The easy answer is that it's time to completely pull out of this country. How about some nation building here in the USA? Those loyal to the pentagon are all for this war for profit. The four Marines died defending their pentagon masters, not the USA. Wasted lives. These young men are pawns being used by other men with evil and greed as their intent. The pentagon mafia is destroying America.

When I was in Iraq in 2007-2008 we distributed soccer balls, candy, school supplies etc., for the first three or four months. We did not have bad intentions, and we thought we were helping. In a way we were, but as this article points out we were likely causing more resentment and harm than we were causing good. Then after writing some interesting intelligence preparation of the battle field reports, our squadron commander came to the same conclusion as the article points out, and ordered that all aid (school supplies, soccer balls, etc.) were to be delivered to the red crescent or to tribal leaders to make the deliveries. There was, it seemed, a noticeable increase in the level of appreciation and dignity by the men in our area of operations. Of course, the small candies were still authorized to be handed out by our soldiers.

In Vietnam's I Corps region, the Marines understood when conducting a Country Fair operation, providing the security was their job. The intereaction with the locals in the village was the responsiblity of government representatives to develope confidence and a trusting attitude among the locals, not only toward the central government, but local officials as well.

So absolutely, who knows the cultural terrain better? Us or the Afghan? Let them conduct friendly interrogations, while also handing-out the freebees - geez, civic action 101 - reinvent the wheel!

Now on to a gloomier subject. This abmush that took place in the Kunar Providence. It's my understanding these hard chargers thought they'd be able to call-in supporting arms? That doesn't seem to be the case, and suggests authority for allowing small vulnerable units to lean into those force multipliers has been centralized, or at least someone held it up to second guess the men out front?

If we are going to entrust these important missions to small unit leaders, have faith in them that they'll understand the rules of engagement, and how and when it's prudent to call for CAS or high angle gun fire support
dammit.

Just makes you angry. And sad. And helpless.

Maybe Will is right. Maybe this is just an unwinnable mess and we should cut our losses and pull out. Use airpower and special ops to hold off the Taliban from becoming anything more than a painful (for Afghans) curiousity.

But then Pakistan, and its nukes, are in danger. The real fight looms and we have to return to an even bigger mess. I really hope that the president does a better job with his new Afghanistan plan than he has so far with health care. Just not sure the Taliban are going to fall for a speech to a joint session.

great, great post. This type of thoughtful analysis is what we need to be thinking about in the military. Empowerment is always the best way to go in all things I say.

www.hooahnews.com

The more we “shoot our way to peace” in our “armed nation building strategy”, the more we’ll alienate the Afghanistan population. “Clear-Hold-Build” can morph into Orwellian “wordspeak” for colonialism. “Clear” is attacking and conquering the Taliban in places they’ve established themselves in the vacuum of authority since the Post 9-11 toppling of the Taliban government. “Hold” is (or will) become “occupation” as the strategy of “armed nation-building” takes place in an essentially poor rural agrarian society where tribal, ethnic, and religious ties supercede any notion of a nation state. “Build” is putting into place illegitimate government officials, or puppets who are sustained only with the support of armed outsiders. The fact a western-style election is held doesn’t make for the sudden emergence of a legitimate national Afghanistan government. The cultural blindness and arrogance of the western power’s approach to forcibly shape Afghanistan is a fool’s errand and an insult to the integrity of the Afghanistan people. In a country that is essentially still in the Middle Ages, the West’s strategy to “create” a self sustaining, pro-west, and semi-democratic state is not worthy of a great nation’s wealth or of any sane civilization. This type of undertaking has never been successful without it becoming an outright naked colonial effort. “Clear-hold-build” if done strictly from the “top-down” and from the barrel of a gun will only spur nationalism, resentment, and ultimately resistance to the Western powers arriving with their evergrowing killing power. While I respect the many thoughtful people who write here, I must point out the blindness of our cultural assumptions that America or any nation can mold and hold a country without oppressing it. There are many seeds to our own destruction in our current COIN strategy. Our own best intentions are lining this road to hell.

God bless American and keep her from dangerous far fetched adventures.

Babur the Mughal became fustrated also. He mentions, in his biography, the tribsemen of this region wouldn't pay taxes, kept stealing his livestock, and attacking his army!

In all seriousness: it appears Gen. McKrystal is aware of what you're mentioning, along with a fine group of advisors he's assembled, and will be trying to do the direct opposite with a population-centric COIN approach, which will continue to leave our trigger-pullers more vulnerable.

He's got a problem though. How far his commmander-in-chief is willing to go to accomplish this, and convince Congress to continue to fund it, while their constituants back in Lizard Lick, NC lose their homes.

After the debacle at Ganjgal, what is a wise Coindinista to do? Offer to build a new school for the village? Bribe them and call it a success, a la Iraq? Avoid the place, pretend it never happened, and bring our "clear, hold, build" democracy tour to a different town?

I seldom if ever meet Americans who talk about Iraqis, Afghans or other Middle Easterners (with the exception of You Know Who) as if they could be our intellectual or moral peers. Consequently, consideration of their possible perspective on matters is virtually never discussed. They are considered rather like violet pawns, whom we can train or punish into obedience. If you really think about it, what human being *could* tolerate an invading force with equanimity and passivity? Not one that I'd want on my team.

But as Americans (Best health care! Best markets! Best capitalism! Best geopolitical solutions!) we don't really need to worry about that. Instead, we humiliate parents and don't even think about it. Because they are frankly deemed infantile or sub-human in our mental characterization of them.

A shame really. It was this simplistic thinking that got us into this deeper mess in the first place.