Winning the War in Afghanistan

[William F. Owen]

Wilf, you tend to think at the tactical level only.

Sorry but that is patently not true. How many times do I refer to the need for a strategy that reflects the policy and strategy achievable in tactics? Ever read any of my posts? This is what I spend most of my time writing and talking about.

A tactic that doesn't serve the operational plan and a operational plan that doesn't serve the strategy - that's never good, no matter how well it looks on the tactical level.

Strategy can only be enacted by tactics. An operational plan merely ensures that tactics occur in the time and place relevant to the strategy. There is NO linkage between tactics and operations, other to ensure the time and place relevant to the strategy.

A battalion ready to sortie is an effective deterrent against open warfare. Even sitting in the own camp and fighting only to protect camp & convoys serves a purpose. That purpose is not in what you achieve, but in what you prevent.

I disagree. Yes deterrence is critical/essential, but you have to do things to make it real. Traditional Deterrence only works if the enemy believes in the credibility of the threat. That means going out and being very threatening and real. Nuke deterrence was based on mutual destruction and thus the absence of strategy.

[Fuchs]

Sorry but that is patently not true. How many times do I refer to the need for a strategy that reflects the policy and strategy achievable in tactics? Ever read any of my posts? This is what I spend most of my time writing and talking about.

I've had the impression that you focus on the tactical level for more than a year and just dropped it as a remark here.

Calling for a strategy is not the same as thinking about strategy.
You seem to think of the higher levels primarily because you want a coherent plan that leads to your preferred tactics, to your understanding of what ground forces are supposed to do in war.

I'm under the impression that your desired tactics (the super competent infantry that aggressively hunts down INS in the region) would not play a major part in any of the smart strategies and operational plans because really smart ones could eliminate the need for such tactical excellence.
I'm also under the impression that you're too fixated on tactical excellence to think creatively about how such smart operational plans or strategies would look like.

The absence of good strategy and operations in Afghanistan for almost a decade (at last on our part) opens a huge area for discussions and original thinking. The tactical level (where troops run into the huge problem of the enemy's elusiveness again and again) is the least promising one.