20 Things To Do in Kabul and the state of US civil-military relations

Seems like there are some people out there who have this Afghanistan thing cracked.  Two of them, conveniently, have their reasons condensed neatly into packages of ten points.  Let’s have a shufti, shall we, Dear Readers?

First, from Victor Davis Hanson, a list of “ten considerations that suggest that Afghanistan is hardly lost”.  For the most part the logic and content speaks for itself:

General Petraeus.  [Ed: 'Nuf said.]

The mission…President Obama needs to remind America of the mission. We seek to foster a stable constitutional system in Afghanistan that will keep radical Islamists from offering sanctuary to international terrorists.

Losses…Afghanistan is no Iraq, much less a Vietnam. In a war nearly a decade long, the United States has been remarkably adept in not losing its soldiers.

Karzai in perspective…He cannot have been so good in 2004 only to suddenly have become so bad in 2010. [Ed: Yeah, about that...]

Afghanistan was not always so…We hear that the country has always been ungovernable. But the British achieved their aims between 1878 and 1919 in preventing chaos.

Eye off the ball?…We are doing well, then, on two fronts [preventing terrorist attacks on US soil and stabilising Iraq], and it would be a mistake to give up on the third.

Executive inconsistency…Artificial deadlines for withdrawal convey the sense that the commander-in-chief is not fully committed to a successful Afghan strategy. The window for blaming Bush for Afghanistan has long been closed, and we will do far better when the administration accepts this.

Diplomatic mess….Should we find one — and only one — diplomat who can partner with both General Petraeus and President Karzai, things will improve.

Obama’s advantages.  Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ (for a time), and Clinton were all seen as reluctant warriors in a way Nixon and the Bushes were not.  [Ed: May you be judged by the company you keep...]

Now, you may or may not appreciate this nonet of ‘considerations’.  But you have got to love VDH’s finale:

10. We have no choice but victory.  Either we stabilize the country, with all the accruing advantages from that achievement, or we withdraw in defeat and expect to reap a bitter harvest from that defeat.

Well, thanks for that, then, Vic.

Not to be outdone, Ralph Peters, took the time to compile his ‘Top Ten’ list, too.  His is somewhat more ‘directive’, shall we say, perhaps reflecting his status as a ‘get it done’ kinda guy, as opposed to the more cerebral tone of the classical scholar that is VDH:

1. Define victory down.  We cancontinue to gut al Qaeda across the border in Pakistan and gore those Taliban who cooperate with bin Laden’s butchers.
2. Push the Pakistanis to stop harboring terrorists.  Petraeus sees the Pakistanis with refreshing clarity. The problem is that senior administration officials have drunk Pakistani Kool-Aid by the vat.
3. Team with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry in Kabul.
4. Streamline the rest of the team.  Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to the region, needs to go. Petraeus must be the go-to guy in AfPak.
5. Quietly build relations with alternatives to Karzai.   We need to start removing some of our eggs from the Karzai basket.
6. Rethink operational priorities.  Planting alternative crops doesn’t work; planting the bodies of dead terrorists does.
7. Loosen the rules of engagement.  Better dead Afghans than dead Americans…More-sensible ROE would be a huge morale booster for our troops.
8. Take the fight to the enemy.
9. More special operations, please.
10. Insist on a long-term detention policy for dangerous captives.

Lots in that list to love: gut, gore, plant dead bodies, relax ROE to improve morale.

Who knew it was going to be so easy?

In other news, Andrew Bacevich has come out with his assessment on the health of American civil-military relations.

In an article published in the Washington Post, he looks at the impact of protracted war on both civil-military relations.  He states that The Long War–and long wars in general–has had a corrosive effect on the interplay between generals, politicians, and society. 

Bacevich uses this opportunity to underline his point (again!) that the ‘all volunteer force’ (that is, an armed forces that are not the product of compulsory service or conscription) is to blame. 

The Long War is not America’s war. It belongs exclusively to “the troops,” lashed to a treadmill that finds soldiers and Marines either serving in a combat zone or preparing to deploy…To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed conflict without end. Once begun, wars continue, persisting regardless of whether they receive public support.

American society is not engaged, they are not shouldering any part of the burden; therefore, they do not act as a brake on the militaristic jugernaut.

To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed conflict without end. Once begun, wars continue, persisting regardless of whether they receive public support…Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend.  The smug disdain for high-ranking civilians casually expressed by McChrystal and his chief lieutenants — along with the conviction that “Team America,” as these officers style themselves, was bravely holding out against a sea of stupidity and corruption — suggests that the officer corps of the United States is not immune to this affliction.

A sobering read, especially when spiced up with anecdotes from serving officers, who assert that McChrystal was not alone:

Pretty soon you have an entire organization believing that their leader is the ‘Savior’ and that everyone else is stupid and incompetent, or not committed to victory…Senior officers who condone this kind of behavior and allow this to continue and fester…create generation after generation of officers like themselves — but they’re generally so arrogant that they think everyone needs to be just like them anyway.

I guess Bacevich’s source was not a part of Team America.

What to do? Bacevich paints a stark choice:

The responsibility facing the American people is clear.  They need to reclaim ownership of their army.  They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly “at” war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course — and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse — the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe.

I’m no Delphic cephalopod, but I’d put my money on door number 3.