Given the number of “I agree” clicks that Col. Lang is getting, I’m clearly fighting a losing battle here, but I’ll keep trying:

Surely some insurgencies/revolutions/whatevers are bad things, either for the people of the country involved or for U.S. interests or for both. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge come to mind. So does the Iranian Revolution of 1979, at least once it got hijacked by Ayatollah Khomeini’s religious extremists. So do the Taliban today in Afghanistan and the narco-terrorists in Colombia and Mexico. As Col. Lang implies, we were probably on the wrong side in Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh was originally interested in U.S. support, as I recall, and more of a Vietnamese nationalist than a Communist – but there are always going to be some places where both morality and strategy agree that we should oppose revolutionaries, and sometimes that will require inserting U.S. forces.

I’m not particularly thrilled at the prospect, but our military needs to be prepared for it. We invest billions in preparing for a global thermonuclear war and for a trans-Pacific clash with China, after all, and those are both more unlikely and more painful possibilities than another Afghanistan-style intervention, let alone than the relatively light advisor presence we had in the revolutions in Latin America. Counterinsurgency is another capability we need, and another area where it’s deeply unwise to unilaterally disarm.

– Sydney Freedberg

www.LearningFromVeterans.com

Flashback to 2009, the US military requested enough troops to undertake serious COIN operations in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. The president gave them half of what they need so the military did half the job...they drove the Taliban out of the south. Now is the time to do the other half and the president gutted the "surge" force. That means it will take longer. They'll be more casualties. They may fail...and then Obama will pull out anyway grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

Many suspect this all because unemployment is way above the 7.2 percent threshold the president needs to be reelected. If the economy was going well, the president would let the war go well...but that is not what happened.

So the president is sacrificing our security instead. Even suggesting he'll use the money "saved" from the Afghanistan campaign for more stimulus spending here at home.

So we will get more deficit spending, sacrifice the progress in Afghanistan (and like the rest of the stimulus "package") probably not create any real private sector jobs...but we will help the president get reelected.

What a deal.

"insurgencies that threaten U.S. interests are going to keep occurring around the world for decades to come." Why? Insurgencies are other people's revolutions. Why should we insist that they will threaten US interests? Did the "insurgencies" that swept Latin America in the '60s really threaten US interests or did we insist on making the insurgents our enemies. I helped suppress a number of these revolutions as part of the "Alliance for Progress" effort. Was this really wise, or should we have embraced these revolutions against the latifundista class? Were we wise to support French re-occupation of Indochina after WW2? Are we really so much the status quo country that we instinctively want to support stasis? Mr. Jefferson said that revolution was a good thing. COIN is dimly understood today. It is, in fact, a counter-revolutionary doctrine, a doctrine for Tories.

Simply put, there is no denying that in a variety of respects Afghanistan is still a mess--in terms of overall security, governance, the deficit of popular loyalty toward central authority, and resentment toward the NATO presence. In this situation, no so-called "strategy" geared to rather sweeping short-term goals is likely to succeed. Indeed, even a more persistent NATO approach, albeit unlikely, spanning a somewhat longer timeframe aimed at acceptable stability might be somewhat doubtful.

The endemic dysfunction and corruption characteristic of national government under Karzai & Co. represents a serious threat to stability regardless of military developments on the ground. And compared with, say, Iraq, governance across Afghanistan is hindered by the absence of a tradition of more settled engagement often in the setting of cities and larger towns plus myriad difficulties inherent in more rugged terrain. Making matters still worse is the low probability that adequate and truly nationally effective army and police organizations can be put in place anytime soon. In Iraq, the effort to produce loyal and properly functioning national police cadres has been plagued by setbacks, despite far higher levels of literacy and familiarity with organized structures. And although the Iraq effort in that respect was hobbled by ethno-sectarian differences as well as problems related to tribes, by comparison ethno-sectarian and tribal complications in Afghanistan appear even more challenging. And despite being dogged by corruption, crime, sabotage and aging infrustructure, Iraq's oil provides a flow of revenue far exceeding that available to what passes for a government in Kabul.

Then there is the daunting task of achieving a realistic dialogue and reconciliation with the various tendencies comprising the Taleban and other elements opposing Kabul and the NATO mission to provide a basis for a measure of more durable stability. Whether this is possible at all is an unknown. In Iraq, although insurgents were not yet being defeated by Coalition forces, as early as 2004 they made serious approaches to US forces in search of a deal with which to end hostilities because their heavily built-up communities were being damaged so heavily by Coalition firepower and because of al-Qaeda in Iraq's abuses in those same communities. Overall, elements in Afghanistan still in the field against NATO and Kabul also have not been thoroughly defeated. Nonetheless, their equities in terms of property are valued somewhat less, the terrain within which they operate far larger and more forbidding, a ready sanctuary exists across an international border, and their dissatisfaction with Muslim extremist behavior not as significant. Moreover, they appear to view the government in Kabul with even greater disdain and suspicion than did Iraq's largely Sunni Arab insurgents with respect to successive Iraqi governments in Baghdad.

And, perhaps most tellingly, the Taleban and other anti-government forces certainly are not unaware that time appears to be increasingly on their side. They too know of the compelling popular and fiscal pressures on the US administration to roll back its presence in Afghanistan. The relevance of the better part of two additional fighting seasons for NATO forces to accomplish considerable additional progress may be of doubtful value over the long term. And even in the short term, the overall strength of the NATO and government position in areas recently fought over in the south remains somewhat iffy, let alone vast areas of the east that still defy both government authority and have yet to witness truly substantial NATO military encroachment.

If the real "strategy" of a US administration reluctant to become far more deeply commited militarily to the mission in Afghanistan early on is to lend credibly to its promises since then to scale back in the leadup to the 2012 US elections without suffering significant consequences on the ground in that limited timeframe, it is quite possible that somewhat narrow plan would work out reasonably well. Over the long haul, however, the overall equities in play on the ground do not look nearly so promising for even a modicum of anything a neutral observer could deem NATO "success" in Afghanistan given the more dramatic planned reductions in the US military presence that lie ahead.

Counterinsurgency is here to stay. It’s something the U.S. military will have to keep doing around the world for decades to come, because insurgencies that threaten U.S. interests are going to keep occurring around the world for decades to come. I sincerely hope we’ll never again have to do something on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq, where we provide essentially all the troops required for years on end while we try to build local security forces from scratch – it is much more cost-effective in both blood and treasure for the U.S. to provide advisors and high-tech support to indigenous light infantry – but there’s no way to guarantee that won’t happen, so the Defense Department had better be ready. Yes, land wars in Asia are things to avoid, but sometimes the alternative to intervention is something worse.

I certainly understand the exhaustion with counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, but most of that exhaustion is with the Afghan war in general, not with the COIN strategy specifically, which we’ve only been undertaking in a serious way since the current surge began in 2009.

That said, “COIN” had become a fad and that some degree of backlash is overdue. Col. Lang is right that we are not going to win enough “hearts and minds” to fully stabilize Afghanistan any time soon, let alone build a unified, centralized nation-state. (Given the current political deadlock and rising violence in Iraq, we can’t actually be sure COIN has succeeded there, either). But I agree with Col. Collins that we do seem on track to stabilizing Afghanistan enough that its own ever-strengthening security forces can provide the manpower and let the U.S. ease back into the advise-and-support role. To use an Imperial Roman analogy, as Col. Lang is fond of doing, the barbarians are beaten back enough that the legions can (mostly) return to base and leave the auxiliaries to hold the line.

But our legions are going to have to march out against other barbarians in other places in the future. Imagining that the military can simply refocus on conventional warfare and forget counterinsurgency, again, as it did after Vietnam, is a disastrous mistake. We’ve fought more “small wars” against irregulars than “big wars” again nation-states in our history, and that tilt is only going to get steeper in the future. We do need to start training again on some of the big-war skills we’ve neglected for years – large-scale maneuver, artillery barrages, rapid deployment – but these abilities should complement our counterinsurgency skills. Regular armies have been acting more like guerrillas, and guerrillas more like regulars, ever since World War I, and the distinction is only going to blur further in the future. (This is my take on the currently trendy “hybrid war” theory). In the future, we’re not only going to have to be able to do either counterinsurgency or conventional war: We’re going to have to be able to do both at once.

– Sydney Freedberg

http://LearningFromVeterans.com

In doing what? In pacifying Afghanistan so that a sovereign more or less consoliated central government rules over this buffer state created by the Russian empire and the Raj to separate their forces? How many 'nations" are there within the borders of the country of Afghanistan? I speak here of ethno-linguistic nations. Pushtuns, Tajiks, Turkmen, Hazara, Uzbeks, Baluch, Persians, Arabs, Kirghiz, these are not "tribes," or "factions." These are different peoples with often mutually unintelligible languages who have warred or co-existed in what we call Afghanistan for millennia. COIN was supposed to bring them all together in brotherly solidarity through good works and the wonderful "graft" derived from foreign aid? There is no "Afghan People," only Afghan Peoples.

This was always a fool's errand, sold by the "people of the book," in this case the COIN manual. Dr. Brenner calls the priestly class of the NEOCOIN religion," the deluders," as opposed to "the deluded." The latter are to be found among the policy making crew and the soldiers who have been lured into conversion to this faith as an anodyne for present American security problems. This "religion" is now so firmly established in the US Army and US Marines that its prevalence reminds of the widespread ancient cult of Mithra as the faith of the Roman Army.

Has COIN "worked" in Afghanistan? The troops in Helmand and Kandahar have cleared large zones of overt Taliban control. Will that removal of the Taliban survive our departure? Nobody seems to think it will unless we stay at least another two or three years.

What does Hamid karzai of this? He was asked by Zakariya on Sunday if the security situation is worse or better than a couple of years ago. He said that it was worse.

"Will withdrawing 10,000 troops by the end of the year give the military enough time to accomplish its goals during the spring fighting season?" The military is not supposed to have "goals" other than those established by the civilian, elected governmet of the United States. I don't know what country is thought of in this question but in the US the president is the commander in chief, not the generals.

It seems quite evident that the COIN strategy died last week when Obama said that "the time has come to do nation building here at home."

We are going to adopt a much cheaper CT strategy in Afghanstan and the rest of the world. The renewed COIN "crusade" is dead. The question of the week is irrelevant. pl

The President's troop withdrawal was not daring, but prudent. It was more aggressive than Mullen and Petraeus (and Joe Collins) desired, but it still leaves at the end of 2012 twice the number of US troops in country than when Obama became President. The President's decision makes military, economic, and political sense.

Militarily, the surge is succeeding, not only in breaking enemy formations and leadership cohorts, but more importantly, in improving afghan army and police units. The Afghan Natl Secty Forces (ANSF) now number 300,000 and are building to 352K. This is ten times the number of hardcore Taliban. We now can afford to send home some of our troops. As of this month, the ANSF will assume security lead in 7 geographic areas that contain about a quarter of Afghanistan's population. The military risk associated with the scheduled pullout is prudent, and reversible if there are unforseen setbacks.

Economically, the down sizing returns money to the Treasury and begins to scale our 110 billion dollar (2011) Afghan commitment to more realistic proportions. If this down-sizing is followed to 2014, the next Administration --- after all US and Allied combat troops are withdrawn --- can reduce its financial obligation to a fifth (or less) of what we are spending today. Reconciliation or even wholesale reintegration of Taliban fighters could lower that even further.

Politically, the President deftly outflanked his Republican opponents and let the people know that the era of large-scale, expeditionary force counterinsurgency is coming to a close. Another message to the electorate: if they reelect him, they can watch the curtain come down on both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars. This result will be withdrawal (if not peace) with honor in both wars, and Usama bin Laden in the bag as well. The great question marks --- the quality of Afghan governance and Pakistani policy --- remain, but there is 3.5 years between now and the final withdrawal of all combat troops in 2014, which should also be the year that Hamid Karzai steps down from the Presidency. This will not be the last big decision an American president makes about Afghanistan.

To read more, see my article, tentatively entitled "On the eve of Afghanization," in the next (early July) Armed Forces Journal.

Three questions should be asked in the wake of President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan last night. What does it means for the United States’ strategy there – and in Pakistan? Does it represent a qualitative change in official American thinking about its stakes in the region and how figures in the wider ‘war on terror?’ What influences shaped the approach Obama outlined?

Here is a preliminary, and sketchy, attempt to answer them. First, Washington’s goals remain the same. That means a vigorous campaign against the al-Qaeda remnants on both sides of the Durand Line, an unrelenting war of attrition against the Taliban (its leadership above all), a campaign of bolstering anti-Taliban political forces to ensure that they will be minor players in the country’s future, and to secure from a straying Mr. Karzai agreement to accept large American military bases for the foreseeable future. Whatever the odds on achieving these ambitious objectives may have been, they are somewhat lowered by a withdrawal schedule mildly more accelerated than general Petraeus and Secretary gates wanted. Still, the United States will keep there for at least a year and a half a force bigger than the one it had in 2009. As for Pakistan, Obama will continue the relentless, and futile, effort to dictate to the Islamabad leadership an aggressive strategy against all hostile elements. Hence, the risk of a rupture and/or strife within Pakistan will grow.

This assessment points to an answer for the second question. Mr. Obama’s worldview has not undergone any modification. For all the rhetoric, he still is devoted to creating conditions of zero threat to American security emanating from the region. Too, he has not questioned the goal of a dominant American military presence stretching from the Persian Gulf deep into Central Asia. Perhaps most important, there is no sign of a readiness to engage with other powers to design and implement a broad security system that takes into account the interests and outlook of Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia and China. None of those states will be happy about this. Mr. Obama has no strong foreign policy convictions. But such as they are, they point to following the path first staked out in 2001.

Finally, how do we explain the White House’s readiness commit to a schedule of force reductions that runs against the grain of Petraeus/Gates/Panetta? We have to look at American domestic politics to understand the dynamic within the administration that led to this outcome. Obama’s preoccupation is getting himself reelected. All else pales into relative insignificance. His in-house advisers, Chief of State William Daley and National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, pushes very hard to reinforce the President’s already strong predisposition to put politics above foreign commitments and goals. The rhetoric about the need to concentrate on domestic needs was similarly inspired. As public support for leaving Afghanistan grows, and as the country’s economic problems fester, it became imperative to cast Afghanistan in this light.

There is reason to believe, nonetheless, that Obama hopes to have it both ways, i.e. a politically rewarding reformulation of America’s position in AfPak and a spinable measure of success in which, at least, will prevent an embarrassing unraveling.