The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency: Part One - The Afghan Army

The Marine Corps University Counterinsurgency Leadership In Afghanistan, Iraq and Beyond: The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency transcript (PDF) is so good, I have decided to post the entire thing in four installments. I believe there are important insights in these discussions not only for Afghanistan, but in the context of US Navy discussions as well. The participants were:

Bing West, Correspondent, The Atlantic
Col. Dale Alford, Institute for Defense Analyses, USMC
Col. William M. Jurney, US Joint Forces Command, USMC
Col. David Furness, Marine Corps Liaison Office, US House of Representatives

Held on Wednesday, September 23, 2024 at 10:30 at the National Press Club, Washington DC, part one is the presentation by Bing West.

We were going to, in this panel, move from the general to the very particulars. You consider this the panel that deals with fighting in the trenches, the tackling and blocking that happens upfront in the line. And I was asked basically if I would establish the context for the three battalion commanders.

Dave had one-one. But, you know, what you received about these gentlemen really, really didn’t tell you the reason that they’re here. I mean, Bill Jurney, when we were in Ramadi, a lot of people, including, me didn’t think you could get that place under control, and Bill Jurney was the battalion commander who did it.

And Dale Alford, of course, is a legend because Dale went out to Al-Qa’im, 250 miles from Baghdad, and that place on the Syrian border was just totally out of control and with one battalion he established not only control out there but managed to work with the tribes so that after he left it continued to be quiet. And everyone felt that on the Syrian border that just couldn’t be done.

And so you do have the opportunity this morning or listening to a few people whose credentials are just absolutely remarkable.

Concerning the context, I’ve been to Afghanistan four times, I’d like to just focus it on that and I was there in April and May and again in June and July and I was on about 40 combat patrols up north and down south and so I’ll just tell you what really concerns me.

It’s very, very simple - that every valley has a mountain. And all the mountains are controlled by the Taliban and the watchers are everywhere. No American or Afghan patrol leaves the wire without being watched and reported on the whole way. And I’ll tell you, H.R., that really concerns me because it indicates that there’s a substrata of that society that we’re dealing with, and if everywhere you go they’re watching you all the time, this is a big, big problem.

May I have the next slide, please? Now, the way in which we had been - next slide, please - the way in which - this is the Korengal Valley but this could be anywhere in Afghanistan.

The way in which all the firefights had been taking place up until the last couple of months was very simple. We were fighting apaches who remained very, very hidden. You’d never get a distinct target and generally the ranges were 400 to 600 meters. And this is in the Korengal and we’re firing at targets that were firing at us 600 meters away but you had to go down a valley and up the other side so there’s no way you could close with them. So we automatically were using air strikes.

And H.R. was talking about company commanders having these indirect fires at their disposal. Yes, every single patrol has it, but we now have a new tactical directive that says, knock off using most of it because you’re also killing civilians. And that leads to a very big problem about what takes its place.

And there’s another element about Afghanistan that concerned me greatly. May I have the next slide, please? Look at this photo. This is Ganjgal where the four Marines and the ETT were killed last week and eight Afghan soldiers. I’ve been in Ganjgal a couple of times. The 1st of 32nd is there.

And we took this picture because they said, look behind us. And as you’re moving along in an MRAP to go to this one small hamlet in a ravine and next to the mountains, the kids were coming out right behind us and putting the rocks behind us in order to trap us, just like that. We sat down. We had shurahs with these people in Ganjgal. We did everything according to the book that you’re supposed to do for counterinsurgency for the last two years and they betrayed the Marines and the Afghan soldiers when they went into that village and that’s why they killed them all.

So there are some hearts and minds that you’re just not going to win. The politics of each valley differ but every single battle space owner, every single battalion commander that we now have in Afghanistan, could come to this meeting, give you a map of his area, and take a red line and show you the areas where he cannot go without getting into a firefight.

And to show you what’s happened in the firefights and the biggest concern I have about finishing them - will you show this firefight, please? This is a typical firefight. This is down south.

(Begin video segment.)

MR. WEST: This is Bing West with the Afghan Army, British advisors and United States Marines in southern Afghanistan.

MR. : So you start suppressing all the - (inaudible) - across a certain ground.

MR. : You can hear the incoming.

MR. WEST (?): See, those were the PKM rounds, the machine gun rounds that hit just above our heads.

(End video segment.)

MR. WEST: Stop. If you can get it going, once you try to get it going again. But the point about this firefight was it was from one compound to the next - why don’t you replay it and see if it will just start - one compound to the next. They were firing RPGs. It was an open field. You couldn’t determine whether there were women or children in that compound, therefore you were stuck. You had one or two options. You either withdrew or you went across the open field. We withdrew.

And the dilemma that we’re going to be facing - may I have the next slide please if that doesn’t work? The dilemma that we’re going to be facing in the future is that the more we have constrained our indirect fires, which has been the principal way in which we were doing this, you leave the question, or two big questions dangling out there at the battalion level: How do you finish the firefights?

Right now we’re not finishing firefights. So we’re not doing damage basically to the enemy. The enemy isn’t doing damage to us because we have our armor. But we have now an attrition warfare. We don’t have mobility warfare. The Taliban run circles around us because they’re not wearing heavy armor. They’re in much better shape, incredible shape. And as a result, they hold the initiative. They decide when to initiate a firefight. They decide when to stop the firefight. And we react to them and we’re not finishing the firefights. So we’re not killing the enemy.

Now, are we arresting the enemy? Excuse me. I used to say detain or something. Now we say “arrest.” No. The Afghans arrest practically no one. And the average number of arrests for an American battalion is one person every two months.

So we’re not killing them and we’re not arresting them. And the blocking and tackling them that are fundamentally essential are right now really lacking.

So we can put in more troops, but my concern about this is, if we don’t find a way of finishing these fights, we could be having this conversation a year to two years from now and the Taliban would still be intact.

And that basically leads to the other issue which is where are we going? Basically, if we’re managing what we measure, we have some adjusting to do in what it is we think we’re going to be doing in Afghanistan.

And particularly - may I have the next slide, please? The question of what is our theory of victory. It seems to me if you read the assessment that I think that H.R. and others worked on - you read the assessment that McChrystal came out with the other days and you read it very careful, its theory of victory is not victory - it’s transition.

And when you look for how do we transition, it becomes a little bit fuzzy. And if transition is the name of the game, then the very best paper I’ve ever seen on it was written by actually Maj. Gen. Bob Neller when he was an obscure brigadier general out in Okinawa or something and had time to work it. It’s the best single paper that I’ve ever seen about how you transition.

But the problem we now have with the Afghan Army is very simple. We build it in our image. They’re all wearing armor. They’re all wearing helmets. They are no more mobile than we are. When you get into the firefight, they immediately turn to the advisor because only the advisor is permitted to call in the indirect fires. The minute you call in the indirect fires, you’re positioning the troops, you become the leader in the combat.

The Afghan leaders are absolutely the key to the success, but Mark Moyar’s - and that’s a good book he wrote - Mark has this fascinating section in the book where he interviewed something like 250 advisors. And they estimated that 65 percent of all Afghan battalions have poor leaders. And yet, our advisors have about zero effect on promotions in the Afghan system. So here I go.

I know that Pete Mansoor said, you know, Bing’s for these joint promotion boards but Gen. Petraeus had another way of doing it. I think, Pete, we’re out of time for being gentile in Afghanistan, and if we’re going to make a difference, I think we have to get more control over who’s in charge in the Afghan army.

The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency: Part Two - How We Think and Who They Are

The Marine Corps University Counterinsurgency Leadership In Afghanistan, Iraq and Beyond: The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency transcript (PDF) is so good, I have decided to post the entire thing in four installments. I believe there are important insights in these discussions not only for Afghanistan, but in the context of US Navy discussions as well. The participants were:

Bing West, Correspondent, The Atlantic
Col. Dale Alford, Institute for Defense Analyses, USMC
Col. William M. Jurney, US Joint Forces Command, USMC
Col. David Furness, Marine Corps Liaison Office, US House of Representatives

Held on Wednesday, September 23, 2024 at 10:30 at the National Press Club, Washington DC, part two is the presentation by Col. David Furness.

Thank you. I’d like to thank Marine Corps University for including me on the panel and so I join two of my friends and distinguished Marine officers.

Mark Moyar asked me to talk about battalion command in counterinsurgency operations. That’s kind of a broad left and right lateral limit. So what I’ll do is I’ll kind of define it to actions that we took prior to going into combat and then those that we did while we were in combat.

Now, these are no new ideas here. There’s nothing earth shattering. Most of them were borrowed from peers that I respect, like the two gentlemen to my right, things I learned while I served on the staff of the 1st Marine Division in ’03 and ’04, and things that I read through self-study. So I tried to apply them in a dynamic environment, and so here are some of the lessons that I learned.

There’s the agenda. Here’s how I broke up the topic. Just a little bit of orientation. Here’s Baghdad, Fallujah, and Ramadi. So my experience was all based in southern Baghdad in ’05 when I was commanding officer BLT 11, part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. And then in ’06 at a place north of Fallujah, a place called Karmah which - or “bad karma” as we’d like to refer to it. But it was all eastern Anbar province, western Baghdad.

As you drill down, here’s Karmah. It’s about 10 kilometers northeast of Fallujah. The other little red dots are small villages that were my principal population centers in and around the area: Saqlawiyah, Sitcher (ph), Ganether (ph), (Abu Ghraib ?). I had part of the northern Zadon which was kind of a no man’s land at times. But this is the area in ’06 that I operated in when I was attached to RCT-5.

Pre-combat leadership - we’ve all said, you know, what’s the difference between a leading battalion and conventional battalion and leading battalion, counterinsurgency? And I think it was covered well by the brigade commanders and I won’t repeat it.

I will say it’s a decentralized fight. Everybody agrees with that. And if you’re going to be successful in a decentralized fight, you have to operate on commander’s intent. We all - no one will dispute that. But how do you get people to understand intent and be able to use intent? And then who really tells you about that?

What I learned from watching Gen. Mattis at the division level, go down to the PFC level and just embed his ideas, his thought process, what was important to him down to the private. I said, okay. That’s what I have to do when I get battalion command.

So what we did was everybody’s got philosophies of command, philosophies of training, philosophies of this and that, and I’m no different. I came into command with them and spent a lot of time trying to craft a language that actually meant something.

But I handed those things out, had a one pager for the Marines and NCOs. I had a more complex, a little longer version for staff NCOs and officers. I gave them out. I had them read them, and then in groups of 20 platoon size, I went around after they had read them and we had discussions. We had (team meetings ?). What am I talking about when I say this? What does this mean? What am I telling you to do?

And you try to operationalize it because you want them to understand in so that when they’re in that point where they have to make a decision and no one’s around and it’s corporal so and so, he can do it. He knows what Furness would want him to do and that’s probably the only thing - if that’s the only thing he can remember, it’s something he can fall back on and hopefully it gets him through that difficult decision.

So I think that’s the most important thing that you have to do right upfront as a battalion commander. You’ve got to put your fingerprints on your unit right from the start, the first day you grab the guide on.

And once they understand it, then you reinforce that every day by what Gen. Krulak used to say “leadership by walking around.” You’ve got to get out of your office, you’ve got to get away from the computer and you’ve got to talk to your Marines, and sailors, and you’ve got to - where they work, what do they care about, and everything they do, you give them a little, that’s the way I want it done, pat on the back, or hey, next time you do it, how about his way, you’re doing a great job, but you have to imprint what you feel is important into their brain housing groups.

The next point, individual small unit discipline is the key in counterinsurgency. Gen. Zinni once said that elite units are better at counterinsurgency because they have greater discipline. And discipline is what’s going to give you restraint, which is going to give you discrimination in the use of fires, and it’s the bedrock on which everything else is build. So you have to instill it.

With our op tempo going 100 miles an hour, discipline can sometimes fall by the wayside because we don’t have time to correct it right on the spot, you know, we’ll get to that later. Well, you can’t do that.

I think you have to be - somebody said, well, if you could do anything to a battalion to prepare it for counterinsurgency operations, what would you do? I thought for a minute and I said, I’d put him through recruit training, all as a group, and let a bunch of gunnies with Smokey Bear hats just beat discipline into them for 13 weeks. And I think when you came out the tactics are fairly simple but the discipline is hard to instill.

The sergeant major - I had a big long talk with staff NCOs and NCOs about their role in helping me attain a level of individual and small unit discipline which would carry the day when we got into this dispersed dynamic environment.

And I also told them is, your discipline will be your hallmark and it’s the only IO message that as a small unit in Iraq you control. You control how you’re perceived by the population, the way you walk out the gate, the way you wear your gear, how you carry your weapons, they instantly perceive that and that’s the only IO message that you control as a small battalion in this big, wide, long war.

The thing I focused more on in pre-deployment training is NCO training because, again, I think Gen. McMaster said it: That’s where it’s going to be won - corporal, sergeants, lieutenants. That’s where you have to focus on because that’s who is going to be way out there on the edge of the empire, the pointy end of the spear, like we say. Those are the Marines that are going to make those tough calls and if they’re not trained to deal with that type of decision making, if they don’t have the requisite excellence and their weapons handling and their small unit tactics, they’re not going to be able to do that job.

So we ran a battalion in house through the PTP and all the things you have to do with that, we ran a battalion in house. We call it the Leaders’ Course because there were some lance corporals that were filling NCO billets that got the training as well.

But the bottom line was we wanted to control how Marines would be led in 11. We didn’t have enough quotas for the great sergeants’ course or the division squad leaders’ course. You just couldn’t put them through the pipeline fast enough so we did it ourselves. It was each company took a block of instruction and it was basically a five-week course. It could have been better. I’m sure it could have.

But it was good enough and it focused on prep for combat, how to give an order, how to prep a unit to get out the door and do a mission, how to inspect them, how to do a post-mission critique and learn from what you did right, what you did wrong. And so you’re teaching them the skills that then you’re going to demand that they use when they get out there in a very challenging environment in Iraq.

We talked about language training. What I did on my first deployment - Col. Greenwood got DLI instructors from Monterey to come in the battalion. We had about a 60-day emerging course, 30 days in Camp Pendleton and then in the trans-Pacific - when you’re on the ships, you’ve got nothing to do. We had about 100 Marines at that time in language training, and then, when we go to Kuwait, the instructors went back home and we have a fairly good training base.

What I changed the second time I deployed as a battalion commander is I gave everybody the DLAB so we looked at people who had propensity to learn languages as we picked those people. And then like Gen. McMaster said, I look for people who just naturally had a gift of gab because we wanted to add those talkers in every squad throughout the battalion.

And so, with those two elements, we picked 150 Marines. They did a 90-day immersion course because I had the contacts with the instructions from the previous deployment, brought them down to Camp Pendleton, and that’s all these Marines did. They were Marines that already had a tour under their belt so as far as going through the PTP, again, with a five-month turnaround I felt I could assume risk without putting them through it. I didn’t ask anybody. But they didn’t do anything but study language.

And some of them I was amazed at how quickly they picked up conversational Arabic. And could they write it? No. Could they read it? A little bit. But they could speak it enough to where they could act on it on the street.

And everybody said this is a fight for information or intelligence. Well, if it is, you’ve got to talk to people to gain it. If you talk to them in their own language they are much more perceptive to talk to you because they realize most Americans don’t speak Arabic and they’re kind of impressed when you do.

And it’s one of those things, to build report which is the first key to starting up a relationship, and relationships mean everything in this culture. It really helped and I think it paid significant dividends. And I would even do more Marines if you could and for longer periods of time because I think it was that important.

Culture training was the same as every other unit. The basic infantry TTPs - they’re important but the tactics are not so - they’re not complex. The decisions are complex, and that’s again, what you focus on. You use your training always as a vehicle to put people and test their decision making through TDGs all the time so that you can do this.

Intelligence collection you had to spend a lot of time training on because we don’t routinely do it at the squad, platoon, and even battalion level. So we looked at a process to do that.

Here’s how I organized to solve the problem, and the only thing I’ll talk about on this slide is H&S Company - 245 Marines in H&S Company: cooks, bakers, candlestick makers. But what I used them for is to reinforce my main effort because I formed provisional security platoons out of H&S Company because most of H&S Company’s duties are to life support for the battalion. But when you live on Camp Fallujah, you don’t need any more life support. You’ve got more life support there than you do at Camp Pendleton.

So I put these guys out in the fight and they loved it. Every Marine or rifleman, they’re actually doing fixed site security so my infantry Marines, when they come back from an eight-hour patrol don’t have to stay on guard duty. They can either do mission prep or sleep, rest, do something else. But it increased my ability to maneuver.

ROE - the thing I’ll talk about at this is it’s a commander’s issue, and I taught it. Now, the JAG was with me for any technical questions but Marines don’t like lawyers. They don’t listen to them. And they don’t want to be talked to the guy who they think is a pencil-neck geek anyway. Most of your Marines didn’t go to college. They don’t understand lawyers and they don’t want to be told about a very critical part of their decision making process, which is a law of armed conflict, by somebody they don’t respect. They want to hear from their commanding officer. And so that’s why I taught it.

We reset - every time we pulled platoons out to give them a shower, hot chow, we reset and re-taught LOAC, and we went over vignettes that we had either done well or things we didn’t do well while we were executing the mission.

The thing you have to remember is your hearts of your Marines will harden overtime. If you don’t understand that, you miss the point. These guys are on third, fourth tours. They’ve seen buddies get killed, blown up. They may have been blown up themselves and come back to duty. It’s hard to tell them to like these people but you have to talk to about it in a relevance to the mission and how - treating them well and using the law of armed conflict. It benefits them as far as their legitimacy, as far as their ability to execute the mission and actually save fellow Marines’ lives.

Combat leadership - I’ll say this is the big thing: supervise, supervise, supervise. You come out there. Once you’re in the fight, you have to get out of that CP and go see every unit. I had, at one point, seven maneuver companies, 30 platoons. It took a week to see everybody face to face. When I talk about two levels down I’m talking looking the lieutenant in the eye, having him brief you on what he’s doing. You know what he should be doing because you’ve given him the order, but you’ve got to go out there and see them actually do things.

Again, the non-kinetic focus - what I’ll talk about here is the kinetics are easy. We get that. The non-kinetic civil affairs CI ops, IO, working with civilian leaders, that’s the hard part. I’m not saying going to guns is not important - and I think Gen. McMaster said it well: don’t ever lose a firefight, pursue those guys until you got them, that’s shooting. No one gets a free shot, is what I used to say. I don’t care how far you’ve got to chase them. Chase them, run them down, and kill them if they choose to oppose you. But focus your efforts of your staff, the battalion on the non-kinetic aspect of the fight.
Partnership - you’ve to eat, live and sleep with them to be effective.

And I don’t care about that. I’ll get to the last slide. The last bullet is if you remember nothing else, I would say - we had all these signs that said, complacency kills. And I told my Marines that that’s really not true because it’s the divine right of the PFC lance corporal to be complacent. That’s his right. He gets to do that. After he has his first firefight, he’s going to be complacent. He’s going to get comfortable in his environment and it’s his leadership that mitigates that natural phenomenon.

If his leadership isn’t caring, active, involved, he will be complacent and he will get himself killed because you didn’t have the balls to do it right, get in his face, jack him up, and make sure he did it right.

So that’s my presentation. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency: Part Three - The Local Approach

The Marine Corps University Counterinsurgency Leadership In Afghanistan, Iraq and Beyond: The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency transcript (PDF) is so good, I have decided to post the entire thing in four installments. I believe there are important insights in these discussions not only for Afghanistan, but in the context of US Navy discussions as well. The participants were:

Bing West, Correspondent, The Atlantic
Col. Dale Alford, Institute for Defense Analyses, USMC
Col. William M. Jurney, US Joint Forces Command, USMC
Col. David Furness, Marine Corps Liaison Office, US House of Representatives

Held on Wednesday, September 23, 2024 at 10:30 at the National Press Club, Washington DC, part three is the presentation by Col. William M. Jurney.

Good morning. Dr. Moyar, again asked us to address a few points from the battalion perspective regarding lessons and experiences from Ramadi, ’06, ’07 timeframe.
I would start by saying that the employment concept of military forces is first and foremost based on getting at the enemy so that’s the perspective that I’m going to come from.

With an offensive mindset and not defensive you look for and go after that which allows you to take and maintain the initiative against that which opposes you. There is no cookie-cutter solution or template for this. And I think all too often, that’s what we see folks seeking, that there’s got to be one set template approach. And I would submit to you that that’s just not going to be the case.

However, in counterinsurgency, you can’t expect the key terrain to be the population. We’ve heard some folks talk about that today. So the question comes up as to whether you should be population focused or enemy focused. And I submit to you that the answer is yes. You cannot look at one without understanding the full implications to the other.

The key thing that I said just now was “understanding,” which is much different from assuming or misplacing your own Western bias onto the actions or reactions of particular events in a given AO. Wide variances can exist from one local area to the next, therefore you must account for and understand these specific nuances for each local area or community.

From that point, you can already see that an effective tactical concept of employment, by necessity is going to come predominantly from a bottom-up point of view.

Nevertheless, back to the question of population focus or enemy focus - in my framing of the two, I would submit that the population is viewed more as a means to get at the enemy versus a standalone end state. It’s not that CMO or civic actions should not be aligned to meet the needs of the people. It’s just that they have to be more closely aligned and prioritized by that which gives you the greatest tactical advantage to get to the enemy first.

Oftentimes, I’ve seen civil military actions that are not connected to either the needs of the people or anything else that ties to improving a unit’s ability to hurt the enemy.

Now, that’s not meant to be a disparaging comment about our civil affairs efforts but rather at the decisions of commanders because it is a commander’s decision no different than ordering an attack, which brings me to my next point which is that you cannot understand something that you do not live with, sleep with, and operate with every day and night.

Effective COIN operations in and around populated centers require a permanent, persistent, credible security force. It cannot be part time. You will not gain the level of understanding of the situation, nor the trust of the people if you’re not there 24/7.

The best security force is homegrown. It’s local. Some might think that I’m simply advocating the last experience in Ramadi with the Awakening. Actually, no. The Awakening was a growing movement that was making a difference outside the city of Ramadi in late ’06. And although it helped in providing new recruits for outside the city of Ramadi - which was a good thing - this movement and its recruits were from surrounding rural areas and they would not operate within the city proper. And therefore, not the ideal local type that you want, who knows the streets and knows the people.

Yes, at some point we hoped that a national identification of governmental forces transcends a struggling country psyche, but near-term COIN is not going to happen. Make no mistake.

The best security and sense of security for locals are a local, and that local security force will also know the area and its people in such a way that no level of cultural understanding will ever bring.

A local security force is the enemy’s worse nightmare come to town. If the enemy loses its ability to hide in plain sight, he then loses his freedom of movement and action. He also loses the ability to replenish its own ranks with new recruits. So you’re hurting the enemy and you’re meeting the essential needs within your AO for employment, money, prestige, honor, and even a sense of adventure for some by joining a legitimate government security force which also allows, culturally speaking, a desired venue to prove yourself a man and a warrior.

Some will argue that a 24/7 combined action battalion concept for partnering and entire battalion and its leadership with newly forming security forces in the populated areas is simply too risky. I would not disagree more. I submit there’s not only greater risk to the force but also an even greater risk to successful accomplishment of the mission if you choose to operate from some isolate disconnect FOB while conducting independent or intermittent partnered U.S. ops that lack permanent presence and a connection to the people.

Lastly, I suggest that our tactical concepts of employment must pursue multiple lines of effort concurrently if you’re going to take the initiative.

Kinetic and non-kinetic, regular, irregular, conventional, non-conventional - you pick the moniker of the day. There are many. However, focusing on the enemy by only pursuing U.S. targeted raids, all under the framework of “clear, hold and build” are not enough to truly be on the offensive and take the initiative. They’re essential and they’re viable ops. But I would not suggest that such a narrow approach would be pursued.

I have seen time and again the limited activity of general purpose forces waiting on the big one, waiting on the big one to emerge for that game changing targeted raid, the kill or capture an all important individual. This single line of effort is simply not going to work in gaining you the initiative, nor will it work for a unit that simply follow a lockstep sequential approach along the clear, hold, build construct.

I suggest that building or holding one might in fact clear the enemy without a firefight. If so, then why would you limit yourself to only those tools that traditionally associate with conventional ops against a fixed enemy force especially when you can’t even find the enemy?

Therefore, you should cast your net wide along all viable lines of effort if they can help you get at the enemy. Actions that you take should either directly or indirectly lead to improving our ability to impose our will on the enemy.

Discussions of civil military ops, key leader engagement, training employment of local security forces, restricting lines of movement, population control measures, census taking, improving governance and essential services, all are techniques and methods to be applied and/or combined as a leader sees fit based on a continuous process that sees a tactical advantage at taking up such actions.

If not, then I submit that you’re likely putting men and women at risk for nothing. Moreover, you could actually be making your own situation worse by inadvertently disenfranchising the most critical element of getting at the enemy: the population.

And with that, I’ll turn it over to the Dale who I know has been on the ground in Afghanistan. Thank you. (Applause.)

The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency: Part Four - Culture and Terrain

The Marine Corps University Counterinsurgency Leadership In Afghanistan, Iraq and Beyond: The Art of Battalion Command in Counterinsurgency transcript (PDF) is so good, I have decided to post the entire thing in four installments. I believe there are important insights in these discussions not only for Afghanistan, but in the context of US Navy discussions as well. The participants were:

Bing West, Correspondent, The Atlantic
Col. Dale Alford, Institute for Defense Analyses, USMC
Col. William M. Jurney, US Joint Forces Command, USMC
Col. David Furness, Marine Corps Liaison Office, US House of Representatives

Held on Wednesday, September 23, 2024 at 10:30 at the National Press Club, Washington DC, part four is the presentation by Col. Dale Alford.

I’d like to start by saying us three on the stage here, first of all, we’ve known each other as brothers literally for 20 years. Our families, our friends, we’ve spent many, many hours over the last 20 years drinking beer together and on occasion sipping a glass of whiskey talking about this stuff. And what I just heard over the last 30 minutes, I could say again over and over and expanse on each of those points because we literally know what each other think. And that’s a unique thing about the Marine Corps that you need to understand.

What I will talk about - I was asked by Mark to talk about the lessons from Al-Qa’im and how they transfer to Afghanistan. I had an opportunity to command a battalion in Afghanistan ’04, came home for seven months, went back to Iraq with the same battalion, literally the same battalion, same five company commanders for the most part, the three - the XOs all just - that was an unique piece the 36 were able to do. And then this past year I spent nine months in Afghanistan working for a great soldier named Gen. McKiernan.

What I will say is what Bill said. It is population centric versus enemy centric? Yes. Again, it’s both. And you call look at al-Qaim and you can say we did Iron Fist, a battalion size operation - got to do everything that everyone believed that you would want to do as a battalion commander: shot rockets, dropped bombs, threw hand grenades, the whole bit - and then a regimental size operation, Steel Curtain, in order to take back the area of Al-Qa’im.

That was a means to an ends though. As we moved and did that, we literally dropped off platoons that built position and at the end of a 10-week period, we have 14 positions. And we immediately moved the Iraqi army in with us. I learned many of those things at the first tour in Afghanistan - mistakes made - and was able to use that the next year in Iraq.

And how does that transition to Afghanistan? Right now, what I see in Afghanistan, and I had the opportunity to travel around the entire country, visit many, many units including our NATO partners, that we’re completely an enemy-centric force.

We need to re-position a significant portion of our FOBs and COPs among the population because right now they’re not. The problem is they were built for CT missions in ’02 and ’03 and in ’04 in wrong locations for a population-centric COIN effort.

And the second thing is we talk about it a lot, we write about it a lot but we are not focused on the Afghan army and the Afghan police and the Afghan border police. We don’t live with them as partnered units. We consider partnering to link up and do operations. If you’re not sleeping with them, eating with them, and crapping in the same bucket, you’re not partnered and we’re not partnered in Afghanistan.

Real quick. COIN population centric is not about being nice to them like - (inaudible) - said. “Hearts and minds” gets confused sometimes. It’s about separating the population from the insurgents, protecting them, influencing them, and controlling the population, especially in the initial stages. And we talked about already about the enemy. It’s fluid; it hides in plain sight. The enemy does it.

And what do we mean by hearts and minds? I think, Dr. Mansoor, you brought up “trust and confidence.” I totally agree. The heart or the trust is that we’re in their best self-interests. We’re in their best self-interest. The people have to be believe that and in their mind or their confidence in us they have to believe that we are going to win, and when I say we, it’s the Afghan army and police with our support and their government. They have to believe that we’re going to win and we’re going to protect them. In their heart they have to believe we’re in their best self-interest and in their mind they believe that we are going to win. We’re failing to do that.

I’ll talk a little bit about if you’re going to do population-centric COIN and you’re going to live with the Afghan army and police, how do you do that? And the very first step is you really need to understand who you’re dealing with. I’m going to talk a little bit about understanding the Afghan people from my 17, 18 months experience in the country.

First off, this is a quote I found and I totally agree with it. They’ve learned to survive 30 years of war by hedging their bets. They’ve learned to play both sides. And they are still doing it. Why? Because they’re getting slapped on one cheek by their government and the other cheek by the Taliban. They don’t have a good choice and we’re not providing them a good choice because we’re not population centric, we’re not amongst the people, and we’re not with their army and police force. That’s the first step. I was pleased to see Gen. McChrystal’s paper that came out Monday that he’s writing about it. Now we’ve got to execute it.

The next thing is these people can read you better than any people I’ve ever been around including my uncles that live in north Georgia which are very similar to. (Laughter.) They live off the land. They’ve learned over their lifetime in order to survive how to read people. You’ve got to understand that when you deal with then on a daily basis. If you’re not sincere, they will see through you in a heartbeat and you will not be successful with them.

And the next point is about their problems. Their problem is they don’t have honor. They don’t have justice in their government. They believe that their government is corrupt. Whether it is or not, they believe it. And they don’t believe that they have physical security and a significant portion of the population doesn’t have food security four or five months out of the year; those three things, we - if we’re among the people and with their army - we can focus on those.

This is an important list. First bullet: The Afghans have based all their thoughts and decisions on history. When an Afghan looks at life, he looks backwards. He thinks about his history, he makes decisions off of his oral history that he knows of his society.

When we, the Western world, look at life, we look forward. We think about how we’re going to have a bigger house, we’re going to have a better retirement, I’m going to get a better car, I’m going to send my kid to college and get a better education, which in my case, it’s not very difficult to do.

When you deal with an Afghan, he makes decisions. You’ve got to know that. He looks at life 360 degrees from the way you look at life. It’s difficult for us to wrap our minds around and understand that. We must try better.

It’s an agricultural-based society which is extremely important and it was - and much of their agriculture was destroyed in past history and we must focus our effort and our development to bring that back. First thing is we’ve got to be there amongst them.

And then the rural versus the city - 80 percent of the population is a rural force, rural people. They don’t want electricity in many of the homes. We think they do. Why did Iraqis want electricity as soon as we - because they had electricity. The Afghan - many of the Afghans never had electricity. They want electricity to move water in their clinics and to schools but in their basic homes, they’re not begging for it, but we’re trying to give it to them in many cases. We need to understand them better before we try to help them.

And the last one, how do you get them to pick our side? This whole thing is about getting them to pick our side. Right now, they’re playing defense. They’re on defense because they’re not picking our side because they don’t believe in their heart that we’re in their best self-interest, and in their mind they don’t know if we’re going to win.

The Afghan culture, it’s like the Iraqi culture on steroids. It really is. It’s a weird mix between Pashtunwali and Islam, which in many cases are opposed to each other. And the parts where the insurgency really is, the East and the South - because this is a Pashtun insurgence, make no error about it - Pashtunwali is extremely strong even though something similar to Pashtunwali is throughout the rest of the country. And it is a great code. It is a very similar code that my uncles in north Georgia live by.

Understanding the people and their culture, and you need to do that because that’s all they have. That village elder that you deal with on a daily basis, if you’re doing this business right, his honor and his culture and his history is all he has in life and he will kill you for it.

We’ll go through the Afghan army real quick. One thing I’ll say about it is you’ve got to leverage a culture. The leadership we’ve talked about already, the logistic of their force is weak and we had to work on that. You’ve got to accept chaos when you deal with the Afghan Army because it’s going to be there. And you’ve got to show that you’re committed and risk your life right beside them. If you don’t do that, they will not fight with you.

The army - I’ll talk about all three of them - the army is an extremely credible force especially at the company and below. The battalion and above, they’re struggling. Battalion and above is struggling because they’re trying to build the airplane while they fly it. And if we’re them all the time, which we’re not now, as a partnered force, we can make that a lot better. Advisors and mentors are not enough. We have to evolve for that. We had to start with a partnered force and evolve to mentors and advisors and then work our way out of a job. We got it backwards, I believe.

The Afghan police - there’s got to be a local-based police, as Col. Jurney talked about. It must be from the local area and the people have to know who they are. That’s where the intelligence comes from and I believe that we, as a general purpose force, have to live with the police force.
I can do some math for you really quick. How do you do that because there’s a lot of places. Let’s just say there are 360 districts. There’s 388 but we’ll say 360. I think an infantry battalion can do about 12 positions, 12 districts, and we’ve got some examples of this down south with the Marines in Delaram. You divide that and it comes out to be 30 battalions. Thirty battalions is 10 brigades. We’ve got to do some real math and tell some real truth about what it’s going to take if we’re going to do population-centric COIN because the police are the most important thing we’re doing and right now we’re not focused on it.

Those clusters in those districts, you’d be amazing at what happens when the Marines live with them or the soldiers. The governor, the district governor moves and he puts his house right by the police station. The district police chief moves right by the police station and stays there 24/7. The judge moves there. He can move the DSTs, the district support team out of PRTs into those areas. It becomes a cluster in those districts and that’s where it matters in Afghanistan, down at the district level. We’re failing to do that.

And last, the last piece is the Afghan border police, the forgotten soldiers. They are a paramilitary fighting force. If you want to get into a firefight in Afghanistan you go partner up with the Afghan border police. You’ll get all the fighting you want. We’re not doing it. And we must change the way we’re doing it and we must do some real math on what it’s going to take if we want to make a viable, stable Afghan country that no longer harbors terrorists. If that’s so, then there are some hard lessons, some hard decisions that have to be made about what’s going to take.

Thank you. (Applause.)

COP Keating

Honoring those who lost their lives at COP Keating.

Staff Sgt. Vernon W. Martin, 25 of Savannah, Ga. photo
Sgt. Justin T. Gallegos, 27, of Tucson, Ariz. photo
Sgt. Joshua M. Hardt, 24, of Applegate, Calif. photo
Sgt. Joshua J. Kirk, 30, of South Portland, Maine. photo
Sgt. Michael P. Scusa, 22, of Villas, N.J. photo
Spc. Christopher T. Griffin, 24, of Kincheloe, Mich. photo
Spc. Stephan L. Mace, 21, of Lovettsville, Va. photo
Pfc. Kevin C. Thomson, 22, of Reno, Nev. photo

Read a fairly thorough account here. There are several interesting comments in that post as well.

Helping Out

Remember that FOB that suffered from the all day attack last week in Afghanistan? The 56 survivors lost everything they had when the FOB was overrun and destroyed, and are making a call home for assistance. Check here for details.

High Expectations Are Good

This is an interesting discussion at Danger Room regarding the 60 Minutes revelation that General McChrystal and President Barack Obama had only spoken once prior to today's meeting. Read the Danger Room article and come back...

I think Professor Mark Grimsley is wrong, and I think both Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Michael E. O’Hanlon are right.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen said:

“I agree with President Obama in his approach — strategy first, then resources,” Mr. Rasmussen told reporters in the Oval Office. “The first thing is not numbers. It is to find and fine-tune the right approach to implement the strategy already laid down.”

Mr. Rasmussen is exactly right, but the question is what kind of strategy is being examined. This is war, so the answer should be military strategy. The revelation that President Obama has not talked with General McChrystal leaves the impression the President is treating the situation as political strategy. That perception of political strategy for Afghanistan instead of military strategy for Afghanistan being the focus of the President is the first reason why Professor Mark Grimsley's analysis is off. When it comes to leadership, particularly political leaders, perception matters a lot - as the talks with Iran today will prove.

Michael E. O’Hanlon said:

“I don’t think I can defend him for being out of touch with his commander,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. “He has other people who advise him. But there’s no one else with the feel on the ground that McChrystal has.”

Exactly right. We live in the Information Age, so there is no excuse for anyone with resources and responsibility, like the President of the United States in wartime for example, not to be the most informed person in the room. Talking to the folks on the front lines would seem a logical approach to being informed about a war. Professor Mark Grimsley attempts to make a comparison between being informed and micro-management. I think these are apples and oranges comparisons.

I also don't think President Obama is in danger of being accused of micro-managing any policies so far in his presidency. In fact, the legitimate criticism he appears to be taking from all sides, including his base on health care, is that he doesn't give the impression he is engaged enough. I think the criticism is very legitimate. We should have high expectations from our political leaders.

I also want to add one last thing here. Do you sense the real debate regarding Afghanistan? I do. To COIN or not to COIN... isn't that the question? This is the discussion that never happened before Iraq in 2003. It feels icky and looks ugly, and the Presidents political opponents even call it political dithering... but taking a bit of time to debate the war is a very good and healthy thing for America, because I think it helps insure everyone has a clear picture of the consequences and commitment that comes with each of the choices the President must make.

This isn't dithering, it is what it looks like when you don't make haste of decisions regarding war. Dithering would have been legitimate criticism had the President not bought time with an Afghanistan surge up to 60,000 troops earlier this year, a surge that btw has yet to hit the battlefield in full yet.

Pashtun rebels and the Taliban have been fighting in the same ~200 districts of Afghanistan all summer. The fighting has not expanded out of those ~200 districts. That suggests we now have a better understanding of the limits of Pushtun reach in Afghanistan. The summer has defined what the battlefield terrain in Afghanistan is. I think that is an important detail in the development of a military strategy for Afghanistan.

"We will do to you what we did to the Russians"

This is outstanding war coverage.

We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.

"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.

Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.

That is the second article by Jonathan Landay of McClatchy News of the attack, this one was filed earlier in the day.

Also, check out the analysis at NightWatch.

Landay’s experience reinforces the NW contention that without air support, US ground operations are unsustainable. As a result of Landay’s excellent dispatch plus earlier reports of a number of US defeats at the hands of the Taliban, mostly in Konar Province, it is no longer accurate to assert that the US wins every battle. The ability of the Taliban to leverage their information operations to support their combat operations, as described by Landay, is a breakthrough in insurgent tactical success.

The ability of the Taliban to win successive battles in Konar Province against the best armed, supported and networked forces in the world is nothing short of astonishing! The Marines got beat, not because the Taliban were better on the battle field, but because they had better intelligence, i.e., were smarter. That ought to be a wake up call to someone.

No insurgent or nation respects a country because it has a great counter-insurgency capability. Great power status rests on air power and, in appropriate situations, naval power. Consider, the Taliban are so afraid of US ground forces that they persist in fighting them with turbans, AKs, RPGs, sandals and flowing robes. No body armor, no armored vehicles.

The NW hypothesis is that the security of US forces is not sustainable without air support. Landay’s article proves that proposition. Protecting the Afghan populace … from NATO forces … has become the responsibility of the Taliban in the south and northeast. If Landay’s account is typical, the US apparently has no coherent strategy that translates into effective tactics, and that puts US soldiers’ lives at increased risk.

Troubling.

Every Budget Suggests a Policy

Admiral Morgan used to say that for the military services, every budget is a strategy. I remain unconvinced, but when it comes to budgets, I do believe every budget suggests a policy.

The AP is reporting on the bill passed in the Senate regarding President Barack Obama's $128 billion FY 2010 budget for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do we make of the Senates opinion regarding Afghanistan policy with this bit of budget reorganization?

The bill would cut $900 million from Obama's request for Afghan security forces, though the $6.6 billion provided still represents a 17 percent increase over current spending. Inouye says the Pentagon acknowledges the full budget request wouldn't be spent in the coming year and instead devoted the $900 million to bomb- and mine-resistant vehicles.

A counterinsurgency approach in Afghanistan will not work without Afghanistan security forces. In fact, advocates of a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan have emphasized we need to expand Afghan security forces to succeed, and do so at a much faster rate. This money, which Inouye says wouldn't be spent this year, would potentially be how to fund building a larger Afghan security force faster.

If we use this budget as guidance to suggests the Senate's policy position, it looks to me like the Senate has no interest in counterinsurgency for Afghanistan. This type of changes suggests Senate policy is for our troops to kill more bad guys, and have the staying power necessary to do it. MRAPs purchased with this money will not influence the Afghanistan theater faster than if the money was used for Afghan security forces, even if the money wasn't used for Afghan security forces in FY 2010. The time issue may not be a very good reason.

I think Senators should be asked about this budget change directly, because I think the answer would suggest whether this was a policy choice, or an industrial choice. The American people need to know how seriously our elected officials are taking the war in Afghanistan, and this issue offers an opportunity for insight into what Senators are thinking. Will their answers reveal policy differences with the administration, or strategic ignorance to the situation?

MRAPs represent a policy alternative for those who reject a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, but it would also suggest that all of those good will projects we are doing in Afghanistan as part of the counterinsurgency approach do not need funding either. I would recommend shifting that money towards buying more aircraft and bombs for the Navy and Air Force, if we are to keep our budgets consistent in policy.

Information Warfare Observations

The Bill Roggio reporting of NY Times reporter Stephen Farrell being kidnapped is an interesting discussion. It has become even more interesting as the fallout from the rescue of the reporter has hit the British press. The British press is asking questions whether military force should have been used to rescue the NY Times reporter after his assistant, two civilians, and a British soldier were killed in the rescue.

Hostage negotiators expressed anger at the raid, saying they were within days of securing the peaceful release of Farrell and his assistant Sultan Munadi from the Taliban, according to newspapers in London.

And the death of a soldier in the raid sparked anger in the British army here, the Daily Telegraph said, after claims Farrell brushed aside security advice by venturing into a Taliban stronghold.

"When you look at the number of warnings this person had it makes you really wonder whether he was worth rescuing, whether it was worth the cost of a soldier's life," a senior army source told the Telegraph.

The Times newspaper, quoting defence sources, said the raid was mounted after British forces feared Farrell could be moved, and there were no guarantees that the negotiations would have led to his and Munadi's release.

However, several sources quoted by the newspaper said that the kidnappers were, at worst, seeking a ransom.

"There was no immediate urgency that they were going to be beheaded or handed over to another group. You cannot move them easily. It's a very isolated area," a Western source involved in the talks told The Times.

Some of this is typical media Monday morning quarterbacking. Had the rescue gone smoothly, many of these issues would never have seen the light of day. Shit happens in war though, and this time people died.

Bill Roggio was not the first reporter to report the kidnapping of NY Times reporter Stephen Farrell. Afghan province governor Eng. Mohammaed Oma announced it as soon as it happened, and FOCUS reported the kidnapping a day before Bill Roggio did. Bill was the first US mainstream (sorry Bill, you graduated MSM U long ago) reporter to report the kidnapping, so he is taking the heat for it fairly or not. The ethical arguments are already in discussion here, here, and here. Bill's defense is pretty straight forward.

I speak as someone who has reported from both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005. To me, this is simple. Either a kidnapping is news, or it isn't. When soldiers, contractors, etc. are kidnapped, it is news. When a reporter is kidnapped, it is also news.

I think these two stories are interesting when considered together, because it sort of looks like the British Army attempted the rescue instead of waiting for negotiations specifically because Stephen Farrell is a high profile NY Times reporter. It was a judgment call and the operation wasn't executed flawlessly, but regardless how negotiations were proceeding at the time of the raid, the celebrity of the kidnapping victim would almost certainly be one of many factors considered in whether the rescue would be attempted.

I am not an Afghanistan theater information warfare expert, but I do know quite a bit about information warfare, cyber warfare, and strategic communications in government, and I probably spend a bit too much time observing the way the Navy handles strategic communications.

I see this event as an example where our national approach to information warfare and strategic communications is not coordinated well. Bill Roggio's defense for reporting the kidnapping is centered around an equality argument between a reporter and a soldier in the war zone. There is nothing inappropriate behind his relative comparison, but in the context of information warfare a soldier and a reporter are not equal.

It may not be fair, but it is fact that when a reporter gets caught up in war, whether kidnapped or killed, there is a great deal more press coverage of the incident than when a soldier is kidnapped or killed. The enemy knows this; the tactic has long been part of their information war campaign. This isn't about equality of life, it is about the enemy seeking the inequity of publicity that favors the kidnapping of a high profile media individual relative to the lesser publicity given the kidnapping or killing of a soldier.

Did anyone notice that there are already more news articles written about the events surrounding the kidnapping of Stephen Farrell than articles discussing the death of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, and Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard's death includes all the publicity associated with the photo by Julie Jacobson - and the attention Secretary Gates gave the photo issue. No one says the inequity is fair; life, love and war never is.

We have gone from embedded reporters riding with the front line military units in Iraq to the way the press covers war today with their stringer army, and somehow in the information age an event like this gives the impression both the press and the military continue to struggle with the nature of information warfare. The kidnapping of the reporter is a fairly obvious propaganda effort intended to support the enemies information warfare campaign. Bill Roggio wasn't attempting to contribute to enemy propaganda by reporting the news, but that is exactly what he did.

There appears to be something preventing the press and military in developing a mutual understanding of how the enemy creates events for purposes of propaganda. The kidnapping of a reporter is a legitimate news story, but how do we reconcile it as a legitimate news story when the press reporting of the kidnapping is part of the enemies objective? This kidnapping highlights the deteriorating security situation in the northern province of Kunduz (and neighboring Baghlan), as Bill Roggio reported. That is important news and should not be censored, particularly at a time when the President is developing his policy for the war.

I think the incident highlights that for the purposes of information warfare, the enemy has intentionally made the press part of the war in Afghanistan, whether they want to be part of it or not. I do not see consistency in the press in adjusting to this reality, and I am not sure what the role of the military is in addressing the situation.

How do we address the skill used by the enemy in exploiting the press towards their strategic objective of creating political friction in our war policy while also protecting the press in the warzone from censorship? General McCrystals strategy appears to align promises, policy, words, and actions as a strategic communication effort to discredit the Taliban and convince the Afghanistan population that the ISAF and the Afghanistan government offers the people and the country the better future. I do wonder if our skill in information warfare is as effective in exploiting the enemy as they clearly are in exploiting us, because the success of our information warfare strategy in this counterinsurgency will be as critical as our success in combat.

The Afghanistan Campaign Plan...

This is my cynical take on the release of this "sensitive" but "unclassified" document.

Someone in the Pentagon sees this as the way to blame the State Department for the eventual failure in Afghanistan. Read it, and you'll see what I mean.

If the President doesn't believe the State Department can do it, he needs a Plan B. Another very cynical political view would be to suggest this is how someone decided to kill Hillary Clinton's career.

Russian Airspace Now Open

This is quietly a significant development.

Washington is now allowed to send military aircraft to Afghanistan through Russia’s airspace. More than four thousand flights per year are scheduled to deliver troops and various types of cargo, including military hardware.

Officials on both sides of the ocean have called it an important step, which proves that Moscow and Washington can cooperate in spheres of mutual interest.

The cooperation Russia is offering in Afghanistan is a considerable policy victory for the Obama administration. The article goes on to suggest this will save over $130 million in fuel costs for transport aircraft supporting the Afghanistan theater.

Why No One Cares that Media Corporations Are Going Out of Business

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the Associated Press had a bit of a disagreement on Friday. An AP photographer named Julie Jacobson, embedded with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province - included a picture of Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard while being treated by what turns out to be a mortal wounded from an RPG. The Associated Press decided to distribute the photo as part of its package for the story, at which time Secretary Gates sent the following letter to AP President and CEO Thomas Curley.

Mr. Curley:

Today I learned that the Associated Press plans to publish a graphic photograph of Lance Corporal Joshua M. Bernard taken shortly after he received mortal wounds. I understand that you have decided to do this over the objection of Lance Corporal Bernard's grieving father. Out of respect for his family's wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision.

I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed - as was the case with Walter Reed. I have long been committed to more transparency with regard to media access - even when that means showing war's terrible human costs. Earlier this year I lifted the ban on images of the return of the fallen at Dover Air Force. I did so with one overriding thought in my mind: to give families the opportunity to honor their fallen however they saw fit and for the American people to understand, to see, and to appreciate the enormity of their sacrifice.

The American people understand that death is an awful and inescapable part of war - a fact driven home to me in a very personal way each time I write a condolence letter. Those of us who have not lost loved ones in a war can never know what it feels like. All we can do is pay tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and respect the wishes of their families. Publication of this image will do neither and will mark an unconscionable departure from the restraint that most journalists and publications have shown covering the military since September 11th.

I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard's death has caused is family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family's wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right - but judgment and common decency.

Sincerely,
Robert Gates

This is an easy topic to avoid on this blog, but the Marines live on ID too and I can't let this one go. I agree with Gates 100%, because the AP cannot defend this decision. It would not be an issue at all if the Lance Corporal's family had given permission, but as soon as they denied that permission, the AP should not have included the photo. With the permission of the family, the story is the Marine and what the Marines are doing. Without the permission of the family, the story is no longer about the Marine, the AP turns the story into the AP.

The AP cannot possibly claim this is about getting the real story of the war out, because if the AP requires a picture of a dieing Marine in order to tell the story of a violent Afghanistan war, then the AP is making a damning statement describing just how ineffective the AP is as a news organization in covering the war.

In the end, the photograph was used not to honor Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, nor the Marines fighting in Helmand Province, but to make a political statement about the war (the Huffington Post published the photo front page in the center of the homepage under the pretext of getting the truth out, suggesting the inability to comprehend these statistics as informative). There is no excuse for the actions of AP President and CEO Thomas Curley, because even when judging him by the ethical standards of his profession as listed by the Society of Professional Journalists, it is clear ethical standards were not applied to this decision.

From the Society of Professional Journalists website, under the Minimize Harm section of the ethics code:

• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
• Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
• Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
• Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
• Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.

I don't want to see the bodies of Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, or Sailors on the front page of the newspapers, nor criminal victims, dead criminals, or people killed in war. It is absolutely clear that the picture included above showing Marine Corps Gen. Lawrence Nicholson (left) and 2nd MEB Sgt. Major Hooph (right) paying their respects to Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard during a memorial service at a forward operating base in Now Zad would have been more than sufficient, and very powerful, in highlighting the horror of the war in Afghanistan that comes from American Marines dieing. By using the image of a dieing Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard against the wishes of the family and in spite of the request by Secretary Gates, ethical standards were ignored and the AP changed the story into a 1st amendment rights issue, which predictably led to the picture being exploited as a symbol for political purposes.

It is a black eye for journalism, and this won't help other war reporters embedded with troops. It is a real shame too, because other than this picture, the work of Julie Jacobson is really quite good. Check out the other pictures associated with Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard here, because they tell the real story and in a remarkably compelling way without the image that has caused controversy. Americans should care that media organizations are going out of business, but when this is how the media makes a statement in public about itself, it is quite understandable why the media gets no sympathy from the average American. To put it simply, most Americans don't believe the media serves to protect them anymore, rather most Americans believe the media is always protecting the interests of people in power, or the media themselves. Whether true or not, that is the perception, and in many cases...particularly DC, the reality.

I am aware I did not link the image in question. I just don't feel it is appropriate.

When Tactics Displace Strategy

ISAF's mission is to help the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) defeat the insurgency threatening their country. Protecting the Afghan people is the mission. The Afghan people will decide who wins this fight, and we (GIROA and ISAF) are in a struggle for their support. The effort to gain and maintain that support must inform every action we take. Essentially, we and the insurgents are presenting an argument for the future to the people of Afghanistan: they will decide which argument is the most attractive, most convincing, and has the greatest chance of success.

The Afghan people are a diverse mix of ethnicities and tribes with strong traditions and a fierce sense of independence. Their country has been scarred by 30 years of war, and the fabric of Afghan society has been badly damaged. Traditional tribal structures have been undermined deliberately by the insurgents; many communities have fractured. State weakness and corruption erode confidence in government. Nearly eight years of international presence has not brought the anticipated benefits. The Afghan people are skeptical and unwilling to commit to active support to either side until convinced of a winning proposition.

The above introduces the ISAF Commanders Counterinsurgency Guidance issued by General McCrystal on August 26, 2009. I read everything that follows these two paragraphs as tactical and operational guidance, not a strategic road map for Afghanistan. The guidance is useful in exploring, based on the tactical and operational guidance, what the objectives for a new strategy may be in Afghanistan as recommended by General McCrystal. Copies of this guidance can be found on Herschel Smith's Captain's Journal blog and at the Small Wars Journal, among other places.

Herschel Smith includes analysis and makes several points where he agrees and disagrees with this guidance, noting distinctions between what happened in Iraq and what is being prescribed for Afghanistan. For those who are inclined to engage that tactical exercise, that is an interesting discussion.

Classic Insurgency?

What concerns me is the strategy the US is considering for Afghanistan, and whether or not there are strategic alternatives being examined and compared to the widely reported counterinsurgency strategy being proposed. The advocates for COIN in Afghanistan are the same people who recognized Iraq as a classic insurgency, and drew from history the lessons necessary to develop and operationalize a COIN strategy for Iraq. What I have not seen is creative thinking intended to operationalize a military strategy tailored for the conditions in Afghanistan. For several reasons, I do not believe a credible counterinsurgency strategy can be developed as a successful option for the United States in Afghanistan, because I do not believe Afghanistan is suffering from a classic insurgency.

How does a counterinsurgency strategy work in Afghanistan when the government neither has legitimacy nor credibility to act as the authority over the people, and does not have the support of the people? While I am not an expert on Afghanistan history, it looks to me like Afghanistan has not had a consistent domestic government authority with the support of the people for nearly 5 centuries.

Counterinsurgency theory applies a population centric military strategy for promoting an existing credible governing body in a weak state where the government is facing an armed rebellion or occupation. Counterinsurgency is not the establishment of credible governing authority in a failed state where no credible governance exists. How does a counterinsurgency approach work in a failed state? I thought COIN was for weak states?

We are being told that Afghanistan is a weak state because there is an elected government in power today. How much control does that government have over the people even without the Taliban influence? The Taliban has not been the only problem in Afghanistan over the last eight years, and the governments authority didn't exist over much of the country even when the Taliban wasn't the main problem. I am having trouble digesting the suggestion that what we see in Afghanistan is a classic insurgency. Show me the evidence. Can someone please explain why the conditions are that of a classic insurgency, and not the chaotic soup one finds in a country suffering from 30 consecutive years of war caused primarily by foreign power influence compounded by centuries of tribal conflict and mistrust.

As a society, Afghanistan is still struggling to digest the Treaty of Westphalia, and to complicate things we have added the idealism of democracy. After thoroughly confusing the Afghan people in ways that fundamentally alter the historical tribal power structure, the suggested counterinsurgency military strategy is being sold as us needing to understanding the Afghanistan people. Unfortunately, the strategies success will almost entirely depend on the Afghanistan people conforming to the democratic government we have established to force their inclusion into the Westphalian world. From where I am sitting, it looks like the success of a counterinsurgency military strategy is dependent upon our non-military capability to successfully execute a broad social experiment intended to drag Afghanistan society out of the old testament. What are we doing?

Supporters for the COIN approach to Afghanistan, like John Nagl on Tuesday in Foreign Policy, suggests the problem is simply the lack of support for the Afghan National Army (ANA). If he believes that, I'd like to see how his calculations add up, because I don't see the flaw in Professor Donald Snow's calculations.

As noted earlier (at at the risk of being a “nag” on the subject), the Counterinsurgency Manual embraces the idea of pacification but also points out that it is very manpower intensive. To reiterate, an effective COIN force, in the manual’s own estimate, requires 20 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 in the population being protected. As previously noted, that literally means a force of 660,000 counterinsurgents, given the size of the Afghan population. Even fudging on the numbers, that adds up to over one half million forces confronting the Taliban, whose numbers of full-time fighters has been estimated at as little as 20,000, not including part-timers.

How do the numbers match up to fill this bill? Here we need some new math. Currently, there are 62,000 American forces in the country, scheduled to expand to about 68,000 by year’s end. With other NATO contributions, the number swells to about 100,000, although the NATO numbers are likely to shrivel. Current projections call for an Afghan National Army (ANA) force of around 134,000 by the end of 2011. Given the progress in recruiting and training those forces (and especially in making them ethnically representative enough for the Afghans themselves to think of them as “national”), we are talking about a total force of less than 250,000 by the end of next year. That does not even come close.

General McCrystal states in the August 26 guidance that "...an insurgency cannot be defeated by attrition; its supply of fighters, and even leadership, is effectively endless." If the Taliban is estimated at 20,000 fighters, then the endless supply of fighters argument appears manufactured to meet a predetermined military strategy.

Clear as Mud

The US strategic objective in Afghanistan should be the prevention of extremists in the region from marshaling forces for an attack against the United States; and preventing extremists from strengthening sufficiently to overthrow the Pakistan government. Those are clear strategic military objectives. If this Washington Post article by Ann Scott Tyson is accurate, then how does the square peg fit in the round hole:

Although the assessment, which runs more than 20 pages, has not been released, officials familiar with the report have said it represents a hard look at the challenges involved in implementing Obama's strategy for Afghanistan. The administration has narrowly defined its goal as defeating al-Qaeda and other extremist groups and denying them sanctuary, but that in turn requires a sweeping counterinsurgency campaign aimed at protecting the Afghan population, establishing good governance and rebuilding the economy.

What? Is the strategic objective to defeat al-Qaeda and other extremist groups and deny them sanctuary or is it to protect the Afghan population, establish good governance, and rebuild the economy? Those are two entirely different strategic objectives, but both become the strategic objective when you add the words "that in turn requires a sweeping counterinsurgency campaign."

Counterinsurgency has become the slipper that fits every foot, when in fact military history suggests there are other military strategies for military engagement in failed states when unity governance cannot be achieved or established by an external state. As Bryan observed on Tuesday, George Will came out in advocacy for an alternative military strategy that looks a bit like Offshore Balancing. Offshore balancing strategy has long been proven an effective grand strategy to balance the geopolitical environment, but is very poorly developed as a military strategy in a military campaign. Will's suggestion falls apart because we are beyond the ability to leverage offshore balancing strategies in Afghanistan, which as a rule avoids "boots on the ground" in the first place, not substitutes for "boots on the ground" after the fact.

That doesn't mean there are not other military strategies to be evaluated. The Obama administration is facing difficult political choices. Alternatives to counterinsurgency might include any number of conventional military campaigns absent nation building services. There are certainly risks involved, but those risks are no less than the obvious risks in counterinsurgency strategies being suggested. Risks might include many deaths of non US citizens by the hands of our adversaries, but it is hard to tell if that will be at any greater rate than what is already happening. If our military strategies stayed engaged and is centered upon killing bad guys, the Taliban wouldn't want anything to do with centralized government, because it would make them easy to kill.

I personally believe there are chaotic conditions that the US can live with while meeting strategic objectives and avoiding major unintended consequences, but the US military campaign under an alternative strategy that rejects population centric activities and government military support would have to be very active and very lethal. It would likely entail leaving a military footprint in Afghanistan, but the tactics would be guerrilla style or hit and run in nature, and would avoid population centric promises. These alternatives are conventional military strategies that engage in unconventional warfare not much different than the initial invasion and overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. These alternative military strategies are less expensive, are designed to be disruptive, and are much less humanitarian. Like I said, difficult choices.

If we use history as our guide, how does history support a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan? By definition counterinsurgency strategies are designed to protect the recognized centralized government seen as the legitimate authority for the people. Afghanistan's recognized government isn't centralized, it is tribal. Is it fair to say the last effective domestic 'centralized' government was the Timurid Dynasty? I'm not counting when external powers ruled, because I don't believe our objective is indefinite occupation.

If it is fair to note that small historical detail, then it should also be noted we are 500 years removed from the Timurid Dynasty, which suggests to me the counterinsurgency strategy intended to strengthen a centralized domestic government, protect the Afghan population, establish good governance, and rebuild the economy is not likely to be successful.

The Partisan Myth

I have only one more comment. A lot is made regarding the polls taken suggesting support for the war. The polls are deceptive. The President has yet to make a single prime time speech on the war that outlines his position. That is significant, because this President is one of the best communicators this country has seen in the White House in a long time. One would be foolish to underestimate the effect Obama can have in influencing public opinion regarding the war.

It is particularly noteworthy that all indications are the military strategy that will be recommended to him from the Pentagon will be the counterinsurgency strategy the opposition party would like to see. In other words, Obama needs only to get support from less than half his base and he will quickly achieve a majority position on the war issue.

Where all of this becomes interesting is if the President chooses an alternative military strategy in Afghanistan. This becomes a choice of political cost and financial cost. The counterinsurgency strategy requires the largest footprint and will carry the highest financial cost for military operations, and a strategy that increases military presence in Afghanistan is not widely supported by the presidents political base. An alternative strategy would be more conventional, likely avoid nation building as a primary strategic objective, require far fewer military forces, carry a much lower cost, but will almost certainly be more lethal for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan in its execution.

It should also be noted that should the President favor a conventional military strategy his position would essentially represent the Republican 2000 Presidential platform for using military power as described by George Bush of avoiding nation building.

I note this collision of partisan policy choices the Obama administration is facing as an example why I avoid partisan politics when talking military strategy. I consistently find that over time, political positions are remarkably fungible when it comes to the military. Conservatives today are moaning George Will because he advocated a military strategy that Bush stood for in the 2000 election cycle. Should Obama ramp up a counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan, his base will note in many colorful ways how the Presidents position and the Republican position are remarkably similar, but his alternative squarely puts his policy in line with the George's.

Thus is why I think partisan politics can be entertaining to observe here, but I do not find partisan politics as important to military strategy as some try to suggest.

Strategic Shift Coming

We are not going to be allowed the privilege to read General McCrystal's report on Afghanistan. Maybe in 10 years someone will release it, but until then we discuss what the various folks are saying in the context of the report. I'm a big fan of Dr. Cordesman, so this is hard to ignore, but the comments that caught my attention on the topic come from John Nagl.

America has vital national security interests in Afghanistan that make fighting there necessary. The key objectives of the campaign are preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a sanctuary for terrorists with global reach and ensuring that it does not become the catalyst for a broader regional security meltdown. Afghanistan also serves as a base from which the United States attacks al-Qaeda forces inside Pakistan and thus assists in the broader campaign against that terrorist organization -- one that we clearly must win.

U.S. policymakers must, of course, weigh all actions against America's global interests and the possible opportunity costs. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, low-cost strategies do not have an encouraging record of success. U.S. efforts to secure Afghanistan on the cheap after 2001 led it to support local strongmen whose actions alienated the population and thereby enabled the Taliban to reestablish itself as an insurgent force. Drone attacks, although efficient eliminators of Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, have not prevented extremist forces from spreading and threatening to undermine both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The so-called "light footprint" option has failed to secure U.S. objectives; as the Obama administration and the U.S. military leadership have recognized, it is well past time for a more comprehensive approach.

I read a great book once discussing the less than encouraging record of success in counterinsurgency campaigns, in fact, I think I've read another great book that said something like that too. Look, I get it... what we are doing in Afghanistan isn't working and we have approached a moment of decision, but ineffective efforts and the ability to select alternative options neither suggests the way ahead nor the destination.

My problem with the massive increase towards a new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan isn't that I believe the method couldn't be effective, indeed I believe with enough troops and investment, we have a decent shot at successfully securing population centers. What I don't understand is how that translates into the strategic objectives of preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a sanctuary for terrorists when in fact Pakistan is serving as a sanctuary for terrorists today. It seems to me we have a serious geography problem in strategy execution, and I do not see how any strategic method, counterinsurgency or otherwise, is going to achieve the strategic object of denying safe havens to the enemy as long as the approach includes allowing the enemy a safe haven (in Pakistan).

John Nagl is completely wrong btw, the so-called "light footprint" option has not failed to secure US objectives, at least the objectives as I knew them to be after 9/11. Afghanistan is currently not serving as a sanctuary for terrorists to enact attacks with global reach, which is the specific strategic objective he cited that the US is fighting to achieve. US military objectives have been unclear in Afghanistan for so long that his statement almost sounds accurate. It isn't accurate.

Both John Nagl and Anthony Cordesman are brilliant competitive strategists in my book, but until someone clearly articulates what the ends of strategy are for the US/NATO effort in Afghanistan, the discussions concerning ways and means to execute strategy serve only to distract from the objective, not achieve the objective. Until I see a meaningful strategy that addresses the drug issues, the Pakistan issues, and the NATO combat support issues - count me in favor of whatever liberally violent, low-cost strategy the President comes up with that kills the most bad guys.