Article

2007-08-13 Afghanistan

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Bobby 2007-08-13 12:15|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top
File under: Taliban

#1 Interesting how the two sides of this discussion -- 'hearts and minds' versus 'grab them by their balls' never seem to understand that both are necessary. Counterinsurgency tries to dry up the sea in which the insurgents swim, and at the same time make it really, really, unhealthy to be an insurgent. Mr. Fick makes a cogent case for 'hearts and minds', and he's right as far as he goes, but you also need security in the villages and towns (not to mention around your own firebases), and you need to introduce a healthy respect for your troops amongst the bad guys.

Spreading some reconstruction money around is good, as long as it does what it's supposed to do and not end up in some warlord's pocket. How do you guarantee that unless you have troops around (whether they do it personally or simply protect the USAID officer)? How do you make tribal chiefs play nice? Sure, offer them a good deal and remind them of how the bad boys treat them (aka, Anbar), but having enough firepower along to ensure said tribal chief knows who is the 'strong horse' is also necessary.

I get some fed up with these sorts of articles and the people who write them. They act as if doing just one thing will fix all our problems, and always claim that whatever we're doing, we're not doing the one thing.

It's not one thing. It's never one thing. If it were one thing we'd be done and home already. It's a hundred things, all orchestrated and done in the right order. That's the tough part.

I thank Mr. Fick for his service. If he's so smart, he could leave the think tank and sign onto our diplomatic staff in Kabul.

Posted by Steve White">Steve White 2007-08-13 13:09|| 2007-08-13 13:09|| Front Page Top

#2 The academy's final lesson is that tactical success in a vacuum guarantees nothing.

Particularly when you let the enemy, and their allies, shape and tell the story.

A corollary maybe, you can have all the OPSEC in the world, but if you don't tell the story, no one else will, and you'll still lose.

Time to get out of the mindset of the mid-20th Century. DO NOT out source the story telling to the MSM. They are not your friends. They have been the unquestioning mouth piece of the enemy.

Time to reinvent the PAO, presently organized and aligned to interface with the dead tree and crisis entertainment media. Exploit the internet to end round the news withholders and distorters.

Time to exploit that troop in the unit, who like the company clerk a generation ago who had the magical skill of typing and therefore regardless of Military Occupational Specialty was reassigned to the company orderly room, who has the skills to write and integrate the internet's technology to tell the story. You know, the real ones who've actually been in the dirt and sweat, not those who just transit assembly bases in Kuwait.

Posted by Procopius2k 2007-08-13 13:41|| 2007-08-13 13:41|| Front Page Top

#3 Steve you are so very right.

"...insurgents inevitably attack the workers. But as the projects progress..."

And how do the projects progress with nothing but dead workers?

This is the same problem with Iraq. We fix the electricity, they blow it up. We fix the pipe lines, they blow it up. It's a lot easier to blow it up when there's no security to shoot them dead.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-08-13 14:13|| 2007-08-13 14:13|| Front Page Top

#4 Generals like force protection. It keeps them from having to be grilled by the congressional morons showing off about their concern for casualties.
That the force protection either makes the objective impossible or increases casualties later on can be blamed on the generals.

Senior officers don't come to value force protection by their own selves.

Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey 2007-08-13 15:06|| 2007-08-13 15:06|| Front Page Top

#5 This goes to "migrating" the battlefield back into a healthy country theory. Unfortunately, there have been some really great examples of how to do this that we have missed out on in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of these is to take as many unemployed men as possible and set them to work on government improvement projects at the prevailing (low) wage. Importantly, these projects are not make-work, but have to be designed to create small businesses and more efficient farms, like co-ops.

These type projects show they are working by running out of laborers--who go on to better jobs.

For instance, you hire 10,000 men to use hand labor to prepare a large area for farming. They clear and level the land, dig irrigation canals, and remove and break up rocks, which are then used to build fences to subdivide the land. For this they get paid a wage and food, with the wage going to their family or being kept in a bank. In their off work ours they both get classroom on how to manage such a farm, and get government speakers out there to encourage them and tell them the news.

When the land and buildings have been prepared, you split off perhaps 2,000 of them who will become the owners and workers of the prepared land. They get the agricultural co-op experts to take them through an entire season to show them how it is done.

The other 8,000 get another 2,000 newbies, and go on to the next project.

On top of that you have the really huge government projects that need 50-100,000 men, which are designed to improve a major region. It also keeps them from involving themselves in mischief, and pumps a lot of money into the economy. More so in setting up the support businesses to provide for this many employed people.

Ideally, you must shoot for 100% employment. The more troublesome an area, the more work is available. It neutralizes a LOT of the trouble making.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-08-13 17:46|| 2007-08-13 17:46|| Front Page Top

#6 A look at the Board for the Center for a New American Security:

The Honorable Dr. William J. Perry
Chairman of the Board (Clinton Sec. of Defense)

The Honorable Dr. Madeleine K. Albright (Clinton Sec. of State)

The Honorable Richard L. Armitage (Colin Powell's er... handyman)

Norman R. Augustine (former head of Lockheed Martin)

Admiral Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.) (Military)

The Honorable Dr. Richard J. Danzig (Clinton Sec. of the Navy)

William J. Lynn (Clinton UnderSec. of Defense - Comptroller)

Lieutenant General Greg S. Newbold, USMC (Ret.) (Military)

John D. Podesta (Clinton Chief of Staff)

Posted by Pappy 2007-08-13 21:37|| 2007-08-13 21:37|| Front Page Top

#7 All Clinton all the time. You cannot prepare for the next century by using a model of the past - especially if it fails consistently. This FP is a range of suspicious judicial killers.

Posted by newc">newc 2007-08-13 23:15|| 2007-08-13 23:15|| Front Page Top

23:58 Zenster
23:40 Zenster
23:15 newc
22:53 Swamp Blondie
22:53 Ebbineque Grugum4237
22:37 Zenster
22:25 Eric Jablow
22:22 Barbara Skolaut
21:51 Rob Crawford
21:50 Pappy
21:37 Pappy
21:20 Pappy
21:08 john frum
20:51 Cyber Sarge
20:43 OldSpook
20:38 Zenster
20:35 tu3031
20:33 Natural Law
19:39 DepotGuy
19:22 Capsu78
19:21 gromgoru
19:20 Capsu78
19:18 Redneck Jim
19:07 Excalibur