I've noticed an interesting pattern in my e-mails over the last 24 hours regarding the question of whether McChrystal should be fired. That is, the more someone knows about the military, the more likely they are to call for his removal. Political types, by contrast, don't see what the big deal is.

I have been particularly struck by a couple of hard-right types I know who are retired senior officers. For them, this is a matter of good order and discipline. If you allow a general to bitch-slap an uncertain president, how do you keep the troops in line?  

By Matthew Irvine
Best Defense deputy bureau chief, Special Operations affairs

Following General McChrystal's revised close air support rules in 2009, units such as Lt. Col. Brenda Cartier's 4th Special Operations Squadron have become a preferred mode of air support in the theater. Cartier led the squadron in Afghanistan this year and just returned from the combat deployment.

Colonel Cartier's squadron, consisting of AC-130 gunships, MC-130 Talons, attack helicopters, and Special Tactics Squadron air controllers, provided a combination of precision strikes and situational awareness to the personnel on the ground not otherwise available from high speed, high intensity platforms like the F-16 or B-1. According to Cartier, in Afghanistan, "I'm allocating assets to a counter-terrorism and a counterinsurgency commander... . I have a small supply of air power and a lot of mouths to feed."

In order to adapt to McChrystal's regulations and the counterinsurgency operating environment, Cartier says "we throttled back on the direct action piece. How do you do that with a gunship? The answer is, literally, very carefully."

Good relationships between air and ground commanders are key to AFSOC's effectiveness in Afghanistan. Conducting joint training exercises and working with deployed units over long periods of time allow the parties to be mutually supportive. The 4^th Squadron's Ghostriders equipment is suited to remain within the battle space for extended periods of time.

Like drones, the AC-130s and MC-130s can remain above the battlefield for hours, circling at relatively low speeds. With sophisticated sensors and communications equipment, the air fleet can help maintain a complete bird's-eye view of the operating environment. The extended presence allows the air and ground force to synchronize their operations. With AFSOC contributing, says Cartier, we need to get away from the fight over whether "it's an air campaign, a sea campaign, or ground campaign -- it's an Afghan campaign."

The Air Force's Special Operations capability is often overlooked when not actively engaged and has faced a history of cuts during peacetime. AFSOC and Colonel Cartier's combat experience since 2001 demonstrates the utility and value of these forces and should remind us that the best air power is more than just the fastest fighters and bombers.

Here is a note from a Marine captain in Afghanistan, about a sergeant in Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. Worth reading:

"I'd like to highlight one squad leader, who, along with his peers, has played a vital role in changing Fightin' Fox's area of operations (AO) over the past six months. Sergeant Lattimer, the incredibly courageous leader of ‘Fox 1 Bravo,' is on his 4^th deployment; this is his third combat deployment. Sergeant Lattimer was repeatedly recognized during the pre-deployment training period for his outstanding leadership. 

Here in Afghanistan his performance has been special. When the company fought on a near-daily basis in November and December, Sergeant Lattimer all but forced his platoon commander and company commander to give him the hardest and most dangerous missions. For nearly six straight weeks, Sergeant Lattimer led his squad from temporary patrol base to multi-day ambush position to the next temporary patrol base to the next ambush position. Each time that he moved his squad, he led his men further into what the enemy once considered his safe haven. Sergeant Lattimer embraced ‘Spartan' living conditions and then some, while very rarely ever going back to one of our ‘permanent' patrol bases where, at a minimum, a Marine, Sailor, and/or ANA soldier would at least have a cot (maybe), an occasional hot meal, and a steady supply of water. Sergeant Lattimer sacrificed these ‘creature comforts' so that Fox 1 Bravo could be on the hunt every hour of every day. And hunt they certainly did... from eliminating enemy fighters, to forcing other enemy fighters to quit, to tearing tens of IED's out of the ground, Sergeant Lattimer made very clear to the enemy that he wasn't welcome in the company's AO. 

Fast forward 4+ months. Last week, First Sergeant Adams and I were fortunate enough to join Sergeant Lattimer's squad as he executed a late night contact patrol to one of his elder's houses. Earlier in the day and on previous occasions, this particular elder, when asked by Sergeant Lattimer how he could help, responded that his daughter and wife were sick and that he didn't have the money to bring them to a good medical clinic or hospital. With the same amount of passion that he approached hunting the enemy in direct fire engagements in November and December, Sergeant Lattimer requested a Medical Officer and Female Engagement Team (FET) to help his elder. Sergeant Lattimer's request was granted. He then informed his elder that he'd come by later in the evening with a doctor and FET. I proceeded to participate on a patrol led by one of America and the Marine Corps' "strategic" sergeants. After ensuring that security was in place outside his elder's house, Sergeant Lattimer joined the doctor and FET in caring for his elder and his family for more than 90 minutes. Needless to say, the elder was extremely grateful. In the days following this patrol, the elder voluntarily shared invaluable information about an IED cell in the area; the leader is now in jail. Our great nation is blessed to have men like Sergeant Lattimer defending it."

Tom again: As long as we are on the subject, here is Abu Mook's very good state of the COIN address.

The majority of people in the U.S. armed forces joined since 9/11, and so only have known a military operating with nearly unconstrained resources. But the decade-long tidal wave of defense spending is ending, as General Barno discusses below. That's not all bad -- in hard choices lie the beginnings of strategy.

By Lt. Gen. David Barno, U.S. Army (ret.)
Best Defense chief Army correspondent

The Nixon Center sponsored its annual National Policy Conference recently at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington. The agenda featured a star-studded cast of former senior government officials and current practitioners, and was opened by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger with a sobering message, that  our purpose must be to rediscover "realism in foreign policy. ...  Any nation must accept its own limitations -- the whole world is not waiting for American leadership. ... We must understand what we can do and what we cannot -- and should not -- do."

The opening panel was chaired by retired USAF General Chuck Boyd, the panel included Joe Klein of Time magazine, Paul Pillar of Georgetown University, Ken Pollack of Brookings and John Nagl of CNAS. Each of these luminaries brought a very different perspective to our two ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as well as the war "formerly known as GWOT." Nagl and Pollack amply described the current challenges and prospects of U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Joe Klein outlined the massive transformation of the U.S. military into a well-oiled counter-insurgency machine -- and noted where the machine may not be working today in parts of Afghanistan. We'll get to Pillar later.

Only in the Q and A did the 800 lb elephant lope into the room: With the U.S. facing a staggering national debt, record-setting deficits, a slow economic recovery and a future with ever-larger entitlement program costs, what can the U.S. afford to be doing in overseas military efforts? Is that picture today now different than in the past? And where does Afghanistan in particular fit into that calculus today?

While much of the discussion predictably got wrapped around the "new American way of War -- COIN," far less commentary was devoted to the strategic picture. Only Paul Pillar truly got at the larger issue of how our growing commitment in Afghanistan fits inside of a changed global strategic context for the United States.

Some of his tough questions:

• Why are we actually in Afghanistan?
• Is the availability of "sanctuary" (in a world of myriad sanctuaries) really important?
Read on

Travels with Shiloh, a good blog new to me, covers a recent conference on counterinsurgency at Fort Leavenworth and comes away with the interesting conclusion that the U.S. military is not gonna get out of Afghanistan anytime soon:

While, current U.S. policy states that we'll begin withdrawing our forces in 2011 there was a universal recognition that any real effort to apply COIN in Afghanistan would take a very long time. While the subject wasn't addressed (except for one question at the final Q&A roundtable) my impression was that all of the speakers (British, Canadian and U.S.) were operating under the assumption that forces would be in place well beyond 2011. I heard no discussion about how to conduct any sort of hand off to the Afghans within 18 months, alterations to COIN theory or doctrine or trains of thought about alternate ways militaries could support/conduct COIN without significant numbers of forces on the ground. I would interpret that to mean that the military has been given the word (explicitly or implicitly) that that 2011 deadline is NOT set in stone. I would, in fact, go further and predict that barring some unforeseen change in the operating environment we will almost definitely have a significant presence in Afghanistan for some time.

I agree with this, and feel worse about it than I do about Iraq. I never thought invading Iraq was a good idea, but I thought (and still think) that invading Afghanistan was a correct response to 9/11.

He also offers this worrisome report:

We most definitely do NOT own the night. Just because we have night vision goggles doesn't mean that much. We're not generally active at night and initiative goes to those who move at night.

Part II of his report, about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, is here.

(HT to CC)

Speaking of Afghanistan, I was sorry to see that the bombing near SW Kabul's Darulaman Palace the other day killed one Canadian colonel, one U.S. Army colonel and two U.S. lieutenant colonels. A Canadian general survived the attack.

It is axiomatic that good strategy can tell you what are good tactics, but that good tactics can't compensate for a bad strategy, or compensate for the absence of one.

That is Andrew "Abu Muqawama" Exum's point of departure in his new essay on the need for a political strategy in Afghanistan. Interestingly, for a COIN-carrying down-home CNASty, Exum begins with a hard pop at the Army's counterinsurgency manual, calling it politically naïve:

When United States wages counterinsurgency campaigns, it almost always does so as a third party acting on behalf of a host nation. And implicit in the manu­al's assumptions is the idea that U.S. interests will be aligned with those of the host nation.

They almost never are, though.

This is, as he notes, a major problem for the United States' effort in Afghanistan.

A second big obstacle, Ex notes, is that the Americans don't have their shit together:

The NATO commander, the U.S. ambas­sador, the NATO senior civilian representative, the U.N. senior civilian representative and President Obama's senior representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan all command the attention of Afghan decision-makers. And while relations between the men are reportedly professional, tensions between their organizations have at times proven poisonous. This is not a recipe for success.

Exum is being polite here: Ambassador Eikenberry and General McChrystal are at odds, and one of them should go. I fault the Obama Administration for not doing something to sort this out. Exum also basically says Holbrooke should butt out: "Trying to forge a working relationship with President Karzai from Washington, as Amb. Richard Holbrooke has attempted to do, is difficult if not impossible." (Tom: I am guessing that Holbrooke will move on by Labor Day.)

Exum also cites a quote from an Afghan student who would make Bernard Fall smile:

If there is a good district chief in an area, there won't be any bomb blasts or suicide bomb­ings... If you get the right people in place, there won't be any need for military operations.

That's one of the best expressions I've ever seen of the thought that politics is always primary in counterinsurgency campaigns -- and indeed is the way to end them.

Meantime, David Brooks codifies the American COIN narrative in a column today about how the Army changed from 2004 to 2007. I think his account is largely correct (if you see errors, please do let me know), but I can see how it seeing it all smoothly summarized in a few hundred words might strike some as a bit too facile. And having it appear in the New York Times all but carves the thing in stone for a big chunk of America's elites.

That said, I don't have a problem with producing a "narrative." That is basically how human beings understand events: This happened, then that happened, etc. People who complain about "the narrative" are being imprecise. What they are upset by is "the dominant narrative," with which they disagree and wish to impose their own "counter-narrative."

The other day I was looking back at Bernard Fall's terrific speech on counterinsurgency to the Naval War College, delivered I think in 1964, and the following quote struck me. This comes right after a section in which he has asserted that tracking which side is collecting more taxes, the government or the insurgents, is a good way to understand which is winning. The italics are his.

I have emphasized that the straight military aspects, or the conventional military aspects of insurgency, are not the most important. Tax collections have nothing to do with helicopters... I would like to put it in an even simpler way: When a country is being subverted, it is not being outfought; it is being outadministered... [W]e can win the war and lose the country.

In 100 words or less: How would you apply that thought to Afghanistan today?

West Point's Col. Gentile says so. This officer in Afghanistan indicates no:

That task is more difficult because the 1/12 battalion hasn't exactly had a terrific rotation in Afghanistan. "We've been asked to do a lot of different things," says Major Korey Brown, the battalion's executive officer. "They detached us from our brigade, which is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan, and sent us out here to Zhari district to be storm troopers -- that's what General Vance called us -- and that's what we were trained for, that's what we like to do.To find, fix and finish the enemy." But the mission changed with the arrival of General Stanley McChrystal, as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in the summer of 2009. "It's not about how you engage the enemy so much now. It's how you engage your district governor," says Brown. "That's a huge change for guys like us -- call us knuckle draggers or whatever, but we weren't trained to do COIN."

Michael Yon, the innovative war blogger, continues to do great night photography of the war in Afghanistan of a kind I am not seeing elsewhere. It really is lovely work. He lives on donations. Throw the guy a dime, OK?

And here's another one:

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

This story that came out in the Times of London a couple of weeks ago is truly a war-dog wonder: parachuting dogs being sent on secret missions in Afghanistan. (The photograph is pretty unbelievable, too.)

These daredevil dogs (and their handlers) are part of Austrian special forces that are "[joining] Nato's Operation Cold Response, one of Europe's biggest military exercises, in Narvik, Norway. ... Commandos from 14 countries, including British special forces and Royal Marines, took part in the Nato exercise. The use of dogs in High Altitude High Opening missions was pioneered by America's Delta Force, which trained the animals to breathe through oxygen masks during the jump."

Dropping from 10,000 feet in the air these dogs "glide in" to land "unnoticed" and they "often carry cameras and are trained to attack anyone carrying a weapon."

I'd be curious to speak to a veterinarian about this but the dog handler interviewed for this piece claims that: 

Dogs don't perceive height difference. ... They're more likely to be bothered by the roar of the engines, but once we're on the way down, that doesn't matter and they just enjoy the view. ... "It's something [this dog] does a lot. He has a much cooler head than most recruits."

After a little digging, I found this is hardly the first time the military -- in the United States or elsewhere -- has attempted to get its war dogs airborne.

Read on

The other night CNAS threw a dinner for Gen. George Casey, chief of staff of the U.S. Army. I went but didn't expect much because in my experience Casey has been pretty cautious, even dull, in his public comments. But I guess as he sees the end of his term approaching he is loosening up a bit, because I found the conversation surprisingly forthright. More enlightening than yesterday's interview with Gen. Petraeus, I'd say.

• He took a pretty hard line on combat incidents such as Wanat, in which the Army has conducted inquiries that faulted front-line commanders. At first he said he couldn't discuss specifics. But he went on to reject the suggestion that such inquiries discourage risk-taking. Rather, he said, the issue, is that some officers were "not executing to standard." He indicated that he has been discussing this with platoon leaders and company commanders, and concluded, "This is something we need to talk about as an Army."
• He had a provocative line about the future of the U.S. relationship with Iraq. "It's almost, we have to leave to get invited back." By this I take it that he means we have to prove we are going to live up to the SOFA before Iraqi politicians can dare to begin talks about a long term military presence. Which I think there will be, and which I think is a good idea, despite invading Iraq being a terrible idea.     
• He indicated he believes that President Obama is going to be a war president, like it or not. "We believe this is a long-term ideological struggle," that "this enemy is not going to quit," and that existing global trends are "like to exacerbate" the situation. "We are in for a decade or more of persistent conflict."
• He thinks future warfare will resemble the fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon in 2006, in which "a non-state actor has the instruments of state power." That means, he said, that the organizing principle for training and educating the force must be "versatility."
• He conceded that in 2009 more soldiers died of suicide than of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Another Defense official present noted that this is in part because of the decline in combat losses in Iraq.)
• He says it was clear to him upon becoming Army chief that "the families were the most stretched part of the force" but added that he thinks "that the president and Mrs. Obama are very supportive."
• He was almost snarky about NATO, saying, twice saying "Good luck" in getting more help from them. But he went out of his way to praise the British army, saying that, "It's nice to have another country that can put a division into the field." (Until I had that, it hadn't occurred to me that division commanders with full headquarters may be one of the world's scarcest resources.) 

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense chief canines correspondent

Sometimes all you need is a picture.

U.S. Marines give some cereal to a stray puppy in northern Marjah, Helmand province on March 24.

In breaking war-dog news, here's a great little piece about Chocolat, the Belgian shepherd who uncovered a Taliban cache of explosives, "enough for ten bombs during the recent Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan" while patrolling a bazaar. 

Got a story about a dog you knew in a combat zone? Please send it in, along with a photo if you have one.

Hillary Clinton hails "a new day" in U.S. relations with Pakistan. And the former CIA station chief in Islamabad says it is time to talk turkey with the Taliban.

Not gonna happen, responds Thomas Ruttig, who was the UN's man in Afghanistan during the last years of Taliban rule, In the new issue of West Point's CTC Sentinel, he  argues that the recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan actually were a way of shutting down talks:

For Afghanistan, however, the arrests have at least temporarily closed the window of opportunity for direct talks with the Afghan Taliban leadership. As a result, the fighting in Afghanistan will continue and President Karzai's peace jirga announced for mid-spring may run aground before it even begins.

Those Taliban still on the prowl, he notes, are younger and more radical than the old guys recently rounded up. I heard the Ex Man say something similar to a bunch of congressmen last night.

I am very impressed with the Sentinel, which does a solid job of exploring the nooks and crannies of terrorism every month. It is much more interesting than most government-sponsored publications. If I ever get my wish to shut down West Point as an undergraduate institution and replace it with a Sandhurst-like post-graduate structure, I hope they keep publishing the Sentinel.

(HT to Attackerman for the Grenier article)

By Matthew Irvine
Best Defense chief congressional correspondent

Gen. David Petraeus, appearing before the Senate Armed Services committee on Tuesday, offered up several of his greatest hits. Most notably, he introduced a new Afghan-centric remix of his 2007 classic, telling the panel that, "The going is likely to get harder before it gets easy... the enemy will fight back." Several senators sang back-up.  

Discussion of Iraq focused on the aftermath of recent national elections and the status of U.S. forces in the country. Asked by Sen. Jack Reed (D., RI) if he expects the new governing coalition to take many months to form, the CENTCOM chief responded, "Yes, we do." (Frankly, BG and L'il Wayne did that tune first, and better.)

During Sen. Lieberman's (I-Ct.) questioning, Petraeus detailed the possible addition of a seventh brigade headquarters in the northern city of Kirkuk beyond the August deadline while reaffirming the target force level of 50,000 troops by the end of summer.

Identifying Pakistan's western Federally Administered Tribal Area as "al-Qaeda's principal sanctuary," Petraeus promised a long-term American commitment to Pakistani counterinsurgency efforts against the Taliban. "We are going to be a steadfast partner. We are not going to do to Pakistan what we've done before, such as Charlie Wilson's War."

For an encore, Petraeus discussed his latest side project, Yemen, which he has been working on with his label-mates, the Special Operations Command ... Seeing Yemen as an emerging terrorist operations hub, CENTCOM has been expanding aid to Sana'a. The likely name of the new album will be "preventive counterinsurgency operations." Expect heavy support from Petraeus's label,  which he said will "double U.S. security assistance to the country in the coming year."