Sorry for the delay but I am working with really poor connectivity while in Kabul. I correspond with Old Blue regularly and hope to drop in on him sometime in the near future. As you can see by our blogs we tend to think a lot alike.

The points he and Vern made on the thread I have been asked to comment on were very interesting and I agree with them both although I think Vern is a little too pessimistic. There is no question that Big Army doesn’t do COIN. They are not even pretending to do COIN which is clearly evident by how they have deployed their forces. In the area Old Blue is working troops not confined to large FOB’s are spread out amongst small combat outpost’s (COP’s) strung throughout the Pech Valley in Kuanr, the southern triangle in Nangahar and the border areas of Nuristan. Those in the Pech valley fight almost daily in long range machinegun and mortar duels with the local tribesmen. I cannot recall seeing a report of any American KIA’s in Kunar in many many months, there have been none in Nangarhar (except for IED strikes unrelated to the infantry deployment) and the last casualties we took in Nuristan were the nine men we lost at Wanat.

When I was a junior infantryman in training we were taught fire without maneuver was a complete waste of time, money and assets and should be avoided at all costs. What we see now in Eastern Afghanistan is lots of fire without any attempt at maneuver. When Army infantry do work their way into the remote villages there are no fighting age males there and the local elders do not want nor welcome any assistance offered by our men. The linguistically and ethnically distinct people in Nuristan Province are even more adamant that they want nothing to do with ISAF or the Karzai government. Many are starting to ask “if these people don’t want us why are we there?” which is a good question.

My answer would be to leave those tribes alone and move into the districts where out help is both wanted and needed by the local population. All 32 districts (even those in the southern triangle) of Nangarhar Province will not only invite but would help protect civ/mil teams who move in to offer them assistance in reconstruction. Four out of five of the districts in neighboring Laghman Province are the same as are many of the districts in Kunar.

Remember the Lone Survivor story? The reason that SEAL lived was not due to Pashtun tribes following the ancient code of Pashtunwali – it was because Petty Officer Luttrell E&E’d to a village on the other side of the Korangal ridge which has been in a state of feud with the Korangal valley tribes for the past 1,752 years. Had he gone down the other side of the ridge his head would be stuck on a pole outside a Korangal village to this day. I don’t know if the SEAL’s pre mission intelligence was good enough to point Luttrell to that specific village but I doubt it was. If they had that much situational awareness they wouldn’t have had a four man team trying to sneak around Korangal Valley to began with. The point is even in the Pech valley there are tribes who want to cooperate with us and we need to support them while isolating those who do not want our assistance. Those isolated villages are best dealt with by the Afghan Army in due time and on their schedule.

We are lucky enough to remain popular with the various tribes and people in Afghanistan who would much rather see a platoon of Americans move into their area to not only bring security but to also supervise the representatives of the Afghan government who are more likely to prey on the people than help them.

Something I had not thought of but an idea which did not escape Old Blue was using the popularity of our new Commander in Chief in the third world to arm twist our Arabic allies getting them to cough up men to augment embedded training teams. American and ISAF military members bring security and modern medical relief, Arabic members bring mentoring to the Afghan police and judiciary. Civilian contractors (all armed and expected to be an active part of the overall security plan) provide the long term presence on the ground while approving, funding, and supervising the 100’s of unfunded infrastructure projects that are “shovel ready.”

The American mission to bring security and developmental aid to Afghanistan can be accomplished. But we have focused most of our reconstruction dollars on building facilities for entities of the State which are currently adding to the insecurity. If you believe in “effects based tactics” with the “effects” defined as what is happening on the ground vice what you want to think is happening on the ground then every penny of the 2.5 BILLION spent on the Afghan National Police has been wasted. Likewise every penny spent on facilities, trainers and equipment for the Afghan National Army looks to be a great investment. Our current approach will not allow us to recognize this obvious fact and correct for it because our Department of State continues to telecommute to the war from the safe, ultra posh confines of Embassy Kabul. And the cat fight about to break out between Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke will only add to the internal focus of the Kabul Embassy staff making them even more incapable (as if that were possible) of dealing with the situation on the ground.

Old Blue can clearly see what needs to be done and if we turn him and a few thousand like him lose even those who see things like Vern (which is a majority of the Afghan population) will have to admit that we are doing (finally) what we said we were going to do when we came here seven years ago.

Make that 1,000 years of bad blood. Explained to me by several Pakis I see in my daily walkabouts and confirmed by several Indian clients and friends.

She can curse worse than a Marine DI…

Even so, the locals would hold her for ransom just on principle.

Stupid comment. How long would ANY of us survive? They are, after all, savages.

But the real measure of our problems is that she hasn’t been kicked off that committee. If there were a GOP administration, someone might move levers. Now nobody cares.

When Rome fell, it was because nobody cared to defend it.

Send Feinstein, without ID, without translators, to some Pushtun village and see how long she survives.

Slaughter now or slaughter later.
Slaughter later = slaughter more.

please see earlier author’s note.

Somewhere down the line are Iran (Shia heretics, threatening Persian nationalists) and the Arabs. The Sauds are guardians of the holy places but they are rich and arrogant; the emirates are just rich and arrogant.
Dave #9 wonders about a gotterdamerung. So, if you’re a fundamentalist Wahhabi senior ISI officer, would you mind if Islamabad were vaporized if Mumbai and Delhi were nuked too? And if you managed to get control of a nuke, would you sell it to someone with delivery plans- or would you lob it at Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Teheran, or Dubai and see what happens?

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/pakistan_concedes_mu.php

Bombay Djin ?

Go after key infrastructure that is foreign sourced…

The mullahs know all about how it goes: they financed such activity against Iraq from 2003 onwards. That’s why oil exports never gained traction.

Oil smuggling across the Shat could flow the other way, BTW.