COIN -v- CT debate

[slapout9]

What happens when the folks in DC do not do their homework...Realize that you aren't going to defeat AQ? That would be a good start. You can marginalize them, reduce their damage ability to a bearable level and it would help if everyone would realize they are not a military problem and they are not going to be defeated -- indeed, by upping their threat appearance and wrongly using military effort we merely enhanced their appeal temporarily.

Neither is Pakistan a military problem. Afghanistan is only one because we made it so...

That is exactly right, the Ends,Ways and Means strategic framework will not work with criminal/terrorist groups like that because there is no end! LE is a process and as long as we have people it will continue forever. AQ can be suppressed through proper techniques to where they are a manageable threat and it would be a heck of lot cheaper then a military option. Through proper asset seizure it would almost be self funding. Evey once in awhile the History Chanel runs programs about Pablo Escabar and they have a lot of interviews with DEA agents that created the plan. And yes they attacked him with a 5 rings analysis and figured out which COG's they needed to attack. They new it would work but even they were shocked how well and how fast it worked. It would have been over in a matter of months it wasn't for interference by the Columbian government, which finally changed their tune.

[jmm99]

This is written from a "We are there, dammit" viewpoint; has little or nothing to do with an independent strategy vs AQ (Astan & AQ are better considered as separate problems); and is suggested more to allow time to coldly consider whether an acceptable (note "acceptable") political effort can be mounted in a more limited geographical region.

This pertains to Entropy's nugget (post #22):

I don't think that's necessarily the case, at least the writing off Afghanistan part. One could shift, for example, from a strategy designed to defeat the Taliban to a strategy designed to prevent the Taliban from winning. We'd be ceding most of the Pashtun areas, but we could certainly prevent Taliban control over the non-Pashtun areas, which is a significant part of the country. In other words, it's not all or nothing.

but is more particularly based on his maps to be found here.

A demographic line approach was suggested for Vietnam (Krepinevich, The Army & Vietnam, pp.266-268). I floated a form of this using Highway 1 as a rough demographic line in another context - this post and this post (maps), forcing through a Peace Enforcement strategy (e.g., Joint Pub 3-07.3, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Peace Operations, Chap III, as updated by more recent operations); and, in effect, offering the Taliban a limited truce if they stay south of the Tripfire Line.

This Peace Enforcement strategy would be of little comfort to those who want either a minmum force increase, none or an immediate force drawdown. The 40K to 80K increase would be, if nothing else, a good PSYOPs move (by not indicating a current intent to withdraw - as we did with Vietnamization); that increase would be incremental and take a long-time (and could be halted at any time).

This strategy does not in any way change my opinion that the prospects for an acceptable future political effort are lousy (a classy legal term ); but, if an acceptable political effort cannot be mounted in the "Northern Alliance" region (above the Hwy 1 line), it cannot be mounted.

[William F. Owen]

That is exactly right, the Ends,Ways and Means strategic framework will not work with criminal/terrorist groups like that because there is no end! LE is a process and as long as we have people it will continue forever.

Huh? So what you are saying is "Strategy" doesn't work against criminals? Maybe true. Strategy to me is the use of force to achieve a policy. As criminals can only be "defeated" by the rule of law, then I guess you mean, the "the enforcing of laws to achieve a policy." If so then the law will have to be applied for instrumental purposes and within the framework of a strategy - thus ends, ways and means.

AQ can be suppressed through proper techniques to where they are a manageable threat and it would be a heck of lot cheaper then a military option. Through proper asset seizure it would almost be self funding.

Whose funds? Money found in Pakistan can fund the DEA?

..... the History Chanel runs programs about Pablo Escabar and they have a lot of interviews with DEA agents that created the plan. And yes they attacked him with a 5 rings analysis and figured out which COG's they needed to attack. They new it would work but even they were shocked how well and how fast it worked. It would have been over in a matter of months it wasn't for interference by the Columbian government, which finally changed their tune.

To me, the death of Pablo Escobar plays out along classical and ancient strategy lines, similar to that of the demise of Napoleon. Escobar was an idiot. His demise was determined the day he tried to gain office. DEA or no DEA, the Colombians (some worse than Escobar) were never going to let it happen.

[Entropy]

Pressley,

Ken saved me a lot of typing (thanks Ken!). I think that AQ and Afghanistan, as distinct policy issues, are certainly related, but not enough that they can be coherently combined into a single policy issue.