Afghanistan indicators

[jcustis]

Speaking solely to the point of the Taliban being afraid of American kinetic power, why on earth would they be afraid of that if they managed to retake Afghanistan? They would have just beaten us having taken everything we could have thrown at them. In any case, little black helos and drones need bases close by, cruise missiles haven't scared them in the past and the Pak Army may object to us overflying their country to get to Afghanistan. The Taliban ain't so scared of us now, if they prevailed I don't see them being afraid at all.

I look at it from the perspective of exactly what you reference, but I don't think that the Taliban would necessarily fear us. In fact, I don't want them to fear us. That causes irrational decision-making. I want them to respect a capability to deliver a blow to a concentrated body of Taliban leaders (and I think concentration would be required if they chose to try to exert power) should we decide to do so.

Killing the Taliban inside Pakistan tends to pose drama, but in the under-governed expanse of Afghanistan, the challenges become less pronounced to a degree.

And Entropy brings up a point I was thinking, but did not articulate. The Taliban will be hard pressed to run Afghanistan in the future, so coupling the Taliban with trans-national terrorism presumes that they will have the ability to influence the scenario in the first place. Sooooo...maybe that means we can worry less about the Taliban inviting terrorist commandos in, and get back to basic containment and counter-terrorism.

[carl]

I want them to respect a capability to deliver a blow to a concentrated body of Taliban leaders (and I think concentration would be required if they chose to try to exert power) should we decide to do so.

Why would Taliban leaders have to concentrate to decide anything and even if they did, what would prevent them from holding quorum in a hospital? Or why wouldn't they just do the whole thing by correspondence from scattered locations? That would cut our tron warriors completely out of the picture. In any event you have a lot more confidence in our ability to locate people who don't want to be found, in countries where we aren't on the ground in the immediate vicinity, than I do.

[jcustis]

Why would Taliban leaders have to concentrate to decide anything and even if they did, what would prevent them from holding quorum in a hospital? Or why wouldn't they just do the whole thing by correspondence from scattered locations? That would cut our tron warriors completely out of the picture. In any event you have a lot more confidence in our ability to locate people who don't want to be found, in countries where we aren't on the ground in the immediate vicinity, than I do.

I do place more stock in our capabilities, but having seen exactly what those capabilities are, I am a believer that we could find our targets with the same success that we would were they across a border of a sanctuary country. Sans any border, we could deal with them more easily in Afghanistan.

[M-A Lagrange]

Bob,

The Taliban are just the flavor of the day stepping up to lead that illegal challenge. If the Taliban were destroyed by some miracle tomorrow, some new group would soon emerge from this same base of the populace to continue the challenge.

Which makes the point occuping forces/government/fake supportive government as the centre of gravity of any “insurgencies” even more relevant.

You are opening an open door Bob but it seems that door needs to be open and reopen million times before anyone sees it.
Any successful invasion/occupation was made through keeping in place the former administration and then finding out inside it who will be the puppet.

Good COIN is not about protecting the populace from the insurgent alone, but also must protect the populace from the government.

Actually not that true. Good population centric COIN is to install a government that will protect its people and act accordingly Rule of Law. But that’s a dream somehow.
Good COIN can also be to crush insurgent quick, fast and hard; Leave them no political room to build a propaganda.

Actually, the paradox is: webberian/modern government is a need for modern occupying powers. (Cf Kilcullen). You need someone to talk to and with. Populations do not! Even in West, we cope with governments and do bargain with it.
Establishing the fact that population need post webberian government based on responsability to protect is what we (let say some dreamers) would like.

[Bob's World]

Actually not that true. Good population centric COIN is to install a government that will protect its people and act accordingly Rule of Law. But that’s a dream somehow.
Good COIN can also be to crush insurgent quick, fast and hard; Leave them no political room to build a propaganda.

This is the fallacy of pop-centric COIN, in that it is a change of "tone" perhaps from threat-centric COIN, but it is still just as deeply rooted in the promotion and preservation of illegitimate governments over the populaces of others as derived from the Colonial roots of our COIN doctrine. It seeks to be just as controlling over the populaces of others as threat-centric approaches.

It is a half-step in the right direction, but a half-step all the same. Doing the wrong thing gently is sadly more apt to get one hurt in the process than doing the wrong thing aggressively. Both produce the same failed results, but the pop-centric approach opens one up to a lot more punishment in the process.

One cannot install a legitimate government over the populace of another. To buy into the belief that we can ties back to what we learned from the Europeans and refined in our own Colonial efforts. Its a lie we tell ourselves, and rationalize by saying that we are "enforcing the rule of law" or "bringing democracy to the people." What brings stability is self-determination of governance and justice under one's own laws; not forced sham democracies and injustice under the laws of some foreign power.

There are good concepts within Pop-centric COIN, but the overall construct as currently defined and as we currently attempt to implement it is fatally flawed.

If we must conduct such interventions to promote and preserve our own national interests, then we must learn to do so in a fashion that does not seek to control specific outcomes, dictate specific leaders and forms of government, or project specific values. Instead we must find ways to empower self-determined solutions within the parameters of broad principles designed to prevent abuses of more universal concepts of human rights than what we currently see as "proper" in U.S. culture. Those who attempt to disrupt such proceedings with violent challenges must be met with even greater violence. No need to buy the support of the people with vast development and charity either. We don't need their support, we just don't want their animosity. Their government needs their support, and they will support a government that they know to be theirs. A government that is constrained by a good constitution tailored to their own culture, but designed to prevent too much efficiency or power in any one man or section of government, and that protects the populace from government abuses of power as well.

Americans may not approve of who is selected to lead, or of the forms of government adopted. So be it. Americans will approve of not being stuck in long, expensive, bloody efforts to force our will unnecessarily onto others; Americans will approve of foreign populaces that do not feel compelled to bring acts of violence to the shores of America as well.

[slapout9]

Americans may not approve of who is selected to lead, or of the forms of government adopted. So be it. Americans will approve of not being stuck in long, expensive, bloody efforts to force our will unnecessarily onto others; Americans will approve of foreign populaces that do not feel compelled to bring acts of violence to the shores of America as well.

And that should be the Center of Gravity of our Foreign Policy.....who gives a flip what kind of government they have so long as they are not going to do us any harm. Hank Williams,Jr. wrote a song about it. It's called "Why don't you mind your own business and you want be minding mine"

[Dayuhan]

If we must conduct such interventions to promote and preserve our own national interests, then we must learn to do so in a fashion that does not seek to control specific outcomes, dictate specific leaders and forms of government, or project specific values.

National interest may not require that we control the outcome of a given process, but it often requires that we prevent certain outcomes, typically a return to the status quo ante. If that were an acceptable outcome we'd have had no reason to intervene in the first place.

Instead we must find ways to empower self-determined solutions within the parameters of broad principles designed to prevent abuses of more universal concepts of human rights than what we currently see as "proper" in U.S. culture. Those who attempt to disrupt such proceedings with violent challenges must be met with even greater violence.

The process of arriving at a "self-determined solution" often involves violence, especially in diverse societies where different components of society have radically different perceived interests, and where there is no broad consensus on the idea of shared power.

Their government needs their support, and they will support a government that they know to be theirs. A government that is constrained by a good constitution tailored to their own culture, but designed to prevent too much efficiency or power in any one man or section of government, and that protects the populace from government abuses of power as well.

I think you vastly overestimate the power of a Constitution. A Constitution in itself is a pile of paper with words written on it; it cannot protect anyone from anything and it cannot prevent or assure anything. These are accomplished not by the Constitution, but by the basic elements of consensus that the Constitution codifies, and by the will to follow the Constitution. Important to note that the document does not create the consensus, it merely codifies it. If there is no consensus to codify, that doesn't work very well.

Our founding documents represent a set of basic principles on which we've agreed to agree. Without that consensus they can accomplish nothing. Democrats and Republicans may disagree on almost everything, but they agree that power can and generally will be shared, and that the source of legitimacy is the will of the people. If different factions do not accept the idea of shared power, or if they believe that legitimacy is, say, inherited, or derives from the will of God, Allah, or The Great Pumpkin (whose will they alone know), no words on paper will create a foundation for shared power.

Trying, for example, to impose the idea of shared power on a society not prepared to accept it is a form of control, no less so than imposing a dictator.

Americans will approve of foreign populaces that do not feel compelled to bring acts of violence to the shores of America as well.

What foreign populace has ever brought acts of violence to the shores of America?

[Bob's World]

National interest may not require that we control the outcome of a given process, but it often requires that we prevent certain outcomes, typically a return to the status quo ante. If that were an acceptable outcome we'd have had no reason to intervene in the first place.



The process of arriving at a "self-determined solution" often involves violence, especially in diverse societies where different components of society have radically different perceived interests, and where there is no broad consensus on the idea of shared power.



I think you vastly overestimate the power of a Constitution. A Constitution in itself is a pile of paper with words written on it; it cannot protect anyone from anything and it cannot prevent or assure anything. These are accomplished not by the Constitution, but by the basic elements of consensus that the Constitution codifies, and by the will to follow the Constitution. Important to note that the document does not create the consensus, it merely codifies it. If there is no consensus to codify, that doesn't work very well.

Our founding documents represent a set of basic principles on which we've agreed to agree. Without that consensus they can accomplish nothing. Democrats and Republicans may disagree on almost everything, but they agree that power can and generally will be shared, and that the source of legitimacy is the will of the people. If different factions do not accept the idea of shared power, or if they believe that legitimacy is, say, inherited, or derives from the will of God, Allah, or The Great Pumpkin (whose will they alone know), no words on paper will create a foundation for shared power.

Trying, for example, to impose the idea of shared power on a society not prepared to accept it is a form of control, no less so than imposing a dictator.



What foreign populace has ever brought acts of violence to the shores of America?

Dayuhan,

As my team medic used to say "you need to step away from the Crack Pipe."

As a student of human nature and motivations as assessed through behavior, you are a bit of a mystery. I'm not quite sure what it is you are afraid of that you feel compelled to persistently argue any position I make, even when they are ones that you yourself have made and defended previously with equal vigor. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not some agent provocateur. Perhaps a Dick Cheney adamantly committed to the rightness of US approaches; or equally a Bin Laden who knows his best chances lie in the US holding the course of the past 9 years.... writing under a pseudonym and the cloak of anonymity the web provides.

No, it is you, my friend, who underestimates the power of a proper constitution. It is you that does not appreciate the critical nuance of the difference between national security forces dedicated to protect and preserve the very document that defines governmental powers and popular rights, rather than national security forces dedicated to simply preserving the government itself.

Of course "self-determined" governance is violent. Anything worth having is worth fighting for; and those who currently possess power and wealth are not apt to surrender their selfish and ill-gotten gains in favor of more equitable forms of governance easily. This is why the role of the intervening power as a neutral buffer on such violence is essential. This is why the role of the intervening power as an establisher and enforcer of broad, principled, equitable limits for such self-determination to occur within is so essential.

No, your arguments hold little water. Not intervening at all is indeed often the wisest course. To set and enforce such limits more indirectly, and without the strategic risk and burden of placing it all within a context of a war that must be "won" or interests elevated artificially to the "vital" level that implies a linkage to national survival.

The world is changing, the US must change as well. Currently we resist such changes, as many others similarly situated have before us. But change is inevitable, what the U.S. needs to decide is on who's terms will we change, and in what manner we wish to be perceived when the histories of this era are ultimately written.

[carl]

I do place more stock in our capabilities, but having seen exactly what those capabilities are, I am a believer that we could find our targets with the same success that we would were they across a border of a sanctuary country. Sans any border, we could deal with them more easily in Afghanistan.

I will remain skeptical. There are too many people we couldn't or haven't been able to find, AQ no. 1 & 2, MO, al-Awaki, Saddam, not to mention aspirin factories destroyed and talks with top Taliban commanders who weren't, for me to have confidence that we would know enough to make "death from the air" a credible threat if we weren't on the ground in the area.

[Steve the Planner]

My trouble with the Bob Brief derives from my experience in state/local government in the US.

Somewhere, by focusing overseas, there is an inaccurate underlying myth about the nature of our government.

Federal, state and local governments in the US are, in most substantive applications, a contest for resources, with explicit and implicit decisions about winners and losers---and substantial "spoils" at stake, including by folks who never even know what was at stake, or what was trade away on their behalf.

Democracy is a constant struggle (including by folks like the K-Street lobbyist crowd whose focus is to keep everything behind the scenes), played out since the inception of our democracy, and gridded by rules and protections which often must be enforced through FBI busts (Prince George's County, Maryland), and Congressional Ethics Actions (Rangel). I am not being paranoid---this is the essential reality that has not, and will never change. The price of freedom is ETERNAL vigilance, questioning, verification, and, when needed, enforcement.

Even with a very open fourth (press) and fifth (public info/engagement) estate, we stand on the bring of looming and very serious state/local budget/bond dilemmas (June 30 budget cycles) unprecedented in recent years (but not in US history). Obviously, as in the past, they will threaten the foundations of democracy and public integrity, but does that mean they will end it? No. We, as a people of common purpose, will face the challenges and move forward.

Where are the viable and highly complex checks and balances (the essential DNA) in our pretend "nation-building" if all we do is stand as sentinel to an Afghan national government with so little to offer its people, and so much being looted?

Acceptable representative government means a lot of different things to a lot of different peoples.

If our mission is to really be accomplished in Afghanistan, it must reckon objectively with the actual dilemmas that jcustis has explained. Many confusing, contradictory and self-dealing parties, all in conflict with each other. The "success" in Iraq is, despite substantial instability, removal of a genuine threat to the institution of government, and focus on conflict-resolution through institutions (not warlords and local tribes).