NYT: U.S. to Protect Populous Afghan Areas, Officials Say

[S-2]

"The real question at the operational level comes as to where the most benefit can be gained with limited resources - and that is where the population is."

That's just not true. Add up the populations of those towns you intend to occupy to interminable and useless purpose and compare it to the C.I.A.'s latest and downsized estimate of the overall population. You'll find that the great majority of afghans will be somewhere other than those towns. Damn near guarantee it.

[Cavguy]

"The real question at the operational level comes as to where the most benefit can be gained with limited resources - and that is where the population is."

That's just not true. Add up the populations of those towns you intend to occupy to interminable and useless purpose and compare it to the C.I.A.'s latest and downsized estimate of the overall population. You'll find that the great majority of afghans will be somewhere other than those towns. Damn near guarantee it.

I didn't say it was the majority - and we don't have the forces for a decentralized strategy in every goatherder village in RC-S/RC-E. So what is your alternative?

On the strategic cost/benefit of the whole mission, my thoughts mostly align with yours.

[S-2]

"So what is your alternative?"

Pardon me but I thought I was clear-get out.

Accept egg on our face, lick our wounds, and await the emergence of targets not requiring another Armitage moment.

This, as constituted or any variation on a theme, is a failed enterprise of massive if not epic proportions. All our proposals from a "been there, done that" C.T. campaign up to an "ALL IN" are, in fact, those variations of this failed theme.

I am here to tell you that you will not unfcuk STATE and the associated U.S. civil agencies anytime in this millenium. Nor shall our allies prove any more capable of altering mid-stream their own business-as-usual approaches. Absolutely won't see tangible results out of the GoA. EVER.

We could put 1,000,000 troops in there and still find ourselves in-country two decades from now to no result and at great but pointless cost. Worse, we've target-fixation to the point that we'll likely auger in.

Afghanistan's the wrong target and we need to dis-engage and clear the decks for the correct one.

I KNEW this would go down badly with you scholar-warrior types. Y'all be looking to earn stars as the next Galula or Thompson and then go to work at CNAS.

Get back in the business of slinging hardware instead of high falutin' words...

[tequila]

The solution of "nuke Pakistan" is not a solution, sorry.

If we stayed in Afghanistan for the next fifty years with 40% of the Army and Marine Corps rotating in and out of there, it wouldn't be as costly as your prescription.

[Steve the Planner]

S-2:

Thanks for the cite to the apologetically revised CIA Factbook.

New estimate: 28,396,000, down from 33 million.

I guess we now have almost five million less Afghan's to worry about.

(Oh, the horror of how this might affect all the NGO contracts helping those now-departed five million phantom souls).

Steve

[Tom Odom]

New estimate: 28,396,000, down from 33 million.

I guess we now have almost five million less Afghan's to worry about.

(Oh, the horror of how this might affect all the NGO contracts helping those now-departed five million phantom souls).

Don't worry--they will get a new contract to figure out how we "lost" 5 million and didn't know it

Tom

[Steve the Planner]

Tom:

You are so much wiser than me.

Of course "the loss" will now be the subject of an aid package. What was I thinking?

Actually, I can just imagine all the last minute edits that are going on right now for the President's briefs. All the metrics have to change by 17%.

Steve

[S-2]

1.) Your solution, whatever it really is, won't wash with our public. The problem there probably isn't the casualties we'll incur. We've been warned to expect as much. It is simply that we've the Thieu/Ky redux at play and the public ain't one bit HIP to that scene again. There's never been a social contract between this malformed GoA and its citizenry and our withdrawal into city cantonments won't offer such either.

Without a viable host-nation, all else spins into pointless oblivion. Got hope for this next round of elections? I don't.

2.) "NUKE" doesn't appear in the cards for Iran either but we've got SOMETHING in store if that goes south. Will we know with perfect clarity where Iran is at EXACTLY if and when? I doubt it so Riyadh disappearing will factor into THAT calculus.

In anycase, our withdrawal doesn't mean that there must be war with Pakistan if you read closely my thoughts. They will be attacked from Afghanistan. That will happen because the day we leave, Karzai will swing just like Najibullah. After that, you can expect a reprise of the 1991-1996 civil war.

After THAT, you can expect ummahness, salafi/wahabbi/deobandi brotherhood, and a planned name change to the Islamic Emirate of Greater Pakistan.

Whether the P.A. fights and wins, fights and loses, or cuts an irhabist-inclined deal will determine what follows next. Let it be on PAKISTAN's dime, though, if only to clarify their thinking on this matter. For what else is the world's seventh largest army if not the defense of their country?

I'm sure we'll be watching with great interest as will Russia, the PRC, and (most of all) India.

Thanks.

[Steve the Planner]

S-2:

Isn't Brer Rabbit the only reason we are having these discussions in 2009? Nobody has figured out the solvent to get the tar off?

Good to hear the "tortured" CIA population figures are finally coming into some kind of an alignment with reality. Just could never figure out the BS of 33 million. I guess it was critical to hyping the importance.

Nice to hear that somebody is actually trying to add up the civilian implications of the Country as a whole, not just today's battlespace. Might help to understand your position more clearly.

Steve

[wm]

I’m just a simple kind of guy; maybe that’s why I don’t understand this idea of concentrating in a few cities. I don’t believe it worked in the past for the British or for the Russians but then we aren’t the Brits or the Bear are we?
Seems to me the bad guys in Afghanistan are forcing us to fight their fight—they are good at non-linear hit and run type skirmishes. So what do we do? Establish ourselves in a series of non-linear enclaves (in the big inkblots AKA the cities or the smaller inkdrips AKA the villages) that are just perfect targets for the tactics employed by the opposition.

Here’s an alternative to consider. We establish ourselves in a couple of linear, protectable enclaves and then advance slowly out from that protection—this is more like bridgeheads or a couple of big blobs that keep getting bigger by swallowing up more territory slowly. I’d suggest we could have two such blobs that center on the North and the South of the country respectively.

The northern sector would span the northern provinces from Badakhshan province westward along the national border through the provinces of Takhar, Kunduz, Balakh, Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-E-Pol. I accept that this may be too broad a spread; so, we could lop off pieces on the eastern and western extremes. This positioning would act as a something like a bridgehead for a forced entry from which forces would get pushed out to the South, SE and SW over time. Simultaneously, we would have a second enclave in the south across the provinces of Nimruz, Helmand, and Kandahar. This bridgehead/enclave would expand to the N , NE, and NW over time as we finished clearing, holding and building inside it.

If folks want to, we could also have a Fort Apache in Kabul Province. I’m not sure why we need one. We are long past the days of wars in which victory consisted of “I captured your capital city so I’ve won.” But, we did seem to need to have forces in Berlin to create an instant POW camp for the GSFG to guard in the event of WWIII in Europe. Since I’m advocating a return to a more conventional strategy, maybe we need to do that again too.

This “strategic” deployment brings us more in line with what we historically have trained for and done well--fight linear battles. It also forces the opposition to fight us on our terms rather than on theirs, if they choose to fight at all. By establishing the two enclaves along the southern and northern borders, we tend to have more defendable LOC leading into the enclaves from Turkmen-, Uzbek-, Tajik-, and Pakistan. As we expand them over time, the bad guys get caught in the jaws of a closing vice. And we have established ourselves, in the north at least, in areas where the bulk of the population is less likely to be Pashtun—the folks who seem to have the greatest problem with our presence in the region. In the southern enclave I propose, Baluchis are almost as prevalent as the Pashtuns I believe In the south we are also in a position to interdict the opium cash crop that may be funding much of the bad guys’ efforts. We could try to get the Pakistanis to provide pressure on the east as well, but that might be a bridge too far, especially since our senior leaders making speeches to alienate them.


Ready on the right? Ready on the left? Ready in the center? Weapons off safe! Commence firing!