Article

2016-10-19 Afghanistan

[Foreign Policy] The United States military failed America in Afghanistan. It wasn’t a tactical failure. It was a failure of leadership.

The ascent of David Petraeus and the Army’s rediscovery of counterinsurgency doctrine led many to believe that the military had dramatically adapted itself for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately the transformation was only skin deep. Petraeus was a myth, and the intellectual father of the Army only in the eyes of the national media. The institutional inertia of the military bureaucracy never caught up with the press releases. The result was a never-ending series of public pronouncements by senior leaders about the importance of counterinsurgency, accompanied by a continuation of Cold War-era personnel and rotation policies that explicitly short-changed the effort.

Upon taking command in Afghanistan in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal made the rounds of his subordinate units and asked each of us, "What would you do differently if you had to stay until we won?" At the time I was in charge of operations for a brigade in the middle of tough fight in eastern Afghanistan. It was absolutely the right question, but in retrospect it was also a trick question. The answer was to get the right people into the fight, keep them there long enough to develop an understanding of the environment, and hold them accountable for progress, but that was not something the military was interested in doing. Instead, we stuck with a policy that rotated leaders through the country like tourists.

Taking the lessons of unit cohesion from Vietnam, the military has followed a policy in Afghanistan where entire units rotate in and out of country every seven, nine, or 12 months. This model, more than the policy of individual rotation in Vietnam, ensures both tactical proficiency and unit cohesion at the soldier level. But it also is completely ill-suited for a counterinsurgency campaign. It makes sense to limit the time soldiers spend conducting tactical operations, but leaders attempting to establish the kind of relationships and understanding necessary to be effective in counterinsurgency must be kept in place much longer. By changing out entire units so frequently, our policy has guaranteed that military leaders rotating through Afghanistan have never had more than a superficial understanding of the political environment they are trying to shape.

The shortcomings of this rotation policy in counterinsurgency have been further reinforced by an institutional culture and personnel management system that places a low priority on the advisory mission. From the beginning of our efforts in Afghanistan the advisory mission was promoted publicly but given a low priority in execution.

The premier example of this mismatch between what military leadership said we were doing, and what the bureaucracy was actually prioritizing, can be found in the story of the AfPak hands program. The program was launched by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, and lauded as the key to shaping Afghanistan by creating a cohort of expert officers from across the services that would have the language skills and experience to build the kind of long-term relationships needed to build an effective Afghan security apparatus. While a priority for the Chairman, the effort was never embraced by the services.

Despite the fanfare and stated importance of the program, mismanagement and mis-utilization were rampant as this specialized cadre encountered personnel systems unable to support non-traditional career paths. Caught between career managers that saw the program as a deviation from what officers "should" be doing ‐ leading tactical units ‐ and a deployment system that often led to random staff assignments instead of partnered roles with Afghan leaders, the program quickly became known as an assignment to be "survived" if not avoided altogether.

A leaked briefing from the Army G-1, the service’s head personnel officer, to the Chief of Staff of the Army in 2014 confirmed that the AfPak Hands program had become a dead end for military careers. Officers who had participated in the program were being promoted at a fraction of the rate of those who had not. There are only two explanations for this outcome: Either the Army was sending sub-par officers to serve in the program, or officers were being punished for deviating from the traditional career track. Whichever it was, both explanations reveal that the effort to train and advise the Afghans was simply not a priority for the Army.
Con't.

Posted by Besoeker 2016-10-19 14:02|| || Front Page|| [11137 views ] Top

#1 Important to keep in mind, top level "leadership" of the services rests with appointed civilians, not generals.

Of course we wouldn't expect Foreign Policy magazine to make mention of that subtle fact.

Posted by Besoeker 2016-10-19 14:15|| 2016-10-19 14:15|| Front Page Top

#2 The Mongols succeeded in the region today referred to as Afghanistan. Mongols waged 'war'. That's the difference. How's that "Kinder Gentler" stuff working out for you.

Posted by Procopius2k 2016-10-19 14:42|| 2016-10-19 14:42|| Front Page Top

#3 It strikes me that in general no one had a clue what victory would look like. To P2k's point the Mongols didn't have that problem.

If you want to try and set up the remainder to take care of themselves you first have to make sure that there is ONLY the remainder.

When was the last time that we sent in our troops with an explicit goal and vision of victory?

Posted by AlanC 2016-10-19 15:16|| 2016-10-19 15:16|| Front Page Top

#4 Remember, irregardless of what you do, if you lose, you are wrong.

"Our Generals" have failed us in more than one war.

We would have had a better start as a country Had we hung Chs Lee at first chance.

Shitheader General Winder should have been hung as an example to others, instead he spawned. :(

A first rate badtard and a father of one

Posted by Shipman 2016-10-19 15:20|| 2016-10-19 15:20|| Front Page Top

#5 Two events immediately come to mind, AlanC.
Panama and Grenada.

Posted by Skidmark 2016-10-19 16:30|| 2016-10-19 16:30|| Front Page Top

#6 Okay Skid, we swatted a couple of flys, somehow that doesn't seem too impressive.

Posted by AlanC 2016-10-19 19:09|| 2016-10-19 19:09|| Front Page Top

#7 As Clausewitz said, "Killing is the sine qua non of war," When all the enemy is dead, the war is over. Not a politically sellable approach in the soft n tender West these days.

Posted by M. Murcek 2016-10-19 19:57|| 2016-10-19 19:57|| Front Page Top

#8 The fact that afghan society is mostly corrupt, illiterate and tribal and the fact that the Taliban were fanatically motivated by Islam while the govt was also motivated by Islam was going to be a problem.

We never really had a way to address the corruption, etc. and never even had the stomach to recognize the Islam problem.

Posted by lord garth 2016-10-19 21:14|| 2016-10-19 21:14|| Front Page Top

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