Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Is Right Posted by Michael Cohen

I'm not exactly sure what to make of Bob Woodward's piece in yesterday's Washington Post about Afghanistan, but I will say that it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Of particular note is Woodward's recounting of this meeting between National Security Advisor Jim Jones and US generals in Afghanistan:

Suppose you're the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel? Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.

Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have "a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF -- which in the military and elsewhere means "What the [expletive]?" Nicholson and his colonels -- all or nearly all veterans of Iraq -- seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.

Ok, fair enough, the President doesn't want to send more troops to Afghanistan. It's a point that he elaborated on in public recently, "My strong view is that we are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops." But here's the problem, Obama and Jones want the US military to undertake a counter-insurgency mission that is fairly ambitious and troop intensive: "security; economic development and reconstruction; and governance by the Afghans under the rule of law." Yet at the same time you have the generals making fairly clear that they don't have enough troops to complete this mission:

The question of the force level for Afghanistan, however, is not settled and will probably be hotly debated over the next year. One senior military officer said privately that the United States would have to deploy a force of more than 100,000 to execute the counterinsurgency strategy of holding areas and towns after clearing out the Taliban insurgents. That is at least 32,000 more than the 68,000 currently authorized.

During the briefing, Nicholson (Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson) had told Jones that he was "a little light," more than hinting that he could use more forces, probably thousands more. "We don't have enough force to go everywhere," Nicholson said.

This comes on the heels of recent statements by General McCrystal that ""We've got to ruthlessly prioritize, because we don't have enough forces to do everything, everywhere." So basically what you have here is the Administration signing off on an ambitious counter-insurgency mission, but refusing (it would appear for political reasons) to give the generals the troops they need to finish the job. This makes absolutely no sense. (And while I know that Bob Woodward has a sacred responsibility to keep his sources happy, perhaps this is the sort of glaring contradiction that merits a follow-up question).

And I'm pleased to see that my old friends at abu muqawama agree with me:

So if we are committed to our current strategy in Afghanistan, it seems pretty darn important that we're confident we have the force levels necessary to establish that minimum level of security.  Otherwise our "civilian surge" and reconstruction initiatives seem likely to be DOA.  That's not a call for the administration to reflexively throw in more troops without a rigorous analysis of strategic costs and benefits, but it does suggest that it needs to double-check to ensure that its ends, ways, and means in Afghanistan are are all aligned.

If I had my druthers the President would conduct just such a cost benefit analysis and come to the right conclusion that the currently stated mission in Afghanistan is worth neither the blood nor treasure that are needed for it to be successfully achieved. Instead he has chosen a muddled course that pretty much guarantees the US won't achieve his goals for Afghanistan. Personally, I think fighting a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is the modern equivalent of fighting a land war in Asia, but if that's the mission you decide upon then you have to give the military the resources to actually do it.

The President can't have it both ways. Either you fight the war in Afghanistan to achieve the mission you've laid out, or you don't. There isn't really a middle ground here. History provides a pretty good road map for how that usually works out.

In the end, this whole situation reminds me of another old military expression: FUBAR

Comments

[Don Bacon]

One senior military officer said privately that the United States would have to deploy a force of more than 100,000

Make that WAY more than 100,000.

US Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency: Most density recommendations fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents.

That means that in Afghanistan, with a population of 32 million, a total of 640,000 troops would be required. Afghan security forces are ineffective.

In an interview in Spiegel, a German magazine, a year ago the outgoing Afghanistan ISAF Commander General Mc Neill confessed to having inadequate trained force to effectively counter terrorism in Afghanistan. "NATO has only 47,000 soldiers instead of a required strength of 400,000."

Currently in Iraq there are 130,000 US troops, plus 600,000 Iraq Security Forces, most of them considered effective (but we'll see), for a population smaller, and more concentrated, than Afghanistan's.

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Don Bacon: Who the hell are you to rate the Afghan National Security Forces? I see no apparent qualification. You're just speaking out of your fourth point of contact. You have no idea what you're talking about, and thus are the perfect lapdog for Michael. Get a clue, Don. People like you are not only less than helpful, you just toss garbage about as if you were some type of authority, which you are not. You're a crackpot. None of you are interested in actually learning anything.

Bacon, did you READ the assessment? While the ANP lag far behind the ANA in capacity, that can be remedied relatively quickly with about 4,000 US mentors. The ANA, on the other hand, is a success story brought about by mentoring. It turns out that National Guardsmen have a talent for working with indigenous forces, something of a pleasant surprise. Meanwhile, your field of expertise appears to be "Eco-tourism," listing even Somalia and Yemen as potential destinations. What reasonable person would list vacation information for Somalia? Are you trying to get someone killed?

Friggen nutcase.

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