The Year of Decision

Do you remember the post I linked to last week in which the author took the position that there’s still time for us to turn back the clock and do everything we’ve done wrong in Afghanistan right this time? Well, he’s back at Small Wars Journal, unchastened, although apparently he received some pushback. Here’s the opening of his new piece:

This article is in response to feedback on my previous article Going Back to the Future: It is Time for Change in Afghanistan. I want to thank all that took the time to comment and for their insightful thoughts and feedback. The feedback ranged from:

1. There is no political will or military patience to go back to bottom up constructs
2. You cannot win in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s support in the sanctuaries
3. What have we been doing for the past 17 years and where is the accountability
4. A broken diplomatic approach
5. Not setting conditions for reconciliation
6. The detour to the Iraq War
7. Inability to understand all politics is local
8. Failure to understand how Afghanistan’s secures itself
9. And an over investment in ministries that exacerbate corruption

All valid and great observations. As in the previous article, I am not going into the minutia of the problems as there have been millions of dollars spent on studies diving into the deep end of the minutia pool and they have been largely ignored. I will however, endeavor to point out critical missteps that we seem to keep investing in despite the negative consequences of doing so.

Note that he doesn’t like the gravest problem: counter-insurgency is completely unworkable in Afghanistan, at least in a form that can be practiced by the United States.

There is no right way to do counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. We did have alternatives. For example, we could have engaged in a significant punitive strike and then, having proved that we’d “done something”, gone home to tighten our own defenses. Alternatively, having deposed the Taliban government we could have set up a permanent base in Afghanistan, established a perimeter, ensured that there was peace and safety within that perimeter, maintained a spoiling force in Afghanistan with the missions of preventing Al Qaeda or similar groups from establishing the sort of base they’d had in Afghanistan ever again there, and otherwise allowed Afghanistan to go to hell in its own peculiar way.

But insisting that if we’re just smarter, more patient, spend more money, etc. we can make what we’ve been doing work there? You don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.