Let’s try a series called weekend reading, and this one will be #1 (in hopes that there will be more).  It’s our foray into instantly-blogging rather than trying to carefully craft single article releases for our readers.  It may succeed, or it may fail due to lack of discipline.

First off, there is a relatively new blog called The Afpak Channel with the AfPak Daily Brief.  They have a long list of notable bloggers, and were kind enough to link The Captain’s Journal.  We appreciate the link, and the AfPak Daily Brief is certainly worth checking out.

Second, Reuters is carrying a concise but well done history of the Taliban.  Sit down in a hardback chair with a cup of coffee and take this one on.

Third, The CSM has a piece taking on the issue of drones, and whether the direct targeting of Taliban and AQ leaders is legal?  The Captain’s Journal has absolutely no problem with targeting Taliban and AQ leaders, but let’s perform a thought experiment for a moment.  The whole tactic rests upon death from above targeted towards known HVTs, while those HVTs themselves aren’t holding a weapon or posing a threat.  Didn’t General Kearney want to charge a couple of Army snipers with murder a while back who did the same thing?  How about this idea.  Let’s apply the same rules of engagement to the generals and CIA chieftains making the decisions during drone strikes as we do the Soldiers and Marines in the field.  That’s fair, isn’t it?  If not, then why not?  Can you make a case that this isn’t fair?

Fourth, Richard North at Defence of the Realm is required reading every day.  His latest piece awaits the howls that are sure to come when the Brits lose their 200th soldier in Afghanistan.  Neither we nor Richard likes tracking this, and Richard doesn’t like to see British casualties.  But that’s why Richard always argues for more troops, better equipment and better strategy.  Richard is the conscience of the military bloggers / new media in the UK.  You can always turn to him for unvarnished prose.

Fifth, there is our own loyal reader Warbucks who might have to change his vacation plans to the mountains of Afghanistan based on our advice to chase the Taliban into the mountains.

Sixth, I had wondered how long it would take PETA to weigh in protesting the practice of using live pigs to train Marines on the amelioration of battle injuries (see also this).  No, advancements in technology would be be able to replace this.  No amount of technology can be used in lieu of the use of live anesthetized pigs due to the anatomical similarities.   What would PETA have us do – lose more Marines and keep the pigs alive?  Nothing these people do is serious.  They’re good for entertainment, and that’s about it.

Lastly, enjoy Dave Matthews telling us about Stella and Alligator Pie.

In Follow and Kill Every Single Taliban we covered and commented on the view of the local Afghans we are trying to protect in this population-centric counterinsurgency campaign in which we are engaged in Afghanistan.  Thus far, we haven’t the troops and helicopters to engage in the chase.  God must be very patient with us, because we get yet another example and object lesson of why we must chase the Taliban (Operation Eastern Resolve).

Day two of Operation Eastern Resolve is drawing to a close. We are with Golf Company, with the 2/3 Marines, they have had a pretty busy day. And camera man Mal James and I spent some time with the Marines in this very dangerous town. It got off to a little bit of a rough start.

We’ve been hearing Taliban fire all around us, coming into contact with the Marines. I can hear it right now.

These Marines are working with another squad, another platoon as they work their way down this village trying to clear this place. But the Taliban aren’t giving up.

The Marines are going house to house, they’re going compound to compound to make sure that there are no militants remaining and they’re doing it while the Taliban that the Marines didn’t kill yesterday try to kill these Marines today.

Morning patrols faced some fairly stiff resistance — the Taliban firing from positions in the mountains surrounding the town, as well as sniping positions in town as well.

Not an easy job, but they’re doing it, and the sense today is that a corner has been turned. Hot temperatures here today though, and some very tired Marines here tonight.

The snipers in the city are one issue.  If they stick around they will be killed by the Marines.  The firing positions in the mountains are a different issue.  Protecting the population will be impossible if we don’t give chase.

We must use our technological advantage – night vision, air power, sniping skills, infantry patrols – to kill them in the mountains.  Night time patrols into the mountains, along with pre-deployed Marine scout snipers, would be just the ticket.  And the ROE must be robust, where offensive actions can be taken (i.e., Marines don’t have to wait for the Taliban fighters to brandish a weapon).  No one – NO ONE – is backpacking for recreation in these mountains.  Give chase and kill the insurgents.  This is the best protection of the population that can be effected.

There is discussion about whether to target the population centers in Afghanistan with counterinsurgency forces, or focus on the rural areas and smaller villages.  Really, this discussion and debate have been going on for years, starting back during the Russian campaign.

The Russians focused on the population centers (e.g., Kandahar, Kabul, etc.).  The Taliban owned the roads, the villages, and the mountains.  Thus they were able to recruit, train, raise funds, and interdict logistical lines.  In short, the cities became like prisons for the Russian troops.  Focusing on the cities was a losing strategy for Russia, and it will be as well for the U.S.  On the other hand, a winning strategy doesn’t relegate the population centers to Taliban control either.  Enough troops must be deployed to address the needs of both the rural and urban areas.

The case of Now Zad is especially unique, in that the population has deserted Now Zad and the Taliban control it as their R&R getaway.  It isn’t even necessary to work to separate the insurgents from the population – they have done that for us in Now Zad.  We can kill Taliban in Now Zad unhindered.  Yet the campaign in the Now Zad district remains under-resources, at least until now.

Hundreds of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers have moved into southern Afghanistan to protect citizens during upcoming elections, military officials said.

Afghans will go to the polls on August 20 to vote in second presidential election since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Provincial elections also will be held that day.

About 400 Marines and 100 Afghan soldiers moved to the Now Zad district in Helmand province Wednesday morning, a U.S. military statement said.

“Our mission is to support the Independent Election Commission and Afghan national security forces. They are the ones in charge of these elections. Our job is to make sure they have the security to do their job,” said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commanding general of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Afghanistan.

“While we encourage every Afghan to exercise his right to vote, who he or she votes for is none of our business.”

The area in which the operation was launched has been known to be a Taliban stronghold, and American, British and Afghan forces have been involved in fierce battles with Taliban militants there in recent weeks.

The Captain’s Journal has rejected population-centric counterinsurgency in favor of lines of effort.  But if we’re not conducting population-centric counterinsurgency at the moment, we are conducting election-centric counterinsurgency.  There is much focus on the upcoming election – too much, in fact.  The election will prove to be far less important than the campaign against the Taliban and other important issues such as corruption within the Afghan National Police.  Furthermore, the question for Now Zad will not be whether the election comes off, but what happens to the additional troops once the election is over.

In other parts of the Helmand Province, Marines are entering Dahaneh for the same reasons – the election.

The Marines are in the Now Zad district so that the people can vote.  They should be there to kill Taliban and make sure that the people can return to their homes and be about their lives.

From the Washington Post in a very interesting article.

Standing by the wreckage the next morning, Murphy explained that while several vehicles have been destroyed this way, the logistical challenges mean that replacements are slowly arriving. Indeed, Castle said Lasher and the other Marines had had to ride in a Humvee because one of their team’s mine-resistant vehicles had been disabled. “If they had been in an MRAP, they probably all would have survived,” Castle said.

Even as losses from roadside bombs mount, Marine commanders know they can bypass main roads for only so long. It is a matter of time, they say, before insurgents target the desert routes and foot patrols. Ultimately, they know the solution lies in dismantling the networks of Taliban bombmakers, and that, in turn, will come only with help from a wary Afghan population.

For now, if units such as Echo Company want to travel even small stretches of road, they must commit to the manpower-intensive work of keeping watch 24 hours a day. As they scrutinized the moonlit road leading to the desert last week, Friis and the other Marines reflected with some bitterness over the loss of their friends, and questioned whether many Americans appreciate — or even know of — their daily grind in the windswept purgatory of Helmand.

“People need to know these guys were heroes. They were fighting so the people living in Potomac and Fairfax in their million-dollar houses don’t have to,” said Friis, a dark-haired, soft-spoken enlistee who is the dog handler for a bomb-sniffing black lab named Jenny.

Paar and Davila, who had a leg amputated, are recovering at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Xiarhos’s wake was recently held in Massachusetts.

Long time readers of The Captain’s Journal know that we are big advocates of foot patrols.  Operation Khanjar has progressed based on aggressive dismounted patrolling through the countryside of Helmand as opposed to the roads.  Also, there are plans in the works for UAV support of Marines in lieu of logistics via roads.  TCJ supports the idea of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force more than we support the sea-based amphibious assault concept based around the EFV.  Yet the roads must be confronted, and in order to do this, more troops are necessary.  Enough troops must be present – and their commitment long enough – to ensure that the population turns over those who emplace IEDs to the Marines.  The Marine Corps awaits the administration?

God has not made any normative promises to keep everyone safe in war, any more than He has given normative promises that no one will lose their jobs in a bad economy.  He has given us a firm and fixed promise that He will be with His people no matter what they go through.

Religious symbols don’t convey some sort of magical powers, and thus the symbols taken into war by this Marine is more a statement of who he is and what he stands for than it is of anything else.  It’s a statement of his religious belief and character.  His gun makes him feel safe.

An interesting report from the WSJ (h/t Spencer Ackerman):

“How many people do you bring in before the Afghans say, ‘You’re acting like the Russians’?” said one senior military official, referring to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. “That’s the big debate going on in the headquarters right now.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said publicly during his campaign for the approaching Aug. 20 elections that he wants to negotiate new agreements giving the Afghan government more control over the conduct of the foreign troops currently in the country.

Gen. McChrystal, however, says too many troops aren’t a concern. “I think it’s what you do, not how many you are. It’s how the force conducts itself.”

Regardless of how he resolves the internal debate on troop numbers, Gen. McChrystal’s coming report won’t include any specific requests for more U.S. troops. Those numbers would instead be detailed in a follow-on document that is set to be delivered to Washington a few weeks after the assessment.

The timing of Gen. McChrystal’s primary assessment remains in flux. It was initially due in mid-August, but the commander was summoned to a secret meeting in Belgium last week with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and told to take more time. Military officials say the assessment will now be released sometime after the Aug. 20 vote.

The shift came amid signs of growing U.S. unease about the direction of the war effort. Initial assessments delivered to Gen. McChrystal last month warned that the Taliban were strengthening their control over Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan.

American forces have been waging a major offensive in the neighboring southern province of Helmand, the center of Afghanistan’s drug trade. Some U.S. military officials believe the Taliban have taken advantage of the American preoccupation with Helmand to infiltrate Kandahar and set up shadow local governments and courts throughout the city.

“Helmand is a sideshow,” said the senior military official briefed on the analysis. “Kandahar is the capital of the south [and] that’s why they want it.”

First of all let’s deal with this issue of acting like Russians with too many troops.  If this debate is actually “going on in headquarters right now,” wherever headquarters is (the report doesn’t say – CENTCOM, the Pentagon, Kabul, Kandahar Air Field, etc.), whomever is in charge should tell the boys to get back to work and quit wasting time.  We won’t be acting like the Russians unless we cloister in the cities, refuse to engage the countryside, turn over the road to the Taliban, fail to beat the Taliban in fire fights, and fail to provide the population security.  More troops will get us further away from being like the Russians, not more like them.  Such childish debates are a sign of a military establishment which refuses to tell the administration the truth.

Second, Spencer Ackerman responds by saying:

“Helmand is a sideshow,” said the senior military official briefed on the analysis. “Kandahar is the capital of the south [and] that’s why they want it.”

That’s your Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment right there. We sent thousands of Marines to a sideshow? Thousands of Marines, a meager complement of civilians, and barely any Afghan capacity? For a sideshow? A place McChrystal recently called a “critical area“? The general tells Dreazen and Spiegel that Helmand was, in fact, critical to focus on first, in order to disrupt the opium trade in the province that helps bankroll the Taliban. But then how could any halfway-responsible military official come away thinking that Helmand is a sideshow?

Perhaps even more alarming is this analysis:

Some U.S. military officials believe the Taliban have taken advantage of the American preoccupation with Helmand to infiltrate Kandahar and set up shadow local governments and courts throughout the city.

To begin with, this kind of comment (“Helmand is a sideshow) is profoundly insulting and troubling to parents, spouses and loved ones of Marines who are fighting in the Helmand Province.  So it’s simply inappropriate to let such loose words slip from the tongue.  “Anonymous” sources are cowards who like to see their words in print, but the words of these cowards sometimes hurt.  As for the issue of allowing the Taliban to come in and set up a shadow government, they have already had that in Kandahar for over a year.

More troops are needed, and taking them away from Helmand is not the answer.  To be sure, allowing the Taliban to come into an urban area and go uncontested is poor strategy, but this strategy calls for a stronger force.  Given the problem of Kandahar v. Helmand, the stupid argument over force size and being like the Russians sounds rather adolescent, doesn’t it?

Continuing, is Helmand really a side show?

The Helmand Province is the home of the indigenous insurgency, the Afghanistan Taliban, and its capital is Lashkar Gah.  Without hitting the Taliban’s recruiting grounds, fund raising and revenue development, training grounds, and logistical supply lines, the campaign cannot be won.  Focusing on the population centers is a loser strategy, doomed to sure failure.  Controlling the cities as some sort of prison while the roads are all controlled by Taliban is just what the Russians did, only to withdraw in ignominy.  The Marines are in Helmand because just like Anbar, Iraq at the time, it is the worst place on earth.

Yochi J. Dreazen and Peter Spiegel wrote an interesting article, but it is badly flawed because they got poor contacts and resources.  Even if Kandahar is of interest, taking and securing it will be but a temporary notch in our belts unless the insurgency is defeated in his own back yard.  Helmand is his back yard.

Prior: Operation Khanjar category

U.S. Marines with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, RCT 2nd Battalion 8th Marines Echo Co. move into position while they were under enemy fire on July 17, 2009 in Mian Poshteh, Afghanistan.

There is now not even a hint of an effort to make the narrative on Afghanistan consistent.  From the AP:

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser did not rule adding more U.S. forces in Afghanistan to help turn around a war that he said on Sunday is not now in crisis.

James Jones, a retired Marine general with experience in Afghanistan, said the United States will know “by the end of next year” whether the revamped war plan Obama announced in March is taking hold.

The administration is redefining how it will measure progress, with new benchmarks that reflect a redrawn strategy. An outline is expected next month.

Making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, Jones did little to dispel the growing expectation that Obama soon will be asked to supplement the 21,000 additional forces he already approved for Afghanistan this year.

“We won’t rule anything out,” but the new strategy is too fresh for a full evaluation, Jones said.

“If things come up where we need to adjust one way or the other, and it involves troops or it involves more incentives … for economic development or better assistance to help the Afghan government function, we’ll do that.”

The Obama plan is supposed to combine a more vigorous military campaign against the Taliban with a commitment to protect Afghan civilians and starve the insurgents of sanctuary and popular support. It envisions a large development effort led by civilians, which has not fully happened, and a rapid expansion of the Afghan armed forces to eventually take over responsibility for security.

“If we can get that done … we will know that fairly quickly,” Jones said.

The system to measure progress is several weeks from completion. It reflects creeping congressional skepticism about the war and its costs. The United States has spent more than $220 billion since the U.S.-led invasion of 2001, plus billions for more toward aid and development projects. By the United States’ own admission, much of the aid money was wasted.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee wrote recently that they are worried about “the prospects for an open-ended U.S. commitment to bring stability to a country that has a decades-long history of successfully rebuffing foreign military intervention and attempts to influence internal politics.”

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday he does not know how Congress would react to a new request for additional troops.

“It depends on what the facts and the arguments are,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. “It depends what our commanders in the field say. It depends also I think in part what our NATO allies are willing to do.”

So to summarize, the strategy involves a few more troops and a lot of civilian NGOs, these civilians not having been deployed yet because it’s too dangerous since there is little to no security, but we will know fairly quickly if this strategy works, er … um, that is, within 18 months.  There may be more troops and if so we’ll provide them, but the White House is going to have a fit if the Generals ask for more troops.

Well, there you have it.  But if Jim Jones is a stooge and a fool, Carl Levin is a liar.  The commanders in the field have already said they are light on troops and need more.  Brigadier General Nicholson has said that he doesn’t have enough forces to go everywhere, counterinsurgency-speak for “the insurgents will be left to run amok in various places.”

If lives and the existence of a transnational religiously-based insurgency weren’t at stake it would make for great theater.

Prior:

Mullen Pops Jones in the Back of the Head

Calling on National Security Advisor James L. Jones to Resign

Vampire 06 blogging at Afghanistan Shrugged has an important account of a recent engagement that provides a good barometer for the way business is being conducted in Afghanistan.

The sweat under my IBA and in my ACUs is starting to freeze, I can feel it against my skin.  I’m wishing right now that I’d put on some long underwear before we’d come out here, it’s too late for that now.  Currently, we’re holding about 200 meters short of the target khalat, it’s aprox 2330. The moon has finally risen giving us better illumination than when we started this about 4 hours ago.

In this shallow wadi are a platoon of US infantry, a company of ANA infantry.  We’re watching the khalat from a defilade position waiting for the ANP, Afghan National Police., who are making their way across about 400 meters of plowed fields.  As soon as they get here we’re going to jump off on the last stage of this operation.

In a small cluster are the US platoon sgt, Kandak Commander, one of my captains and me.  As we talk in hushed whispers about how we’re going to move up this khalat and search it, we each look like something out of a scifi movie.  All of the US personnel have night vision monocoles on giving one eye the green hue of night vision and the other peering into the Afghan darkness.  My ANA counterpart has no night vision, thus we have to describe things to him through the terp and then try to show him by having him look through our night vision device (NVD).

The ANP come stumbling across the field and reach our position.  We brief them on what we’re going to do, make sure they understand and get ready to move.

“Everyone ready”? I ask

“Roger” replies the platoon sgt

“Seis” say the afghans, meaning yes.

“Alright lets move”, and we begin to push forward on line toward the target building

Four hours earlier this mission started because the TOC observed four suspected ACM about 700 meters north of our FOB through a thermal site.  The ACM were located behind a wall near some woodpiles just outside the bizzare area.  We’ve taken serveral rockets from this location in the last three days.  We gathered in the TOC and discussed our course of action.  We think we’re about to get the guys that have shooting at us.

Our joint decision is that the ETTs will move to the bizzare mounted in vehicles and then dismount, clearing through these woodpiles; catching or killing these guys.  The US forces will move to a support by fire position to our east and cover our dismounted movement.  The end of the wall the ACM are hinding behind is the ANA limit of advance, beyond the end of that wall is an open field extending for several hundred meters.  So, if the ANA and ETTs don’t get the bad guys, they’ll be forced to move out into the open field for the US forces to get them.

The ANA have no night vision capabilty, so a key piece of this plan is that the US will fire illumination rounds via 60 milimeter mortars once we dismount allowing the ANA to see as we move through the woodpiles.  All of the ETTs have night vision.

Sounds great, we’re going whack these guys that have been trying to kill us for three days.  Yeah Team!!

We roll out and as we move an F-15 comes on station, with rover capability.  Our plans demise has now arrived.  Rover is a feed that allows TOCs on the ground to see what’s the plane is observing via digital link.  One of the TOCs getting this feed is the battalion headquarters for the US forces. This TOC is located about 100 miles from us.

The ANA reach the dismount point and we all get out, prepping to move through the wood piles.  These piles could hide anythig, giant stacks with limbs and logs sticking out everywhere, trying to see a person in this is going to difficult at best.  Once we’re all ready I call for the illumination rounds.

DENIED!  Because the battalion commander 100 miles away thinks it’s to dangerous.  His concern is that the canister that the illum round is in will land on a khalat in the area, this canister weighs about 8 pounds.  Disregard the fact that without this illum the ANA can’t see anything.  8 pounds hitting a house or us not being able to see?  I’m coming down on the side of us being able to see the enemy.

I call for the illum round again.  DENIED!  What the…?  This guy is 100 miles away and making decisions that should be made by us on the ground, we’re the ones closing with the enemy.  I guess empowering subordinates and letting ground commanders make the call isn’t taught anymore.

We now have a serious problem.  The ANA can’t see but the ETTs can, guess we’ll now have to move in front of the ANA clearing through the piles of wood.  So that’s what we do.  The ETTs get in front and start moving forward.  There are about 50 of us in this position and only four of us can see anything.

Later review of a videotape from the thermal site will show that as we move through; we come within about 100 meters of the enemy before they pick up and run into the open field.  With the illum we would have had these guys dead to rights and either captured or killed them.   We can’t see that far without illumination, but we didn’t hit a house with an 8 pound canister.  Justice is served!  I feel better about myself already.  100 miles must give some other perspective I’m missing.  I can barely see 50 feet.

We reach the limit of our advance.  The F-15 is back on station and says he’s seen the ACM run to a house which he’s illuminating with an IR laser.  I can see the laser coming out of the sky, but I can’t see any backscatter off the traget meaning it’s pretty damn far away from where I’m holding.  These bad guys must be on roids because they ran about 5 kilometers in roughly 10 minutes.  Afghanistan has a bright olympic future with these guys.

After holding here for another 10 minutes we decide to remount the vehicles and move to the target house the aircraft  spotted.  We still have no illumination and the ANA are stumbling around in the dark trying to get back to their vehicles.  Their pissed, I’m pissed but not as pissed as I’ll be when I see the video and how close we were originally.  I still haven’t told the ANA how close we were.

Finally after much cussing in Dari and English we get back to the vehicles and move out to the target.  As we drive, I think to myself, there is no way they ran this far, no way.

Now we’re moving toward the target house.  My clothes are freezing to me and the ANA can see a little bit more due to the moonlight.  We get a radio call to hold short again.

The 100 mile commander has called on the radio trying to telling us how the ANA/ANP are supposed to search the house and what they can and cannot do.  Who the hell is this guy?  He’s telling the armed forces and police of a sovereign nation what they can do in their own country.  He’s not even here on the ground and this is now an Afghan operation.  He must have missed the part about Afghanistan being it’s own country.

We give him the infamous, “Yeah Roger” and start moving again.  I’m amazed and galled by this guys audacity.  He’s a battalion commander, so what, I’m standing in a field in the cold and dark with an Afghan Battalion Commander.  He’s running the show and oh by the way we don’t even think this is the right house.  But 100 mile is telling us it is.  Good God!

We knock on the door and after some time an Afghan farmer answers the door, he’s been asleep.  The ANA/ANP search despite the direction of 100 mile and we don’t find jack.  No duh, it’s three miles away from where this all started.  Luckily at this point we don’t know how close we were to getting these dudes.

The ANA, ANP, US and ETTs trudge back across the field to our vehicles.  Defeated not by the ACM but our own commanders.

Tim Lynch of Free Range International makes the following observation.

You cannot successfully deploy little detachments of infantry in a large geographical space and expect them to fight and behave within the frame work of their commanders intent unless they know their commander trusts them to do the job.  The commander can tell them he trusts them all he wants but actions speak louder than words.  If he insists on micro managing units when they are in contact the message he is sending is “I do not trust you and do not think you will make the right calls in combat.”  The first step towards being able to fight a proper counterinsurgency is to deploy units in the field whom you trust and do not micromanage.  There is no other way and I do not care how many Colonels in Bagram tell you differently using all sorts of anecdotal stories to illustrate why they are compelled to control fights from on high. In the counterinsurgency fight  junior leaders have got to be left alone to do what junior leaders are supposed to do – fight when they have to and figure out how help the local population when they are not fighting.

Analysis & Commentary

I hope that Vampire 06 keeps on blogging, and I know that Tim Lynch will.  Along with Michael Yon, they are must-reads for the person who wishes to understand what’s going on in Afghanistan.  While not ostensibly oriented towards ROE, the report by Vampire 06 and Tim’s comments fairly well summarizes the problems that I have had with the rules of engagement – both standing and local – ever since I have been covering and commenting on this issue.

First, every actuarial or practitioner of probabilistic risk analysis knows what risk is.  Quite simply, it is the product of probability and consequences:

Risk = P X C

When evaluated this way, each evolution or sequence may then be evaluated against another to assess relative risk between options, or designs, or situations, or circumstances.  There is of course a risk associated with wanton destruction in a counterinsurgency campaign, that being that the rate of creation of insurgents is greater than the rate of destruction of insurgents.  Yet upon General McChrystal’s implementation of his recent tactical directive which essentially changed the ROE for Afghanistan, some old warriors claimed that the net result of such a change would probably be more, not fewer, civilian casualties.

The tension is in tactical versus strategic concerns, and it’s foolish to believe that this is an easy balancing act, or that only one choice involves risk.  McChrystal’s new tactical directive which prohibits firing upon buildings or other locations (especially with the use of air power) if it is possible that noncombatants could be harmed is at least prima facie in the strategic interests of the campaign.  Yet this same directive has caused Marines in Helmand to refuse to engage certain buildings with direct fires, the end result being that Taliban fighters later escaped.  These same Taliban fighters will likely cause various distress to the local population, and may be involved in the development or emplacement of roadside bombs which will blow the legs off of Marines.  Assessment of risk only in terms of immediate danger to the population ignores the very real risk from the affect of prolonged operations with Taliban fighters who know that they can hop into any available domicile for protection against U.S. fires.

Second, the proceduralization of rules and tactical directives tends to press decision-making upwards in the organization.  It invariably involves lawyers who have deployed with their assigned units, or at least staff level officers who have been trained by the lawyers.  It’s an attempt to convert war into a clinical, riskless enterprise, with success depending more on risk-free deployments for staff level officers than on-the-ground results.

One thing that separates Western Armies (and in particular the U.S.) from the balance of the world is not only the strong officer corps, but more specifically the strong non-commissioned officer corps.  Decision making should be pushed downward in the organization rather than upward.  The people best suited to balance the tactical versus the strategic concerns are those who are in the field doing the hard work of counterinsurgency.  The preferred model is training, education, assistance and especially trust, rather than regulations, rules, lawyers and staff officer decisions 100 miles away.

Vampire 06 is fully capable of performing the risk calculations without help from superiors.  He, like all field grade officers, does this intuitively and on the fly.  The goal is balanced risk, but we must reject the notion that we can eliminate all consequences in war.  There is no such thing as riskless war.

Prior:

Follow and Kill Every Single Taliban

More on ROE in Afghanistan: Refusing the Chase

Concluding Thoughts on Afghanistan ROE Modifications

Afghanistan Rules of Engagement Redux

Update on ROE Changes for Afghanistan

Changes to Rules of Engagement for Afghanistan

Recon by Fire

Rules of Engagement Category

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From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and the advisers have urged Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost the Afghan National Army and police from current levels of 175,000 to at least 400,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an assessment he will give within a month to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, according to a senior military official familiar with the review.

McChrystal’s report won’t propose how many additional U.S. or NATO troops may be needed to train those Afghan forces or to boost the U.S. fighting effort, the official said, adding that any discussion of U.S. and NATO troop strength will come later.

U.S. intelligence agencies, in a document submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee April 24, estimated the Afghan Army alone would need to grow to 325,000 — more than triple its current strength — to mount an effective counterinsurgency.

We’ve seen all of this before.  In Iraq instead of targeting the insurgency the way it should have been in 2004 and 2005, we increased the size of the ISF and stated that we would “stand down when they stood up” (excepting the Marines in Anbar who were in a bloody counterinsurgency operation beginning in 2004).  It wouldn’t have mattered if we had increased the size of the ISF to a million troops.    With incompetence, sectarianism and desertion, it would be (and will continue to be) a long time before the ISF is a legitimate armed forces on par with the balance of the nations of the world.

A brief rundown of the problems include a culture of entitlement, culture of dishonesty, mistrust and corruption that seems to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia.  This manifests itself in an officer corps that lords it over the enlisted ranks and the lack of a viable NCO corps (see Norvelle B. De Atkine, Why Arabs Lose Wars and Concerning the Importance of NCOs).  In Afghanistan the problems appear to be even worse, with lack of a nationalistic infrastructure or culture, drug addiction, and corruption so bad that it makes the population prefer Taliban rule to the Afghan National Police.

Dr. John Nagl, no more than about six months ago, advocated approximately 600,000 troops for Afghanistan.  When CNAS (which is advising the Obama administration) released its study on Afghanistan, it became obvious that they had dropped their advocacy for large additions of U.S. troops to Afghanistan.  Instead, it now appears that the plan is to increase the total force to around 600,000 by rapidly increasing the size of the ANA and ANP.

For the record, while we have advocated larger U.S. troop additions for Afghanistan (and also did so before it was popular for Iraq), The Captain’s Journal has never believed that defeat of the insurgency in Afghanistan would require 600,000 troops, and certainly won’t require 400,000 Afghan Security Forces.  We’re pushing numbers when we should be pushing quality.  There is even question whether Afghanistan can support a national security force which requires half of its GDP.

As troop strength gradually decreases in Iraq, it will need to be increased in Afghanistan, perhaps as high as 125,000 troops or even more (at least twice the current U.S. force size), and certainly better supplied with logistics and helicopters.  But the goal should be a smaller Afghan Security Force than 400,000 troops, vetted, free of drug addiction, well trained, and disciplined to fight rather than run away from the Taliban.  Such a force would make quick work of the Taliban.  But developing this force is long term work, requiring taking and holding terrain, both physical and human.  As General Petraeus said, Afghanistan will be the longest campaign of the long war, and in order to bring it to an acceptable conclusion, the Obama administration must begin to see it that way rather than searching for a rapid exit strategy.

Prior on the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police:

The Contribution of the Afghan National Army in the Battle of Wanat

Concerning that Robust Afghan National Security Force

The Marines Must Hold Helmand

The Sorry State of the Afghan National Police

Where is the Afghan National Army?

Afghan National Army in Operation Khanjar – Or Not

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