Once Again It's "Strategic Review" Time For Afghanistan

While there is none of the delay and pseudo-drama of last year's "debate" over the Big Question of "Whether Afghanistan," there are definite and deep currents of difference regarding how well the US is doing in whatever it is purportedly doing in Afghanistan.  There is the ongoing contretemps between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the US--particularly General Petraeus--over where American and other NATO or ISAF troops should be doing what.  And, not surprisingly there is the usual highly credentialed panel of self-designated experts damning the entire effort and the Obama ordered escalation as a total failure.

As if that were not a sufficient number of conflicting chefs to spoil the soup, the Pakistanis, which is to say the Army and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has come roaring back demanding that Karzai enter into a power sharing agreement with Taliban and the Haqqani network without delay.  It borders on the ironic that the proposal set forth by Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kiyani is simply a more robust form of the conclusions drawn by the twenty-three academics, journalists, and former government officials.  Far less ironic and far more honest is the implicit admission by General Kiyani that Pakistan is and has been working both sides of the street in Afghanistan.

At the same time the Kiyani proposition underscores the major message of Karzai.  For years now the oft derided (by senior American diplomats and policy makers) Afghan president has argued that without ending the Pakistani support of Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda or sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hermetically, there will be no end to the war.  It is for this reason that Karzai has repeatedly and stridently demanded that the US and others deploy their combat power along the border rather than stage nocturnal raids on isolated Afghan homesteads or stage forcible entries into Afghan cities and towns.

While the US and its allies have seen the war in Afghanistan as one of counterinsurgency, Karzai and some others in both the Afghan government and military have seen it as one of an interstate nature.  The truth is that the war is a hybrid.  The war is an example of a very rare sort of conflict, the partisan war.  In a partisan war the combatants may be organic to the society under stress but do not have sufficient capabilities on their own to continue the war successfully.  The continuation of combat depends upon a direct cross-border supporter.

In the past century the best examples of partisan war are to be found in the several resistance movements in occupied Western Europe during World War II.  In none of the countries under Nazi domination could the domestic, organic resistance forces have accomplished the goal of ejecting the occupier on their own.  The French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norse all relied not only on outside support from the Western Allies to continue their struggle but needed the outsiders to actually do the heavy lifting of killing Germans and destroying Germany.

The wars in South Vietnam contained partisan features when the North decided to answer the challenge of Operation Rolling Thunder by supplying and supporting the indigenous insurgents.  The partisan nature of the war became clear when Northern forces directly entered the war in sizable numbers thus relegating the insurgents to a supporting role at best.

While it is unlikely in the extreme that Pakistani forces will cross the border into Afghanistan, there has never been any lack of evidence regarding the degree to which Pakistan supports Taliban and others.  Nor has there been any doubt but Pakistan has established and controls the agenda behind the fighting in Afghanistan.  As a consequence, characterizing the war(s) in Afghanistan as a mixed state involving both insurgent and partisan features is the most accurate way of defining the war and the operational doctrines necessary to bring it to a successful (from the perspectives of Kabul and Washington) conclusion.

Ending the war will be a two stage process.  The first stage is that of hostilities termination.  The second consists of conflict resolution.  The first is primarily military in its accomplishment.  The second, the final stage, is completely political in nature.  It has been evident that the US at its senior decision making levels has never taken a firm grip on this reality.

Despite the impressive credentials of the "experts" and the cogency of their argument, their conclusion is fatally flawed at least in part.  The Obama ordered escalation has provided the manpower necessary to take the war directly to the insurgents.  The result has been a transfer in initiative from the Taliban to the US and its allies.  The increasing pressure on the insurgents has constricted both their ability and will to operate.  Even the resort to civilian casualty producing tactics such as the escalating employment of IEDs attests to this.  The Karzai decried nocturnal raids by Special Forces units and Afghan partners has done much to disrupt the organizational integrity of the Taliban and Haqqani network.

The overall effects of the offensive operations have been attenuated severely by the existence of the cross-border sanctuary in the Pakistani FATA.  Further attenuation has resulted directly from the on-going support and assistance provided by ISI and the army.  As long as these partisan war features continue, so also will the war.  It is just that simple.

The Predator and Reaper strikes against Taliban facilities and personnel in the FATA are not sufficient to offset the Pakistani assistance.  While these strikes send a nice number of trigger pullers and a small group of leaders to the Big Mo and seventy-two virgins, the net effect is not crippling to the Taliban and Haqqani network.  Crippling requires an end (or a serious reduction) of Pakistani support.

One can understand Karzai's frustration.  He has seen the problem for years with great clarity.  He has spoken and written to his American partners about it with force and moral courage.  At the same time he must deal with the internal political fallout from the nocturnal raids as he must with the collateral casualties of air strikes or artillery bombardments.  His political enemies (and he has many other than the insurgents) use every grievance real and pretended which results from a raid or air strike against him.  This has to become a real drag after a few years.

Karzai is a nationalist first and foremost.  This means he has to be treated as the head of a sovereign state.  Even when he is tossing one of his many hissy fits, he must still be treated with the respect which he believes he is entitled to and which demonstrates to the Afghan people that he and they are sovereign, respected, dignified, not the puppets and lackeys of foreigners.  General McChrystal understood this.  It is not at all evident that General Petraeus does so as well.

The matter of interpersonal relations factors directly into the problem of gaining Karzai's support for the current approach rather than attempting the utterly impossible--sealing the Pakistani border the air tight level which would be necessary to stop effective Pakistani support.  Karzai must be brought carefully on board.  He must be shown why even the advanced technology available to the US is not up to the task of securing the border.  At the same time he and his people must be given more approval rights with respect to the controversial nocturnal raids.  Again, this requires very careful handling and a willingness to forgo a raid or two in deference to local (and militarily irrational) considerations.

At the same time the US has to put pressure on the Pakistanis.  The new Pakistani "peace plan" gives adequate base to do so.  They have admitted they have the juice with Taliban and the Haqqani network.  They have effectively entered a guilty plea to Karzai's accusations.  Use it to get the ISI and army to turn the spigot down if not all the way off.

The reduction of support need not happen overnight to be effective.  It can be a process rather than an event as even a slight diminuation of Pakistani support will be reflected quickly by a degradation of insurgent combat capacity and will.  Coupled with a modest decrease of outside support and access to the sanctuaries of the FATA, the current offensive efforts (including the nocturnal raids) will prove effective in hostilities termination within a politically reasonable period (twelve to eighteen months.)

At this point--the point of hostilities termination which, to err on the side of accuracy, is more a process than an event--the politically oriented matter of conflict resolution takes over.  Importantly, as it the Afghans who must all live together in the years to come, the conflict resolution portion of the effort is almost entirely an Afghan owned procedure.  The nature and extent of power sharing is up to the Afghans alone--even if we are not pleased with the result.

It is true that problems of governance and governmental legitimacy are in play even before hostilities are terminated.  It is one more unpleasant ground truth that this is a matter for Afghans in which we outsiders play a limited role.  The degree of acceptable corruption is an Afghan matter not an American or European one.  As noted in a previous post bribery, graft, and corruption of both a political and economic nature are internal matters.  It is up to the locals to say how much is enough as well as to define what might be called equality of opportunity to be corrupt.

The way in which the several tribes, linguistic groups, and religious communities define political legitimacy, judicial independence, openness, and transparency or even fundamental honesty in government will be messy, convoluted, and probably throughly unpleasant when viewed from a Western perspective, but that is the way life is lived--get a grip on it.  Afghanistan is not, repeat, not, a contemporary Western polity and society in the making.  And, it never will be.  We have to get a grip on that as well.

Pace, experts, but we are not yet losing in Afghanistan.  The Obama escalation is not yet a failure.  Provided we do not make the fatal mistake we did in Vietnam of trying to take over both war and government, we will not lose, not militarily at least.  Provided we allow the Afghans to be effective stakeholders, we can actually reach a reasonable facsimile of winning--again at least through the hostilities termination phase.

To do this we need to keep on with our current operational doctrine.  We need to do a better job of bringing Karzai on board.  Most of all we must, repeat, must, lean on Islamabad to start the process of tamping down the partisan war aspects of the conflict.  Left to their own military and psychological resources, the organic insurgents can not hope to win.  Their only hope is to end the hostilities and seek the best accommodation in the conflict resolution process.

The road to peace in Afghanistan runs, in major part, through Islamabad but not in the way the Pakistani army and ISI hope.  The zealots in those two organizations must be brought to realize that without abandoning their duplicity in Afghanistan and getting right with Washington, they will lose access to the great American cash cow.  Since the Chinese will not play the same sort of obliging game which we have, this means they will be left very high and dry while still facing their own homegrown existential threat.

Survival is the name of the game for the men in Islamabad.  We just have to make certain that they understand it depends on the way in which they continue to play the game in Afghanistan.

Back To The Old Who-Is-Winning Question Again

The NYT, which as desperately wants to declare defeat in Afghanistan as it did in Iraq, has brought up the issue of just how much in the current estimate of success given by the US military should be believed.  With the upcoming review of American progress or lack thereof in Afghanistan the topic is both timely and important.

The military has a rather positive view of developments such the introduction of more boots on the ground due to the Obama surge approved a year ago.  The intelligence community is not so sure, some of its reporting is at sharp contrast with the military assessments.

This is not new.  The same dynamic occurred during the Vietnam War.  Repeatedly, and, as it turned out, accurately, CIA was the odd man out, the naysayer in the optimist's club.  CIA was so much of a "non-team player" that its reports were shuffled to the bottom of the pile throughout the administration of LBJ.  Not until a new Director of Central Intelligence demanded a "shading" of reports so that they might be read during the years of Nixon did anyone at the highest levels of the US government take a look at the findings of the lads in Langley.

Based on experience the Geek has a tendency to side with the gloomy bunch in the intel shop.  In the world, particularly in the war part of the world, all surprises tend to be bad ones.  Pessimism is a realistic way to view uncertain and highly flexible events.  Certainly the state of play in Afghanistan is filled with potentials for surprise as well as vast numbers of Rumsfeldian "unknowable unknowns."  No responsible intelligence analyst would be given to donning rose colored glasses when taking a dekko at Afghanistan.

Of course, the first order of business is defining what constitutes success.  As the experience in Iraq has made crystalline, success is not easy to define.  If the goal is overly expansive--as American goals tend to be--success will prove illusive or illusionary.  There was--and is--no way that the US or any coalition could succeed if the goal was that of producing a fully functioning Western style nation-state with all the requisite features thereof in either Iraq or Afghanistan.  Even though Iraq was at one time a reasonable facsimile of a modern, authoritarian nation-state with a reasonably advanced and complex economy supported by a similarly advanced technological base, the reality underneath the surface was far different, a fundamentally primitive society based on tribal and religious identifications further riven by decades of unsettled scores.

The best the US could hope to accomplish in Iraq was a temporary imposition of stability sufficient to allow nascent domestic institutions to take shape and root.  This was accomplished.  But it was all that was accomplished.  The later, internally driven political stasis and violence is not the responsibility of the US; it was not an American failure.  Insofar as any outside party is directly involved, it is Iran, and Iran is no ally of stability or peace in Iraq.

The situation is similar but not quite identical in Afghanistan.  The best that can be expected is the US and associated forces will reduce the violence to a point where indigenous institutions might survive and prosper.  Long term success is out of our control.  We cannot make the central government or the local ones legitimate, non-corrupt, and efficient.  Nor can the US and its allies in country assure that the Afghan security forces are fully up to the task of extending and maintaining internal security.  Neither can the US and its partners cleanse the FATA of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Haqqani network commanders and trigger pullers.

If we define success in seeing Afghanistan a fully functioning nation-state of the Western sort, failure might as well be declared right now.  Given that Afghanistan is tribal in its social and political nature, riven by linguistic, religious, and provincial differences, and considering the evil hand played by Pakistan, there is no way that a mere military defeat short of total obliteration of the jihadists will lead to peace and stabiliity.

It deserves, even requires restatement, that the goal laid out by George W. Bush of "nation-building" in Afghanistan with all that implied was totally unrealistic in all respects.  That goal should not be used in assessing the relative success to date of the new American operational doctrine set forth barely more than a year ago.  Rather the correct base for evaluation is the degree to which the efforts of the US and its partners have neutered the capacity of the assorted groups to wage war effectively and to mount out of country operations.

On the more limited basis the indicators are all positive.  That does not imply success.  The advocates of violent political Islam have demonstrated tactical flexibility and high recuperative powers.  The cross border sanctuaries of the FATA as well as other assistance provided by the Pakistanis have gone a long way in assuring the hydra headed nature of the anti-government groups.

The uncertainties involving the Afghan government, the Afghan National Forces, the role of Pakistan all combine with the basic nature of the Afghan human terrain, its cultural values, and norms; the nature of tribal society and understandings of loyalty; and the deeply divided nature of the polity to make any but the most limited and pessimistic assessments of success the most rational and credible.  While it is possible, even probable, that General Petreaus, a man who is a PR genius but limited as a fighter of wars, has massaged the data: the recent trends in initiative, refugee generation, civilian collateral casualties and enemy tactics as all swinging in the favor of the US and its allies, including Kabul.

The takeaway?  Caution is appropriate as is limited, controlled scepticism but anticipations of American failure to achieve the limited goal, the goal of "not-losing" are way premature.  Much as the NYT and others of that ilk are chomping at the bit to announce one more US defeat, they are not likely to gain that goal.  If the US and its partners can keep on keeping on along the course plotted in recent months, success is far more likely than not--even with continued Pakistani pertinacity.

Afghan Army Now 0 For 1

A battalion of the ever-so-new and questionably improved Afghan Army tried to go it alone last week. In what the NYT is pleased to call for no discernible reason, "a showcase," three hundred men of the First Brigade of the ambitiously numbered 201st Army Corp went to the village of Bad Pakh in Laghman Province.

It was an operation which started off bad and went to worse. The NYT saw the mission as a "debacle" and seemed eager to convey the impression of the Afghan unit having been chewed into tiny pieces by the far more able and resolute Taliban.

A careful consideration of what is known so far about what happened to the hapless unit shows a dynamic perfectly familiar to any American who served as an advisor to a unit of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN.) It appears that the Afghan unit had all the misfortunes and internal failures which normally typified an ARVN operation during the years the Americans did all the heavy lifting in their war with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

The idea was to insert a blocking force by air and follow up with a frontal assault on the Taliban occupied village and surrounding terrain. This approach is right out of Elementary Tactics and is both reliable and simple. It is a preferred method particularly for relatively inexperienced commanders and troops. The problem came in that the Afghans lost operational security. A person of dubious loyalty apparently revealed the plan to Taliban.

Taliban did the obvious. They ambushed the ground mobile assault force. Later, facilitated by foul weather, they surrounded and cutoff the blocking force.

Opsec is always a major problem for the army of a country under threat from insurgency. Loyalties are shallow and fungible in the extreme. As plans have to flow up the national chain of command, the places where betrayal might occur are legion. History shows that the commander should plan for the highly probable contingency that his basic plan will be in the enemy's hand before the first boot hits the contested ground.

The way in which the situation developed on the ground, particularly the apparent dissolution of the Afghan units, indicates another flaw common in armed forces developed in the high pressure environment of an ongoing insurgency--lack of command and control at the lowest tactical levels and an absence of unit cohesion. At the sharp end of the stick, it is the ability of squad and fireteam leaders as well as the ethos of mutual trust existing within the troops which allows a unit to survive an ambush and regain the offensive.

The personal experiences of thousands of Americans who served as advisors at and below the company level in South Vietnam will undoubtedly be able to reconstruct what happened in the first few minutes from their memory banks. It isn't a pretty scene, but it is one which occurs again and again until NCOs and men develop the experience and mutual trust and confidence which rolls with the unexpected punch, gets up, and gains the initiative.

There were, apparently, no US or other foreign advisors in the field with the unfortunate Band of Three Hundred. Perhaps this was due to Afghan governmental and military sensibilities. Or, perhaps it stemmed from General Petraeus' faith in the training given to the Afghans before they took the field. This consideration is probably moot as the problems confronting an advisor in the midst of unit decay are (usually, even always) insurmountable. It is enough to keep alive in the midst of chaos.

There is another glaring error screaming for attention between the lines of the reports. That error is the obvious absence of a rapid reaction force standing by to pull the hotdogs out of the fire. If the Afghan high command or the commander of the 1st Brigade (or the 201st Army Corps) had wanted to keep this an all-Afghan show, they should have had additional forces immediately available either to exploit success or prevent disaster.

Better would have been an ISAF unit tabbed, briefed, and ready to pull relief and rescue duty so as to prevent the demoralizing effect of an Afghan defeat. This was not done. Rather ISAF components are now trying to retrieve the wounded and captured. This is a classic case of too little done too late.

There are larger lessons here as well.

One is the hardest to use. This is the simple fact that indigenous forces do not fight well or vigorously as long as there are outsiders willing and able to do the killing and dying. That was a constant bane in Vietnam. The same phenomenon was seen at work in Iraq during the surge. It remains to be seen if General Petraeus can do a better job of convincing the locals to fight, to fight hard, to fight with conviction rather than standing on the sidelines while the "infidels" take the major burden.

He did not show a particular talent for this during his time in charge in Iraq. Rather, he resembled General Westmoreland with lots of praise for the locals while allowing them a pass on heavy fighting. Only by real war can the locals gain the skills and self-confidence needed to defeat the insurgents who, after all, have spent years learning the trade of the soldier and know they are good at what they do.

The Afghan Army has to learn to take casualties without disintegrating. They have to learn that being killed is a normal part of the soldier's job description. These basics cannot be taught. They can only be learned--by doing.

While the NYT would like nothing better than to use this one mission as a paradigm for the war in general now and into the future, this is unjustified. All that needs to be remembered is that the ARVN got good, damn good, once the Americans made it obvious they were leaving.

This is the power of the 2011 withdrawal start date. It is a motivator to the locals. It gives a clear choice to Army and government alike, fight or give the Taliban the keys to the presidential residence.

A Covenant With Death--And "Winning"

There is a brutal, unstated, and universal reality which applies to all warriors. Whether or not any particular individual recognizes this reality, whether or not any particular individual articulates this reality does not matter. The reality is still there; it still governs.

The reality? The ground truth which controls all aspects of a warrior's existence?

The warrior, each and every one, has signed a personal covenant with death. The agreement stipulates that the warrior will use his brain and body, his skills and abilities, his every fiber of mind and muscle to stay alive. The agreement also provides that no matter how able and motivated, how skilled and able, how fast of reflex and quick of mind, there can be no immunity from death.

In the fabled French Foreign Legion the covenant was once summarized in a brilliantly brutal and succinct way: "Legionnaires! You are in the Legion to die. The Legion will send you to where you will die."

The Covenant With Death is offset in a very small way by a belief held by many (but not all) warriors. This belief is also held by many of those associated with the warrior: buddies, family, lovers. The belief gives some slight measure of comfort to those who survive the warrior's death, or who suffer with him after he has copped a major league clobber, the kind of clobber which in a blasting small part of a second takes away swaths of the warrior's body or mind.

The belief?

That the warrior's life will not be sacrificed for any end of lesser goal than that of "winning." It is hoped and believed that the body, mind, life of the warrior will not be wasted in the pursuit of a false goal, thrown away on some obscure purpose of state, lost in the ego driven strivings of a superior officer or political leader. All warriors at the least secretly hope that if death claims its share of the covenant, the reason will not be shallow, superficial, transient, or of no lasting purpose.

In the warrior's world the goal is--must be--winning. Even should the warrior die, the victory is secured. It may be the smallest and most intimate of victories, the survival of a buddy. It may fall in the endless midrange of winning, the objective which is taken, the hill cleared, the village secured, the battle ended with the enemy in full flight. Or, it may be victory of the greatest sort, the obliteration of the enemy force and state.

However, and here is the rub, "winning" or "victory" are slippery, protean concepts. A clear and decisive "winning" is rare, particularly when the "victory" is sought on the largest scale.

This is why, for Americans, World War II has been so long and so often characterized as "the good war." Really it was the perfect war. When the guns fell silent two enemies had been destroyed, obliterated, conquered.

For the US the war had been one of a total nature, a total war for national survival. When it ended each of the two major enemies, each of the two regimes seen as being both implacably hostile to the US as well as comprising existential threats, had been utterly and completely defeated. The victory was seen as having such a complete and final nature that it fully justified each and every American warrior claimed by Death's Covenant.

Total wars of national survival are rare in modern history. Far more common are small, often intentionally inconclusive wars on the far frontiers conducted for reasons of state. Also far more common are interventionary wars, nasty conflicts where warriors are killed and maimed but where "winning" is either impossible or illusionary.

The Korean War has become the paradigm for Americans in defining the limited war in support of policy, the cruel little war undertaken for reasons of state in which conclusive victory is either impossible or, at the least, undesirable or unachievable. The warriors die in droves, are maimed in their multitudes, but all that hangs in the air is an anguished question, "For what?"

If the "For What?" question is central to understanding the limited war in support of policy such as that waged in the cold and snow of the Korean mountains, how much more is it apropos when considering the interventionary operation (or, to use currently fashionable circumlocution,) the overseas contingency operation? The survivors, those who have buried their dead comrades, mourned their dead lovers, sons, fathers, brothers, can wail even louder the question, "For what did they die?"

The fine words, "winning" and "victory" have little, if any, relevance in any absolute sense to the outcomes of interventionary operations, of the grim and savage war of insurgent against counter insurgent. True, on the micro level, on the level of the individual warrior who has survived more or less intact in both body and mind, it is possible to say, "I won, damn it! I'm still here." It is possible to assert in the midrange that "We accomplished our mission. The hill was taken. The town was secured. We did bring peace to our valley."

But, on the largest level, the level of states and their policies, the terms, "winning" and "victory" have no genuine applicability. The best which can be said with honesty is, "We achieved our policy goals--more or less."

And, bucko, this ground truth is very, very thin comfort for those who bury and mourn the dead warriors. It is equally thin payback to the warrior claimed by Death's Covenant.

Which brings us to another brutal reality: It is the only reward for being true to the Covenant. It is the only comfort to the survivors. It is the only balm for those who have been cruelly maimed by the battle and the policy which brought the battle.

A policy success--usually of the less complete sort--and the military accomplishment of achieving the minimum strategic need of "not-losing" is the only reward which can be expected in the waging of interventionary war, particularly one of the counterinsurgent sort. At the end, no insurgency is marked by the obliteration of the enemy.

There are no victory parades when the counterinsurgent succeeds. There will be no photo-ops surrounding the defeated insurgent signing a surrender document. There will be no glorious upsurge of national pride as the victorious counterinsurgent forces come home to a grateful public.

Insurgencies do not end with a bang. They don't even end with a whimper. They simply fade out. The noise of battle, of bomb and gun, fades away to the silence of politics. One morning the counterinsurgent wakes to find there is no more war. He stretches, looks around, listens to the silence--and goes home.

Or, in the alternative, the noise continues but the counterinsurgent simply goes home. The war goes on, but the outsider is now a major non-participant. He is absent with leave from the fighting and the dying. The warrior is given permission by his government, by the folks back home to come home.

In short, under this alternative, he is defeated. The warrior may be happy or, at least, greatly relieved to be exempted from Death's Covenant. He may be happy, or, at least, greatly relieved to be spared the fear of impending combat, of death being present at one's shoulder night after day after night after day.

This does not offset the reality that he has been defeated. Even if "victorious" in the field in battle after battle, skirmish after skirmish, the counterinsurgent warrior nonetheless has been defeated. So also has the policy, the government, the country which sent him.

And, as history shows time after time in century upon century, defeat always brings consequences, the majority of which are bad. Countries, particularly those which have aspired to and achieved Great Power status, do not long survive major defeats.

Signing the Covenant With Death is not enjoyable. Neither is facing the reality of death night and day seemingly without end. No warrior can be blamed for doing all in his power to stack the odds in his favor. It is human to seek every advantage against death, to use all the means, all the technology to save one's only skin. It is expectable that no additional risks will be undertaken by the warrior without a very compelling reason.

As a result it has come as no surprise that many of the American and other ISAF troops in Afghanistan were angered by the "courageous restraint" doctrine put into effect by General Stanley McChrystal. It is totally without shock that one reads of the resentment felt against the doctrine felt by so many under McChrystal's command as well as the relief felt with the promise by General Petraeus to review (and, at least, by inference) change it so as to reduce the perceived risk to the troops.

Courageous restraint did bring a rapid and extreme lowering of casualties inflicted by US and other ISAF forces upon Afghan civilians and Afghan National Forces personnel. An indication of what is to be expected should the McChrystal doctrine of courageous restraint be modified significantly--or at all--has occurred within the past twenty-four hours.

An air strike was called upon a contingent of Afghan National Forces when someone didn't interpret the imagery correctly. Five Afghan troops were killed by precision guided munitions. The Afghan government is hopping mad. The same may be presumed, but is not mentioned in the media with respect to the Afghan forces generally and at least some civilians.

On the US/NATO/ISAF side of the fence, the reaction has been pure pre-McChrystal. There was no immediate hospital visit to the injured survivors by the commander in theater; there was no immediate and compelling statement from the highest command levels of dismay, sincere apologies; rather an investigation was ordered. This back-to-business-at-the-old-location is a lot of yadda-yadda in the ears of the Afghans.

So, why the hell should we care?

We should care about this incident as well as the context of modifying the courageous restraint doctrine because it matters greatly as to whether this insurgency ends in a way favorable to American interests or in an American military defeat. The only way in which the US and its allies have even a slight chance of achieving the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing" is by fighting in a way which puts our warriors at greater risk but provides greater physical security to the Afghans.

The only way in which the war will simply fade away allowing our warriors to come home without dragging the can of defeat behind them is by placing a greater burden of risk and fear on our warriors, by insisting that more, perhaps many more, be claimed by Death's Covenant. The only way in which we can justify the deaths of those already killed, or the physical and psychic damage done to so many others is by forcing the war to a conclusion which is favorable to our standing and influence in the world. Then and only then will the deaths be given meaning.

The US government--and We the People--decided to cut and run from our war in Southeast Asia. The US government--and We the People--concluded to pack up and leave, resigning the South Vietnamese to whatever fate might have store.

By this decision the US government--and We the People--declared that all those Americans, more than sixty thousand, who had been taken by Death's Covenant, had been killed for nothing. The US government--and We the People--cancelled even the thin comfort of the deaths having not been without meaning or positive effect.

While the defeat in South Vietnam did not damage the US in its long term national and strategic interests, it did damage us at our core. No nation can write off the lives of thousands of its young men without doing damage to its central values, its belief in itself, or its confidence in its own worth.

A defeat in Afghanistan, no matter how concealed or how colored, will do the same to our national soul as did the self-inflicted loss in Vietnam. Beyond that, a defeat in Afghanistan unlike that in Vietnam will impair our long term national and strategic interests by emboldening those who espouse violent political Islam around the world.

What this means today is simple and unpleasant in the extreme. There must be no backsliding from the doctrine of courageous restraint for to do so is to seek defeat. More American warriors must, perforce, be placed in harm's way, made to hold Death's hand, feel Death's eternally cold breath on their necks.

Only by showing a will to die rather than to risk killing the wrong Afghans can we sanctify the losses of our warriors. Ironically, we cannot kill our way to "victory" in Afghanistan, but we can restrain our killing capacities and achieve all that can be achieved in this kind of war, an incomplete policy success and, more critically, 'not-losing."

The "War" Behind The War

The real conflict is being fought not in Afghanistan but rather over Afghanistan. The war behind the war is the one over how the US should fight in Afghanistan. It is a war between opponents even more bitter in their opposition than is the ISAF and Taliban.

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.

It's Reset Button Time In Afghanistan

President Obama assured all that cared to hear and heed that the change in commanders did not mean a change in strategy in Afghanistan. He went on to animadvert that all hands (including his) were in agreement on goals, strategy and, presumably, operational approaches although "tactics" would be open to change.

Fer sure, Mr President. You might not know it, but that isn't the way things work. Not in the real world of actual soldiers, real insurgents, and if-they-hit-you-you-die bullets. Whether you know it or not, whether you intended it or not, you have hit the reset button in your war in Afghanistan.

To get a grip on this ground truth requires starting with a very basic observation about the nature of successful counterinsurgency in general and what this means for Afghanistan. A primary reality of counterinsurgency is that one cannot kill one's way to victory. Killing people and breaking things plays a role in counterinsurgency, but a very limited one.

The focus of competition between the insurgent and his opponent is is the collective mind of the uncommitted majority of the affected population. Each side seeks to mobilize the support of the uncommitted majority to its side while denying the opponent the opportunity to do the same.

Simultaneously and at a more fundamental level each side--insurgent and counterinsurgent--is seeking to progressively reduce the political will of his opponent while maintaining that of his side. This dual track war means that the side which can maintain its political will while reducing that of his enemy as well as attracting a greater deal of active support from the uncommitted majority than the opponent will succeed.

This twin, interlocking dynamic is seen to have been at work in every insurgency throughout history, particularly the history of the past two or three hundred years. It is at work in Afghanistan today.

Killing people and breaking things plays a role in accomplishing the tasks of undercutting the enemy's political will as well as mobilizing the uncommitted majority at the expense of the adversary. This does not imply that the traditional characteristics of war--killing people and breaking things--is unimportant. Rather, it means that the traditional aspects of war are very important.

The strategic and operational level concepts as well as the tactical approaches which implement the first two on a daily basis must properly define who to kill, how to kill, and when to kill in a way which maximizes the effectiveness of killing in both the undercutting of the enemy's political will and the attracting of the greater percentage of the uncommitted majority. The unique requirements of counterinsurgency call into question the traditional US military algorithm of firepower kills and killing brings victory.

General Stanley McChrystal's understanding of insurgency and the twin, interlocking dynamics which serve to define success or failure prompted him to place the highest value on using US, Afghan, and other allied forces to protect civilians even at the cost of making combat operations more difficult to undertake and complete. His view of the dynamics of successful counterinsurgency also pointed him in the direction of accepting higher friendly casualties if doing such would assure safety for the uncommitted majority.

This understanding is not one easily accepted by conventionally oriented soldiers as well as the civilians who must take the political heat for casualties. The conventional American soldier has been raised in a school which places the highest priority on protecting our troops. The next highest priority is that of killing the maximal number of hostile forces in a minimum amount of time.

The slogan of the conventional soldier, a slogan which is perfectly suited for peer-to-peer wars, is "find, fix, and destroy." That is, use superior technologies of reconnaissance and surveillance to locate the enemy force. Then, employ high volumes of indirect and air delivered fire to fix him in place, to deny him the chance to move. Finally, by superior mobility put enough friendly troops in place to destroy any enemy which survived the fix-in-place stage.

The use of the firepower heavy approach to war proved most counterproductive in Afghanistan (and scarcely less so in Iraq.) General McChrystal came to his job already aware of the limitations of conventional doctrine. Even if he hadn't, the all too obvious rebirth of Taliban as well as the profound hostility felt to "foreign" forces by the uncommitted majority of Afghans would have made it so.

McChrystal replaced the "shoot, move, communicate" so as to "find, fix, and destroy" approach to the war with one which correctly changed the emphasis to protecting the uncommitted civilian population, offering inducements to the soft-core supporters of Taliban, and placing ever increasing direct pressure on the hard core insurgents with the intent of mobilizing support from the uncommitted majority and undercutting the political will of the Talib to continue fighting.

In practice this approach meant the US willingly put aside most of its advantages in indirect and air delivered firepower, put its troops at greater risk of being wounded or killed, and, of necessity, slowed the tempo of combat. Each and everyone of these features violated long standing practices of the US Army (and, to a much lesser extent, the Marine Corps.)

It is not at all surprising that this approach, dubbed "courageous restraint," did not sit well with the more conventionally minded officers and senior NCOs who comprise the majority of the US forces in Afghanistan. It is not surprising either that General David Petraeus has promised to "review" the policy of courageous restraint.

This review will undoubtedly be greeted by hosannas on the part of the conventionally minded men in Afghanistan. It will also be met with sighs of relief by the grunts at the sharp point as no one who occupies that necessary and very uncomfortable place is happy with the notion of placing his one and only skin at risk in order to protect the host civilian population. Then, of course, the legion of hairy-chested politicians, pundits, and TV watching super-strategists who have the bravery of being out of range will cheer a more robust way of fighting the war.

In Afghanistan, the locals have shown their opinion of "courageous restraint" in very real and really beneficial ways. As the incidents of civilian deaths and injuries collateral to US, ISAF, and Afghan National Forces operations have decreased, the flow of actionable intelligence from locals has increased. This has resulted in a steady and steadily accelerating shift in initiative from the insurgents to the counterinsurgents.

Taliban has reacted to the palpable shift in battlefield initiative by resorting to terror tactics which smack of desperation. Taliban has increased its use of indiscriminate IEDs which results in civilian casualties. Taliban has employed assassination of low ranking pro-government tribal leaders and officials. It has even hung an eight year old boy as a spy for the British Army. The net effect of these methods has been the demobilization of Taliban support and its remobilization to the "foreigners" and even the Kabul government.

In short, the courageous restraint concept has resulted in Taliban killing its way to defeat.

Even the thought of change in the McChrystal concept should perturb anyone interested in an ultimate American success in Afghanistan. The fact that General Petraeus would even consider reviewing an approach which is so clearly working is alarming. As a political general, David Petraeus may be more concerned about the mutterings in the ranks about the additional burden placed upon American warriors by the McChrystal understanding of the requirements of successful counterinsurgency. If this is the case, he is worried about the wrong matter.

The fact that General Petraeus was in command in Iraq during the time that the elements placed into play by others took effect gives no reason to believe that he is perceptive enough to see the nature of the great differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, the differences which make Afghanistan the far more difficult venue. Nor should one take undue comfort from General Petreaus having been in overall charge of the process of fabricating the new field manual on counterinsurgency. There is a world of difference between writing an abstract doctrine of theoretically universal application and fighting one, specific war in one, specific human terrain.

The take away is simple to state; hard to practice. General McChrystal developed a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the nature and character of the war in Afghanistan. He developed a strategic and operational concept for waging that one, specific war which showed success from the moment it came out of the box.

Unfortunately, it appears that General Petraeus is all too willing to compromise the success from the moment he accepted the new assignment. Even more unfortunate is the reality that President Obama did not know (or pretended not to know) that a change in command automatically means a change in strategy.

Maybe Some Good News From Af-Pak

General David Patraeus was reported to have made some encouraging observations regarding Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. According to the general, al-Qaeda has suffered losses in the past six to ten months which have forced it to leave all its bases in Afghanistan. Considering the accuracy of General Patraeus' assessments of the state of play in Iraq during the time he was commander in that area of operations, there is reason to accept his comment on Afghanistan as accurate.

As a historian specialising in interventionary operations, the Geek is as predisposed to discount public assessments by high ranking military personnel as he is the statements of presidents and potentates generally. However, there are other indications which independently support the Patraeus position.

One of the most important is the clear dominance of Taliban as both the initiator and recipient of military operations. Even a year ago al-Qaeda was featured equally with Taliban as the actor of insurgency in Afghanistan. No more.

This is not surprising. Al-Qaeda has always been the junior partner in the Afghan war. The majority of the trigger pullers as well as the most effective leadership has been in Taliban. The Taliban, despite outside assistance from Pakistani organs headed by the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been authentically Afghan. While foreign fighters have been killed in confrontations with US and other forces, they represent a distinct and quite small minority of bodies buried and captured.

Removing al-Qaeda bases from Afghanistan is encouraging, but is unimportant in and of itself. The defeat of Taliban as a military reality is far, far more important whether in the context of a purely punitive expedition or in that of leaving behind some semblance of a functioning nation-state.

The US and its partners including the Afghan national government are a bunch of Texas miles away from that goal. And, the forced relocation of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan to the FATA of Pakistan in no way contributes to the possible success of Islamabad against its Islamist jihadist adversary.

Before taking a short dekko at Pakistan, it might be instructive to reflect on the latest "human rights abuse" out of Afghanistan. This latest add-on to the "American war crime" of last Monday may well be a case of very good news hiding in the cloak of the bad.

Nadar Nadery who is described as a member of Afghanistan's human rights commission has hinted that the US employed white phosphorus (WP) in its air strike in Farah province last Monday.

WP (also known in the jargon as Whiskey Peter and Willy Peter) is a chemical added to some artillery and air delivered munitions to provide screening smoke. It may also be used for night illumination fire missions. It is also a fearsome anti-personnel munition. WP was widely used in both World War II and Korea in the anti-personnel role. In Vietnam a cynical saying which was heard on patrol and in the firebases alike was, "Willy Peter make you a believer." Meaning: It made the people down range dead, painfully dead.

While there are powerful, perhaps irrefutable indications that the Israeli Defense Forces used WP improperly during its combat operations in the Gaza Strip, there have been none to the effect that US and other foreign forces have employed it Afghanistan in other than a limited number of screening applications. The reasons for this are simple. The military commanders in the Afghan AO are not inclined to hand the opposition a perfect propaganda weapon. Second, WP is less effective than other, more conventional munitions in the current combat setting.

Neither in the Farah province operation nor in an earlier one in Kapsia province have US forces used WP. If WP was used it is far more likely that it was employed by Taliban. This chemical can be delivered by small caliber mortar shells. Taliban has such. It is used for screening. Taliban, once engaged by US and other forces, is often in need of screening to break contact. Taliban's fire control capacity is less well developed than that of the US and associated forces.

The Doctrine of Inherent Military Probability points directly at Taliban not the US and associated forces as being the user of WP in both alleged incidents. Considering that Taliban, in common with all Islamist jihadist groups, uses civilians as shields, the culpability of the group becomes all but incontestable. Finally, the use of civilians as human sacrifices on the alter of victory sought through propaganda reinforces the case against Taliban to the level of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Should the latest wrinkle on the "American war crimes" theme gain legs it will encourage Taliban to aim its mortars with more intent and deadly effect upon civilians. By doing so the Islamist jihadist hopes to both offset the ever increasing military advantage enjoyed by the US and International Security Assistance Forces as well as stimulate a groundswell of highly vocal disapproval among the chattering classes of Western Europe and the US.

This, of course, is a tactic of desperation. One which recognises that a clear cut military victory is not likely, perhaps not possible. For Islamist jihadists whose cavalier attitude toward civilian life is approaching legendary status, a few human sacrifices for Allah and victory over the infidels and apostates is a very small price to pay. After all, it is so easy to say of those writhing in pain as the WP burns through to the bone, "Allah knows his own."

Taliban in Pakistan will probably be going the human shield, human sacrifice route now that the Pakistani government appears to be serious about defeating its trigger pullers in Swat. Perhaps propelled by the fear of a military coup, the government has authorised both an advance into the Taliban dominated region and the redeployment of forces from the Indian border. Adding to the possibility that the current assault against Taliban is genuine and not a sop to American pressure is the moderate but real chance that the government of Pakistan and the ISI have decided the djinn they let out of the bottle is too dangerous to continue.

Working from the historically validated predicate that ISI pursued with the full agreement of the military to seek strategic depth by putting Taliban into power in Afghanistan, both the ISI and the new civilian government along with the military high command may have decided that there is a better way to achieve the same goal. The better way is the full collaboration between the more or less democratic and ever-so-slightly secular governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Failing an effective rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad, the government of Pakistan faces the possibility of surrendering influence in Kabul to India, which is heavily involved in infrastructure and other projects in Afghanistan. At the same time the current regime in Islamabad is caught in the jaws of military coup and Islamist jihadist takeover with all that entails. The civilian government of Zardari and company has a finely honed sense of self-preservation. Neither a coup nor a Islamist takeover would be desirable.

Given that the Pakistani military is biased toward high intensity war with India and its competence at counterinsurgency is so low as to make the IDF look good at the game, one can only feel sorry for the civilians caught in Swat. While the government is trying (ineptly) to deal with the refugee flow and encourage other civilians to leave the Swat AO, Taliban has mined the roads and is taking other measures to assure they have a plethora of civilian shields and sacrifices.

Taliban has no hope of defeating a determined multi-brigade Pakistani army operations. Rather, it must rely on revulsion in Pakistan and other countries against the civilian butcher's bill to win the campaign for them. The more civilians who die or who live in wretched, under supplied refugee camps, the better are Taliban's chances of coming out on top in the current affray. And, "Allah knows his own."

But, the more Taliban in Pakistan, like its cohorts in Afghanistan, relies on turning civilians into highly visible bullet (and Whiskey Peter) catchers, the closer it is to actually losing. Get a grip on that.

Admiral Fallon Versus General Petraeus

The bitter "sectarian" fight between End-The-War-Now! Democrats and There-Is-No-Substitute-For-Victory Republicans gets all the attention. It is front and center in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere.

There is another struggle in progress resting comfortably off the radar of MSM and the alternative media alike. It is probably--almost certainly--more important than the thunder and smoke in Congress.

The battle lines have been drawn and manned by two senior military commanders. One is George W.'s Man in Baghdad, General David Petraeus. The other is General Petraeus' superior, Admiral William Fallon, the Central Command commander (CINC/CENTCOM).

Admiral Fallon has a long (35 year) record as a man on the way up. He has made enemies along the way (as have all successful senior naval commanders). When he was the commander of Pacific Command, he showed a high degree of independence from the wishes of the neo-con core of the current administration when he promoted a policy of conciliation with the Peoples' Republic of China.

(Truth in blogery requires the Geek to state that his position regarding China was and is a lot closer to that of the neo-cons than to Fallon's.)

Fallon considers Petraeus a brown-nosing huckster for the current administration and has pulled no punches letting the General know it. What Petraeus says regarding the Admiral is less clear.

Now, the nitty-gritty. We need to get a grip on it.

Admiral Fallon wants to cut our force strength in Iraq to one-quarter of its present level by the end of 2009. This is scarcely a precipitous withdrawal. In the Geek's semi-military mind, the Admiral is a little conservative in his timeline. Provided the current indicators of developing Iraqi security force competence continue, the US should be able to take half its combat maneuver battalions out of Iraq by this time next year.

The reason Admiral Fallon wants US forces redeployed is this: He sees greater threats in the region for which he is responsible. In particular Fallon focuses on Pakistan.

The Geek is in tandem with the Admiral. The Islamist ideology may be world wide in distribution. Islamist groups may exist nearly everywhere. Nonetheless, Islamism has several important centers. One is Saudi Arabia. Another is Iran. The third is Pakistan.

At the moment, there is nothing the US can do about Saudi Arabia. At the present, the US would be ill-advised to do anything boisterous regarding Iran. But, Pakistan is a different affair.

If armed Islamism has a heartland, a vital center of command, control, and intelligence, it is located in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier area of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan and conveniently proximate to Iran. Beyond the tribal areas, Pakistan furnishes any number of safe harbors for Islamists.

And, as virtually everyone well knows, Pakistan is on the verge of becoming a collapsed state. The idea of a collapsed, Islamist oriented, nuclear competent Pakistan quite correctly bothers Admiral Fallon. (As noted in a previous post it bothers the Geek as well.)

The CENTCOM chief apparently has a strategic view of potential US operations in the region. His concept puts US forces, including ground troops, in the role of First Responder. Get in fast. Do the heavy lifting as quickly as possible. Get out. Leave behind a combination of non-US stability forces to back the locals.

The Geek took a similar position over ten years ago in lectures at various US and NATO venues. Historically, the US military is good at defeating conventional forces. It is good at destroying discrete high-value targets. It is not good at counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, and similar long duration missions lacking clear phase lines of success.

Beyond that, the long term presence of US forces can be and often has been inherently destabilizing--even when there is good military reason for their presence. (Bear in mind that the presence of US forces and bases in Saudi Arabia during and after Operations Desert Shield/Storm provided most of the early propaganda fuel for bin Laden and al-Qaeda.)

General Petraeus has made it abundantly clear in both public and private that he favors a very long term continuation of a US role on the ground in Iraq. The ostensible justification for this position is that by doing so the security gains in Iraq might be assured. There is merit in this position.

But not at the expense of larger US interests. Not at the expense of mounting a successful Second Cold War. Not at the expense of lacking the means to intervene should the crash come in Pakistan.

General Petraeus (in common with many in the current administration) fails to acknowledge that the struggle in which the US now finds itself is not with guerrillas and terrorists in Iraq. It is not with terrorism per se. The burden is heavier than a mere repairing of the damage we have wrought in Iraq. The road is much longer than any in the current administration thought when they so blithely believed as Donald Rumfield put it,"shock and awe," would turn Afghanistan and Iraq into models of democracy, pluralism and free enterprise.

Admiral Fallon has a far more realistic view. He understands both the limits of the US military in numbers, resources, and public support. He sees Pakistan for what it is--a high potential candidate for intervention.

The Admiral is independent in his thinking. That's good. It's what We the People pay senior commanders to be. He calls matters as he sees them to the best of his knowledge and belief regardless of the effect on his career. That is very good. Too many senior commanders, as has been shown by the Iraq mess, put career ahead of the national interest.

Admiral William Fallon may have made enemies by the shipload on his trip up the chain of command. But, he's made another supporter and admirer by his stance on Iraq.

The Geek.