Articles by Herschel Smith

Russia gets to count U.S. missiles and warheads according to a recent agreement sponsored by the Obama administration.

Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads.

The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said publicly Tuesday that the two nations have made “considerable” progress toward reaching agreement on a new strategic arms treaty.

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires in December and negotiators have been racing to reach agreement on a successor.

Clinton said the U.S. would be as transparent as possible.

“We want to ensure that every question that the Russian military or Russian government asks is answered,” she said, calling missile defense “another area for deep cooperation between our countries.”

While we’re at it, let’s go ahead and give them our miniaturized nuclear weapons technology from Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories.  Let’s allow them access to Oak Ridge National Laboratory so that they can see how we cascade our enrichment of weapons grade material.  In fact, let’s just give them some of our weapons so that Russian scientists and engineers can study our material purity and weapons designs.

Talk about OPSEC (operational security) violations, this must be the mother of all offenses.  The Marines ban twitter, Facebook and MySpace because of just such issues, but Obama lets the Russians investigate and inspect the most significant deterrence to all out conventional war in the last half century.  Is there a problem with this picture?

I’m sorry to steal Paul’s Mirengoff’s thunder (i.e., post title), but it’s too good to pass up.

Fareed Zakaria contends that a troop surge is not necessary in Afghanistan because we’re succeeding there. Our central objective, he notes, is to deny al Qaeda the means to reconstitute, to train, and to plan major terrorist attacks. In this, says Zakaria, we have been successful for the past eight years.

Zakaria’s position is a plausible one and we have flirted with it on Power Line. But was Zakaria this sanguine about Afghanistan when Barack Obama and other opportunistic leftists were attacking President Bush for allowing the situation there to become “dire” while the U.S. focused on Iraq? Or does Zakaria’s assessment depend on which party occupies the White House?

In either case, Zakaria’s analysis, though plausible, is not terribly persuasive. He assumes the situation in Afghanistan is sufficiently static that the status quo will be maintained if the U.S. simply maintains present troops level. But war tends not to work that way. The U.S. may elect to stand still in Afghanistan but it’s unlikely that the other players will. For example, tribes and their leaders surely are trying to determine whether the U.S. is committed to defeating the Taliban and protecting local populations. If they conclude we are not, they are likely to gravitate towards the Taliban, to the detriment of the U.S.

Al Qaeda is also watching from across the border in Pakistan. If Zakaria is correct that the Pakistanis are stepping up their efforts against al Qaeda, then we can expect that elements of that terrorist outfit will gravitate back to Afghanistan if the U.S. is unwilling to surge and the situation contines to deteriorate. Worse, a weakened U.S. position in Afghanistan might well produce gains for al Qaeda in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. For, as the Washington Post concluded after interviewing Pakistan’s foreign minister, the Pakistanis are unlikely to persevere against al Qaeda if they see the U.S. falter.

Fareed Zakaria is little more than a court jester, a clown in a funny costume performing funny antics.  It has always been this way.  Paul’s brief analysis is the only thing that is plausible – that is, that this is all politically motivated.  The Captain’s Journal hates it when war is politicized at home when real leadership is needed and the lives of our warriors is at stake.  Paul is wrong.  It is wholly implausible that what Zakaria says is correct.

Having been said so many times before it probably doesn’t bear repeating, but it will be anyway by quoting Bruce Riedel.

One more thing: the view that you can win the war against al-Qaeda by just bombing al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan–you don’t think that can work, do you?

No.

That’s part of the fairy tale?

That’s part of the fairy tale. We are doing a brilliant tactical job in degrading al-Qaeda today in Pakistan. It depends upon an intricate network of intelligence sources. At any time that network could start to dry up. At any time al-Qaeda could change operational procedures which would make it harder. Al-Qaeda operates in a syndicate of terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It swims among these groups: the Afghan Taliban, the Pak Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and others. And for eight years now, it has been able to successfully operate there by swimming in this environment. The notion that you can somehow selectively resolve the al-Qaeda problem while ignoring the larger jihadist sea in which [al-Qaeda] swims has failed in the past and will fail in the future. That’s what President Pervez Musharraf tried to do in Pakistan and it failed utterly. That, in many ways, is what [former President George W.] Bush and [former Vice President Dick] Cheney tried to do and it failed utterly. It’s a fairy tale, and it’s a prescription for disaster.

Speaking of swimming in the environment of the Pashtun region, commenter rrk3 observes:

I love the way the adminstration is now saying we can seperate the Taliban from al-Qaeda when the evidence to the contrary is right in front of everyone to see. The Taliban are actually laughing at at impudence because they know exactly how to exploit our tactical and now strategic policies.

It does look like that Pakistanis are going into South Wazeristan. We need to prepare for an influx of fighters from the FATA and hopefully meet some of the coming across the border.

Kinetic operations are a precourser to a successful COIN strategy not the other way around. It is better to have fewer insurgents to protect the people from. The only way to do this is to meet the insurgents in the field.

rrk3 and Bruce Riedel know what The Captain’s Journal knows.  There is no border, and AQ swims freely amongst the Taliban everywhere, stolid claims to the contrary.`

Good friend of The Captain’s Journal John Bernard is in the news.

NEW PORTLAND, Maine — It was the last way John Bernard would have wanted his voice to gain prominence in the national debate over the war in Afghanistan. The retired Marine had been writing to lawmakers for weeks complaining of the new rules of engagement he believed put U.S. troops at unacceptable risk in the insurgency-wracked country. He got little response.

Then Bernard’s only son, 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard — a Marine like his dad — was killed in an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand province, the latest victim of a surge in U.S. combat deaths.

Three weeks later, Joshua became the face of that toll when The Associated Press published photos of the dying Marine against his father’s wishes and John Bernard was thrust into a national debate about the role of the press in wartime.

Suddenly, for all the worst reasons, John Bernard’s voice was being heard.

The loss of his son and the furor over the photo have given new resonance to his view that changes must be made in how the war is fought before President Barack Obama sends any more troops to battle the Taliban and al-Qaida.

“For better or for worse, I may be the face of this. That’s fine,” said Bernard, sitting on his porch as he drank coffee from a Marine Corps mug. “As soon as someone bigger can run with it, they can have the whole thing.”

Bernard’s criticism is aimed at new rules of engagement imposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, five weeks before Joshua Bernard was killed. They limit the use of airstrikes and require troops to break off combat when civilians are present, even if it means letting the enemy escape. They also call for greater cooperation with the Afghan National Army.

Under those rules, John Bernard said, Marines and soldiers are being denied artillery and air support for fear of killing civilians, and the Taliban is using that to its tactical advantage. In a letter to his congressman and Maine’s U.S. senators, Bernard condemned “the insanity of the current situation and the suicidal position this administration has placed these warriors in.”

“We’ve abandoned them in this Catch-22 where we’re supposed to defend the population, but we can’t defend them because we can’t engage the enemy that is supposed to be the problem,” he said in an interview with the AP …

The Taliban “are tenacious and you have to fight them with the same level of tenacity,” Bernard said. “If you’re going to try to go over there as a peacekeeper, you’re going to get your butt handed to you, and that’s what’s going on right now.”

[ … ]

It’s been a little more than a month since Joshua was buried in a small cemetery about five miles from their 1865 farmhouse in the rolling hills of western Maine, where the leaves of maples, oak, birch and poplars are turning fiery red, orange and yellow.

Bernard has accepted the loss, but his grief is obvious. He pauses from time to time to take deep breaths as he speaks of his son. Several times, he closes his eyes, as if remembering …

Bernard, 55, joined the Marines in 1972 and served 26 years on active and reserve duty, leading a platoon as a scout sniper in the first Gulf War in 1991. Physically fit, with closely cropped hair and a Marine Corps tattoo on his arm, the retired first sergeant remains a competitive shooter.

He and his wife, Sharon, raised Joshua and their daughter, Katie, 25, in New Portland, population 800. The family attended Crossroads Bible Church in nearby Madison.

Father and son shared the same philosophy: service to God, family, country and Marines — in that order, Bernard said.

Joshua was quiet, polite and determined. He led a Bible study in Afghanistan and earned the call sign “Holy Man.”

It looks as if the family is happy and having fun, Josh is physically fit and has a medium-reg haircut.  This is good.  It’s the way he should be remembered.  Visit John at Let Them Fight.

Prior:

Concerning Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard

Publishing the Marine Photo: Remember the Words of Christ

In recently released article Why are we in the Helmand Province? I a argued for the legitimacy of the Marines’ presence in the Helmand Province, contra the pronouncements of the population-centric counterinsurgency proponents who wish to deploy U.S. troops to population centers such as Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad.  We must go where the insurgents recruit, train, raise their largesse and take safe haven.

Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette later discussed the fact that we mustn’t let Kandahar become like the cities in Anbar, Iraq, controlled by the insurgents, before we take action (to which I responded on one issue raised by Greyhawk in Insufficient Numbers of Marines).  But the fall of Kandahar is proceeding apace, and my arguments for deploying U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province are not to be construed as arguments against deploying them in Kandahar, as sufficient numbers of Marines are available to accomplish both.

Tyler Hicks is reporting from Kandahar, and the streets are anything but secure and bustling with trade.

Tyler Hicks has three rules when photographing in a dangerous, unstable city like Kandahar, Afghanistan. Keep moving, watch the crowd and always listen to your translator and driver.

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the city — there’s always a possibility that you’re moments away from being killed,” said Mr. Hicks, 40, who has been working in Afghanistan for The New York Times since 2001. “So you shave off risk anywhere you can. It’s that bad.”

Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, was the Taliban’s headquarters from the mid-1990s until its overthrow in 2001. Today, Islamic militants are once again operating inside the city, planting roadside bombs, almost daily, and carrying out a number of suicide attacks.

Mr. Hicks prefers working early in the morning when there are fewer people on the street, dressed in traditional clothing and traveling in a car. He often photographs from the window or limits his time on the street to just minutes, but is still able to create images with a startling intimate feel.

“Working is very difficult because no matter how much you try to fit in, once you get out of the car with your cameras, you’re identified and faced with a lot of unfriendly stares,” Mr. Hicks said.

Kandahar doesn’t see or interact with many foreign troops.  In fact, Michael Yon also reports from Kandahar on just what happens with the troops based around Kandahar.

Slowly, surely, the city is being strangled.  Signaling the depth of our commitment, security forces are thinner in Kandahar than the Himalayan air.  During the days and evenings, there were the sounds of occasional bombs—some caused by suicide attackers, and others by firefights.  The windows in my room had been blown out recently and now were replaced.  We came here to kill our enemies, but today we want to make a country from scratch …

An American convoy of MRAPs approached from the front and a soldier in the lead vehicle shot a pen-flare, causing everyone to pull off the road.  The convoys are more menacing from the outside and in fact I kept the camera down and this is exactly why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is concerned about adding too many troops.  Can’t argue with his reasoning; convoys and troops truly are menacing despite that U.S. and British soldiers are very disciplined.  It must look far worse to Afghans.  Most Afghans never talk with foreign soldiers and those who do normally only see us in passing.  In fact, most soldiers never leave base.  Our forces at KAF (Kandahar Airfield) have a base so large that this commercial jet is about to land there after flying dangerously over this unsecured road.

It isn’t the number of troops that’s the problem, it’s what they are doing.  More correctly, the number of troops is the problem in that there aren’t enough of them to secure Afghanistan, but the ones who are there are doing the wrong things.  So there are two large  problems, and both need to be fixed in order to be successful.

Kandahar is badly in need of two or three U.S. Marine Regimental Combat Teams with Air Task Force support.  There is a need for Army mechanized troops – perhaps in other parts of Afghanistan, but the debate between mechanized and foot-borne (or dismounted) soldiering is more than merely academic.  Kandahar badly needs to see troops.  Afghans in Kandahar need aggressive policing.  They need to speak with troops, observe them patrol every day, and feel the protection afforded by Marines with rifles who will fire them at the Taliban.  They need to see the Afghan National Police teamed up with the Marines and interacting with the people rather than tearing out through the city aboard trucks like Yon observed.

Kandahar needs to be a dismounted campaign.  Living on large mega-bases and patrolling in vehicles just won’t do.  No protection from the Taliban is afforded by Soldiers in MRAPs, and no policing and population control can be conducted from the seat of a vehicle, any more than intelligence can be gleaned from mounted patrols.  Kandahar is slowly falling to the Taliban, and the only alternative to ceding this human and physical terrain to the enemy is aggressive, large scale troop presence conducting dismounted patrols.  But for the patrols to be effective, General McChrystal’s tactical directive limiting fires in certain situations must be rescinded.  The Marines and smart and adaptable, and don’t need McChrystal’s advice, as they have been doing and winning counterinsurgencies longer than has McChrystal.  The good general is trying to teach his granny to suck eggs.

Lt. Col. Christian Cabannis fully adheres to and advocates the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency.

Christian Cabannis met a social worker before deploying to Afghanistan. Not for his own wellbeing, but to better understand the task at hand. It was his mother’s idea.

Her son is a lieutenant colonel in the US marines and the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion 8th Marine Regiment.

He is in charge of perhaps the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and also one of the poorest. So his mother wanted him to better understand what it is that motivates the poor and how to win their support.

He describes this mission as “armed social work”; providing hope for the needy and defence against the Taliban …

It is pure, modern counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) and what American and British generals believe is the key to winning this war. Lt Col Cabannis says that until recently the mission lacked the right focus.

Three years ago, Garmsir market was shot up and abandoned; the scene of pitched battles between British forces and the Taliban. But today UK and US troops have driven them away from the town and Garmsir is held up as a success story.

In the past three months, US marines have built on British efforts to establish meaningful local government …

He believes that many insurgents can be persuaded to put down their weapons and re-join society and there are discussions under way as to how to achieve this.

The marines’ success is in part due to sheer size; having the force strength to push into new areas, to stay there and to engage in what they call “consent-winning activities” on a much larger scale than Britain has been able to.

There is much left out of this account of the battle for Garmsir, Afghanistan.  The facts left out of the account actually causes this account to skew the interpretation and may change the context the reader places around the events, thus affecting the import of the story.

The British were unable to take and hold Garmsir, and so in 2008 the U.S. Marines 24th MEU initiated large scale operations to take it from the Taliban.  The operations relied on heavy kinetics, but was welcomed by the people of Garmsir.  The drive against the Taliban continued in such heavy military operations that the fire fights were at times described as full bore reloading by the Marines.  As if speaking to population-centric counterinsurgency experts who believe that they must win the population by nonkinetic means, town elder Abdul Nabi told the Marines “We are grateful for the security.  We don’t need your help, just security.”  The 24th MEU killed some 400 Taliban during their deployment.

In 2008 the Marines were doing the right things – they certainly didn’t lack focus.  But the 24th MEU had to leave, and they turned over to the British, who once again couldn’t hold the terrain, either physical or human.  Thus more U.S. Marine Corps operations had to be initiated in the Helmand Province in 2009.

Accompanying the fantasy-narrative that the lack of focus in the past has given way to a brilliant new strategy to win Afghanistan is a robust defense of the rules of engagement by Lt. Col. Cabannis.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

This is a big change since the spring. All U.S. forces in Afghanistan are now being told to protect civilians even if the enemy gets away. Over the last eight years, Afghans have been outraged by civilian deaths and it’s a big reason the U.S. is not winning.

“Killing a 1000 Taliban is great but if I kill two civilians in the process, it’s a loss,” Lt. Col. Cabaniss said.

Asked how many enemies have been killed so far, Cabaniss said, “I have no idea and it’s really irrelevant.”

“Body counts not something that you track?” Pelley asked.

“It doesn’t tell me that I’m being successful. It doesn’t tell me that at all. The number of tips that I receive from the local population about IED’s in the area, Taliban in the area, that is a measure of effectiveness,” Cabaniss explained.

This is an important exchange, and we should spend some time dissecting and analyzing it.  The reason the U.S. is not winning is force projection, or lack thereof.  There aren’t enough troops, as we saw with the 2008 campaign for Garmsir in the Helmand Province.  The ANP and ANA cannot possibly hold the terrain once it has been taken and won’t be ready for quite some time.  In fact, there is some indication that the locals themselves are a bit disgusted by the ROE.

But even for population-centric counterinsurgency advocates, this exchange is full of nonsense.  To be sure, the population may be one means of marginalizing the insurgents, getting intelligence on them, and then conducting intelligence-driven raids, killing or capturing them.  This was done en masse in Iraq, especially in 2007.  But in the interview Cabannis makes a leap from an enabling feature of counterinsurgency to the end or purpose of it.

If a Province has 1000 Taliban and the U.S. Marines kill them all, and along with them the Marines inadvertently kill two noncombatants, it’s preposterous to suggest that this is a loss.  This suggestion is tantamount to saying that for every noncombatant we kill greater than five hundred pop up in his place.

Further, why did Cabannis use the values of 1000 and 2?  Would it have been acceptable to have killed a single noncombatant if we had killed 1000 Taliban?  If so, is he suggesting that the ratio of generation to kill rate of insurgents is greater than 500: 1 but less than 1000:1?  Or perhaps if these suggestions sound a bit pedantic, it’s more likely that he is simply using theatrics and hyperbole to make a point.  But if one has to use theatrics, the point itself suffers from lack of credibility.

Finally, why is killing Taliban great?  If it’s great because it assures the population that they are protected, then we should endeavor to do more of it.  Killing noncombatants is never a good thing, but giving the insurgents safe haven amongst the domiciles of villages sends the opposite message than we intend.  It gives them operating space, and it tells the villagers that we won’t pursue the insurgents on their own terrain, and thus there is no protection from them once they come into your homes and villages.  The very time you need the protection is precisely the time we will abandon you to the enemy.

By now it’s old news that Obama has hearted the Taliban.

President Obama is prepared to accept some Taleban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future and is unlikely to favour a large influx of new American troops being demanded by his ground commander, a senior official said last night.

Mr Obama appears to have been swayed in recent days by arguments from some advisers, led by Vice-President Joe Biden, that the Taleban do not pose a direct threat to the US and that there should be greater focus on tackling al-Qaeda inside Pakistan.

Mr Obama’s developing strategy on the Taleban will “not tolerate their return to power”, the senior official said. However, the US would only fight to keep the Taleban from retaking control of the central government — something the official said it is now far from capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary to al-Qaeda.

Bowing to the reality that the fundamentalist movement is too ingrained in national culture, the Administration is prepared, as it has been for some time, to accept some Taleban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said.

That could mean paving the way for insurgents willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government, and even ceding some regions of the country to the Taleban.

Mr Obama, the official said, is now inclined to send only as many more troops to Afghanistan as are needed to keep al-Qaeda at bay. Downing Street said that the US President had discussed Afghanistan with Gordon Brown yesterday during a 40-minute video conference call.

Sending far fewer troops than the 40,000 being demanded by General Stanley McChrystal would mean that Mr Obama is willing to ignore the wishes of his ground commander.

General McChrystal, along with the US military’s other top officials, insist that only a classic, well-resourced counter-insurgency strategy has a chance of staving off defeat in Afghanistan. Losing the war, they further argue, would provide al-Qaeda with new safe havens from which to mount attacks on the US and elsewhere.

After two days of meetings in the White House Situation Room with his war Cabinet, Mr Obama, according to the official, kept returning to one central question: who is our adversary?

The answer was, repeatedly, al-Qaeda, with advisers arguing that the terror network was distinct from the Taleban and that the US military was fighting the Taleban even though it posed no direct threat to America.

Ah.  And there is the crux of the issue, isn’t it?  An unstated assumption, it is.  The Taliban pose no direct threat to America, or in other words, they won’t harbor al Qaeda in the future.  They aren’t globalists, and they won’t befriend those who would be globalists or who would participate in the transnational insurgency they call jihad.

Well, I have argued that the burden of proof is on those who claim that the Taliban are no threat at all since they have proven otherwise in their history.  I have further argued that their claims to being innocuous are dubious given their previous devotion to AQ and their recent statements.

But putting that issue aside for a moment, there is something very troubling that stands out in this report.  The administration has elsewhere argued that AQ is primarily (or completely) in Pakistan and is preparing to focus major assets and attention on the Pakistani effort at routing AQ.  They have now signed on to the notion that the Taliban won’t harbor AQ and are even prepared to offer them a place in the seat of government.

Yet instead of sending McChrystal his requested troops for the campaign, they are preparing to send only those troops needed to “keep AQ at bay.”  Keep them at bay where?  In Afghanistan?  But we’ve signed on to the notion that the Taliban will route them from Afghanistan, not harbor them.  If this is true, then not only will no more troops be needed, the ones currently there can come home.  The Taliban can combine with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to do our work for us.

Alas, it is such simple logic, and it’s sad that the administration couldn’t see through the greatest weakness of its own argument.  They don’t even believe it.

Here at The Captain’s Journal, in keeping with the best coverage and clearinghouse of information on the Marines in Now Zad, here is a fairly recently posted video.  I recognize it to be some new spliced in with some previous video.  God bless the Marines in Now Zad.  Thanks to Lance Corporal Mckellips for editing and posting the video.

Amid robust public debate concerning counterinsurgency and whether it works – and if so, what brand works – two successful counterinsurgency campaigns may be briefly studied to ascertain the common elements.  At the recommendation of Professor Gian Gentile I have studied a paper by Karl Hack entitled “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm,” The Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 32, No. 3, 383-414, June 2009.  Hack argues (quite persuasively) that during the Malayan emergency (1948 – 1960, repeatedly cited for COIN examples) Britain applied distinct elements to different phases of the campaign, with the notion of winning hearts and minds coming after a phase of aggressive patrols, population control, etc.  It is naive, argues Hack, to believe that the blend of policies found at the optimization phase will work at the outset of the conflict.  This is important to remember as we ramp up reconstruction teams for Afghanistan in unsecured areas.

The next successful example is the campaign for Anbar.  The much heralded tribal awakening (lead by Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha) unique to Ramadi followed on the heels of significant kinetics to shut down the smuggling lines of Sheik Risha and even kill his tribal members in noteworthy gunfights.  In Haditha it required sand berms surrounding the city (to keep fighters from infiltrating from Syria) along with a police strong man, Deputy Commander Lt. Col. Muhada Mahzir.  In Al Qaim it required heavy kinetics by the U.S. Marines followed on by a police chief strong man named Abu Ahmed.  In Fallujah it required heavy kinetics by the U.S. Marines followed on by biometrics, aggressive policing and patrols, gated communities, payment to the Sons of Iraq, and aggressive Iraqi police (and this in 2007 following even heavier kinetics during al Fajr in 2004).

Creation of utopia or comprehensive state-building wasn’t in the stable of features brought to bear on either campaign discussed above, and yet they were more than marginally successful.  But creation of the circumstances necessary for population control wasn’t quick or easy, and there are no magical formulae to incant in order to effect these conditions.  That’s why Gentile has argued that the center of gravity may not be the population, and it must be discovered by the forces involved in the conflict.  I have gone further and argued that a campaign may not (and in many cases probably doesn’t) have a center of gravity, necessitating multiple lines of effort.

In all cases of successful counterinsurgency there have been enough troops (and the necessary tactics) to effect population control, and thus the idea of small units in forbidding human and physical terrain such as Wanat and Kamdesh are a profoundly bad idea, leading in the end to dead U.S. troops and ruined national reputation before the population we wish to control.

Andy McCarthy argues that McChrystal should be granted his troops for the campaign in Afghanistan (while also strangely arguing that the strategy isn’t clear – why would we sacrifice troops if the strategy isn’t clear?), and then later argues against the practice of counterinsurgency.  More correctly, he is arguing against the practice of state building and population-centric counterinsurgency.  The opposing view is expressed by Joshua Foust when he expresses doubt about the fact that the Marines can successfully occupy Garmsir but haven’t brought enough ANA and ANP forces or good Afghan governance with them for any kind of staying power.  The Marines “thought” they had it right each time they swept through Garmsir.

But the facts are suitable to another narrative.  The British could never hold Garmsir, which is why the U.S. Marine Corps 24th MEU was deployed there in 2008.  They subsequently turned over to the British, who then could not hold the terrain.  Hence, Operation Khanjar was necessary to once again retake Garmsir.  The problem is not that the basic schema was wrong.  The problem is that there have never been enough troops implementing the right tactics to hold the terrain once it has been taken.  The 24th MEU had to leave.  More U.S. Marines should have been deployed because creating good governance and population control – and killing the enemy – don’t happen overnight (as if we can wave a magic wand and deploy good governors and policemen).

McCarthy is right in that creating a utopia is neither a possibility nor a necessity in Afghanistan, but wrong in the implicit presupposition that counterinsurgency done right cannot work.  Foust is right in that there needs to be follow-on stability, but as we have pointed out the ANA and ANP cannot now provide that security and population control.  We have much less with which to work in Afghanistan than we did in Iraq.  That’s why General Petraeus said that of the “long war,” Afghanistan would be the longest campaign.

Poverty doesn’t create radical Islamic insurgencies, since Bangladesh is among the most impoverished countries on earth but doesn’t suffer from the transnational actors that afflict Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Raising Afghanistan from its impoverishment to a nation of relative wealth may be an impossible task, but may be unnecessary (contra the population-centric COIN advocates).  The Taliban continue their propaganda campaign, lately by telling us effectively that they won’t allow al Qaeda back in (or at least that they have no global aspirations).  This is a dubious claim given the mutual admiration, respect and even love between UBL and Mullah Omar. Hakimullah Mehsud, new head of Pakistan’s Tehrik-i-Taliban (and who may be much worse than the deceased Baitullah Mehsud), has said that the relationship between al Qaeda and the TTP is one of love and affection.

As for Garmsir, there are fighters that simply must be killed.

CAMP DELHI, Afghanistan, Oct 3 (Reuters) – On the frontline of Washington’s counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, intelligence officer Hajji Mir Hamzai stands before a map and tells a young Marine where the Taliban are next likely to strike.

“I know here and here, I have heard they want to place bombs,” Hamzai, an Afghan who works for the National Directorate of Security points to a wall and tells Captain Trevor Hunt through a translator.

Hunt wants to know if any of the Taliban in Garmsir district can be turned into allies.

“All Taliban are the same,” said Hamzai, whose three brothers were killed in two separate suicide attacks by the Taliban.

“There is another type which is also called Taliban. They are simple. They are not politicians, they are just locals … But the ones that fight, the only way is to kill them,” said Hamzai, who uses a network of undercover agents to gather information.

As there is in every insurgency, there are locals who will put away their weapons when they learn that the costs are too high to continue – but the corollary is that until they are persuaded of this fact they will not put away their weapons.  But there is a hard core element that must be killed.  This requires troops, as does long term securing and controlling the population.

We needn’t create a utopia, any more than we need to impose Western-style democracy.  The religious and social underpinnings aren’t even in place to support such framework.  But we must kill the globalists and we must control the population until such time as a reliable security apparatus is prepared to fill in behind us once we leave.  This will be a long-duration effort.  At one and the same time, this is the maximum and minimum we can hope to accomplish in this campaign.  We don’t have the national resources or staying power to do more, but if we do less we will likely suffer having to repeat Operation Enduring Freedom because of the mistakes made the first time around.  This is the nexus which defines success.

Following up on our coverage and commenting on recent attacks in Nuristan, Afghanistan, and the consequent deaths of eight U.S. Soldiers, ABC News has an interesting account.

The remote base in northern Afghanistan where eight U.S. soldiers were killed this weekend in a deadly battle was well-known inside the military as extremely vulnerable to attack since the day it opened in 2006, according to U.S. soldiers and government officials familiar with the area.

When a reporter visited the base a few months after it opened, soldiers stationed in Kamdesh complained the base’s location low in a valley made most missions in the area difficult.

“We’re primarily sitting ducks,” said one soldier at the time.

Known as Camp Keating, the outpost was “not meant for engagements,” said one senior State Department official assigned to Afghanistan, and brings “a sad and terrible conclusion” to a three-year effort to secure roads and connect the Nuristan province to the central government in Kabul …

The base, located less than 10 miles from the Pakistan border and nestled in the Hindu Kush mountains, was attacked almost every day for the first two months it was opened, hit by a constant stream of rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

By the third or fourth month of the base’s existence, resupply had been limited to nighttime helicopter flights because the daytime left helicopters and road convoys too exposed to insurgent attacks. That remained true through the weekend.

The base had several near-misses with enemy fire over the years. In 2006, all daytime helicopter flights landing at the valley floor were cancelled when an American Blackhawk was nearly hit with an incoming rocket as it was taking off. After the incident, helicopters were banned from landing anywhere but an observation post some three hours’ walk above the base on a nearby ridgeline. Even then, helicopters filled with troops or equipment were rushed during offloading, as pilots were keen to take off before drawing hostile fire.

And like many other remote and rural parts of Afghanistan, the local population had begun souring on the American presence after airstrikes had hit civilians in the neighboring villages.

The initial military goal was to establish the base as a one of 13 Provincial Reconstruction Teams set up throughout Afghanistan to help with reconstruction projects, civil affairs and basic safety for the local population. Within a year, the PRT had been moved to a safer, more hospitable base in the western section of the province.

Camp Keating, along with two other outposts near the border, was then intended to help patrol and oversee the stretch of the Pakistan border. U.S. officials were concerned that the nearby mountain passes were being used by militants to infiltrate Afghanistan and set up for attacks.

American officials were often divided over whether the U.S. effort in the mountainous region could be sustained.

According to an American who has consulted with U.S. forces on their deployment into Nuristan, the effort in the north can only be seen as a failure.

“What have we done there in the last three, four years,” he said. “We didn’t gain anything. We weren’t able to open the road up or make the area secure.

Despite the inherent physical vulnerabilities of Camp Keating, until this weekend, the base had suffered no casualties from hostile fire. The base itself was named after Lieutenant Benjamin Keating, who was killed in vehicle accident nearby in Nov. 2006.

But on Saturday, a force of as many as 300 insurgents attacked the vulnerable base in what the military has termed a “complex” attack that began in a neighboring village mosque. According to an Afghan translator for American forces in Nuristan, the village mosque was used to store the weapons and ammunition used in the attack. The rules of engagement generally prevent U.S. forces from searching or attacking Afghan mosques.

According to the Afghan translator, most of the insurgents were local. Eastern Nuristan has long been filled by the insurgent group led by former mujahedeen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, called Hezb-e-Islami. U.S. officials believe that Hekmatyar is hiding in Pakistan, and helps coordinate insurgent attacks throughout eastern Afghanistan.

One U.S. military official told ABC News that they believe the insurgents started a fire as they began to attack. “They burned the base down,” said the official.

The smoke from the fire initially limited the air support U.S. soldiers requested, according to a military official. The fighting lasted “throughout the day” as there were signs that the insurgents were able to breach the base before being “repelled.” As insurgents fired from three or four different locations above the base, they also maneuvered and over took one of the observation posts on higher ground, taking out a post meant to protect Camp Keating from enemy fire.

The outpost at its peak was home to roughly 100 U.S. soldiers and a few dozen Afghans from both the national army and police force. According to reports, the base was down to half that size when the attack came over the weekend.

Patrols in the neighboring villages and mountaintops were often limited by the lack of U.S. forces, and forced commanding officers to stay on base for fear of being over-run while on patrol.

“American officials were often divided over whether the U.S. effort in the mountainous region could be sustained.”  This was wasted effort on a juvenile disagreement, and they should have been reading The Captain’s Journal.  The answer was and remains simple.  Just as we have noted in our analysis of the Battle of Wanat, this has all of the markings of lack of force projection: inability to go on patrol for fear of being overrun, lack of logistics because of the danger to helicopters, no roads open to NATO traffic, bad location regarding the terrain because of lack of better choices, inability to connect with the population because of the necessity to focus on survival, and massing of enemy forces to near half-Battalion size.

From Jelawur, Afghanistan there is a similar account concerning lack of forces from a Stryker Battalion.

So far, the Army mission has been an uneasy mix of trying to woo elders with offers of generators, roads and other improvements while fighting a nasty war with an often-unseen enemy.

Bravo Company arrived in Afghanistan with 24 Strykers, the first of the eight-wheeled combat vehicles outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance gear to arrive in Afghanistan. A third of the vehicles are now out of service due to bomb attacks or maintenance …

The Taliban presence is strong enough in some areas that children are afraid to go to school.

“If we send our children to school during the day, then the Taliban will come kill the parents at night,” said one elder in a meeting with Bravo Company soldiers in the village of Adirah.

The company had 152 soldiers when it arrived, more than a dozen short of its authorized strength. Since then, some platoons have been depleted by injuries.

“I don’t have enough troops for everything they want me to do here,” said Capt. Jamie Pope, the company commander …

The problems aren’t as severe as they are in Nuristan, but lack of forces is crippling the counterinsurgency effort all over Afghanistan.  Protecting the population as a strategy is an absurd pipe dream without the necessary forces in places to do the work.  Force projection is a necessary precondition for the other aspects of counterinsurgency.  Counterinsurgency requires troops.

CBS News has come into possession of video taken before and after the Battle of Wanat that in my opinion adds a significant amount to our understanding of the physical circumstances and surrounding terrain of the outpost.  It also contains an interview with Sergeant David Dzwik and David Brostrom, Jonathan Brostrom’s father.

David Brostrom cogently questions the tactics (i.e., he questions the heavy kinetics as does the Cubbison report), but I seriously doubt whether he is correct in saying that “you just lost that village.”  Protecting the population meant heavy kinetics early on in the campaign for Anbar (and even later in 2007), and it certainly meant having more troops than they had at Wanat.

In fact, this sad story is a testimony to silly, religiously-held counterinsurgency doctrine and what it can mean to a campaign.  The notion that deploying a platoon of Soldiers amongst hundreds of Taliban will invite anything other than heavy kinetics is absurd.  It certainly won’t invite the confidence of the population.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Prior: Battle of Wanat category