From the WSJ:

After watching the U.S. try and fail for years to put down insurgencies in both countries, Gen. McChrystal said he believes that to win in Afghanistan, “You’re going to have to convince people, not kill them.

“Since 9/11, I have watched as America tried to first put out this fire with a hammer, and it doesn’t work,” he said last week at his home at Fort McNair in Washington. “Decapitation strategies don’t work.”

In the interview, Gen. McChrystal noted he’s unsure whether the planned troop levels for the job he envisions will be adequate — despite the Obama administration’s commitment to raise the U.S. presence to 68,000 by year’s end, to go along with 35,000 allied forces. Iraq surge commanders had more than 170,000 U.S. forces.

“I know that I want it to be an effective traditional or classic counterinsurgency campaign by getting people down in among the population,” the general said. “I know that’s easier said than done with a limited-sized force.”

And thus do we have in four short paragraphs some revealing and even some troubling information.  When General McChrystal says that “decapitation strategies don’t work,” if he means that the high value target campaign is a failure, The Captain’s Journal most heartily agrees.  It has always been, it forever will be.  We have spoken against it for months and even years.  The design of the campaign should be to destroy the insurgency from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Hopefully McChrystal doesn’t mean that he wishes to convince the mid- or high-level Taliban commanders to join with the government.  In fact, we are heartened to hear that he is no big fan of the reconciliation program.  But what does he think that the balance of the forces have been doing while as a SOF commander he has targeted, captured and killed some HVT?  Does he believe that they have been engaged in only the softer side of counterinsurgency?

Surely he must know that both kinetics and population engagement have been included in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and continue to be?  Surely he knows this, doesn’t he?  Doesn’t he know that the Marines killed 400 Taliban in Helmand?  What does he mean when he says that we can’t kill people, we must convince them?  Surely he knows that there are irreconcilables that must be killed, and that his SOF cannot be engaged in doing this everywhere, all of the time?  His SOF must be attached to infantry units, and they must all be engaged in all aspects of counterinsurgency, everywhere, all of the time, including killing and road construction.  Right?

And finally he puts his finger on the root problem.  Doing this with a “limited-sized force.”  So when will he inform the administration that he needs more troops?  Sooner (preferably) or later?

Friend of The Captain’s Journal Colonel Gian Gentile is well known for his arguments that the traditional warfighting skills should not be allowed to atrophy.  He strikes back at those who simplistically claim that this means turning the clock back a quarter century or more.

Arguing for rebuilding the Army’s capacity for conventional operations does not mean taking the Service back to 1986 in order to recreate the old Soviet Union so we can prepare to fight World War II all over again in the Fulda Gap. Such accusations have become the standard—and wrongheaded—critique that purveyors of counterinsurgency dogma like to throw at anybody who argues for a renewed focus on conventional capabilities. The Army does need to transform from its antiquated Cold War structure toward one that can deal with the security challenges of the new millennium and one focused primarily on fighting as its core competency (italics mine).

U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Conway apparently agrees, at least as it pertains to skills he sees being at risk to atrophy.

The Marine Corps hopes to give Marines 14 months at home after deployments by mid-2010, Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said Thursday.

Currently, Marines spend seven months deployed and seven months home, but that could change now that the Corps has grown to 202,000 ahead of schedule, and with almost all Marines expected to leave Iraq next spring, Conway said.

“That’s going to be very helpful, we think, for our families,” he said. “We think that young Marines who maybe haven’t had a chance to meet someone are going to be afforded that opportunity.”

Marines will also use that extra time to train for amphibious landings and to fight conventional wars, two types of skill-sets that have deteriorated as the Corps has focused on counterinsurgency, he said.

“We believe very strongly in this capacity of the Marine Air Ground Task Force,” Conway said. Its core competency is maneuvering under its own fires and rolling up on an enemy just as the smoke lifts. We used to do 10 of those [exercises] a year at Twentynine Palms. Today we do none.”

The importance of Marines getting back to their traditional warfighting skills is underscored by current tensions on the Korean peninsula, he said.

If a conflict broke out, Marines would likely be called upon to launch amphibious operations, he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates implied in April that amphibious landings might be a thing of the past, noting that the Corps’ last major landing was in 1950.

Asked about Gates’ comments later that month, Conway said the Corps had launched amphibious operations since then, most notably when Marines helped to evacuate U.S. citizens from Lebanon in 2006.

Conway quickly added Thursday that the Corps would be able to do the job eventually.

“But I’m simply arguing we can do it better when we’re trained to it, and that’s the value of this 1:2 deployment to dwell: to give us the opportunity to give those young Marines more time with the families and more time to, again, relax at home, but also to get on these training fields and get back some of these core competencies that have withered over time,” he said.

Analysis & Commentary

It’s very difficult to imagine a near-peer or even a nuclear-armed state (whether near-peer or not) settling for massive human casualties in a conventional war without invoking the nuclear option (which is not quite the same thing as saying that it’s hard to imagine a conventional campaign in the future).  Contrary to what many think, the best use for nuclear weapons is not using them – it is in creating a situation in which they don’t have to be used.

There is also no question that while counterinsurgency involves the application of soft power, it also includes quite conventional warfighting skills at times (as these two videos show).  We have discussed the Taliban tactic of massing troops against smaller units of U.S. forces, up to and including half-Battalion size engagements.  The lessons learned from one such engagement with a Marine Force Recon company was to remember the tactics taught in School of Infantry, because they will be used in such fights.

Involvement in counterinsurgency campaigns has brought U.S. forces to the point of being the most combat experienced fighters on earth, contrary to the example of the appalling performance turned in by the Russian troops against the Georgian Army (an Army, by the way, which had come back from Iraq with recent experience).

It is also very difficult to imagine that the Marine Corps will ever launch another large scale amphibious assault involving high numbers of casualties.  Other ways will be found – and should be found – leading us to recommend replacement of the EFV and the notion of sea-based assault with more air power and delivery aboard Amphibious Assault Docks.

Either way, talk of amphibious assaults clouds the main point, and it is one on which both Colonel Gentile and the Commandant have settled.  We must not let our warfighting skills atrophy.  With the Commandant, The Captain’s Journal also believes very strongly in the concept of the Air Ground Task Force, as well as teaching all Marines to perform squad rushes and other conventional tactics as well as the room clearing and constabulary operations more focused on counterinsurgency.

Quite obviously, if the Marines are not performing these field exercies and maneuvers, then it’s high time to get back to them.  This is equally true for the Army.  One need not posit the near-peer conflict in order to see the usefulness of warfighting skills if these very tactics are being used in the counterinsurgency campaigns in which we are now engaged.

Rich Lowry with National Review is encouraged at the signs of tribal uprising against the Pakistan Taliban.  The Captain’s Journal is far less encouraged.  We have pointed out that Baitullah Mehsud specifically targeted tribal elders in his rise to power, killing some 600 elders after they spoke out against him.  Mehsud has globalist intentions, and now the distinction between al Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban has been all but erased.  The Taliban fighters shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!”

Philip Smucker recently observed that al Qaeda has essentially chosen Baitullah as their front man in Pakistan, and further observed that:

Most Afghanistan-Pakistan insurgent groups, led by Mahsud and Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban, have not officially adopted the “al-Qaeda” brand name, but they have essentially sworn their allegiance to bin Laden, say leading experts on the terror network.  They claim that al-Qaeda has learned from the mistake of going into business under its own name in Iraq and it prefers, instead, to remain behind the scenes, protected by local gunmen on the one hand, but capable of influencing the fight against US and foreign “infidels” in South Asia on the other hand.

This alliance knows no borders, and hence it’s pointless to refer to the campaign as Afghan, Pakistan or otherwise as pertaining to nation-states.  Syed Saleem Shahzad has recently described the safe haven that al Qaeda has created for itself throughout the Hindu Kush.

The Eastern Hindu Kush range, also known as the High Hindu Kush range, is mostly located in northern Pakistan and the Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan.

This chain of mountains connects with several smaller ranges, such as Spin Ghar, the Tora Bora, the Suleman Range, Toba Kakar, and creates a natural corridor that passes through the entire Pakistani tribal areas and the Afghan border provinces all the way to the Pakistani coastal area in Balochistan province.

By 2008, al-Qaeda had taken control of the 1,500-square-kilometer corridor – something it had planned to do since fleeing Afghanistan when the Taliban were defeated by US-led forces in December 2001.

Al-Qaeda decided then to build a regional ideologically motivated franchise in South Asia to thwart the strategic designs of Western powers in the area.

While US forces were vainly trying to hunt down al-Qaeda in the Tora Bora mountains, the group was focused on establishing links with organizations such as the Jaishul al-Qiba al-Jihadi al-Siri al-Alami and Jundallah in the Pakistani tribal areas and organizing the recruitment of Pakistanis and Afghans to those organizations. The underlying reason for doing this was to destroy the local political and social structures and in their place establish an al-Qaeda franchise.

The plan worked. Today, in many parts of the Hindu Kush corridor, centuries-old tribal systems and their connections with the Pakistani establishment through an appointed political agent have been replaced by a system of Islamic warlordism.

The old breed of tribal elders, religious clerics and tribal chiefs, loyal to Pakistan and its systems, has been wiped out, to be replaced by warlords such as Haji Omar, Baitullah Mehsud, (slain) Nek Mohammad and (slain) Abdullah Mehsud. They are all al-Qaeda allies, and allow al-Qaeda freedom of movement in their areas within the corridor.

Al-Qaeda members from abroad also use the corridor to enter the Pakistani tribal areas.

This sounds very much like our observation in Games of Duplicity and the End of Tribe in Pakistan, and serves as an even more recent warning that the desired tribal military action against the Taliban probably won’t materialize.  Dead elders, a separate political system, a separate legal system, and terror plus patronage have almost ensured that if the Taliban are to be defeated, it won’t be at the hands of indigenous fighters.

In Palau Taking the Uighurs for 200,000,000 Dollars, The Captain’s Journal noted the absurdity of spending this kind of money on a handful of Chinese Muslim terrorists.  It amounted to the cost of more than 100,000 sets of body armor for our troops, and the Chinese are going to a tropical paradise on the Island of Palau.  At any rate, we called them “terrorists.”

Joshua Foust took issue with this characterization, and sent a link to Obsidian Wings along (noting that it wasn’t my “cup of tea” – and he is certainly right), as well as a few other links.  He asked if I had any more data on them to justify calling them terrorists?

I must confess that I know between little and nothing about them (although I do know that there is a budding Chinese Muslim insurgency in Western China).  I have better things to do than spend my time studying this particular group.  The choice of words was instantaneous (in a post that took five minutes to write) and not meant to convey a wealth of knowledge about the Uighurs.  Michael Yon and I were also chatting about this, and Michael wondered if they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Perhaps so.  But Michael and I certainly agree on one thing.  Give them to me (Michael and I will have to fight over them).  LT Nixon also wants them.  Catch: we get the $200,000,000 too.  So I’ve got to throw down with Michael and LT Nixon over the Uighurs.  They are younger than me, but I have wisdom and treachery working on my side.

Keeping the Uighurs would actually be easy I think.  I would just hire a few of the bad dudes I work out with (I still hurt from all of those inclined bench presses I did on Friday), and let them hang with me along with the bad dudes.  We could chain ourselves together and make field trips to the grocery store and gym).  I think $200,000,000 would handle the expenses.  Oh, and picking up TVs and heaving them across the room would be off limits – and I would implement that rule by use of force if necessary.  Neither would I allow discussions of Muslim separatist movements, and yes, I do consider that to be a bad policy, one that I would have a right to control.

Concerning the money the U.S. government paid to get this done, as LT Nixon said – “Uncle Sucker.”

Postscript: Based on where he is, you should expect interesting things coming from Michael Yon in the near future.

Given the obvious importance of the ring road to our campaign in Afghanistan, it’s good to see the U.S. Marines engaging the local Afghans in activity that will both keep them away from the Taliban and help them earn some of their own money.

Next is a video of combat action in and around Now Zad.  There is some dumb propaganda at the beginning based on a bad rendering of Psalm 23.  Rightly understood, the Marines should fear no evil because our lives and times are in God’s hands.  A good antidote to this poor rendering of Psalm 23 can be found here.  That said, this video shows a useful contrast to the softer side of counterinsurgency found in the first video.

Closing GITMO has its price.  The Chinese Muslims at GITMO, called the Uighurs, included four who had been cleared of charges by the U.S.  Bermuda has agreed to take them in and allow them to pursue citizenship.  As for the balance of the Chinese terrorists captured on the field of battle, all thirteen of them?  Well, the tiny Island of Palau with a population of 20,000 has agreed to take them in for whopping $200,000,000.  This amounts to $10,000 per person for every citizen.

Now.  Let’s assume that front, rear and side SAPI plates (small arms protective inserts), plus the soft panel ballistic protection against shrapnel, plus the carrier, costs a total of $2000 for complete body armor (this figure is slightly to moderately exaggerated).  This means that for what we have spent on sending thirteen terrorists to the Island of Palau we could have purchased 100,000 full sets of body armor for Soldiers and Marines.

It also means that wounded warriors who are being denied coverage will still have to plead with the authorities for full recognition of their wounds from war, both mental and physical.  So while our warriors need body armor and rehabilitation and assistance, Chinese Muslim terrorists have been released to Bermuda (where most people cannot afford to go on vacation) and other such Islands.

This means that to finally address the issue of each Chinese Muslim terrorist has cost us $15,384,615.  Extremely conservative estimates are that Baitullah Mehsud has around 20,000 fighters at his disposal.  Disposal of them will cost us a mere 308 Billion Dollars if history is any indication of the future.  It’s time for another spending package.  Call up Timothy Geithner and tell him to get the printing presses rolling.

Note: Updated with Further Thoughts on the Uighurs

CSM on the insurgency in Southern Afghanistan.

US and Afghan security officials say that in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces, border police training has been going on for much longer.

“We’ve only been focusing on the border police in the south for nine months,” says Hix. Until now, the focus in Afghanistan’s violent south has been on building the region’s district police forces, and “there just weren’t enough resources to train the border police,” he explains.

It took longer to begin training programs for border patrol officers in the south, because the fight here is viewed by US military commanders as less of a commuter’s war. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement, and, unlike the northern and eastern regions of Afghanistan, homegrown insurgents are plentiful.

“In the east, they have a much bigger Pakistan problem than we do,” says Hix, referring to Pakistan’s tribal areas across the border. where militants enjoy safe haven and can enter Afghanistan freely. “Down here, a lot of the enemy is local. In the south, the enemy is enabled by forces in Pakistan, not dependent on Pakistan.”

As for corruption, he says that “there will always be smuggling. Always has been, always will be, as there is in every country in the world. But coalition monitors tell me that pilferage here is less than the percentage of pilferage that has been documented at some Western ports of entry.”

Afghan security officials understand all too well the problems facing the ABP.

“I believe in the border police’s efforts, and I believe they’re capable,” says Brig. Gen. Shermohammed Zazi, who commands the Afghan National Army’s 205 Corps in Kandahar. “But they don’t have enough personnel to cover a 1,000-plus kilometer border, and they don’t have proper equipment.”

And of course, the border has two sides. Some ABP officials complain that their Pakistani counterparts, though better funded, are less effective than the Afghans are.

Still, resources for the border police on the Afghan side are what most concern coalition forces here.

In southern Afghanistan, district-level police number between 6,000 and 7,000, about twice the size of the border patrol. Money for the ABP comes out of the larger police budget, making it difficult to gauge the exact cost of the program. Hix has promised to provide Hakim with up-armored Humvees and other equipment once it becomes available.

The six-week training currently offered by the coalition is less about police work and more about how to survive contact with insurgents. Unlike district police, the border guards operate in small units on far-flung outposts, with little backup.

It’s a dangerous job, and the training includes an emergency medical care component to help stem casualties.

While Afghan and US security officials are optimistic about the program, the ABP has a long way to go.

“Here,” says Hix, “hope is in degrees.”

In the Northern and Eastern reaches of Afghanistan we are fighting the Tehrik-i-Taliban and the Haqqani network of fighters, both of whom find safe haven in Pakistan.  But it’s important to remember that the Afgan Taliban have their leaders and headquarters just across the Pakistan border in Quetta.  200 Afghan Border Police cannot possibly hope to accomplish this mission.  But there is hope on the way.

Some 7,000 new U.S. troops ordered to Afghanistan by President Barack Obama are fanning out across the country’s dangerous south on a mission to defeat an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.

Marine spokesman 1st Lt. Abe Sipe says 7,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade are now in the country. The brigade is based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The Marines represent the first wave of 21,000 troops ordered to Afghanistan this summer. Most of the buildup will take place in Helmand and Kandahar.

The two southern provinces lie at the heart of the insurgency and are close to the border with Pakistan, where the Taliban’s top leadership is believed to be based.

The lot appears to be cast for the U.S. Marines.  While Army, Army SOF and the CIA are taking on the border regions with Northern Pakistan, the Marines have been assigned to the indigenous insurgency in the South.

TheStar.com gives us a very important look into IEDs, patrols and counterinsurgency from Camp Carwile, Afghanistan.  The entire report is duplicated below since all of it contributes to our own analysis.

CAMP CARWILE, Afghanistan – The United States has 39,000 troops in Afghanistan and thousands more on the way, but soldiers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep the area around the capital safe from roadside bombs and gunfire.

Last Monday, four American soldiers stationed at Camp Carwile, just a few hours outside Kabul, were killed by roadside bombs that blew their armoured Humvees into the air. Two days later, three more patrols were hit by bombs. In that incident, no one was killed.

U.S. patrols are using cellphone jammers to try to thwart radio-controlled bombs, and they are installing vehicles with metal detectors. But while these techniques may be effective on dirt roads, on highways insurgents are switching to pressure-plate bombs that explode when driven over; setting off bombs with command wire; and putting explosives in concrete and steel culverts under paved roads.

Taliban fighters set up beyond the tree line hundreds of metres away and wait for American patrols.

“Sometimes they dig a hole in the main asphalt highway, put in the bomb, fill it in, melt tires overtop, and then spread dirt over that section,” says Lt. Alvin Cavalier, whose platoon scours roads for improvised explosive devices. “No one can say they aren’t effective.”

Besides the threat of IEDs, soldiers say they’re constantly targeted by mortars and gunfire, and efforts to cultivate relations with villagers are meeting with difficulty.

“We took out this high-value insurgent target a month or so back, and people here were acting like he was Robin Hood,” says Sgt.-Maj. Dewayne Blackmon. “The whole town was in mourning over his death. They closed all the stores like he was a local hero. How do you change something like that?

“I understand it, I really do,” Blackmon continues. “The Taliban shows up and says, `If you cooperate with the Americans, we will kill you.’ They don’t know how long we are really going to be in Afghanistan. So what choice do they have?

“This war isn’t going to be won on technology. We need to be doing a better job relationship building.”

Even relations between U.S. and Afghan soldiers are sometimes fractious. Afghan soldiers are no longer allowed on the U.S. section of Carwile after some were discovered stealing from American soldiers, and now, while U.S. troops live two or three to a room in wooden cabins and enjoy amenities such as a gym, large-screen TV and ping-pong table, Afghan troops live together in a single canvas tent, exposed to bone-rattling winds whipping off the nearby mountains.

“The Americans keep promising they’ll help us build a hut, but it never comes,” says Fawad Seddiqi, a 20-year-old translator who works for the U.S. Army but lives in the Afghan section of the base.

U.S. troops say they have reason to be wary of local Afghan soldiers and police. In March, Cavalier headed out from Carwile with his platoon on a routine patrol to scour the roads for bombs. During the patrol, a suspected drug smuggler and Taliban conspirator was detained. But the soldiers were ordered to turn the suspect over to Afghan police.

Two hours later, when U.S. Special Forces arrived at the base to question the suspect, he’d vanished.

Analysis & Commentary

This report documents a failing counterinsurgency effort – failing because wrong strategy has informed the tactics, techniques and procedures.  To begin with, why are Special Forces being brought in to interrogate a suspect?  Because of knowledge of Dari or Pashto?  Not a knowledge that is likely any better than their translator.  This is a misuse of Special Forces, who ought to be embedded as trainers with the Afghan forces (SF) or attached to infantry (SOF).

Speaking of translators, Sgt. Maj. Blackmon is right.  The U.S. needs to build better relationships.  During the Marines’ tenure in Anbar, the Arabic translators were often considered as Marines themselves, and in fact, Iraqi translators have been allowed Stateside and joined the Marines.  What is their translator doing garrisoned with the Afghans?  A translator is perhaps the most important asset in the U.S. arsenal.  Why isn’t he happy and fulfilled in his job?  Why is a situation allowed to exist where he has unaddressed complaints?

Speaking of being garrisoned, why aren’t the forces out on foot patrol for extended periods of time?  What good does having a large screen TV and ping pong table do for the counterinsurgency effort?  Sgt. Blackmon is right again.  Technology will not win the war, from TVs to armored vehicles and cellphone jammers.  Infantry on foot will.

Every technological advantage we have will be turned against us with some low level, cheap and easy defeater by innovative insurgents.  MRAPS and other armored personnel carriers are merely ways to keep the U.S. from engaging both the enemy and the population.  Infantry belongs on foot.

Corporal William Ash, a squad leader from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), along with a stray dog lead a patrol through a city in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. When the platoon moved into the area, they found two stray dogs, and each time the Marines head out on patrol the dogs are right at the Marines’ side.

Camp Carwile may be a good place to rest, eat and relax in between patrols, all the while providing good force protection.  But this force protection has a purpose.  It is to allow resupply, regrouping and recuperation.  It should only be a temporary station between protracted, continual multi-day foot patrols from smaller FOBs and combat outposts.

Killing insurgents like Sir Robin Hood will convince the population that it’s too dangerous to fight the Army.  Spending time with the population will convince them that the Army is able to protect them from people like Robin Hood, who in reality, brings violence and takes what little wealth they have.  Sgt. Blackmon needn’t worry – they don’t really want Robin Hood there.  They want security.

The Center for a New American Security, which is advising the Obama administration, has released Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Permit us a few observations?  On page 4 we read that they advocate that we:

Adopt a truly population-centric counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes protecting the population rather than controlling physical terrain or killing the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Notice how killing Taliban and al Qaeda has been set in juxtaposition over against protecting the population, as if the two are mutually exclusive.  We have dealt with this before in Center of Gravity Versus Lines of Effort in COIN, where we argued that the Clausewitzian concept of a single center of gravity should be jettisoned in favor of multiple lines of operation and lines of effort.  As far as protecting the population and killing the enemy, it isn’t EITHER-OR, it’s BOTH-AND.   But we have to get off of the huge FOBs in order to do it.  Dealing with this in a little more visceral way, let’s allow Greyhawk to respond as he did in a comment at Abu Muqawama.

I may be wrong – but there seems to be some fundamental misunderstanding of COIN in general and “protecting the population” at play here.

The idea that those are somehow efforts that don’t involve killing bad guys and blowing things up is wrong. I know this is obvious to 90% of the people who comment here, but there’s also a growing number of people seeking understanding of this newfangled “COIN” business who may be under the impression that it’s some sort of bloodless warfare – and some may scan these comments for illumination. If you aren’t among that number skip this rest of this.

In Iraq for the early days of the surge we did not pull away from contact for fear of hurting someone – in fact we did the opposite. We plopped ourselves down in various neighborhoods (very much to protect the populations therein) knowing full well a bit of the old ultra violence would ensue. Check the death tolls* – civilian or military – for late winter to early summer ’07 to see the result.

We killed bad guys (“irreconcilables”) in droves. If they didn’t come to us, we air assaulted (sorry – delivered troops via helicopter) to them. And if CAS (sorry – close air support, aka death from above via fixed or rotary wing aircraft…) was needed for TIC (sorry – troops in contact, meaning exchanging gunfire with the enemy), CAS was delivered. (Do not, however, take this to mean wanton, indiscriminate slaughter.)

COIN is not a fluffy bunny warfare world where no one gets hurt and we all ride unicorns over rainbows. It is very much killing the enemy. Protecting the population requires it.

To be completely fair, they do tip the hat to “lines of operation” on page 15, but this still doesn’t undo the basic presupposition where one aspect of counterinsurgency is set over against another.  But it gets a little better.  On page 19 and following, CNAS may even be taking a page from us when they take direct aim at the HVT concept.  If they are advocating a stand-down from the high value target campaign, they we heartily agree.  We have gone further in advocating the re-attachment of SOF to infantry, and getting infantry all places, everywhere, all of the time.

But of course, this requires troops.  What is strangely missing in this report is advocacy for large troop additions.  It isn’t mere coincidence that John Nagl, who once advocated 600,000 troops for Afghanistan, now heads up CNAS which is advising the Obama administration.  It has become apparent that this administration will not contribute more than around 68,000 troops to Afghanistan.

The report may not be the triage it was meant to be.  Instead, it may be well intentioned [politically affected?] analysis that sends too few men on an impossible mission.

After publishing A Half-Dozen Gargantuan Bases where we discussed the cloistering of Army troops on large FOBs in Afghanistan, we had reactions across the spectrum from Joshua Foust who believes that Philip Smucker’s piece exaggerated the risks in most areas of Afghanistan, to other contacts (active duty Army in Afghanistan) who responded that Smucker had gotten it exactly right.

Friend of The Captain’s Journal Tim Lynch of Free Range International provides a recent significant addition to this narrative.  For folks who get fumed at inter-service rivalries, you may stop reading now.  But a serious reading of Tim’s commentary shows that it isn’t about inter-service rivalries.  It’s about much more than that – institutional intransigence.

As I mentioned in my last post I do not really know what our mission in Afghanistan is. We are engaged in a counterinsurgency war but confine the troops to large FOB’s which directly contradicts our counterinsurgency doctrine. Our troops do not have sustained meaningful contact with local Afghans, cannot provide any real security to them, and due to Big Army casualty policies are forced to ride around in large multimillion dollar MRAP’s where they are subject to IED strikes which they cannot prevent because they do not control one meter of ground outside their FOBs …

While in the VIP barracks – a wooded B hut with my own little bed and table, I listened to the staff officers as they prepared to fly out to various other FOB’s to attend conferences of great import. One discussion I remember is an upcoming multi-day confab concerning “Water Shed Management.” Why the hell are we concerning ourselves with Afghan water shed management?  We have FOB’s sitting in important cities in which the main canals are full of garbage, human and animal waste, large protozoan parasites, and toxic sludge but instead of taking care of that simple problem we are conducting huge meetings on big box FOB’s with lots of senior officers about water shed management.  You know why? Because dozens of senior officers, Department of State flunkies, and US AID techno weenies can spend their entire tour preparing slides, looking at studies, conducting historical research, looking up old hands from the American heyday of public works projects in the Helmund Valley (back in the 50’s and 60’s) to produce a product which in the end is meaningless to the Afghans but shows “forward thinking” on behalf of the fobbits. They then can have multi-day super high speed presentations about water shed management without ever having to leave the FOB’s, deal with a real Afghan, or actually see, taste or feel any real water. It is virtual stability operations done by people who want to help but can’t so they do the next best thing which it to switch on the denial mechanism resident in us all and plow ahead on complex projects designed by complex people who are spending a virtual tour in Afghanistan …

His entire commentary is highly recommended, but now we come to the hard stuff.

You will not hear much about the Marines in the months ahead because they run counter to the preferred MSM narrative but the Afghans in the Helmund valley know who they are and they, according to our local sources (which are extensive in the region…The Boss was exporting fruit and cotton out of here back in 97 when the Taliban ruled and has more than a few reliable sources) the Afghans eagerly await the arrival of the Marines as they understand the Marines are here to stay. The Afghans in the Helmund like the Marines who they feel treat them with more respect than the other forces operating in the region. They also admire the tenacity of Marine infantry and their propensity to operate in small units while taking on large formation of Taliban. I have cited in previous posts examples from the mighty 3rd Battalion 8th Marines who had platoons numbering around 30 Marines attacking groups of Taliban numbering in the hundreds.  They beat on these thugs like a drum while sustaining zero causalities. Old Terry the Taliban doesn’t like fighting the Marines – he would rather throw acid on little girls or behead stoned ANP troops but that is the way it is going to be this summer.  They can run or they can die – there are no other options for the frigging cowards …

The number of enemy killed is meaningless – you have to kill the right guys – the bomb makers, foreign trainers, leaders, and money men. These are the “high value targets” (HVT’s) our tier one special ops guys go after in raids launched from afar based on suspect intelligence which more often results in the killing of innocent Afghans. The only way to separate HVT’s from the people is to be out in the districts with the people – no other method will work which is exactly what our counterinsurgency doctrine says should be done. There is only one large outfit in Afghanistan with the training, ability, attitude, courage and balls to do that – the United States Marine Corps. There are plenty of American Army and ISAF units who can do the same – again it is the institutions which are flawed not the individuals. But the Marines produce competent combat leaders who retain the hunger for the fight at the senior level. They also have the confidence in their small unit leaders to allow them to go outside the wire and stay there.

The Army SF teams, SEALS, SAS operators and small unit fighters from other lands who are as lethal and dedicated as the Marines all welcome the MEB.  They prefer Marine helicopter gunships – primitive though they are when compared to the Army Apache – because Marine pilots fly right into the teeth of dug in enemy to take them on at ridiculously low altitudes and at close ranges. An Army SF guy I talked with said that when his men were pinned down fighting for their lives it was a Marine Huey pilot who hovered right above them spraying mini-gun fire into the faces of the Taliban. Col Mellinger who is the operations officer for the 2^nd MEB confirmed the story adding that the pilot took 3 AK rounds in the only place on the bird which would not bring it down – the self sealing fuel tanks. No stand off rocket shots for Marine pilots; they want to get close enough to shoot pistols at the Taliban. The various special operators out there now, preparing the battle space for the 2^nd MEB  love Marine air… who wouldn’t?

Tim’s words folks, not mine.  There’s more than a little Oorah in Tim’s commentary, but coming from someone who is in theater and not constrained by hurting feelings, it’s meaningful to read confirmatory analysis.  At TCJ we have been highly critical of these tier one SOF raids that are launched from suspect intelligence and in reality accomplish very little of benefit.  It has been a constant theme, and re-attaching SOF to infantry, and then getting infantry off of the FOBs has been exactly our own counsel.

Note also that there is none of this “butterflies are beautiful and we love you so love us back” counterinsurgency doctrine from Tim.  Tim advocates killing Taliban, but making sure that it’s Taliban with the big T.  The only way to do this is to be amongst the people.

If you have heard it once here at TCJ, you have heard it a thousand times.  And now you’ve heard it from Tim Lynch.  Stop the ridiculous PowerPoint presentations.  Ban them.  Deploy to far flung areas and be amongst the people.  Kill Taliban.