This is a good question that began the thread. If a Commander is doing FID then his tasks, equipment and skills sets of his folks have to be one thing while counterinsurgency requires other JMETLS, etc. So nailing down exactly what we're doing is the place to begin. Its a little unsettling that you got shouted down, as it were.

On a bigger plane, and taking the wholistic approach to all of ISAF's activities in Afghanistan, we're doing far more than short term FID and far more than counterinsurgency. I've had friends at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan mentoring their faculty, so what is that? FID? Probably fits more with that than counterinsurgency. The problem with the term counterinsurgency is not only that the US and NATO can't do counterinsurgency in a country that is not ours, as pointed out above, but that the prefix "counter" only speaks to identifying what we're fighting against, rather than what we're fighting for. If COMISAF is doing counterinsurgency, he should get all the SOF, Psyops, intel, recon, assets to go kill insurgents. But all that does is create dead insurgents. Alone it does not defeat the movement commonly known as the Taliban because the issue(s) that inspired its creation in the first place remains.

So what to do? What are we fighting for and who gets to decide that? The Afghans do and somehow the Afghans have to create a movement that builds the sense of themselves that along the way eclipses the Taliban's movement. The Afghan cadets and many of the 20 somethings in the Kabul area seem to be wishing to do that, they just need some time to figure out what shape that will take. Hopefully ISAF buys them the time and space to do that.