1. Believes better tactics can substitute for strategy.

2. Believes good tactical execution constitutes 'winning.'

3. In our longest war ever, is still trying to get at the basics of tactics and operational art for this new environment.

I wish the lieutenants and NCOs well. They're on their own...

Mortar training, I like mortar training, One can tube HE into defilades, draws and deep valleys easier than non-organic artillery. Let us hope the ROE will be slightly more liberal for the Afghan soldier than our own forces, and further hope a literate Afghan is running the plotting board.

Ok, my good natured sarcasm aside, the statement, "that nothing improves the quality of local forces like actually having U.S. soldiers work, eat and sleep in the same place as them," is indeed a time tested fact.

However, I read over on SWJ, the Taliban initiate contact at 500 meters and our American forces apparently don't have the skill set to accurately return small arms fire at that distance. My point being: perhaps we should be careful not to mirror the Afghan Army to closely to our own forces - damn, there's another good natured jibe!

My current read is Bing West's first (I think) book, "The Village", an early 1966 Combined Action Patrol effort that he watched as a captain. The reason this cluster of rural hamlets had a relatively larger component of residents who hadn't resigned themselves to VC control had something to do with rivalries across the river where the VC strength was, competition for fishing rights.

The VC lost ground when their village based leadership was killed/captured, and prevailed when Marine volunteer efforts proved unable to protect local allies and leadership from targeted assassination, a nearly impossible task.

Af-Pak reportage that lacks resolution at even the macro pashtun/non-pashtun level upsets me. If the guy with the beard above is a farsi speaking Tajik, the output effect of US troops accompanying his squad thru Pashtun turf might have nothing to do with his tactical skills or grand strategy. If he is a wrong flavor of local, say from a rival village/clan competing for water, timber, jobs, district influence over the long haul, it might be even worse.

Given the rotation and range of our leadership and troops, the agendas of almost anyone we partner with, the chances of 'beard' being the right guy, in partnership with the right Americans, on a productive mission, seems pretty slim.

After 30 years of fratricide, it's that kind of a war. We're just the greek of the week.

Excellence at fighting is no substitute for a clear set of realistic war aims and a coherent strategy to bring those aims to realization. The Germans twice in the past century, particularly in their last war demonstrated an unmatched skill and professionalism at ‘fighting’ but that lethal prowess did not save them from a consistent inability to formulate a realistic war winning strategy. They, like us, underestimated the will, advantages and circumstances of their opponents and egocentrically over estimated their own ability to impose their will, as they would wish.

Like us in Iraq and Afghanistan their ‘hopes’ in both wars were for quick victorious campaigns. Our amateurish and reckless leadership confused driving into downtown Baghdad with ‘winning’ and pushing rather than destroying Taliban into Pakistan’s mountains as ‘victory’. Like RD my sympathies are to the men in field who must bear up, preserver and take their knocks because their leadership seem about as clueless as any could be.

Putting ‘US soldiers alongside Afghan ones’ as recommended by Josh Sherer is NOT going to suffice to win in Afghanistan as long as Gates, Mullen, Patraeus trio keeps offering alibis for Pakistan sheltering Mullah Omar’s QST in Baluchistan and Haqqani’s HQN in North Waziristan.

Obama administration has continued to ignore Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Taliban’s Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

But Defense Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus have continued to justify Pakistani government’s (Pakistani Army as well as civilian government) terrorist connections by always evading to answer most fundamental question - why haven’t they ordered drone attacks on Mullah Omar’s QST in Baluchistan?

As Afghan President Karzai told a news conference in Kabul on 7/29/2010 after WikiLeaks leaks, “The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“

Afghanistan’s national security advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta asked the same question in a Washington Post article on 8/23/2010: “While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists’ main mentor (Pakistan) continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified? Despite facing a growing domestic terror threat, Pakistan “continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and Al Qaeda. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure “requires confronting the state of Pakistan that still sees terrorism as a strategic asset and foreign policy tool.”

Poor Karzai’s call to his Western allies ‘to destroy Islamist militant sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan’ is falling on deaf ears in Washington where powers to be are hell bent on sacrificing Afghanistan to mollycoddle Pakistan.

When I read the post and the article it cited, I just thought it was about how when small American units work closely with small Afghan units the Afghan units improve quite a bit in a short time. I didn't realize the true meaning was how bankrupt American grand strategy is. I'll have to read more carefully next time.

JPWREL: I don't know whether you trotted out your trusty straw man or if it is the fallacy of the false alternative. No matter, you end up in the same place.

It seems to me Mr. Martel is foremost lamenting that we refuse to see the game the Pak Army/ISI is running on us, even though it is killing our people. We can't take action against something we refuse to see, whether that action is a Hellfire in the courtyard of a compound in Quetta or cutting off the billions the Pak Army/ISI use to buy and play with really cool toys. That is rather a long way from wanting to "dismantle Pakistan".

The United States soldiers understanding of the people with whom they are working is crucial. The same could be said for the Afghan soldiers. The soldiers from both countries living together obviously has the potential bring the two nations together.
If the United States has information, training, or strategies that need to eventually be transferred to the Afghan soldiers, why not do it now? There is no harm in training the Afghan soldiers to do what the United States needs them to do once the US troops come home from Afghanistan. If the United States wants the Afghan soldiers to continue this fight after they leave, United States soldiers will have to form strong bonds with Afghan soldiers.
Additionally, if the Afghan soldiers have access to the technology that the United States possesses, they have a greater chance of success. This translates to success in Afghanistan for the United States.

JPWREL: The time is never past for tactical tinkering. If it is the second last day of the last war and somebody tinkers with a tactic, it may save somebody on the last day who otherwise would have died; even if that tactic should have been tinkered with years before. It is cheap shot sharp shooting to criticize the Army for trying to do its' job better however and whenever it can.

I think changing the outlook of the Pakistani Army general staff is not the same as dismantling Pakistan. However if I were a member of that general staff I would be delighted that I have convinced others that the fate of the country and the fate of a portion of the Army are one and the same.

I would also point out that "the threat of ISI sponsorship of the Taliban" has been a reality for rather a long time.