Articles by Herschel Smith

Joshua Foust and I were engaging in some friendly jousting over a few articles we had written (and found much more on which to agree than disagree), and some interesting information came to light.  You see, Joshua is currently in Afghanistan, and he responded to me that he couldn’t get to my web site as it was locally blocked by S6 (or otherwise CJ6 or J6, which is Army IT Staff).

I immediately copied the article into an e-mail and sent it on its way, but only later did the importance what Joshua said dawn on me.  Pressing him for more data and information, Josh responded with an article of his own.  The results of his little investigation are striking.

Blackfive is blocked, as is Abu Muqawama, Global Guerrillas, and our very own The Captain’s Journal.  This list is not comprehensive.  Allowed are Small Wars Journal, The Long War Journal, and rather interestingly, Bouhammer, whose URL has the word ‘blog’ in it.  I use WordPress to create articles, but I am not associated with WordPress and the Army would have no way of knowing what software I use.

The Captain’s Journal hasn’t been swept up in some doltish group block such as with Twitter.  No, we have been specially selected.  Says Joshua:

On a personal level, Registan.net is blocked. This is not an automatic block, as the category used in the reason line is “local blocks,” or it was manually added. Why an S6 would want to block this blog from being read on Army computers escapes me, but it is nevertheless the case. Many other blogs, including everything on blogspot, are also inaccessible … I see no noticeable rhyme or reason to this, aside from some local blocks, like Captain’s Journal, that are deeply puzzling. But it also speaks to a deeper problem in how the military in general is approaching IT issues in the field: it makes absolutely no sense. Many of the blocked blogs are sources for deep, intelligent, and even essential analysis, news, and discussions. In fact, I only know they are blocked because I read them and see value in them.

Someone in the Army in Afghanistan, after reading our content, has made the decision to initiate a local block of The Captain’s Journal.  Is it a field grade officer?  Is it a member of Army IT staff?  We don’t yet know.  But we do know that this is not accidental.

Now, we have been critical of the failure to look forward and plan for problems in logistics in Afghanistan, given that we pointed out the strategy now being employed by the Taliban one year ago in Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  We also shot straight with Major General David Rodriguez (and Army intelligence) for ignoring the signs and even arguing that there wouldn’t be a Taliban spring offensive in 2008.  And while we praised certain parts of the campaign such as the Marine Corps operation in Helmand, we were also critical of certain other parts such as the disaster at the Battle of Wanat, especially focusing on the lack of control over the terrain at Observation Post Top Side.

But there are bright aspects of our prose, such as our almost constantly reminding command that Afghanistan needs more troops along with Generals McNeill and McKiernan.  We don’t apologize for any of it.  We aren’t a cheerleader site.  We don’t try to beat other web sites with breaking news.  We don’t regurgitate talking points.  We are an analysis and advocacy web site.  Our track record is impeccable, from advocating troop increases in Iraq before the word “surge” had ever been heard, to predicting the interdiction of logistical routes through the Khyber pass.

The troubling aspect of The Captain’s Journal being blocked isn’t our own reputation.  We won’t change, and we will only do what we can do to influence policy, logistics, strategy and tactics.  We are still a relatively small blog, but we have been contacted by a number of military both in Afghanistan (before we were blocked) and after coming back stateside.  We have been told that we are one of the more “squared away” web sites on Afghanistan.

But even if it’s unlikely that The Captain’s Journal could make any substantive difference in the state of affairs – and we are not convinced that this is so – the troubling aspect of being blocked is what it says about the Army and its institutional intransigence.  I already have had such experiences with the Marine Corps, and my relationship with PAOs has probably been irrevocably harmed as a result.

But when the Army’s own Command General Staff College is now requiring its officers to blog, what does this say about their own ability to listen to constructive criticism when they apparently cannot bear the scrutiny of The Captain’s Journal?  This is not a good sign.

Others:

Joshua Foust, Registan, Dispatches from FOBistan

Wings Over Iraq, Regarding Proxy Servers and Blocked Websites

David Axe, War is Boring Blocked!

Prior:

The Captain’s Journal, Thoughts on the New Media and Military Blogging

Concerns are being raised about potential loss of logistical support for troops remaining in Iraq.

The U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq will create a shortage of helicopters and logistics support that high-level officials worry will hamper the elite U.S. troops who stay behind to train Iraqi forces and to combat terrorist networks, according to experts studying the problem.

The shortage is part of an overall logistics crunch that the Pentagon is grappling with as it shifts forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, where the rugged terrain and lack of infrastructure require more helicopter transport, engineers and a slew of other support capabilities.

As the U.S. military pulls out the bulk of its 142,000 troops from Iraq by August 2010, troops such as Army Green Berets, who are specially trained to partner with foreign forces, are expected to remain in significant numbers.

Yet those troops currently are dependent upon the basing, aviation, communications and other logistical backing of conventional U.S. Army brigades that are slated to leave the country.

Senior Special Operations officials “are really worried about the conventional Army pulling out of Iraq and leaving us holding the bag unable to support ourselves,” said Roger Carstens, who studied the problem as a nonresident fellow for the Center for a New American Security and testified on the issue last week before a House panel.

The leadership of the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., is particularly concerned about the Army’s difficulty in splitting off from its brigades vital capabilities including intelligence, communications and helicopters that are needed by the Special Operations troops, Carstens said.

“A lot of people do not understand that SOF [Special Operations forces] are really unable to support themselves,” said Carstens, who is currently working at Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.

In the longer term, the Pentagon should consider creating at least two additional helicopter battalions dedicated to Special Operations forces, according to Robert Martinage, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, who also testified last week before the terrorism subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

But the issue is larger than mere helicopters.  Sustainability for a long term deployment requires consideration of food, fuel, ground transport, electricity, communication and connectivity, medical services, troops for force protection, interpreters, Chaplains, and so the list goes.

For all of the electioneering promises that have been made, Flag officers and even field grade officers will determine how many troops must remain if any do at all, how quickly the remainder will be able to withdraw, and what is needed to support the remaining troops who will remain deployed long term.  But these officers will only weigh in after consultation with their logistics officers.  Logistics rules.

Logistics trumps politics, and logistics even trumps valid orders.  Orders cannot be carried out without the necessary support, support that most uninitiated people don’t even think about before it’s too late.

Prior:

• Destroyed Khyber Bridge Shuts Down Afghan Logistics Route
• U.S. Supplies Shrinking in Afghanistan
• Will Russian-Afghan Logistics Dictate Foreign Policy?
• New Afghan Supply Route Through Russia Likely
• U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership
• The Logistical Battle: New Lines of Supply to Afghanistan
• The Search for Alternative Supply Routes to Afghanistan
• Large Scale Taliban Operations to Interdict Supply Lines
• More on Lines of Logistics for Afghanistan
• Admiral Mullen to Obama: Logistics Rules Dude!
• How Many Troops can we Logistically Support in Afghanistan?
• Logistics Will Dictate Troop Withdrawal from Iraq
• Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan
• Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul
• Degrading Security in Afghanistan Causes Supply and Contractor Problems
• Interdiction of Supplies in Khyber Pass
• The Torkham Crossing
• The Khyber Pass
• Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Andrew Lubin, who blogs at The Military Observer, is headed back to Afghanistan.  Andrew has authored articles we’ve used and quoted here, along with other work in Leatherneck, Small Wars Journal, Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), and others. He’s one of those few free-lance correspondents who goes out in the field with the Marines and soldiers; he understands both the strategies and tactics over which he writes.  He has embedded and written from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

He’s asking for support for his trip back to Afghanistan, and asked us to mention that his book “Charlie Battery; A Marine Artillery Battery in Iraq”, is available for sale off his website. The book won the Military Writers Society of America’s 2007 Gold Medal for best military non-fiction, and selling it is how he funds his embeds. It’s a great book, and in this market, he needs all our support.  Without reader support, trips like this would not be possible.

Galrahn at Information Dissemination takes issue with us taking issue with him.  His post is worth the read time.  Drop on over and take a look (although we must say that William Lind is not one of favorite analysts, and Galrahn didn’t need Lind to make his point). We didn’t like his focus on equipment, strategy, tactics, etc., and recommended that we kill the pirates, dump the bodies overboard, and destroy their domiciles.  Galrahn responds that The Captain’s Journal is speaking from the perspective of what we want, he is speaking from the perspective of what is.  Galrahn is working within the system, we want to change the system.  Or at least, this is our take on his post.  It is more complicated than that, but this little summary will move us forward.

We accept the criticism of our criticism, and confess that it’s true that we are recommending things that have a vanishingly small chance of occurring.  Nevertheless, the import of our original article, Pirates? Call the Marines … er, the Lawyers! has not been addressed.  The question is not one of what to do within the system.  The current system won’t work, or so we have argued.

There may be a real solution within the current system as Galrahn suggests, but it is likely to be so expensive, so inefficient, and so protracted that it is effectively infeasible.  We aren’t suggesting that Galrahn is wrong or that we know more about Naval warfare than he does.  He isn’t and we don’t.

The most humane solution to the problem – the solution most likely to end piracy in a timely manner, save potential kidnap victims, and prevent largesse inflow to unstable regions of the world – is to rely on rapidly employed extreme violence.  This is a specialty of the U.S. Marines.  The most humane solution also happens to be the only viable solution.

Galrahn suggests a real but effectively infeasible solution.  We claim that the only solution likely to survive the budget cuts and end piracy is to reject his solution and implement our own.  If we do not do either, that is, if Galrahn’s solution as well as our own is rejected, then it proves yet again that piracy exists because we wish it to be so.  Collectively, we may not want the pirates, but we want them more than we want a solution.

The Guardian published an insulting article on U.S. heavy-handedness in Afghanistan, but before we briefly tackle it, a note about the reaction over at Abu Muqawama.

… what lazy-ass Guardian sub-editor wrote the header at the top of this otherwise good article on the Poles in Ghazni? A good part of the British media (and some of the British Army) indulged in this kind of “oh, the Americans are all violent oafs” narrative for the first three years of the Iraq war until it dawned on everyone that the softly-softly British had more or less lost in Basra and that the “kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” Americans had adapted and begun to win in the rest of Iraq. I’m not saying the Americans weren’t too kinetic in this part of Afghanistan. Maybe they were. But seriously, these tired all sterotypes about the clumsy American military in COIN operations was supposed to have gone out of style in 2007. This is not, I repeat, Julian Borger’s fault. This is the fault of some clown in London.

Actually, Abu is being gracious, or maybe he hadn’t had enough morning coffee (wait, it was posted at 1323 hours, after six cups).  The title of the article – Afghanistan diary: Poles apart from the Americans’ aggression – matches the import of the article quite well.  Some of the article is quoted below.

The Poles are missing their pierogi, but otherwise morale seems high. They have been here for four months and so far have not lost a man. They claim not to have killed any civilians, which for a rough province like Ghazni, with several “contacts” with the enemy each week, is a good record. The commander of the Polish taskforce is an energetic colonel called Rajmund Andrzejczak, who seems to have taken on board the emerging new orthodoxy on counter-insurgency.

“For me the critical thing is to be non-kinetic,” he said, employing Nato-speak for not shooting.

“After a couple of operations, we realised the less aggressive we were the more effective we were. I recommend not so many troops knocking down doors every night, but instead to sit down and drink tea, discuss what the people need, and bring them closer to the coalition,” he said.

The reference to knocking down doors at night is clear to anyone who has spent more than a couple of days here. It is a dig at US special forces, who have a reputation for raiding Afghan houses in the middle of the night, on the basis of intelligence that can be accurate or inaccurate, causing a disproportionate number of civilian casualties.

“The special forces are playing a damaging and negative role. They operate outside the chain of command, going in and doing raids without any co-ordination,” a senior western aid official told me. Nothing is eroding support for foreign forces faster …

Ghazni’s governor, Mohamed Osman Osmani, is pleased with the Poles. When Osmani first heard they were coming, he had feared a bunch of Warsaw pact headbangers, who would use their artillery and Soviet-model Hind gunships on everything that moved. So he is now pleasantly surprised. He says his province is more peaceful under the lighter-touch Poles than the more aggressive Americans before them.

“Security for us is like oxygen. Without it nothing can breathe, nothing can happen. And the Poles really have brought security,” Osmani said. He told me this in Kabul, on the way to Warsaw, his first trip abroad. From there he called Andrzejczak’s mobile several times a day, checking what was happening at home and reporting back on his first impressions of Europe.

However, by the time we arrived in Ghazni, something had happened to threaten this image of harmony. On 27 February, Polish troops were called to a house in a village called Dhi Khodaidad, a few miles south-west of Ghazni city, where they were told there was a Taliban cell recruiting locals.

What happened next is subject to furious debate, but there is no argument that any Taliban there had got away. The Poles said they were called in by the Afghan police, and did not open fire, using only a flash grenade on what looked like an ordinary building. The local press said the Poles had stormed a mosque guns blazing, damaging the building and destroying a Qur’an. Riots followed soon in Ghazni city, threatening to undo all the Poles’ careful “hearts and minds” work.

“People were saying that the Poles had improved security here, but now with this problem with the mosque they are beginning to wonder, and ask what the Poles are really trying to do here,” said Mirwais Pashtun, the director of a local radio station.

What a bunch of worthless claptrap.  Those cowboy Americans who shoot up everything have been replaced by the softer and more sophisticated and successful Poles, at least until they actually launched a semi-kinetic operation.  Now their reversion to American heavy-handedness has cost them all of the hard won good will.

Pure bunk and myth-making.  The Guardian is telling fairy tales.  Of course it has been more peaceful than before, since the Poles won’t conduct any kinetic operations against the insurgents.  And of course counterinsurgency is more than just kinetic operations, and to say its all about drinking chai in their homes is to dumb down the narrative.

But this whole European narrative wears like a ten year old shoe.  It has worn through and has now become unhealthy for the rest of the body.  The Europeans need to jettison it in order to take part in the larger campaign.  The catastrophe of Basra shows exactly what the British approach to Iraq brought us, and more of the same in Afghanistan is the reason why the campaign is gradually being taken away from the ISAF and brought back under the control of CENTCOM and General David Petraeus.

And as for Petraeus, the softly-softly General?  What does he have to say about the need for kinetics?

… we must pursue the enemy relentlessly and tenaciously.  True irreconcilables, again, must be killed, captured, or driven out of the area.  And we cannot shrink from that any more than we can shrink from being willing to support Afghan reconciliation with those elements that show a willingness to reject the insurgents and help Afghan and ISAF forces.

Petraeus made the attendees at the 45th Munich Security Conference feel uncomfortable with this remark, it was said.  Counterinsurgency: the right thing, at the right time, with the right tools, under the command of the right people, employing the right lines of effort, to the right ends.  If it’s kinetics, then so be it.  If it’s road building, then bring in the bulldozers and skid steers.  If it’s payment for damaged windows or attendance at a town council, or mentoring the police to build a sense of responsibility, then do it.

But if the Euro-sociologists wish to avoid kinetics altogether, then the solution is to leave their weapons at the FOB, and move out of the way so that the U.S. can do what needs to be done.  Mistakes will be made here and there, and the population and the troops will get to know each other over time.  But enough kinetics, while continuing to catalyze complaints, will also engender the belief that one can’t harbor insurgents and be safe.  This realization will be an important step in the campaign for Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, the Poles won’t be a part of it.

Military brass and strategists have been pining away at the good Taliban – the ones with whom we can deal in order to manufacture some sort of Afghanistan tribal “awakening” on the order of the Anbar campaign.  Thus the secret negotiations continue, attempting to stop the leak through the dam that is the Afghanistan insurgency.  The Captain’s Journal has struck a cautionary note concerning these so-called negotiations, especially without the accompanying force projection by U.S. troops, but a commentary in the Times of India does a good job of summing up the problem in a recent commentary.

According to certain strategists, in Pakistan as well as in the US, the Taliban can be broadly drawn into two categories -one, the socially ultra-conservative Islamists, who demand the rule of sharia in areas where they dominate, and, two, the global jihadis. It’s being suggested that the world can do business with the former, if only to isolate and eliminate the latter, the bad ones.

Is this a valid distinction? When General Musharraf suggested that there were “moderate” Talibs, the then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh had called this an “oxymoron” – and most of the world, the West certainly, would have agreed. And yet now, when the Taliban is threatening to overrun Pakistan, there are some who are proffering the “good” Taliban theory as a key foreign policy input for the US.

This is the theory that guided Islamabad to strike a deal last month in Swat with Muhammad Sufi, the same man who sent thousands of Talibs to fight the Americans when they went into Afghanistan after 26/11. He is today being seen as a “moderate” who is not interested in affairs outside Swat, unlike Baitullah Mehsud, the bad Taliban, who heads Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and is waging a war against the state.

US strategists tend to divide the Taliban into three groups: first, based in Afghanistan under leaders like Jalaluddin Haqqani, responsible for the violence in Afghanistan; second, the Pakistan Taliban; and third, the ones led by Mullah Omar of the Quetta Shura, the core of al-Qaida. Some American strategists believe that by exploiting the divisions among these groups, US could achieve its objectives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre.

Experts here say there are several reasons why flirtation with any kind of Talibanism is dangerous. They point out that, good or bad, all Talibs who demand the enforcement of sharia invoke a variant of Islam that also calls for Islamic domination by global jihad. Besides, to accept the “good” Taliban theory is to write off the rights of Muslim women, allow public stoning and summary executions.

So this commentary groups the Taliban in three divisions.  First, there is Jalaluddin Haqqani, ex-anti Soviet fighter and commander, now anti-U.S. commander.  Second, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, and third, Mullah Omar and the more traditional Afghanistan Taliban who have sought refuge in and around Quetta.  He has aligned al Qaeda with Omar when perhaps they should be more aligned with the Tehrik-i-Taliban, but let’s not quibble over details.

In a commentary for the Washington Times, Georgie Anne Geyer shills for the current administration in a pitiful piece on a symposium entitled “NATO at 60,” sponsored by the European Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.  Geyers’ piece is just horrible for anyone who knows anything about Afghanistan or Pakistan, but she does give us an interesting quote.

As Ali Jalali, former Afghan interior minister and now a specialist with the National Defense University, said of his country at the symposium: “There are three kinds of opposition – the traditional insurgency of people who have been mistreated by the government and is not ideology-backed, the classic ideological Taliban-type movement, and the global movements using Afghanistan for their own purposes.”

Now it must be understood that this comment pertains more to Afghanistan than Pakistan, but the divisions Mr. Jalali gives us is as follows: indigenous insurgency, Afghan Taliban and the globalists.  This division is troubling because it fails to recognize what is pointed out by the commentary at the India Times, namely that all Talibs who demand the enforcement of sharia invoke a variant of Islam that also calls for Islamic domination by global jihad.

This requires careful thought.  The author is not saying that everyone who invokes Sharia is a Talib.  The author is saying that the Taliban who invoke Sharia do so in concert with a hermeneutic of Islam that is accompanied by a globalist import.  The distinction means everything, and the reader is advised to read the last several sentences again.

Thus The Captain’s Journal has been very wary of such “negotiations,” believing that the kinetic operations that will necessarily precede the next phase of the campaign have not yet occurred.  We have seen only the precursors.

As for the brief analysis by Jalali concerning the Afghan Taliban, we are afraid that he doesn’t group the traditional Taliban with the globalists, a mistake we made prior to 9/11.  It’s all about the hermeneutics rather than sociology.

But there is a group with which we can bargain and maneuver.  It is the indigenous insurgency who fights for monetary well-being.

FARAH, 5 March 2009 (IRIN) – A 25-year-old man we will call Shakir has told IRIN he rues rejecting an offer of “work” from a Taliban agent whereby he would get 500 Afghanis (about US$10) a day for carrying out attacks on government offices in Farah Province, southwestern Afghanistan.

Those who accepted the offer are better off, he thinks.

“People are jobless, hungry and destitute so they agree to do anything for a small payment,” he told IRIN, refusing to give his name for fear the insurgents would kill him.

The Farah ring-road linking southern and western provinces is risky for relief convoys. Dozens of food aid trucks hired by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) were attacked there in 2008, and Farah Province is seen as a hotbed of insurgency: two districts have been taken over by the insurgents in the past two years, according to local officials.

Shakir was deported from Iran three times in 2006-2008 and his efforts to find a job in his home district of Pushtroad have been unsuccessful. “I cannot marry and start a family because I have no money… Wherever I go [for work] I return empty-handed,” he said.

“The Taliban pay 500-1,000 Afghanis [$10-20] for a day of action against government and American forces,” said Lutfullah, 23, from Helmand Province.

By contrast, government employees get less than $2 a day.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes.  We must address the situation holistically, but we must be careful with whom we negotiate and who we pay – and with whom we fight.

It is estimated that there are on the order of 20,000 hard core Taliban fighters alone in Helmand, and more in the balance of Afghanistan.  The Captain’s Journal seriously doubts that we can align any of these elements with the U.S. on a long term basis.

The indigenous poor are a different story.  This may be the doorway we are looking for.

Yochi J. Dreazen opines in the Wall Street Journal concerning how the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan hinges upon far-flung outposts.  A few salient parts follow.

“You can’t commute to work in counterinsurgency,” Gen. Petraeus told a security conference in Munich. He declined requests to be interviewed for this article.

Afghanistan, however, is different from Iraq. It remains a destitute country with few roads and virtually no modern infrastructure, meaning the outposts are unusually isolated. Outposts in Iraq were located in major cities, so they were able to protect the vast majority of the Iraqi populace. In Afghanistan, most outposts are in rural areas like Seray. Often, these outposts can be reached only by air. That has prompted fears the bases could theoretically be overtaken by insurgents before reinforcements can arrive.

The article then turns to Wanat as an example of what can happen in what he calls “far-flung outposts.”  More on this in a minute.  Continuing with Dreazen’s article:

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who has long advised Gen. Petraeus on Iraq and Afghanistan, supported the outpost strategy in Iraq. But he says the U.S. is making a mistake by deploying so many troops to remote bases in Afghanistan.

Mr. Kilcullen, a retired Australian military officer, notes that 80% of the population of southern Afghanistan lives in two cities, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. The U.S. doesn’t have many troops in either one of them.

“The population in major towns and villages is vulnerable because we are off elsewhere chasing the enemy,” he said.

Andrew Exum picks up on this theme and poses a number of questions.

Afghanistan is a really big country — bigger than Iraq — and we are trying to protect more terrain with fewer troops. The old maxim that he who defends everything defends nothing seems to apply here. Are we, by putting troops in little far-flung outposts, setting them up for more Wanats? Should we instead be camped out in the big cities of Kabul, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah as Kilcullen suggests? Should not our first priority be to secure the Afghan people in order to reduce violence in the country and facilitate the upcoming national elections?

Joshua Foust responds to Exum’s questions thusly.

Umm, should not. The last people to assume that “the people” reside in the cities, and so there their operations should focus, were the Soviets. The Taliban run circles around the U.S. and ISAF precisely they control most of the countryside and not the cities. The problem isn’t Kabul, but the Tagab. The problem isn’t Kandahar but the hills above it. The problem isn’t Lashkar Gah, but Garmser. The problem isn’t Khowst, but Spera. The problem isn’t Herat, but Shindand. The problem… well, you get my point (and that list wasn’t meant to be comprehensive, merely illustrative, in case that weren’t obvious). If you want to do a population-centric COIN in Afghanistan, you do it in the countryside …

… this kind of flabbergastery is perfectly emblematic of why knowing buzzwords like “population-centric counterinsurgency” is really worthless without that other COIN buzzword, “intimate knowledge.” You can’t make a strategy population-centric if you don’t know the population, COINdinistas.

Without considering nuance and detail, it is easy to conflate issues.  We have extensively covered the Battle of Wanat, and while the base may have been “far-flung,” close air support was initiated within 27 minutes of the start of the battle, close combat aviation within 62 minutes, and reinforcement and relief within approximately 2 hours.  The Battle of Wanat happened and proceeded as it did in large part due to other decisions: Eight of the nine who perished did so as a result of defending Observation Post Top Side, U.S. forces didn’t occupy or control the high ground, intelligence failed as indications of massive Taliban troop movements were ignored, and a host of other issues.

Wanat is a sidebar discussion regarding the overall strategy of the campaign.  So who is right?  Should we protect the population in large urban centers as suggested by Kilcullen (and questioned by Exum), or is Foust right that properly engaging Afghanistan means doing so in the countryside?  The answer means everything to the campaign.

First off, it is important to correct wrong impressions that this information can give.  The U.S. doesn’t have troops in Kandahar, for instance, because that is a Canadian operation under the purview of the ISAF.  Canada currently has approximately 2700 troops in Kandahar, and this force presence is soon to double with the addition of a U.S. BCT.

Furthermore, part of the 10th Mountain Division is now garrisoned near Kabul in Maidan Wardak and Logar provinces to the south of Kabul.  So it simply isn’t true that the U.S. forces are all going to far-flung outposts as opposed to securing the population centers.

But at what price?  At Forward Operating Base Altimur, the 10th Mountain has access to Lobster tails, massage services, skype hookups, jewelry shops and six kinds of ice cream.  While no one should begrudge them their creature comforts, the most problematic of all concerns is that they are said to be “bored.”  So should these troops be in more rural locations instead of urban centers?

This debate falls into the trap of Clausewitz – that of trying to find a unitary focus for our efforts.  Both Exum and Foust favor a population-centric model, and yet The Captain’s Journal supports a different view.  U.S. forces are present in Afghanistan because there are enemies of the U.S. located there, and also those who harbor enemies of the U.S.  Without them, the likelihood of our presence is vanishingly small.  The enemy is our target.

If the enemy announced his presence and fought without the benefit of mixing with the population, the rate of the fight would be more productive.  This has occurred even recently in Afghanistan, when the Taliban evacuated Garmser of its population, dug in and unsuccessfully faced down the Marines of the 24th MEU.  During their deployment in Helmand, they killed some 400 hard core Taliban fighters in what was described at times as “full bore reloading.”  Yet the tribal elders also said that “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you,” showing little interest in reconstruction, programs and assistance.

But it will not always be this clear.  The enemy is who we are after, but to get to them at times requires focusing on the population.  Every situation is unique, and thus rather than finding a center of gravity, it is best to see the campaign as employing lines of effort.  In spite of the lack of adequate troops, the campaign will not be an either-or decision, focusing on the enemy or the population.  It will be both-and.

Foust is right.  The Russians focused on the large population centers, and left the countryside to the Taliban.  But Exum is also right to question only deploying in rural areas.  Kandahar has seen its share of troubles, and even the Canadians admit that the sense of security has plummeted because of Taliban activity.  The Taliban are there in force, the population has no security, and thus a force presence is required in Kandahar.

No single narrative is adequate to describe what is required to successfully prosecute the campaign, and buzzwords add little if anything to the discussion.  We must be smart and allow the local situation to dictate the plan of action.  Whether from tribal elders in Garmser or the more sophisticated population of Kandahar, the message is the same.  The enemy cannot be allowed to rule the population.

The EFV (Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle) has fallen on hard times.  More accurately, it fell on hard times long ago.

It’s back to the drawing board for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.

The multibillion dollar program, designed to deliver combat-ready Marines from Navy ships to enemy shores aboard amphibious, armored personnel carriers, is so over-budget and behind schedule that it has been blasted as an “embarrassment” on Capitol Hill and identified as a poster child for troubled military acquisitions projects.

Widespread technical failures caused the Corps to scrap its existing plans two years ago and restart the program’s entire development and demonstration phase, a move that cost nearly $1 billion. But Marine Corps Systems Command is pushing forward with the creation of seven new prototypes while testing continues on existing vehicles in an attempt to head off future problems.

Marine officials say the program has turned a corner, but critics insist the EFV’s time has passed. It’s a money pit, they say, an engineering stinker that will consume about a quarter of the Corps’ research and development budget through 2014.

Even if does better next time around in operational assessments, analysts question whether the development of an amphibious vehicle without a V-shaped hull — favored for deflecting roadside-bomb blasts — makes sense, when there is no apparent need for amphibious raids on the Pentagon’s horizon.

But it’s more than just budgetary problems that plague the program.

Things began unraveling early into the development and demonstration phase. According to reports by the Government Accountability Office and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the Corps delayed the project’s completion date three times between November 2002 and March 2005 as numerous components failed in reliability tests.

Ultimately, General Dynamics was paid $1.2 billion under the contract, including $60 million in bonuses and fees for good performance, a 2008 congressional report said.

The GAO and Defense Department auditors blamed the EFV shortfalls on a variety of factors, including the adoption of an unrealistic schedule that rushed production, skipping a comprehensive design process in favor of having General Dynamics fix problems in a piecemeal fashion and not appointing an overall system engineer.

In a pivotal moment, the EFV failed a milestone operational assessment on numerous levels in 2006. According to Defense Department and congressional reports, the assessment was “dominated by very low reliability,” where the vehicle was able to operate only 4.5 hours between breakdowns, with 3.6 hours of corrective maintenance needed for every hour in use. Reviewers completed only two of the 11 amphibious tests and one of the 10 gunnery tests, and the gun turret support arm broke free during the assessment.

The Marines Corps is uncharacteristically willing to accept inferior equipment, even after all of the redesign has been finished.  “The Corps expects the new prototypes to last about 19 hours in between breakdown when they first receive them, which would put the requirement of 43.5 hours before breakdown within reach for the final product.”  Don’t let this fact escape notice.  Target = less than two full days of operation before major malfunction occurs requiring protracted maintenance.  This is the ultimate goal, not the interim stages while the Corps tests the vehicle.

Finally, there is the issue of the IED and roadside bomb vulnerability of the EFV, since it has a flat bottom hull due to its need to float.  The Corps has experience in the use of flat bottom craft when, in the summer of 2005, 14 Recon Marines perished in Anbar when running an Amphibious Assault Vehicle down a road in the desert.

Marine Corps Commandant Conway has a justification for the continued investment in the EFV.  “We’re optimistic that once people understand the facts and understand that the United States Navy is not going closer than 25 miles to a shore, they’ll appreciate the value of a vehicle that is really an armored personnel carrier that also planes at about 30 knots over open ocean,” Conway said. “We think that the program is absolutely necessary to what we do.”

This issue touches on a debate over the so-called littoral combat program on which the U.S. Navy has supposedly embarked.  Twenty five miles is beyond the horizon.  The Navy believes in littoral combat, or so it says, but not really.  Not if it’s a risky proposition.  So Commandant Conway’s solution is to field the EFV.  A video of the USS San Antonio, the LCAC and the EFV is below.

But the whole amphibious assault construct including the EFV rests on the propositions that it [amphibious assault] will be necessary, that the assault will be a surprise along with the corollary idea that there will be no IEDs to destroy the EFVs, and that there is no other solution to the dilemma.

Let’s challenge at least the last three of those propositions.  First, if an amphibious assault becomes necessary against a nation-state, it is not a legitimate claim that the state will not be aware of the Amphibious Assault Dock just off its coast.  The element of surprise is thus taken away, and therefore the EFV is vulnerable to IEDs due to its flat hull, just like the Amphibious Assault Vehicle shown above.

Second, if the target to be invaded is a failed state, it’s not plausible to claim that conventional equipment such as the EFV is necessary.  If there is a need for rapid deployment of Marines, along with heavier equipment and firepower, then the solution is to invest money in a new generation of assault helicopters.

The problem of a broken military procurement system and irresponsible defense contractors isn’t going to go away.  The Marine Corp Commandant doesn’t need to jettison the expeditionary philosophy of the Corps.  Helicopters can supply the needed firepower, carried on board Aircraft Carriers and Amphibious Assault Docks.  The Commandant needs to jettison the EFV.  And the Navy needs to stop bragging about littoral combat unless they prove themselves actually willing to do it.

The next time you swear at the snow on the roads as you’re driving to work, remember this.

In January of 2009 Andrew Lubin authored an open letter to the President concerning Afghanistan.  This was carried on his own web site and also the Small Wars Journal blog.  A number of recommendations were made, but one observation bears repeating.

Get the Army off their huge stupid bases where their bureaucracy flourishes. Put them in the field where they belong. Their “creature comforts” have gotten out of control -Burger King, Orange Julius, jewelry shops; do you know they now offer massage services at Bagram? In a war zone?

The Washington Post published an article entitled From a Fortified Base, a Different View of Afghanistan.  The beginning of the article justifies Lubin’s concern and continues with this theme in the superlative degree, although not just at Bagram.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE ALTIMUR, Afghanistan, March 2 — From the air, this U.S. Army camp in Logar province looks like a fortified gravel pit on a barren slope, surrounded by two-tiered sacks of dirt and razor wire.

But inside the wire, the hundreds of young sappers and scouts and cavalry troops from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, all newly arrived for a one-year deployment, have a pretty good life.

There is a heated recreation tent with treadmills and table tennis, 24-hour Internet service, Skype hookups and a bank of low-cost, instant-connection phones. A muted cacophony of domestic chatter rises from the rows of plywood booths.

“Don’t forget to make the car payment . . . She told me the new baby has red hair . . . I thought we agreed not to talk about that till I get home . . . No, it’s real quiet here, Ma . . . I saw some pretty nice hunting rifles on the Net . . . Are you being a good girl for Daddy?”

One tent away is the DFAC, or dining facility, where a crew of cheerful civilian cooks from India stays up all night preparing a smorgasbord of goodies. There is a mountain of fresh strawberries and grapes, replenished daily. There are six kinds of ice cream and pie. There is surf and turf every Friday night, with lobster tails flown from Maine via Dubai. After a late patrol, the men can still get grilled cheeseburgers at 2 a.m.

The living and bathing accommodations are luxurious, too, especially for soldiers who have slept on open rocky ground and gone for weeks without a real shower on previous deployments in much more primitive and dangerous conditions, such as insurgent-plagued Konar province to the east.

The 20-cot sleeping tents are neatly arranged between gravel paths that absorb the mud and snow. They are lighted brightly enough for soldiers to read at night, although most prefer watching action movies on their laptops. They are heated by giant black plastic hoses that blast in air so hot it can dry a pair of washed socks in 20 minutes. The hoses also pull out the exhaust so powerfully that they can suck up nearby objects — even a visitor’s sweater and cellphone — like some stealth worm from a science fiction novel.

Then there is the view, which is utterly breathtaking. Logar, located in central eastern Afghanistan about 50 miles south of the capital, Kabul, is a wide valley surrounded by mountains. From the lookout post at Altimur, set atop an abandoned stone wall, one can gaze in any direction at a vertiginously sculpted panorama of pristine white peaks.

But the men of the 3rd Combat Brigade did not come here for a sightseeing vacation, and they seem edgy and bored in this cramped military spa. They are young and fit and ready for action, and the drizzly, leaden weather means little contact with the Taliban insurgents they came to fight.

This approach can be contrasted with that taken by the 24th MEU when they deployed to the Helmand Province.   Col. Peter Petronzio, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, observed that “You need physically to be there,” he said. “You need to continue to move about the population, let your presence be known, but do it in a way so that you are not smothering and overwhelming. You have got to let life go on.”

The Marines lived for most of their deployment in Helmand without electrical power, e-mail, connectivity, or comfortable living arrangements.

No ice cream for the Marines.  Food was prepared over an open fire in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Marines on patrol in Now Zad, Afghanistan.

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.

Continuing with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, is there anything to do in Logar?  Perhaps so.  “Recently in Logar, armed locals blocked the highway into Kabul for hours, in protest of a night raid where US forces killed one and detained three others. According to local reports, the nearly 2,000 protestors burned tires and chanted anti-US slogans.”

The capabilities of the 10th Mountain Division versus the Marines is not at issue here.  The issue pertains to command decisions concerning how troops are to be used, the strategy employed in Afghanistan, and the tactics used to effect that strategy.  Clearly, this is not the right use of the 10th Mountain Division.