Negotiations, Afghan-style?

Tue, 06/30/2009 - 3:56pm

An American military press release out of Afghanistan begins, "Coalition forces launched precision airstrikes overnight against senior Haqqani commanders and command posts in the remote mountains of western Khost Province."

Old Bill Roggio adds, "More than a dozen fighters have been killed and 21 more were captured, including a commander, during airstrikes and raids since June 27."

At first blush, air strikes don't sound like the sort of negotiating with insurgents that people have come to expect from General Petraeus. But this might be the opening round. That is, look we can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. Okay, here's a taste of the hard way...   

(HT to Blake Hounshell)

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

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ho hum

by Don Bacon on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 4:17pm

The US has been launching "precision airstrikes" for over seven years now, and yet the situation has worsened.

The US has been launching

by J Thomas on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 5:09pm

The US has been launching "precision airstrikes" for over seven years now, and yet the situation has worsened.

In all fairness, we don't know how much faster it might have gotten worse without the airstrikes.

It's an experiment with no control group. We don't know how well any alternatives might have worked because we haven't tried them.

actually it would have gotten better

by Don Bacon on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 5:54pm

The Pentagon several times since the Taliban began to gain ground a few years ago has said it was taking aboard protests from the Afghanistan government about the number of civilians killed and was imposing new restrictions. McChrystal's predecessor, General David McKiernan, called for restraint in December. But each new round of orders has been followed by another bombing atrocity. The latest order from McChrystal is partly in response to an air strike in Farah province last month that generated a lot of anger.
http://www.truthout.org/062309B

President Karzai has consistently and publicly campaigned against the air strikes. He told CNN recently that "We believe strongly that air strikes are not an effective way of fighting terrorism,” he recently told CNN, adding that “air strikes rather cause civilian casualties and do not do good for the U.S., do not do good for Afghanistan."
http://www.antemedius.com/content/pakistan-bombs-kill-civilians-make-more-terrorists

"We've seen decreasing levels of support for our operations in Afghanistan and part of the reason is civilian casualties from air strikes."--Seth Jones
http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2008/how-to-end-terrorism-1208

In 2005, the coalition conducted 176 close air support missions (in which aircraft conduct bombing or strafing in support of ground troops) in Afghanistan. In 2007, it completed 3,572 such missions. Bombs—even “smart” bombs—are blunt instruments, and they inevitably kill people other than their intended targets. Each civilian death at the hands of the coalition further diminishes the finite amount of goodwill toward the United States among the Afghan people. Each civilian death undermines the legitimacy of the Afghan government the United States seeks to support. Each civilian death, when refracted through the Taliban’s propaganda campaign, strengthens the narrative of America’s enemies.--Nathaniel C. Fick, John A. Nagl
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4587&page=2

Don, I agree that there is

by J Thomas on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 2:17pm

Don, I agree that there is strong evidence that our airstrikes have caused us considerable problems.

What we don't know, and can't know, is how many problems we would have had from the Taliban leaders that the airstrikes killed. Would it have been worse if there were no airstrikes and they stayed alive? Would it have been better?

I tend to think it would have been better, that the damage those individuals did us would have been less than the damage the airstrikes have done us. But I have no evidence about that and there is no possibility for me to get that evidence. It's entirely my prejudice, my belief in my understanding about the world.

We couldn't even do controlled studies by doing airstrikes in some provinces but not in others. The enemy would then store critical resources in the places we did not do airstrikes, and use them wherever they were most useful. The samples would not be independent, they would interact.

There's no way to get good data about this. The airstrikes probably do more harm than good, but we can't tell because we can easily tell they're doing harm but we have no way to measure the good they do. Mostly we don't even get good evidence whether they killed the people we intended them to kill, or even whether the people we intended them to kill are real people or instead are ghosts created by the enemy for us to chase. It's like arguing about the Tooth Fairy.

on killing leaders

by Don Bacon on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 3:39pm

re: Taliban leaders, high value leaders, etc.
Agreed, there is no evidence that killing leaders hurts a movement, but there is evidence that it doesn't. Killing Saddam? That was supposed to be big. All the al Qaeda leaders they crowed about killing in Iraq? Propaganda. No harm to their movements, apparently.

Getting rid of old leaders might even be beneficial. Losing US leaders through tour rotation has been a staple of US military engagements in Vietnam, and since. Bring in a fresh face, gung ho with new ideas. No apparent problems. There might even be an Eisenhower down there in the officer ranks. Bring him up. It isn't until very recently that General McChrystal has suggested that annual tour rotations is not a good idea.

I think that in a popular movement where nationalism is an element, such as in the countries that the US occupies, I think that in these cases native leadership is not particularly important because the strength of the movement comes from below, not above. If you or I believe that we are fighting to protect out families and out towns we don't need leadership as much as it we were on a foreign adventure amongst hostile natives, which is why military imperialism doesn't work very well, and has a very high failure rate.

I agree with you right down

by J Thomas on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 8:04pm

I agree with you right down the line, Don. What you say makes good sense. But I point out again that we don't actually have data. Killing Taliban leaders (assuming that we actually have been killing Taliban leaders and not phantoms or koran study groups) might have some big effect for reasons we don't know, even though what we do know says it probably wouldn't matter that much.

We don't know how much good it does, and there probably isn't any way for americans to find out how much good it does.

So why does the american military keep doing this stuff? There are obvious big disadvantages,and the benefits are intangible. Why do it? "When the only tool you have is a bomber, every problem looks like an airstrike target."

They've had worse

by Codyed on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 6:34pm

It's unlikely we are going to cower the Taliban with a few precision air strikes. As Don Bacon has noted above, the Taliban has experienced air strike after air strike for the last seven years with little to show for it. These are the same type of people, mind you, that have stared down the Russian bear, took the bear's atrocities on the chin, and kept going.

The Taliban, if anything, are resourceful and persistent.

Same old, same old?

by Popsiq on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 10:47pm

The nice thing about precision airstrikes is that they always start-off sounding great - in the press release at least. Then, as time passes, other details begin to tarnish The gilding somewhat. So far the latest story has broadened to include only 2 civilian deaths.

It must be difficult for the western military - who are used to leaving the family safe at home, to excuse the 'Taliban' for not insisting theirs be kept at a safe distance too. So they prefer to think of somebody hiding behind civilians, deliberately setting somebody up for a 'bad rap' or just not being manly enough to stand out in the open and let themselves get killed.

The alternative is the morale-sucking thought that they aren't the white knights they consider themselves to be and that snotting somebodies' wife and children because they were 'at home' when the bomb dropped-in is really waaay beyond what they learned in kindergarten, or thought war should be.

No wonder PTSD is a problem. A conscience will do that to 'good men'.

precision air strikes

by Don Bacon on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 11:19pm

I lack knowledge about air-dropped munitions, but apparently the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), which may be delivered by B-1B aircraft, has a CEP of 13 meters, which means that fifty percent of the bombs fall within forty feet of the target on a good day. How precise is that?

But trust me, I don't know what I'm talking about. I hope someone more knowledgeable can address "precision."

Joint Direct Attack Munition

by J Thomas on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 3:39pm

Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), which may be delivered by B-1B aircraft, has a CEP of 13 meters, which means that fifty percent of the bombs fall within forty feet of the target on a good day. How precise is that?

That's precise enough to destroy the target every time provided it isn't a hardened military site.

As to whether it also destroys other unintended targets that happen to be within 100-200 feet, or 500 feet for things that weren't well-constructed, or 1000 feet for things that are pretty flimsy, well that's why we call it collateral damage.