I think a great deal of the problem is that we are trying to apply a Western solution to an Eastern problem. This not only frustrates our military but our State department folks as well. It is my humble opinion that we still do not understand the tribal culture enough to fully exploit its strengths and weakness

I am frustrated as well because I would like to know what the plan is as well as it seems out national leadership does not have one and will not decide upon one until mid November. I can only imagine what having boots on the ground would be like on the frustration level when as jbrookins states they do not know what type of house to build.

There is a really good paper going around I thought I would share.
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/one_tribe_at_a_time.pdf

Again our problem is we think everything needs an American solution this is not the case at all we recognized this in Iraq, I think we are yet to recoginize it in Afghanistan.

You state, “We have not defined the goal in Afghanistan clearly and what we have described we haven’t supported.”

The overall goal in A-stan, from the beginning in 2001, was to drive Al Qaeda out of its havens there and wipe them out to the full extent possible. And the U.S. has been successful in doing that so far as that goes.

Perhaps what you are getting at, however, is the goal NOW, which has inevitably morphed due to the changing conditions in 2009. If that is what you are talking about, then, yes, you are absolutely correct: this Admin has left considerable doubt about the goals in A-stan by saying one thing (Obama: “this is a war of necessity” etc…) and saying/doing another ( “Don’t ask for more reinforcements”…”Can’t decide about more troops until we know that we have a perfect national government in A-stan”… “Open to the Taliban being part of the government…” “Don’t like the word victory…” ). And now we have the comment by It’s All Verbatim that decisions seem to have been reached in advance and the facts are going to be skewed to fit the decision, damn the consequences for our troops and national security.

Yes, elections have consequences. For all that Bush did wrong, at least he was willing to take a hit politically in order to ensure that Iraq got the surge in forces needed to finish the job. USMC University Professor, Mark Moyar, has written (via Powerline):

“In Afghanistan, turning back the insurgents will require major changes in leadership just as it did in Iraq. Like the Iraqi government, Hamid Karzai’s government lacks the mid-level and junior leaders required for success, so American leaders will have to fill the leadership gap. That means assigning more American forces to the mission of population security and enabling more American officers to provide guidance to Afghan forces, either as advisers or as commanders of American partner units.

For that reason, more than any other, the United States needs to deploy tens of thousands of additional Americans to Afghanistan as General McChrystal has recommended. Because Afghanistan has a much larger rural population than Iraq and has fewer seasoned army and police leaders, counterinsurgency is more difficult in Afghanistan today than it was in Iraq in 2007. But, as General Petraeus said concerning Iraq, difficult does not mean impossible.”

As I predicted months ago, this Admin will not commit the resources to win this fight, so getting out, as horrible as that would be, is less evil than sacrificing troops to a half-hearted approach that is under-resourced and, therefore, doomed to failure.

We have not defined the goal in Afghanistan clearly and what we have described we haven’t supported. If I say we are going to build a house yet only send two framers to the job site guess what? It won’t get very far even though our framers are busting their butts. If I tell you we are building this house yet I don’t tell you what it will look like or how many rooms, well how in the hell do you build it?

I remember years ago in SF we would joke about command guidance that went basically, “Go out and do good things”, it kinda lacked an objective.

I know the frustrations of soldiers and can imagine there are many other agencies that are very frustrated right now. I certainly wouldn’t volunteer to work with State in Afghanistan right now.