The 19 True Things Generals Can't Say About Afghanistan

In honor of Veterans' Day, Nigel Tufnel Day and Binary Day, I present the 19 true things a general cannot say about our mission in the 'Stan:

1. Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.
2. We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.
3. The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt.
4. Karzai's family is especially corrupt.
5. We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.
6. But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.
7. Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.
8. Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe
9. Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.
10. Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn't end the fighting.
11. The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.
12. Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there's no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.
13. Even non-Taliban Afghans don't much like us.
14. Afghans didn't get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .
15. And they're not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we're paying more and getting less than any other player.
16. Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?
17. The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.
18. We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won't act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.
19. The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.

True words.

Question. How did you guys get into this?
Number two, how do you think this will end? Because I don't think anyone can sort out Pakistan and Afghanistan unless they themselves want to be fixed. And I'm not sure they do. Not the ones who actually hold the power anyway.

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Originally Posted by rajpoot

Question. How did you guys get into this?

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9/11. But the real screw up occurred March 20th, 2003. Resources and attention diverted, goodwill thrown away, opportunity wasted.

I could tell you some stories.

But I don't want to get in trouble. The manner in which we are building and educating and policing the money here goes against just about every domestic policy we have back home, from banking regulations down to basic welfare principles. Then again, Washington in corrupt, so one could simply say the Afghans are learning from the pros

I've heard some stories, apparently you can make a life sized armchair from £1m in cash

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Originally Posted by drone

9/11. But the real screw up occurred March 20th, 2003. Resources and attention diverted, goodwill thrown away, opportunity wasted.

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How would more resources and attention have changed the outcome?

dont invade a country that is renowned for its rebellious nature towards foreign invaders....

and when you get there you cannot pussyfoot about.

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Originally Posted by drone

9/11. But the real screw up occurred March 20th, 2003. Resources and attention diverted, goodwill thrown away, opportunity wasted.

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Yes and to illustrate it:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6045/...a44100c4_z.jpg

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

How would more resources and attention have changed the outcome?

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Afghanistan took second rate status once Iraqi Freedom started, our motives and commitment in-country became questioned. There are no guarantees we would have ever succeeded, but the invasion of Iraq doomed our chances in Afghanistan.

Yes, I think we've all heard the 'we took our eye off the ball' meme ad nauseam at this point, but is there any solid evidence to support the notion that it made any difference? Usually when we say something 'doomed' something else, there is a solid historical line from A to B. The idea seems to make sense if you don't really think about it, but I've always had a hard time connecting the dots on this one.

It seems to me that the factors working against the coalition (mainly internal and regional politics) would persist regardless of what happened in Iraq. Would a suitable Pashtun leader have emerged if we didn't intervene in Iraq? Would Pakistan have suddenly decided to be an honest broker? :inquisitive:

I'm just not sure that pouring more resources into the country in 2003 would have altered the situation in any meaningful way, especially when both the Soviet experience and our contemporary situation are examined. As for good will, how much did the West really garner in 'Operation Collateral Damage', err, I mean the initial 2001 air campaign? And how much effect did the Iraqi invasion really have on the opinion of your average Afghani? Did he suddenly shift from feeling liberated to oppressed because of what was happening in Baghdad?

It just seems like a simple excuse to explain away a complex, and ultimately predestined, failure.

Then allow me top add some perspective, PJ. Afghanistan turned out not to be scorched earth, kill-them-all efforts in the long run. We uprooted the Taliban, and the mission because a mission of holding ground and rebuilding. To accomplish such a mission, you need boots on the ground, financial micromanagement and massive humint.

From 2003 until the around 2007, the US presence in Afghanistan consisted of combat missions peppered with an occasional goodwill mission. Intel we got or the locals gave us resulted in raids or bombings. Then we went back to the FOB. Keep in mind, this was all well before COIN. The mission had COIN overtones all along, but there was no specific guidance.

In 2004 in Afghanistan, if a vehicle came within 100 meters of your convoy, you obliterated it. In 2005, if a convoy was going through a town, the whole town was cordoned. In 2006, a serious lack of understanding of the culture existed and US forces were acting on bad info fed to them by angry business competitors and family fueds. In 2007 If a vehicle did not move out of your way, you ran it off the road. The partnership between the Afghan police/military consisted of giving them money and resources and scant joint operations. IF an IED blew up the left side of your convoy, you returned fire to the left and shot anyone holding a cell phone. These were the ROE well into 2007. ROE like this results from a force that has its kill-them-all mission mixed up with its rebuilding mission. ROE like this makes the people hate the occupying force. ROE like this results from people living on FOBS and only going off base to kill. ROE like this exists because a massive amount of resources, both human and material, were used up on Bush's pre-emptive war.

If you want actual stats and graphs and pie charts, I am afraid I cannot provide those. There is, I suppose, no "proof" that mopney meant for Afghanistan went to Iraq.

However, and I do mean HOWEVER, because things in Afghanistan were considered "under control", despite top CIA brass begging the administration to do more, more resources were not sent to Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan was under control, the Taliban was able to seize on huge bumper crops of opiates and an almost unfestered period to regroup in 2005-2007. Because Afghanistan was "under control", all of the things were are doing now in terms of rebuilding were the no-brainer from the start, but we did not do it. The first commercial tv/radio station did not pop up outside of Kabul until 2008. As of 2006, we had paved less than 500 miles of roads. Companies were not putting up phone rural towers until 2008. We didnt get our first rural solar energy plant until 2009. The big push to get girls into school did not come until 2007.

So yeah, there may be no proof. But all these things that did not come until after 2007 are a no-brainer now for shaping a country, and they were a no-brainer then. Add that to battle fatigued soldiers, "lessons learned" in Iraq being misapplied to Afghanistan and Pakistan looting our convoys regulalry until this year (they still loot them, we just don't put anything on them) then, yeah, I would say that that other war, ya know the pre-emptive one, that cost 10x more than this one, distracted from the task at hand in Afghanistan, a task that was and still is far more honorable than ousting a dictator in one of the most economically stable and sectarian countries in the middle east.

Edit: That came off as kind of disjointed. So let me clarify:
It took us damn near 8 years to figure things out here that would have been obvious from the start were we not turtling. To many of us these things were obvious. And these issues were brought up with the administration over and over again. Which resulted in us simply turtling even more for our safety because a real solution could not be implemented due to lack of resources. We had the troops to put more on the ground in Afghanistan, thanks to the 9/11 enlistment surge, but the vast majority of those went to Iraq. Had we not been focused on Iraq, perhaps it would have been more clear that things here were, in fact, not "under control" and those troops would have come here. Or perhaps it was clear, and the White House simply did not care.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Yes, I think we've all heard the 'we took our eye off the ball' meme ad nauseam at this point, but is there any solid evidence to support the notion that it made any difference? Usually when we say something 'doomed' something else, there is a solid historical line from A to B. The idea seems to make sense if you don't really think about it, but I've always had a hard time connecting the dots on this one.

It seems to me that the factors working against the coalition (mainly internal and regional politics) would persist regardless of what happened in Iraq. Would a suitable Pashtun leader have emerged if we didn't intervene in Iraq? Would Pakistan have suddenly decided to be an honest broker? :inquisitive:

I'm just not sure that pouring more resources into the country in 2003 would have altered the situation in any meaningful way, especially when both the Soviet experience and our contemporary situation are examined. As for good will, how much did the West really garner in 'Operation Collateral Damage', err, I mean the initial 2001 air campaign? And how much effect did the Iraqi invasion really have on the opinion of your average Afghani? Did he suddenly shift from feeling liberated to oppressed because of what was happening in Baghdad?

It just seems like a simple excuse to explain away a complex, and ultimately predestined, failure.

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You have the testimony of your only special forces and generals about how Bin Laden and the Taliban were let escape from Tora Bora due to basically lack of resources.

If you had a caught them then you could have declared victory and drew down your forces at a time when the Afghan insurgency had not ramped up yet.

I've seen stats showing the US effort in Afghanistan is over 100x the GDP of Afghanistan.

The economy is the US effort. It has to be causing all sorts of unintentional consequences.

Outsourcing might be fine in the short term but in the long term it can damage any brand if not tightly controlled. With the Afghan economy so small in comparison to the US military it doesn't take much to cause problems.

This is the same situation in one employer towns. Everyone is beholden to the primary economy even if it means stunting the secondary economy. Unfortunately in this scenario the secondary economy isn't a corner store but the entire Afghanistan economy.

Corruption is easy when controls are removed, things are done in haste and money is free flowing.

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

Edit: That came off as kind of disjointed. So let me clarify:
It took us damn near 8 years to figure things out here that would have been obvious from the start were we not turtling. To many of us these things were obvious. And these issues were brought up with the administration over and over again. Which resulted in us simply turtling even more for our safety because a real solution could not be implemented due to lack of resources. We had the troops to put more on the ground in Afghanistan, thanks to the 9/11 enlistment surge, but the vast majority of those went to Iraq. Had we not been focused on Iraq, perhaps it would have been more clear that things here were, in fact, not "under control" and those troops would have come here. Or perhaps it was clear, and the White House simply did not care.

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So should we stay or should we go? :shame:

We should stay. However, certain things must change. A Karzai fate not unlike is broter's would be a start, the Kuchi Nomad situation needs to be addressed, atrocities committed amongst the various ethnic groups prior to the US invasion (yeah, yeah, the critics like to think it was all peaches and brandy before we came) needs to be addressed, such as the slaughters of the Uzbeks and the HAzarras, and the viullage raids that the Taliban and NA did to one another on frontline towns, where they raped and/or stole all the women and chidlren. People need to learn to read, people need to be exposed to the outside world. They want the previous two things I mentioned, but you would not think this from the Afghan Government mouthpieces because the governments majority are old men from the old world who don't want their little Islamofascist frat party disrupted, so they spin tales of educated women turning to whoredom and educated men moving to gtreener pastures, to scare all the old people. The youngsters here don't buy it.

Also, mark my word, KArzai's elimination of private security companies will end in disaster because hordes of NGOs will pull out and take all their charity funds with them. The ANA/ASP/AUP/and ASG will not be able to proivide adequate security to the foregn aid agencies, not to mention the insurance premiums will skyrocket. This is not a wholesale indictment of all the Afghan forces, but one can easily thingk of 1000 reasons why one would want, say, A bonded German security firm escorting your doctors and engineers over a pack of illiterate guys with submachine guns.

And to further implement my point that resources were divertecd to Iraq that could have been put to good use in Afghanistan, consider this:

The "Surge" and COIN were developed for Iraq, despite Afghanistan being the far older war.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.

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The entire problem with the Drug War in a nutshell.

MRD, thanks for the perspective. It would be foolish to argue with someone with your specific hands-on knowledge and skill set, so I won't. I just can't help but think that 100+ thousand soldiers in 2003 would be doing pretty much what 100+ thousand soldiers are doing today - winning hard fought but essentially pyrrhic victories. And considering the soviet experience with extensive infrastructure investments, I'm not sure more development would have changed the fundamental issues working against the coalition. We can give them security, resources, development, and elections, but, as has already been said, their leaders have to want what we're selling - and representative democracy is a hard sell to people who are used to lording over their own private armies. Also, it is my understanding that COIN was developed for Iraq because the Iraqi insurgency grew in scope and intensity before the Afghani one did. The surge was developed in 2006 and announced in 2007, just as violence began to flare up in Afghanistan.

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Originally Posted by Gaelic Cowboy

You have the testimony of your only special forces and generals about how Bin Laden and the Taliban were let escape from Tora Bora due to basically lack of resources.

If you had a caught them then you could have declared victory and drew down your forces at a time when the Afghan insurgency had not ramped up yet.

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The battle at Tora Bora took place in December of 2001, iirc. The invasion of Iraq commenced in March of 2003. :book2:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

The battle at Tora Bora took place in December of 2001, iirc. The invasion of Iraq commenced in March of 2003. :book2:

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Irrelevant you asked if lack of resources hampered the effort obviously they have on occasion.

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

Irrelevant you asked if lack of resources hampered the effort obviously they have on occasion.

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Umm, not irrelevant as the discussion was about resources diverted to Iraq and whether they could have made a difference in Afghanistan... :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Umm, not irrelevant as the discussion was about resources diverted to Iraq and whether they could have made a difference in Afghanistan... :inquisitive:

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So when there was no Iraq they had problems with resources, but when Iraq was on the problems went away

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Well.. I've never been part of a NATO or UN operation, but I have been part of the Coalition in Iraq. I very much enjoyed working with the various British, Australian, Polish, and Japanese units that I encountered. They all did their part as far as I saw, and because of that I would be loathe to say that they are just "going through the motions" in Afghanistan. However, I could be wrong. The division of forces in Afghanistan is very different than in Iraq. Not only that, but the amount of troops in Afhganistan has fluctuated wildly over the course of the war. Far more so than in Iraq.

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That's a not so subtle jab at Germany and Italy. They want the US bases, and were arm twisted into sending combat troops to Afghanistan. And the German forces was told not to risk combat casualties (at least that's the reputation they earned). The mission be VERY unpopular with the German public. And to a lesser extent Canada and the Netherlands. Who had large combat missions but after a decade the political will to dried up, and the combat mission was ended.

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

So when there was no Iraq they had problems with resources, but when Iraq was on the problems went away

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Your position seems to have shifted a bit. I thought your argument was:

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[...]Bin Laden and the Taliban were let escape from Tora Bora due to basically lack of resources.

If you had a caught them then you could have declared victory and drew down your forces at a time when the Afghan insurgency had not ramped up yet.

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Which may or may not be true (I'm taking your word on the SOCOM General's testimony about a lack of resources as the only such incident I am aware of was a Delta Force commander, 'Fury', who did interviews on Tora Bora but said nothing about a lack of resources*), but, as I pointed out, had absolutely nothing to do with the Iraqi adventure.

Now that position seems to have transformed into 'because there were resource problems at the Battle of Tora Bora in 2001, there must have been resource problems when the Iraq war commenced several years later'.

Such a position is rife with logical inconsistencies, one of the largest being that you are mixing macro-level strategic resource commitment over a broad period of time to tactical resource commitment during a specific engagement. The resource problems that may or may not have existed at a specific date, at a specific time, at a specific location, and in a specific battle do not say much one way or the other regarding the overall resource situation of the broader war effort, to say nothing of long term development aid. For example, at Khe Sanh in Vietnam the US forces faced severe resource shortages for a period of time during the battle, but that was not indicative of the greater US resource situation in South Vietnam.

And more importantly, in the case of Tora Bora, there were at least 800 Army Rangers in the area that could have been committed to the battle but were not, which indicates that the resource deficiency in the battle was more a function of leadership than a systemic under-deployment. Tommy Franks' decision not to use them has been heavily criticized for years now.

* IIrc, 'Fury' indicated that Bin Laden's escape was due mainly to an over reliance on Afghan native fighters with questionable loyalties and commitment to the fight, the assumption that Pakistan would seal its border, and the failure to utilize air dropped mine fields to contain him. The former highlights another issue with your analysis. In 2001, the US was using a very different strategy than is currently being used - one that emphasized a small footprint, special forces, and a reliance on Afghan fighters. If I were to bet, I would say that your SOCOM general came to the same conclusion that most other military types have over the years - that a stronger presence in the beginning, and especially around Tora Bora, would have yielded better results. The lack of resources he cites is completely different than the lack of resources being discussed earlier in the thread, in that the former was a tactical decision in which resources were available and not used and the latter was a strategic decision to shift limited resources from one front to another.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

Your position seems to have shifted a bit. I thought your argument was:



Which may or may not be true (I'm taking your word on the SOCOM General's testimony about a lack of resources as the only such incident I am aware of was a Delta Force commander, 'Fury', who did interviews on Tora Bora but said nothing about a lack of resources*), but, as I pointed out, had absolutely nothing to do with the Iraqi adventure.

Now that position seems to have transformed into 'because there were resource problems at the Battle of Tora Bora in 2001, there must have been resource problems when the Iraq war commenced several years later'.

Such a position is rife with logical inconsistencies, one of the largest being that you are mixing macro-level strategic resource commitment over a broad period of time to tactical resource commitment during a specific engagement. The resource problems that may or may not have existed at a specific date, at a specific time, at a specific location, and in a specific battle do not say much one way or the other regarding the overall resource situation of the broader war effort, to say nothing of long term development aid. For example, at Khe Sanh in Vietnam the US forces faced severe resource shortages for a period of time during the battle, but that was not indicative of the greater US resource situation in South Vietnam.

And more importantly, in the case of Tora Bora, there were at least 800 Army Rangers in the area that could have been committed to the battle but were not, which indicates that the resource deficiency in the battle was more a function of leadership than a systemic under-deployment. Tommy Franks' decision not to use them has been heavily criticized for years now.

* IIrc, 'Fury' indicated that Bin Laden's escape was due mainly to an over reliance on Afghan native fighters with questionable loyalties and commitment to the fight, the assumption that Pakistan would seal its border, and the failure to utilize air dropped mine fields to contain him. The former highlights another issue with your analysis. In 2001, the US was using a very different strategy than is currently being used - one that emphasized a small footprint, special forces, and a reliance on Afghan fighters. If I were to bet, I would say that your SOCOM general came to the same conclusion that most other military types have over the years - that a stronger presence in the beginning, and especially around Tora Bora, would have yielded better results. The lack of resources he cites is completely different than the lack of resources being discussed earlier in the thread, in that the former was a tactical decision in which resources were available and not used and the latter was a strategic decision to shift limited resources from one front to another.

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The White House had to be near dragged into going into Afghanistan such was the obsession with Iraq.

Do you seriously believe this did not have any effect in anyway in Afghanistan.

A country like Afghanistan always needed far more resources than it got, massive reliance on Pakistan and local elements has basically done in your efforts and all you can do now is choose your leaving.

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

The White House had to be near dragged into going into Afghanistan such was the obsession with Iraq.

Do you seriously believe this did not have any effect in anyway in Afghanistan.

A country like Afghanistan always needed far more resources than it got, massive reliance on Pakistan and local elements has basically done in your efforts and all you can do now is choose your leaving.

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Now it just seems like you're throwing out random assertions hoping something will stick.

In any event, I think you're dead wrong. The White House had to be 'dragged' into higher troop levels in Afghanistan because at some level the administration initially understood what happens to large occupying forces in Afghanistan. The problems in Afghanistan had much more to do with President Bush's unchecked idealism than anything to do with Iraq. Apart from Tora Bora, the initial campaign in the country was brilliantly executed, and the gains made against the Taliban could have been maintained if the US had operated in the same manner that everyone else does in Afghanistan - through money and proxy armies. But when freedom and democracy were promised, the associated mission creep necessitated an ever greater number of troops and resources which had an equal and opposite effect on the Coalition's effectiveness. There were plenty of warlords in Afghanistan more than willing to take American money and SOCOM's help in keeping the Taliban out of their fiefdoms, there were far fewer willing to subordinate themselves to a national government - especially one led by Hamid Karzai.

That's why I question the 'if we'd just poured more resources into Afghanistan earlier' line of thinking. Afghanistan will swallow all the resources we're willing to throw at it and still remain... well... Afghanistan. As long as Pakistan still exists as a nation state, there will always be a low-level insurgency in Afghanistan until an ISI approved government is in place in Kabul - it's just a matter of how that insurgency is managed and whether it can be convinced (through death from above or $$) to limit its ambitions. The focus should have never grown beyond securing Western security from international terrorism by denying Islamic terrorists safe haven in the country. If America had played smarter instead of harder, this could have been done for less than a billion dollars a year - especially with the progression of the drone programs.

We're destined for failure in the conflict not because of a lack of resources, but because we've committed so many that our effort is no longer sustainable. It was never our responsibility to ensure that little girls have access to school in Afghanistan, and it was equal parts stupid and idealistic to assume that we could fundamentally change a culture far older and far more resilient than our own through force of will alone. But that was America coming out of the 90's...

Now were talking about different things PJ, my assertion is there was never enough resources either men, equipment, political will or even money in Afghanistan

Your trying to assert that increasing resources would have been no good, that you should follow established Afghan models.

Thats all fine and well except for the big Iraq war next door obviously was sucking all the best minds, money, equipment and men into it.

You cant run a proxy war if your main interest is an actual war somewhere else now can you, also come on now PJ asserting that at some level the admin blah blah etc etc.

Rumsfeld had to be sacked eventually he was that incompetent and the rest of the neo-cons were also massively out of touch with reality too all across the board.

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We're destined for failure in the conflict not because of a lack of resources, but because we've committed so many that our effort is no longer sustainable. It was never our responsibility to ensure that little girls have access to school in Afghanistan, and it was equal parts stupid and idealistic to assume that we could fundamentally change a culture far older and far more resilient than our own through force of will alone. But that was America coming out of the 90's...

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Thats been America always PJ nothing to do with the 90s

The truth of the matter is that the US army has very little experience fighting insurgencies as opposed to armies, it's not good at it, and the operation is viewed as a 'war' to be won as opposed to 'crime rate' to be stifled. The reason is that a 'crime' scenario is a long term commitment.

Including semi-military contractors to do the brunt of the work (who have less, or less applicable training than regular troops in the first place) who have even less experience fighting insurgencies because they were bouncers, small town police, signals corps officers, or coastguard before they saw the fat paychecks they could get in the private security business only serves to make things worse, as these people compensate their lack of training with extra aggressiveness which doesn't exactly help win over the locals.

Several major strategic blunders (such as firing the entire iraqi army, police, and civil service, thus leaving millions of armed people with weapons training unable to feed their families) only served to push a deteriorating situation over the limit.

Politically, as many probably agree by now, the war was legal, if perhaps baseless, but falsely advertised as a blitz affair with an enemy who would be beaten in a gentlemanly napoleonic fashion, and, after being shown his inferiority, disdainfully hand in their sidearm to the rescuing hero.

This advertisement was either extremely naive, or, more likely assumed to be only a problem for one administration and then pushed onto the next one.

Constructively, as I see it, the only choices are to either drop the whole thing completely, and admit to themselves and the world, that toppling Saddam was enough, and the rest was a waste. Or actually commit, train soldiers and officers in low-key counter-insurgence, less aggressive (which doesn't mean less effective) policing and attitudes, and a long-term solution. Which, of course would have still wasted billions, and will remove whatever political goodwill is left at home.

The alternatives, considering the economic and social turmoil at home, will draw more similarities with 1915 Russia or Weimar Germany than is comfortable for anyone to admit.

I have been refraining from expressing my opinion on the subject, but the floodgates broke.

Ah, but we aren't talking about our many screwups once we got into Iraq. ~;)

Aside from the physical resources, once in Iraq the international perception changed from "US kicking terrorist-supporting foreign Arabs out of the 'Stan" to "war on Islam", "war for oil", etc. Inside the US, once Iraq got going Afghanistan was forgotten in the press, unless something really bad happened. Afghanistan just sat and festered.

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Originally Posted by SwordsMaster

The truth of the matter is that the US army has very little experience fighting insurgencies as opposed to armies, it's not good at it, and the operation is viewed as a 'war' to be won as opposed to 'crime rate' to be stifled. The reason is that a 'crime' scenario is a long term commitment.

Including semi-military contractors to do the brunt of the work (who have less, or less applicable training than regular troops in the first place) who have even less experience fighting insurgencies because they were bouncers, small town police, signals corps officers, or coastguard before they saw the fat paychecks they could get in the private security business only serves to make things worse, as these people compensate their lack of training with extra aggressiveness which doesn't exactly help win over the locals.

Several major strategic blunders (such as firing the entire iraqi army, police, and civil service, thus leaving millions of armed people with weapons training unable to feed their families) only served to push a deteriorating situation over the limit.

Politically, as many probably agree by now, the war was legal, if perhaps baseless, but falsely advertised as a blitz affair with an enemy who would be beaten in a gentlemanly napoleonic fashion, and, after being shown his inferiority, disdainfully hand in their sidearm to the rescuing hero.

This advertisement was either extremely naive, or, more likely assumed to be only a problem for one administration and then pushed onto the next one.

Constructively, as I see it, the only choices are to either drop the whole thing completely, and admit to themselves and the world, that toppling Saddam was enough, and the rest was a waste. Or actually commit, train soldiers and officers in low-key counter-insurgence, less aggressive (which doesn't mean less effective) policing and attitudes, and a long-term solution. Which, of course would have still wasted billions, and will remove whatever political goodwill is left at home.

The alternatives, considering the economic and social turmoil at home, will draw more similarities with 1915 Russia or Weimar Germany than is comfortable for anyone to admit.

I have been refraining from expressing my opinion on the subject, but the floodgates broke.

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while not an argument for pmc, they are not usually composed of the kinds of people you just described.

Some of them, sure. Most do have a military background, but too often not in the areas necessary. There are few from MP, or close protection/anti insurgency special forces background, among other things because there aren't that many of these guys to begin with...

And yes, GC, I'm sure pmcs pay better than the army...

200k isn't a stretch.

my cousin was an e-5 and now he works for Xe. he was a ranger combat medic.

I'm sorry swordmaster in this case you are simply wrong or misinformed.