Why are we still leading missions, instead of supporting Afghans conduct them?

[jcustis]

This may surprise you (it surprised me as well) Policy makers don't understand this stuff. They have no background or experience in this, and frankly the military community has enabled them to see this as a military problem rather than as a political/policy problem. They wait for us to finish the dirty work so that they can get on with what they do. We have told them over and over that one must create security first. We are wrong. Get the political/policy aspect on track first, and then security will emerge over time.

Congress is only as informed as the general populace, they go off of what is in the media and carefully crafted official statements from DoD that are fed to them. They worry about their electoral bases first and foremost.

We have been saying for years that we are at war and that their are vital national interests at stake. Congressional response is "Now you want me to tell my people that we are not at war, and that these interests have been mis-stated or exaggerated?" "How can we do that (and not lose credibility and the next election)?"

Our government is wonderfully inefficient. I love that fact, because it is by design to prevent insurgency at home. It does make it hard to get to a logical approach to dealing with insurgency abroad, however....

I'm not completely surprised, after getting a glimpse at the disconnect between the RC commander and the lead of the PRT during my last deploy, over who was really doing what regarding the various Lines of Operation. It seemed as if he had to repeatedly fight off misperceptions by reinforcing that he was there to focus on security, in order to support the other LOOs, and not be looked at as the lead on governance and development. It routinely blew my mind that there was even a single question over it.

The difficulty that relationship caused, even down in my backwater corner of my AO, still pisses me off to this day.