The semi-covert war behind the overt one in Afghanistan is waged between conventional soldiers and the special operators. This war started long before Osama bin Laden came to realize that Allah or someone was calling upon him to wage jihad against the "Crusaders." It is a war which has been fought with greater and lesser vigor ever since the first conventional forces were sent to a predictable failure in Vietnam. It is likely to continue long after the last American boot has shaken the soil of Afghanistan from its sole.
The conduct and outcome of the war behind the war will do much to determine the degree to which the US succeeds or fails to achieve the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not-losing" in Afghanistan. The process of the war behind the war will also do much to dictate not only if the US will have to stage a rematch of the Civilized World versus the Islamists but also whether or not it will succeed or fail the next time around.
The firing of General McChrystal was one small skirmish in the war behind the war. McChrystal was the very definition of special operator. His entire active career was in special operations. McChrystal's intellectual focus was on the requirements for success in the most difficult of unconventional military operations, those of an interventionary nature, the wars of insurgency and its counter.
The astute observer would have counted McChrystal's days as numbered the moment he released his operational doctrine with its curtailment of American usage of artillery and air delivered firepower. With his reorientation on protecting civilian lives even at the cost of placing more Americans at greater risk, General McChrystal directly challenged a definer of the uniquely American way of war which has existed nearly long as the doctrine of civilian supremacy. The American way of war gelled in the aftermath of the War Between the States and its overwhelmingly high butcher's bill.
Ever since the Civil War, the sine qua non of US military operations has been the curtailment of American losses. Over the years and through the many, many wars which have occurred since 1865, the US has spent much time, much money, and a very great deal of industrial and technological innovation on the challenge of replacing loss of blood with the expenditure of munitions.
The defining profligacy of American firepower has been commented upon repeatedly by our allies and adversaries alike. During World War II, where either the British or the Germans would have sent a patrol, the Americans heaved tons of munitions downrange from artillery tubes almost beyond counting and aircraft formations which darkened the noon sky. The lavish expenditure of munitions went a very long way to assuring that American troops came home on their own two legs and not on a stretcher or in a body bag.
There is no doubt that in a peer-to-peer conflict, the American way of war is both effective and easily justified by its results. Even in a limited war in support of policy such as the Korean War, the American way of war limited costs to mere dollars and not lives. Nonetheless, the US did have to spill blood at meaningless terrain features such as Pork Chop Hill so as to convince the Chinese that we had the political will to fight on regardless of loss.
Hostile observers have long concluded that the American unwillingness to shed the blood of its troops constituted a fatal weakness. When this reluctance was linked (as it inevitably has been) to our equal distaste for expending time on something so wasteful as a war, some adversaries have become convinced that the sovereign counter to the US was to be found in combining the infliction of casualties upon us with the prolongation of the war.
The second part of the How To Defeat The Americans Theory has been called into question by the evident willingness of two presidents to keep on keeping on regardless of the prospect of "victory" or the growing unpopularity of the war with We the People. However, the first part, the more important part of the Recipe For Defeating the American Infidels, is still operative, still to be placed to a full and effective test.
Insofar as General McChrystal's operational concept of "courageous restraint" provided a real change in the views held by Afghan civilians toward the Americans, it was an operational and tactical success. A comparative consideration of enemy initiated versus friendly initiated and meeting engagements covering the months before and after the McChrystal ordered change shows the balance was shifting decisively in favor of the foreigners.
Not to put too sharp a point on the matter, the McChrystal doctrine turned the battlefield and political tides from the negative to the positive. McChrystal's sound understanding of the political and psychological nature of the insurgent-counterinsurgent conflict with its emphasis upon protecting the uncommitted majority from the harm of battle was paying off.
Ironically the successes, preliminary and incomplete as they were, had no impact upon the majority of the troops, particularly the officers, carrying out the new order of battle. To the men on the sharp end of the stick, the new rules of engagement were tantamount to fighting while leaving our best, most lethal, weapons left back at base.
No man, as the Geek well knows, likes the idea of taking more risks than the minimum necessary. The nature of operations in Afghanistan assures there are risks enough without seeming to add to them by limiting the use of artillery and air support. There is no surprise that the McChrystal approach would result in more than a little bit of bitching and moaning--particularly as the operational tempo ticked up with casualties doing the same.
The degree of complaint was far greater, however, than could easily be justified by actual combat losses, which showed no undue increase given the enhanced tempo of operations. But, the McChrystal approach did more than simply enhance the perceived (as distinguished from actual) risks on the battlefield, it called into question the entire "find, fix, and destroy" doctrine which has governed US military doctrine since before World War II.
Despite the fact that the "firepower kills and killing equals victory" approach to war was proven massively irrelevant in the Vietnam War, it was followed both in Iraq and Afghanistan far too long.
In Iraq, the change in American fortunes came with the "surge" but not because of the "surge." Rather the increase in American success came with a decrease in US inflicted Iraqi casualties. It came because the Marines and some Army units went from the "shoot-move-communicate" understanding of war to one which emphasized the human factors, the reality that the battleground which mattered was the perceptions and attitudes of the uncommitted majority of the Iraqi population coupled with constant pressure on the hard core of insurgent true believers.
General McChrystal's special forces played a very key role in the successes in Iraq attributed in the media and on the Hill to General Petraeus. McChrystal carried the lessons of Iraq along with the broader lessons of counterinsurgency with him to Afghanistan.
The mere fact that McChrystal, a lifelong member of the Special Forces, the red-headed stepchild of the Army, was jumped to command in Afghanistan was a major irritant to the conventional soldiers. McChrystal's predecessors were all good conventional troops, distinguished treadheads in the main. Nonetheless, they had lost control of the battlefield to the enemy.
When McChrystal's new approach bore immediate positive results, the irritation grew to overwhelming proportions. Making the irritation all the worse was SecDef Gate's view that the US would be facing asymmetrical conflicts and not peer-to-peer wars in the near- and mid-term future. If McChrystal's new doctrine were to succeed, the future for the treadheads and big bore tube meisters of the conventional army would be grim to say the least.
With that as context it isn't surprising that no voices were raised in defense of McChrystal's ill-advised words in Rolling Stone. It isn't surprising that all ran for cover behind the spurious notion that the outspoken spec-ops guy was an out of control rogue. Nor is it shocking that he was speedily replaced by a man, General Petraeus, who is a good, conventional man at heart.
Petraeus' dedication to the "firepower kills and killing brings victory" notion became evident during his confirmation hearings when he promised to "review" the limitations imposed on artillery and air delivered firepower. He will conduct the review and, in highest probability, slacken the restrictions.
Any slackening, any backing off from "courageous restraint" will inevitably result in collateral civilian causalities. With the best of intents, the closest of command and control, big guns and fast movers will kill non-combatants. As a result, the uncommitted majority of the Afghan population will once again swing toward Taliban and away from the US and ISAF. The situation will return to the status quo ante McChrystal.
At the same time, responsibility for the American failure will be offloaded to the Afghan government and security forces. There is much reason to do so. The Karzai government has a very laid back attitude toward the massive corruption which is and always has been a component of Afghan political life. The Karzai government is given to the notion of a separate peace with Taliban as such is in its own best interests given the conviction that the Americans will not stay the course and lack both the will and ability to defeat Taliban et al militarily.
While it matters only slightly to the US what sort of government rules in Afghanistan, it is a matter of key national importance as to whether or not the future government of the place thinks it is safe in offering safe haven to Islamist entities planning harm to the US and its interests or those of its allies. It is a matter of great national importance if other Islamist groups around the world are emboldened by the perception of an American military failure in Afghanistan.
However, it appears that these larger, longer term potentials resident in an American military failure is of far less concern to the conventional soldiers of the high ranks. Their lodestone is the superiority of the treads, tubes, and gunships of the "real" Army. Their hope is that another "incomplete policy success" in Afghanistan such as that experienced in Vietnam will end any consideration of future US involvement in these nasty little wars of intervention.
"No more Afghanistans" will join "No more Vietnams" as a way of allowing the generals and other budgeteers to get on with the real mission of preparing for wars the US is less likely rather than more to be fighting in the years to come. The "peace at any price" and "blame America first" contingents of the American political and media elite will embrace the same two slogans in their never ending campaign to assure the US drops to the second tier of nation-states.
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