A General's Perspective

A while back I wrote about the US role in this conflict, to include our interaction with NATO. Some of it had to deal with the world's opinion of the US, and some of it about Afghanistan and our role here. Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, an adjunct professor of International Affairs at West Point, wrote what I believe to be the best summary of this conflict I have seen. If you have even the slightest thought or opinion about the war in Afghanistan - which I assume as a reader of this blog you might - I highly suggest reading the report. It is not very long, does not require a glossary of military terms and abbreviations, and is as clear cut and straight forward as could be. Reading his assessment has given some perspective to this conflict and the future of Afghanistan, as well as echoing the sentiments I have written about prior. Below are a few bullets I pulled from the report as items I thought most accurate and present in my experience (emphasis added to stress my thoughts on his points). If you've got the time and motivation,it can be found here.

• There is precious little support for the Afghan operation among the American people. 66% say it is not worth fighting for.
• The Afghan’s are generally extremely grateful for US and international presence. US/NATO forces have a 60%+ favorability rating in the polls.

What the above two points tell me is that there is more support for this war from the Afghanis than from the US. That's a terrible shame in my opinion, that even though we're making things harder for the people right now by getting caught up in the cross-fire, they would still rather keep us here, yet people back home would rather have us out.

• The Taliban now have a serious presence in 160 Districts of 364--- up from 30 Districts in 2003. They have a Shadow Government at Province level and most Districts throughout the country. Insurgent attacks have increased 60% in less than a year. In July alone they employed 828 IED attacks against friendly forces. We should expect 5,700 IED attacks in total by year’s end 2009. We must guard against tactical arrogance by US and Allied ground combat forces.

It's very easy to think that because our enemy lives in mud huts and fights with technology decades behind ours that they are inferrior. While I do believe that we are the better soldiers, the gap is not very wide. Where we train to fight for months or years, our enemy trains their entire life. They are not a force to be trivialized, they are smart and calculating and very good at what they do.

• Twice in recent months we have seen battalion sized units of Taliban fighters conduct highly successful (not-withstanding catastrophic losses by the attacking insurgents) complex attacks employing surprise, reconnaissance, fire support, maneuver, and enormous courage in an attempt to over run isolated US units. This is not Iraq.
• The current US force level of 68,000 troops will increase per order of President Obama on 2 December by as many as 33,000 additional troops. The Allies may well provide an additional 7000+ reinforcements. However, only the courageous Brit’s will have both robust ROE and an aggressive ground-air-logistics-SOF combat capability. The Canadians and the Dutch will withdraw. The political support in Germany for their Bundeswehr (extremely weak capabilities because of very restrictive ROE) is on the verge of collapse. The French are extremely capable but in the field in small numbers.

The General holds back even fewer punches than I did. How is it that we are sending 30,000 troops and the entire NATO contribution to match will be less than a quarter?

• Afghanistan and Iraq are an immensely costly war running in excess of $377 million a day in FY10 Constant dollars. (WWII was $622 million per day.).
• There is no inevitability to history. We are neither the Brit’s nor the Soviets.
• Our focus must now not be on an exit strategy -- but effective execution of the political, economic, and military measures required to achieve our purpose.

This may not open any eyes or change any opinions, but reading the thoughts of someone who clearly knows what they are talking about, has been there, and has seen it first hand is more meaningful to me than all the talking heads and media spin a news network could muster.