One More Hostage And Barricade Day

Here is the situation. A group of criminal suspects are located in a private residence. Women and children are present. When cops arrive they are taken under fire from inside the house.

Here are the choices. Call in a police helicopter with orders to bomb the house. Surround the place, and, if negotiations fail, use minimum necessary force to subdue and capture the suspects.

The advantages of the first choice are these: Low risk of friendly casualties. Saves time.

Disadvantage of first choice: High risk of killing innocent parties.

The advantage of the second option is simply the risk of innocent casualties is minimized.

The disadvantage of the second option is the high probability of police being killed or wounded.

Now for the second scenario. Actionable intelligence is developed indicating that a Taliban mid-level commander and multiple trigger-pullers are present in a compound along with multiple civilian women, children, and non-combatant men.

The choices are the same as in the first hypothetical situation: airstrike or ground assault using minimum force following an attempt at negotiating the surrender of the insurgents.

The advantages and disadvantages of each choice are identical with those outlined in the first situation. The only significant difference--and it is highly significant--is the impact of collateral non-combatant casualties on the larger Afghan public, particularly the uncommitted majority.

There has been only one use of the air power option by a local police force during a hostage and barricade situation in recent American history. That occasion was the use of a state police helicopter delivered homemade bomb on a house in the Move compound during a siege conducted by the Philadelphia police during the days of Rizzo. A number of women and children were injured or killed as a result of the bombing and consequent fire.

In Waco, Texas, the FBI used a heavy ground assault to end the long siege of the Branch Davidian compound. While many, if not all of the deaths of women and children which came in the wake of the breeching vehicle's attack are attributable to fires set by the religious fanatics in the compound, the attack was resoundingly criticized by many Americans as was the bombing of the Move compound in Philadelphia. The Waco attack was also a contributory factor in later terrorist events most importantly the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City.

In both cases, Philadelphia and Waco, the use of means which caused either directly or indirectly the loss of "non-combatant" lives were negative. In Afghanistan the death or wounding of non-combatants as a collateral to US and ISAF operations is not just negative. This type of death, even if clearly inadvertent, obviously unintended is a defeat.

The often decried McChrystal doctrine of "courageous restraint" was predicated upon a sound understanding that every non-combatant death, every non-combatant injury constituted a victory for Taliban or the other insurgent groups. It was also based upon the historically well rooted view that counterinsurgency is more a species of police action than it is a variety of war.

To men at the sharp point "courageous restraint" smacked of a belief that the life and skin of the American (or British or other ISAF) infantryman was of less value than the lives and skins of the Afghan civilians who, after all, may be civilians now but Taliban fighters later in the day. It is not a surprise that commanders came to see matters in the same way since they were responsible for the lives of those under their command.

The bitter reality as the Geek knows from too much personal acquaintance, the effective counter insurgent, the "winning" counter insurgent must value the lives and skins of the uncommitted majority, the non-combatants, the women and children more highly than he does his own--if he wants success to come his way. That means quite simply that "courageous restraint" may be highly unpleasant to those called upon to show it, but it is the best, cheapest, most certain way to secure the support, assistance and loyalty of the previously uncommitted majority.

And, (here is the nitty-gritty) without the increasing support, assistance and loyalty of the previously uncommitted majority there can be no success. There can be only failure. Defeat.

It is absolutely critical that the onus for killing civilians, non-combatants, particularly women and children fall upon the insurgents. And, only the insurgents.

Indeed one way the counterinsurgent knows he is winning is when the insurgent starts killing women and children, starts slaughtering civilians of the uncommitted majority as a matter of policy and not accident. Recently Mullah Omar, the jefe grande and spiritual father of Taliban reversed the course he set last year and ordered his troops to target civilians, particularly women. So far this year the insurgents have been responsible for the majority of non-combatant fatalities in Afghanistan thus continuing the pattern established last year. Mullah Omar's new order assures the number of civilian corpses will grow, fast.

This switch in Taliban policy makes the necessity of staying with "courageous restraint" all the more critical. If the McChrystal doctrine is abandoned with the same lack of thinking which characterized the general's sacking, it will lessen the effects of Omar's new way of war.

Keeping "courageous restraint" as the primary operational doctrine will go a very long way to mobilizing the uncommitted majority to the US/ISAF/Afghan government side. Omar's kill-our-way-to-victory gambit will turn the uncommitted majority against Taliban with the certainty of the moon governing the tides.

In the short run keeping "courageous restraint" in place will mean a high probability of more dead and maimed Americans. In the longer run it will mean fewer deaths, fewer injuries and a high likelihood of success before the magic date of 2014 or even the Obama pious hope date of mid-2011.

Abandoning "courageous restraint" particularly in light of the Omar Directive will mean less fear and fewer deaths in the short term. And, in the longer term, it will mean failure. Defeat.

Karzai Is Out For Himself--What A Shock!

There is a piece in the NYT which is disquieting but not at all surprising. Quoting the recently resigned or fired director of Afghan intelligence as well as a passel of unnamed "senior" sources privy to Karzai's thoughts, words, and action, the paper concluded that the Afghan president has lost faith in the US/NATO capacity to defeat Taliban and is off to make a separate peace behind the collective backs of the West.

Despite the introduction of increased forces and the new approach of General Stanley McChrystal, the Afghan president has convinced himself that the Westerners will lose to the Pakistan supported Afghan Taliban. The real deal is, of course, that Karzai is still hacked off from the accusations of vote fraud in last year's election and the high-handed hectoring he received from both President Obama in person and from assorted US civilian personnel.

Karzai is a highly impossible person with whom to deal. He is personally parsimonious with honesty. His relatives are even more afflicted with this feature. Karzai has a most prickly sense of honor and is more easily dissed than the most thin skinned homey in the hood. On top of that, he is tribal to the max, distrustful of other tribals in the extreme, and fiercely xenophobic. All this means Karzai is a good Afghan politician.

It is possible that the dark mutterings of a separate peace are being made and marketed with premeditation as a way of scaring more bucks from the US. And, one must never be ready to overlook the strong tendency of both the NYT and the WaPo to scent American defeat in either Iraq or Afghanistan whenever possible. Yet, there are good reasons for Karzai to cut a deal with Taliban in addition to simply staying alive and in power.

It is in his best interests as well as those of his relatives and tribe to cut the best possible deal with Taliban before the Westerners do more "damage" to the traditional order of affairs in Afghanistan. The slow motion, low friendly casualty approach to Marja and, yet to come, Kandahar does threaten the continuation of Afghan business as usual. It threatens the highly profitable opium trade. It threatens the tight web of corruption and favoritism which cements tribes and creates alliances between tribes.

Worse, as the Americans, British, and others expand their influence, it emboldens the local government types to bitch and moan with great justice regarding the yawning deficiencies in Karzai's central regime. The locals, the elders of the villages, districts, and provinces want to practice self-organization. Karzai and the rest of his Kabul crowd want centralization uber alles.

As long as Taliban controlled Helmand and other disputed territories, the locals had to keep their mouths closed. Now, with American and other foreign troops present and pushing Taliban hard as well as developing the notion of an Afghan national force, the locals are free to talk and the foreign correspondents are there to hear and record. Mr Karzai is not a happy camper with this sort of development.

At the same time we in the West have to keep in mind that Afghanistan under Karzai is not much more "liberal" and not a whit more "pluralistic" or "secular" than it was under the Taliban. The notion that the US or the ISAF or the UN could create a simulacrum of a modern, Western nation state was an exercise in self-delusion which boggles the imagination.

Afghanistan is and will remain a reactionary bastion of tribalism coupled with Islam--a religion which is little noted for its advanced, progressive, and expansive ideology. The place will remain mired in corruption, favoritism, feuds, and the other features of Afghan culture which assure it is not a candidate to join the League of Civilized States at any time soon.

What matters to the national and security interests of the US and others of the ISAF is that the government of Afghanistan--present and future--understand that any future harboring of bad actors such as al-Qaeda and Taliban will bring future boots on the ground. The Bush/Cheney crew had their chance to squash the jihadists and blew it. Now, McChrystal has a much harder task in doing the same--and very little time to do it.

Karzai's attitude does nothing to make McChrystal's job easier. But, provided the troops on the ground are allowed to get on with the job which, from all basic indicators, they are doing well, there is a very good chance that al-Qaeda and Taliban will be militarily defeated on the ground of Afghanistan. Of course, this means they will regroup across the border in Pakistan as well as bide time to do a deal with Karzai which will bring them back to Afghanistan.

As long as the Islamist goons of Taliban focus their free exercise of religion on such matters as keeping women in garbage bags and cutting the heads off of thought criminals along with the odd lopping off of thieves' hands, no worries, mate. Whatever happens in Afghanistan no matter how Medieval and barbaric, stays in Afghanistan. Only when the primitives of Islam decide to leave their stone huts and mountain fastnesses in order to hurt the Great Satan, do we need to be concerned.

Should the primitives of Islam once more seek to hurt Americans or others of a civilized country, then we will have to go back and do what should have been done by the rhetorically muscular but reality challenged Bush/Cheney/Rumfeld mob--go in, break things, and kill people until the survivors rue war for generations to come.

That's right, boyo, treat primitives like primitives. It may be unfashionable to think about let alone write about, but history shows time after (literally) bloody time that the concept has one thing going for it--it works.

McChrystal Gets Blunt--Very Blunt

General Stanley McChrystal has a reputation for telling it like it is to the best of his knowledge and belief. He shows how he developed that rep in an interview published in the WSJ.

(The Truth In Blogging Act requires the Geek to note that the Pentagon has taken the position that the WSJ misinterpreted the General's remarks. It prefers the version attributed to McChrystal in USA Today in which he says it matters not if the US is winning, losing or stalemated, but "Taliban has the initiative which we are trying to reverse." In war, the side having the initiative is the side which is winning.)

Right now, the general avers, Taliban is winning. It has the initiative. The momentum. It has moved out of the traditional strongholds in southern Afghanistan to carry the war to formerly quiet areas in the country's north and east. In these assessments, General McChrystal is correct.

In one area he is wrong. The general insists that Taliban has forced a change in strategy and tactics upon the US and other International Security Assistance Force members. While it is true that the US and its allies have changed their approach to fighting and defeating Taliban, the change was not so much forced upon us by Taliban as by the belated recognition that the war-on-the-cheap method favored by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld had handed Taliban the opportunity first to recover and next to go on the effective offensive.

There is no more destructive a notion than that of fighting a counterinsurgency campaign without sufficient strength on the ground. No matter how much technology may enhance the counter-insurgent's capacity to collect information, develop intelligence, move forces quickly, and coordinate the efforts of widely dispersed small units, success demands a large number of boots on the ground. The more boots, of course, the greater is the likelihood of more casualties.

General McChrystal does not minimise the brutal reality that US and other friendly casualties will continue to be high in the months to come. The necessity of wresting and maintaining the initiative from Taliban requires that risks be run and losses accepted. McChrystal's correct emphasis upon our troops interposing themselves between the trigger pullers and suicide bombers of Taliban on the one hand and the civilian population on the other also assures our loss rate will be high.

The fact remains that even more US and allied combat forces are needed in Afghanistan if we are going to achieve even the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not-losing." To be certain that there will be no chance for Taliban or al-Qaeda or any other Islamist jihadist group claiming to have defeated the Americans and their allies militarily regardless of what happens eventually in Afghanistan is and must remain the minimum goal.

Right now, even considering the 21,000 additional troops approved by the Obama administration, there will not be enough combat and support forces in theater to assure the gaining of even the minimum goal. National Security Advisor and former general, James Jones, strongly implied that in the Sunday talk show circuit. While he carefully hedged his statement by noting that further deployments depended on a number of imponderables including the success or failure of Pakistani efforts in the FATA, Jones made it clear that the administration was not averse to sending more troops to Afghanistan.

The highly respected defense intellectual, Anthony Cordesman, no doubt would approve. Cordesman, who is, among other things, an advisor to NATO on Afghanistan, argues in the Times of London that the US and its allies must dispatch anywhere from three to nine combat brigades above the currently authorized level. Cordesman also maintains that the Afghan National Security Force must be nearly doubled from the currently envisioned levels of 134,000 for the army and 82,000 for the constabulary.

It might be noted that Cordesman's numbers are still lower from the obviously quite theoretical figure given by the Director of National Intelligence Admiral, Dennis Blair, to the Senate Intelligence Committee last February. It also deserves mention that the increase in the Afghan National Force called for by Cordesman would require a substantial ramp up in the number of trainers provided by the US and its partners.

Most importantly, the military options in and of themselves will not win the war in Afghanistan in any meaningful way. All that can be accomplished by the military is the achievement of the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not-losing." Ultimately, this is what the widely criticised "surge" did. The additional boots on the ground--and bodies in bags--forestalled any possibility of the US being defeated in the field by the assorted insurgent groups.

Victory in an interventionary operation is a far more elusive critter. First, and most basic, the definition of "victory" is inherently subjective. Obviously, victory in the eyes of the locals may--probably will--mean something quite different from victory as seen from Washington. When the shooting stops, both the former insurgents and the former indigenous counter insurgents have to live together. This means power-sharing with the one time counter insurgents having operational dominance perhaps but not anything resembling total authority.

This means the deals, compromises, and practical details of inventing political and social stability may not meet with the approval of either the US government or We the People. At nightfall both may wonder what we made the sacrifices for. What was the use of spending lives and treasure for the benefit of a lot of ingrates?

We best get a grip on the fact that the most we can hope for from the use of military force in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, or in some future war against the Islamist jihadists, is simply "not-losing" and denying a safe haven to the hostile forces of the Islamists and their armed component, the jihadists. We cannot--and should not try--to plant American values, institutions, norms, structures, and practices at bayonet point. It simply cannot be done.

"Nation building" is done by those most personally and directly involved. This means, quite self-evidently, the people who live there. And, in particular, those who are the most politically engaged. The most politically engaged come from two camps--the government and its supporters and the insurgents. These two antipodal groups ultimately will have to make the peace, build the nation, live together in whatever degree of harmony or rivalry organically emerges once the active hostilities have stopped.

General McChrystal and Anthony Cordesman are experienced and realistic enough to recognize and accept this fact. Now all that can be hoped is that the agenda driven Obama administration and its ideological soulmates in Congress as well as We the People can equal this degree of realism.

Not likely, to be sure. But, still one can hope, because the alternative is so much worse.