests and way of life and it is not up to us to prescribe nirvana. Bob's World is correct, we need to break that foolish, dangerous and ill affordable addiction. The World has changed and we are way behind the power curve.

If we hadn't stayed on, the Taliban would have been back shortly since they just moved across the border. That would have amounted to trading a raid for a raid leading to more raids probably. Sort of medieval.

So? Trick to that is to make your raids hurt more than theirs, easily done -- unless the raiding instrument either (a) gets bogged down or (b) is so poor at execution that it fails to achieve a required level of hurt. Of those, 'b' is a capability issue and we have deliberately not developed that as fully as we should due to the "fpe" objecting to that as 'not nice' (and the ostensible leaders of the raiders being unduly risk averse in the upper -- not the lower, actually do it -- echelons).

Far more regrettably, 'a' is often a conscious decision will fully undertaken for dubious reasons as opposed to being an inadvertent occurrence. That would be the Afghan issue...

I don't think NATO's involvement is inimical to NATO's interests at all. It is critical if NATO is to survive as an alliance. Refusal of the alliance to support its most important member in the face of an attack would have meant the end of the alliance. Involvement in Afghanistan may be inimical to individual country's interests, but to the alliance, no.

I believe there are several stretches of reality there. Inimical is an opinion, we can differ. Criticality to NATO survival is also an opinion and we differ on that as well.

Stretching Article 5 as the US did and you support was IMO very ill advised. I will certainly acknowledge that, since we stayed, it was politically a smart move on several levels and that is in some senses beneficial to the alliance. That does not make the staying beneficial to us or the alliance.

You seem to be an interventionist as are many members of the "fpe." While I have no problem with intervening or with violence if the results will be beneficial for the US, I strongly object to such activity when the results will be detrimental and / or the cost benefit ratio is quite poor -- not a little poor but quite poor. I even more strongly object when the nominal results are unachievable or will do more long term harm to the US and when the cost-benefit ratio is quite averse. If as is often the case it can be reliably predicted that such interventions will likely worsen the state of the local populace then the action is even more objectionable. That was and is the case in Afghanistan and is also the case with Libya. The "fpe" OTOH relishes interventions that spread sweetness and light and 'improve' the state of the masses as they see it. They're most always wrong. That, again, was and is the case in Afghanistan and is also the case with Libya.

The "fpe" and the pro intervention always crowd, accompanied and encouraged by those in the DoD and DoS establishments that see such efforts as budget, power and prestige enhancing who ally with them and come up with some really fascinating rationales to justify them -- and expand them with mission creep beyond all recognition or logic. JFK's rather foolish "...bear any burden..." collection of bravely spoken words have much to answer for.

[Fuchs]

KSM and OBL were in Florida and Hamburg, I didn't know that.

Atta was the leader of the cell and developed the plan.

[Ken White]

Atta was the leader of the cell and developed the plan.

All those others did was fund it and send others off to do the dirty work. That's the easy part, lots of folks are into that side of it. Some don't even do that much...

[Dayuhan]

We have created a monopoly of governance in Afghanistan, and then enabled the formalization of of that monopoly when we oversaw, supported, and protected a sham of an election that elevated our hand-picked man to the Presidency, and led to the production of the current constitution that vests all patronage from the District level and above in that same man. In this land, such a monopoly of governance and patronage means a corresponding monopoly on economic opportunity as well.

We didn't create the monopoly of governance, that's implicit in Afghanistan. It's the way they govern. We can't simply decree that henceforth there shall be inclusion and shared power... or rather we can decree it, but nobody's going to listen.

We have created and dedicated ourselves to the preservation of an illegitimate monopoly on governmental and economic opportunity in Afghanistan.

That we did do, foolishly IMO. I'm not in a position to declare anything "legitimate" or "illegitimate" in Afghanistan, and I'm not convinced that any American is in that position, but we did put one faction in power and invest ourselves in keeping it there. Not a good idea.

Now we act as a conduit to bring an increased Indian presence into Afghanistan. Sure Karzai welcomes them, because he knows the US will ultimately depart, and he also knows that India will stay.

Are we doing that? How? I've yet to see any evidence that the US is acting as a conduit to build Indian influence. As others have said here, the Indians are quite capable of pursuing their own interests with or without our help or approval.

That knowledge enables Karzai to continue to avoid the one thing that must be done to bring any hope of stability to this region: Break down the monopoly on governance and allow legal competition for influence and political and economic opportunity in Afghanistan.

How are we supposed to do that? By decreeing what shall henceforth be considered "legal competition"?

I think you vastly overestimate the US ability to reshape Afghan political culture and change the way Afghans govern. We can't do that. They can, over time and through an evolutionary process, but it won't happen because we want it to happen.

What we could have done was to simply provide evidence to whoever was going to monopolize power (it was always going to be somebody) that attacking us or our allies or sheltering those who do would produce immediate and horrible consequences.

We could have done that and left. We obviously can't know how that would have played out, but it's hard to see how it could have been worse.

[Bob's World]

Yes, we did create the monopoly; and yes we did enable the envelopment of Pakistan by India. Both were avoidable, and both are very bad to the longterm stability of the region.

We tend to discount those who can read as somehow being not as smart as us. Foolish that. Men who control vast networks and who have survive multiple swings of power are well equipped to play our linear thinking policy officials like a cat plays a mouse. Unlike the mouse, however, we delude ourselves that we are in control of the situation. We are not.

[Ken White]

Unlike the mouse, however, we delude ourselves that we are in control of the situation. We are not.

Not even close are we. We're being played like a Bass Fiddle on Bourbon Street at 0330...

And not only in South Asia...

[Dayuhan]

Yes, we did create the monopoly

We may have created this particular monopoly, but we didn't create the tradition of winner-take-all monopoly rule, nor can we change it. Any government we installed would have ended up with monopoly rule based on patronage: Afghans are going to rule like Afghans, even if they are put in power by Americans. Why would we expect otherwise?

and yes we did enable the envelopment of Pakistan by India. Both were avoidable, and both are very bad to the longterm stability of the region.

Has Pakistan been enveloped by India? When did that happen? Certainly the Indians are trying to boost influence in Afghanistan, but they will do that whether we like it or not: like the Pakistani's they are not going to ask our permission before pursuing their perceived interests. They are a long way yet from controlling the place, or from enveloping Pakistan.

I suspect that Pakistan would be perfectly happy to see India mired down in the graveyard of empires, with dubious supply routes and vulnerable to attrition. I can think of few other places where Pakistan and its proxies would have as good a chance of imposing a military defeat on India.

Unlike the mouse, however, we delude ourselves that we are in control of the situation. We are not.

We are absolutely not in control of the situation. We certainly can't control how Afghanistan is governed, we can't change the political culture, we can't force inclusion or power-sharing, and we can't control what India does. All the more reason not to have stuck around and tried to transform the place.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Carl,

It was felt that one of the primary reasons 9-11 came was because AQ found a congenial home in Taliban run Afghanistan and one of the primary reasons Taliban was running Afghanistan was because we stopped paying attention to the place after the Soviets left.

Carl please, this argument gets a bit old. After the Soviets departed Afghanistan, their puppet government remained in place for a couple of years. They just didn't leave and then the country fell apart the next day and we ignored it. Pakistan supported the Taliban so they could gain a controlling influence in Afghanistan for their strategic purposes (not ours). We probably didn't care that much back then, because if you recall UBL left Pakistan and went back to Saudi for awhile, and then he went to Sudan used that has his base before he went to Afghanistan. The Taliban provided safehaven to fello muj who helped them fight the Soviets, that doesn't mean the Taliban were ideologically aligned with their vision of global revolution (at that time).

I agree with Ken, we just needed to keep conducting punishment raids and I suspect the Taliban would have gotten tired of their AQ friends over time. If not, at least they would be in area where we could readily kill them at a cost that would be reasonable. Kicking AQ out of Afghanistan and then continuing to sit there spending billions to fight the Taliban isn't going to protect from further terror attacks. If were there for humanitarian reasons, for women's rights, to fight the opium trade, etc. then so be it, but AQ is another matter.

[carl]

Ken:

Money may be the easy part, but it is the critical part. No money, no execution no matter how brilliant the plan.

Trading raids is sort of medieval. It goes on forever. If your plan is to make the raid so painful they won't counter, that is a plan to fix the problem permanent. And as such, it depends on our being able to determine at what level of pain they will say uncle or even what constitutes pain. I don't think we would be so good at that. Also it would be complicated by trying to figure what to hit. From afar we would be just as likely to kill lots of civilians as bad guys. That wouldn't cause a police state much pain but their propaganda efforts subsequently would surely cause us a lot of pain. Lastly, that kind of thing I don't think would go over in the long run with Americans. This year's raid, next year's raid and the raid the year after that. People would start asking why don't we just fix the thing.

I didn't say I supported stretching Article 5. I said in 2001, the members of the alliance had to support us, or felt they had to, if the alliance was to remain strong. They didn't have to if they didn't want to. The French didn't and we still like them. The alliance is probably a not so useful relic of the past in any case and I don't think the help we get from NATO vs. individual countries is worth the trouble.

I don't know if I am an interventionist. You think I am. I do know that if we are going to intervene we should do it right.

Bill Moore:

That argument may be old but it is still true. Like you said, we didn't care much back then and we let the situation do what it did and look what happened. It doesn't really matter what Taliban knew before 9-11. They knew after and they didn't give up AQ. That is a pretty easy thing to interpret.

I don't understand why you guys think we could have raided Taliban into submission. The punitive strikes would neccassarily (sic) have been air raids. When have air raids (aside from atom bombs) ever broken an enemy's will to fight? We beat the bejabbers out of NV and NK and Germany and Germany pounded London and none of that resulted in much effect if any on the will to fight.

[Ken White]

Money may be the easy part, but it is the critical part. No money, no execution no matter how brilliant the plan.

True. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is widely available and there are multiple sources that can and will provide it to hurt or embarrass the great Satan. People willing to fly themselves and airplanes full of others into buildings are in far more short supply...

Trading raids is sort of medieval. It goes on forever.

Not at all. Not if you do it right -- however, given the sway of the "fpe" in DC today I'll admit that could be problematical in the near term. Shouldn't be but likely would.

From afar we would be just as likely to kill lots of civilians as bad guys.

One absolutely cannot do an effective job from afar, not at all. See below. Even if up close and personal, some civilians likely will be casualties -- but far, far fewer than are likely over an intervention of years or even months...

Lastly, that kind of thing I don't think would go over in the long run with Americans. This year's raid, next year's raid and the raid the year after that. People would start asking why don't we just fix the thing.

As well they should -- the point being that military intervention will most often inadvertently do more harm than good. A Raid, OTOH is designed to do more harm than good; inadvertent lack of harm is to be avoided. Not too subtle difference there.

As I'm sure you know, one should use one's tools for the purpose designed. One can do other things with them but it is usually not as effective and can be hard on the tool -- which you may want for other things.

"Fixing" it requires non-military solutions while attempts at military-centric or heavy fixes usually worsen the situation.

I didn't say I supported stretching Article 5. I said in 2001, the members of the alliance had to support us, or felt they had to...

Then I misunderstood this from the earlier Post:

""Refusal of the alliance to support its most important member in the face of an attack would have meant the end of the alliance.""

That any refusal would have ended the Alliance, I doubt. I also do not think we are the most important member -- biggest, yes, important not so much...

I do know that if we are going to intervene we should do it right.

I agree with that. However, as I keep trying to point out to you, we will not -- indeed, we cannot -- do it 'right.' Ergo it's best not to do it.

Bill Moore can answer for himself but FWIW, this isn't correct:

That argument may be old but it is still true. Like you said, we didn't care much back then and we let the situation do what it did and look what happened.

It is not true. It IS the position of the "fpe" (or many of them; the 'we must help' and the 'Realist' subcrowds...) but they're quite wrong often and on many levels. Afghanistan wasn't of much concern to us then and should not be now. Just as the Kennedy brothers elevated the nothing that was Viet Nam to a major effort in order to boost the economy, show they were "tuff on kommunism" and wag the dog, so too did Jimmy Carter stick our nose into something that did not need our help. That our 'abandonment of Afghanistan' contributed to the Taliban and /or to AQ being there is "fpe" hype and it's fallacious logic to foster internationalism and such. Boosts budgets, too...

Afghanistan was doing what it wanted to do and will again, our intereference in their affairs has done and will do more harm than good. The Talibs rose and would have fallen on their own eventually, not our problem. AQ would have found somewhere to hang out, just as they will again in the future. Not a problem -- AQ is not a problem unless we let it be one (which we did.). We would be advised to worry a bit more about Hezbollah than about AQ...

I don't understand why you guys think we could have raided Taliban into submission. The punitive strikes would neccassarily (sic) have been air raids. When have air raids (aside from atom bombs) ever broken an enemy's will to fight? We beat the bejabbers out of NV and NK and Germany and Germany pounded London and none of that resulted in much effect if any on the will to fight.

I think you just made our point -- one cannot raid OR bomb anyone into submission, thus "submission" should not be even a minor goal.

The elusive pursuit of victory and submission, of breaking the enemy's will is a legacy of a bygone era and those things need to be discarded as aims barring a major existential war, an unlikely occurrence in the next decade or so. Just as Parents can no longer kill kids who disobey -- indeed, in many nations, they can't even physically strike them no matter how lightly -- so submission and victory are relics of the past. What Parents can do is make bad behavior really disagreeable if not painful to one degree or another. Same with Nations, submission is not an issue -- acute discomfort is. With Non-state actors, the gloves can come off a bit but the goal then is conversion or elimination (level of fanatacism dependent), not submission or breaking will (which just defers the end state).

Punitive strikes by air are pointless and will never do the job -- even nukes, no longer new and awesome, won't change that -- in fact, air efforts will merely worsen the situation because they are so ineffective and annoying to those who endure them and survive. Air power gets to transport the Troops in, provide distractive and supportive strikes but as a main effort, it would fail. Ground action is required. Precise strikes by decently trained units, not SOF in all cases, aimed at judiciously selected targets. We do targeting and do a good job at it. We can better train and equip properly to do this and do so more economically than many other options.

The point of such raids and the key effort in the raid must be to show that we can inflict greater harm than can the opponent and that we can do it pretty much when and where we want to -- and, even more so (thank you, G. W. Bush...) to show that we are not predictable. Regrettably today we certainly are highly predictable, to the veritable fault -- and you're advocating continuing to do what has failed miserably for 60 years with only two minor strategic successes which were regrettably and rapidly transmuted into business as usual by the "fpe" crowd...

Long time passing, indeed.

[Bill Moore]

Carl,

I agree with what Ken wrote, but sadly it will fly over most folks heads, because their heads are buried in new age hype disguised as a National Security Strategy. It was a pretty sad day when a flag officer said we need to go to dark places because that is where all the threats are. That is complete hogwash, but here we are spending billions on dark places (ineffectively spending that money in Afghanistan) to no end.

I never said raid until they submit, I don't expect any state or non-state actor to submit unless we conduct total war like we did against Germany and Japan (where "we" killed tens of thousands of civilians). The intent of the raid is to change an actors cost-benefit assessment, and once the U.S. shows the will to act (and not my launching missiles or dropping bombs from airplanes, but by putting boots on the ground) and inflict pain, the groups will be "less" likely to strike (or if they're fanatical like AQ, their hosts will be less receptive to allowing them to act out their fantasies). Raids can serve multiple purposes, but I'm focused on two, first is the pre-emptive strike (that doesn't mean invade and then occupy a country) and second a retalitory response. Both are viable and affordable options, not permanent solutions, I don't think there are any permanent solutions. If you think occupying Afghanistan and breaking our piggy bank is going to lead to a permanent solution well then just keep hoping away...

[Fuchs]

Let's face the Afghanistan War problem/project at a more abstract level. This helps the clarity of thought.

I say:

The problem is the extremist view on warfare and national security.


Evidence:
I cannot remember a single war in history where governments believed that an alliance was still to be committed to a fight AFTER the aggressor was pushed out of power (para)militarily. Wars usually end when the aggressor lost power.

This time it's even more extreme: The alliance only really committed itself AFTER that government had lost power. How dumb is that?

Even MORE extreme: Said government wasn't even the aggressor. The aggressor was a state-independent and transnational group of criminals, none of whom resided in the country in question, were born there, raised there or belonged to one of its ethnic groups. The ones who commited the crime died in the process.


2,200 years ago, Cato repeated after every Senate speech (and he lived very long, was Senator for many decades) that he believed that Carthage muzst be destroyed. Carthage posed no real threat any more, but he wanted it destroyed.
Such extremism was not atypical in ancient Rome: As long as it could, the Republic and early Empire were not able to accept the survival of a threat. They were quite childish and naive, obviously. The consequence was war after war, expansion after expansion - until the empire had not only passed its optimal size, but even grown further to a size that was so much suboptimal that the benefits of a small empire were consumed to the degree of fragility of the huge empire.


This same inability to stand the survival of even a small threat, this extremist view that sheds centuries of warfare that usually had a lot of restraint - this inability probably stems from 1943 when the Allies demanded unconditional surrender. This counter-productive extremism means that easy ways out of troubles are blocked by extremism.

The whole extreme treatment of the AQ/AFG affair was totally counterproductive, even if we ignore all the expenses, WIA and KIA.
By the time of the invasion AQ was still denying responsibility for 9/11, right?
With that denial (a condition for Taliban's hospitality) there would have been no global jihad fashion and thus much less if any follow-on attacks.
If AQ had on the other hand accepted responsibility while in AFG, this would have helped denying them this safe haven.

In other words; smarter diplomacy and national leadership could have
# either solved the AQ/AFG issue 100%
or
# avoided the global jihad fashion

Instead, resources were thrown at the problem and governments acted like 4 year olds.


Now could we at least getb rid of the latter and shed the extremist view on warfare?

[Bob's World]

Gen Wardak reports that Jan Mohammed Khan was killed by suicide bomber attacks at his home in Kabul.

Jan Mohammed, though lately mostly in Kabul, was the #1 powerbroker in Uruzgan Province and a very close family friend of the Karzais. He also was the primary patron of the uber-corrupt Uruzgan Police Chief, Juma Gul; and the Uncle and patron of the unber controversial ANP Colonel / Private Security company owner / close friend of US and Aussie SOF but hated and distrusted by the Dutch, Uruzgan strongman Mattiulah Kahn.

This is as significant as the hit on AWK. Gloves are off and "they" (whoever that might be) is tightening the loop and striking very close to the throne.

Some results will be that Juma, having lost his patron will either have to find a new one or fade away. Not sure what Juma is doing lately, but he has always wanted to get back to Kabul, and saw his time in Uruzgan as the route back. If not in Kabul he will seek to get there. Mattiulah, on the other hand, has been building a broad base of support across traditional tribal lines in Uruzgan, has long been the most effective fighting force in the region and the key to keeping the road from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt open, and has been chaffing at the constraints of Jan Mohammed Khan's dominance in recent years. He will now likely make moves to clearly establish himself as heir to the role of principle power broker in Uruzgan.

[TDB]

Gen Wardak reports that Jan Mohammed Khan was killed by suicide bomber attacks at his home in Kabul.

Jan Mohammed, though lately mostly in Kabul, was the #1 powerbroker in Uruzgan Province and a very close family friend of the Karzais. He also was the primary patron of the uber-corrupt Uruzgan Police Chief, Juma Gul; and the Uncle and patron of the unber controversial ANP Colonel / Private Security company owner / close friend of US and Aussie SOF but hated and distrusted by the Dutch, Uruzgan strongman Mattiulah Kahn.

This is as significant as the hit on AWK. Gloves are off and "they" (whoever that might be) is tightening the loop and striking very close to the throne.

Some results will be that Juma, having lost his patron will either have to find a new one or fade away. Not sure what Juma is doing lately, but he has always wanted to get back to Kabul, and saw his time in Uruzgan as the route back. If not in Kabul he will seek to get there. Mattiulah, on the other hand, has been building a broad base of support across traditional tribal lines in Uruzgan, has long been the most effective fighting force in the region and the key to keeping the road from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt open, and has been chaffing at the constraints of Jan Mohammed Khan's dominance in recent years. He will now likely make moves to clearly establish himself as heir to the role of principle power broker in Uruzgan.

The Taliban, Haqqani or whoever are playing this very well. They know they are under pressure and so are using tactics like this, assassinations and spectacular attacks (inter-continental, kabul bank) to not only just strike fear and uncertainty into the hearts of the populations. But also to create power vacuums and struggles amongst the patrons and strongmen. Khan's and AWK's death will likely as you've said cause fractures and create a conflict as various lieutenants aim high.

[davidbfpo]

Time for a 'Red Team' to have some input in Kabul and beyond.

Question for them: The Taliban's leadership campaigning poses a danger to ISAF & GIRoA, how can the danger be mitigated?

Secondly given the spread of the insurgency far beyond the traditional areas and outside the Pashtun areas, what would be the dangers that poses and how to counter them better?

[Bob's World]

David,

I believe we miss the mark when we think of the "insurgency" as a particular type of activity in a particular location. Locations to act and actions to take are merely tactical choices for dealing with the larger dynamics behind such actions.

So, rather than thinking about this as a "spread of insurgency," far more helpful to ask "why the change of tactics"?

I would be curious as to where Juma and AWK stood on reconciliation? Where do their likely successors stand on that critical issue? This goes to the primary fracture between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. Then there are the growing fractures within the Northern Alliance. Two powerful Pashtus close to Karzai are gone, does this open doors for Uzbeks, Hazara or Tajiks to move into? Is it possible that some Tajik faction is more open to reconciliation with the Taliban as a move to displace Karzai, and that weakening Karzai's base preps the way for that shift?

One can speculate all day.

As to how this affects GIRoA, that depends on what GIRoA's intentions are, both currently and in the future. Changes may be in play that could change that significantly.

"Danger to ISAF" is a bit of a funny one. There is no real danger to ISAF, but perhaps there is to ISAF's current definition of the problem and choice of approaches for dealing with the same?? These may be changes to be leveraged rather than merely "countered." But first we must be able to step back from myopic focus on how we have defined the conflict to date, and take on a bigger perspective of what it is that is truly important to the issues that led to the creation of ISAF in the first place.

Bob

[Dayuhan]

I would be curious as to where Juma and AWK stood on reconciliation? Where do their likely successors stand on that critical issue?

It may be a critical issue to us, but how critical is it to the various fghan factions? I doubt that the Karzai crowd have any real interest in reconciliation, except as a tool to co-opt some Taliban leaders and increase their own hold on power. I doubt that the Taliban have any real interest in reconciliation, except as a tool to get some of their people inside the tent and advance their own quest for the power monopoly.

We shouldn't assume that our objectives are shared by any of those we have to deal with. Better to accept that it's their country and their system, and we aren't going to change it. If we take on a set of goals that require us to transform the way Afghanistan is governed, we set ourselves up for failure.

[carl]

2,200 years ago, Cato repeated after every Senate speech (and he lived very long, was Senator for many decades) that he believed that Carthage muzst be destroyed. Carthage posed no real threat any more, but he wanted it destroyed.
Such extremism was not atypical in ancient Rome: As long as it could, the Republic and early Empire were not able to accept the survival of a threat. They were quite childish and naive, obviously. The consequence was war after war, expansion after expansion - until the empire had not only passed its optimal size, but even grown further to a size that was so much suboptimal that the benefits of a small empire were consumed to the degree of fragility of the huge empire.

Seeing as how Rome lasted a rather long time after the death of Cato the Carthage killer, I'd say that they were doing something right, however childish and naive it may have been. Also I think maybe you could say that one of the things that did Rome in was that they did actually started to accept the survival of external threats in order to fight each other. They were too interested in civil war and neglected the external threats which eventually did them in. That huge new empire wasn't fragile because it was huge, it was fragile because the Romans cut themselves to pieces.

This same inability to stand the survival of even a small threat, this extremist view that sheds centuries of warfare that usually had a lot of restraint - this inability probably stems from 1943 when the Allies demanded unconditional surrender. This counter-productive extremism means that easy ways out of troubles are blocked by extremism.

That is easy to say now when political and emotional realities of the time can be easily forgotten. At the time, rather harder to do, especially given the nature of the opposition. Besides, we did end up allowing the Japanese some conditions.

[carl]

Ken:

Mr. Atta wasn't likely to collect much money, no fame, no ideology, no cachet; all things Mr. Bin Laden had. That was the hard thing to build up and OBL had the power to bring in the bucks. Anybody can bring dumb young muscle to blow themselves up or fly planes into buildings. There are lots of them around. The last decade has proved that.

the point being that military intervention will most often inadvertently do more harm than good. A Raid, OTOH is designed to do more harm than good; inadvertent lack of harm is to be avoided. Not too subtle difference there.

As I'm sure you know, one should use one's tools for the purpose designed. One can do other things with them but it is usually not as effective and can be hard on the tool -- which you may want for other things.

I am a bit confused by the first part here. Military intervention will do more harm than good, presumably to our side. But, a raid, which is military intervention, will do more harm than good to their side, but not to our side but it is military intervention which does more harm than good to our side. I'm lost.

True you do use the correct tool for the job. But you don't pick and choose the jobs you do because you only have one tool. Buy or make another. The military should be more akin to a tool kit than one single tool. Ok this half century I have to invade Normandy so I need this tool from the kit. Next half century I have to fight a bunch of small wars so I use this other tool from the kit. I don't think it wise that you say no, I am not going to do that because I like using this one tool and don't feel like learning to use one of the others.

I also do not think we are the most important member -- biggest, yes, important not so much.

Just out of curiosity, which country is the most important member of NATO?

However, as I keep trying to point out to you, we will not -- indeed, we cannot -- do it 'right.' Ergo it's best not to do it.

I don't buy that. We can do it right and have done it right. To say we shouldn't because we just can't is a rationalization for laziness or fecklessness. And, it is an invitation for clever enemies to follow a path that will confound us.

Bill Moore can answer for himself but FWIW, this isn't correct:It is not true. It IS the position of the "fpe" (or many of them; the 'we must help' and the 'Realist' subcrowds...) but they're quite wrong often and on many levels. Afghanistan wasn't of much concern to us then and should not be now. Just as the Kennedy brothers elevated the nothing that was Viet Nam to a major effort in order to boost the economy, show they were "tuff on kommunism" and wag the dog, so too did Jimmy Carter stick our nose into something that did not need our help. That our 'abandonment of Afghanistan' contributed to the Taliban and /or to AQ being there is "fpe" hype and it's fallacious logic to foster internationalism and such. Boosts budgets, too...

Afghanistan was doing what it wanted to do and will again, our intereference in their affairs has done and will do more harm than good. The Talibs rose and would have fallen on their own eventually, not our problem. AQ would have found somewhere to hang out, just as they will again in the future. Not a problem -- AQ is not a problem unless we let it be one (which we did.). We would be advised to worry a bit more about Hezbollah than about AQ...I think you just made our point -- one cannot raid OR bomb anyone into submission, thus "submission" should not be even a minor goal.

The fact of the matter is AQ was hanging out in Afghanistan, killed a bunch of us and then the Talibs didn't give them up. What would have happened, or not have happened is immaterial. That did happen. We reacted as is normal for a nation subject to mortal attack.

We would be advised to worry a bit more about Hezbollah than about AQ...I think you just made our point -- one cannot raid OR bomb anyone into submission, thus "submission" should not be even a minor goal.

But didn't you just say we could bomb people into submission. You implied that if our raids hurt them enough, they would stop raiding back. And since the raids would mostly be air raids (they would have to be, we haven't done big punitive ground raids much and the one we did in Mexico didn't work well) and submission would consist of not raiding back...I don't get it.

How did Hezbollah get into this? When was the last time they attacked New York?

The elusive pursuit of victory and submission, of breaking the enemy's will is a legacy of a bygone era and those things need to be discarded as aims barring a major existential war, an unlikely occurrence in the next decade or so. We would be advised to worry a bit more about Hezbollah than about AQ...I think you just made our point -- one cannot raid OR bomb anyone into submission, thus "submission" should not be even a minor goal.

Until human nature changes, that just isn't true. That is what humans do, try to win and beat the other guy.

Punitive strikes by air are pointless and will never do the job -- even nukes, no longer new and awesome, won't change that -- in fact, air efforts will merely worsen the situation because they are so ineffective and annoying to those who endure them and survive. Air power gets to transport the Troops in, provide distractive and supportive strikes but as a main effort, it would fail. Ground action is required. Precise strikes by decently trained units, not SOF in all cases, aimed at judiciously selected targets. We do targeting and do a good job at it. We can better train and equip properly to do this and do so more economically than many other options.

The point of such raids and the key effort in the raid must be to show that we can inflict greater harm than can the opponent and that we can do it pretty much when and where we want to -- and, even more so (thank you, G. W. Bush...) to show that we are not predictable.

How you going to do all this without very large bases close by and a very large logistical effort and a whole lot of airlift? We don't have the airlift. Given the force-pro proclivities of the modern military, I don't see how we could move in and out of anywhere fast enough to make big punitive ground raids work. And I don't see how we could ever hurt them more than they hurt us given our probable greater sensitivity to casualties. All they would have to do is shoot down one, just one C-17 or Herc loaded with troops.

and you're advocating continuing to do what has failed miserably for 60 years with only two minor strategic successes which were regrettably and rapidly transmuted into business as usual by the "fpe" crowd...

What am I advocating exactly? Something now or something in the future?