For a year I have had the distinct feeling that virtually no one in the administration whether it was Obama, Holbrook, Clinton, Biden, Gates, Lute, Jones, Mellon or even in some respects McChrystal and Petraeus are really contented with the current strategy and progress in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

While the war is being very expensively fought, nine years on this amazing effort has not translated itself into anything resembling success relative to the investment. The basic reason for this seems to be some belief that the ‘principles of war’ do not apply to the United States. We can see this aptly demonstrated by having fatally undermined ourselves with a flawed strategic premise.

Today we grimly soldier on in lieu of a practical or to be more accurate an expedient way to extract ourselves without losing both face and influence in the region. Additionally, an unseemly withdrawal would undoubtedly further damage the reputation of a very chastened U. S. military.

Now as a father I receive word that our Navy SEAL son has been given the word once again in his career to stand by for deployment orders to Afghanistan. While he and his men (all veterans) have as usual vigorously trained for this and are enthusiastic, keen and sharp as razors their families are becoming more troubled. Not so much because of the obvious danger, that has always existed and we have become used to it rather like a policeman’s wife.

Our concern is rather the larger purpose of it all. Comforting platitudes even from the highest authority don’t help largely because they are over used and the suspicion that the purveyors of such don’t really believe them anymore than we do. So we keep our doubts to ourselves and prepare to wait out the anxiety of another tour in an endless and seemingly pointless war.

JPWREL, There is nothing wrong with a well read, intelligent father being concerned for the welfare of a military son, regardless of the age and obvious independence of that son to carry out the duties of his chosen profession. However, to accept the sacrifice of the son's peril in order to avoid national " loss of face" or even nebulous "influence" in a very remote area of the world is counter to the intelligence and reasoning abilities of said father.

There is nothing a father can do but wish well a military professional son, that is, you most probably will fail to stop your son from potentially being harmed for no damn good reason. But keeping your doubts to yourself (sorry, cat's outta the bag) is not what you should do.

I have an abundance of pain for all the things I never discussed. Please believe me...the silence isn't the way to go. F the loss of face. Funny, it seems that Richard Holbrook came up with that analysis about Vietnam long before attrition totally wiped out America's appetite to sacrifice young men's lives in another meaningless counter of the world.

As parents of young people who have been in harms way, do you think the very reasonable doubts you have expressed about the value of the mission, whether you expressed them to your kids or not would be similar if the value of the mission were greater but the chances of getting hit were also much greater?

What I mean is, in WW II there wasn't a lot of discussion about the value of the mission, nor should there have been. But, as has been discussed here at length, the wastage of young men was rampant.

I guess what I'm asking you guys - who certainly know how it feels - is whether feelings about tactics, equipment, leadership, etc., in other words the main factors beyond bad or good luck that determine whether your kid gets out intact or not end up equaling the same thing as doubts about the actual mission.

We can agree that the Afghanistan mission is, at best dodgy and most likely wrong headed; it isn't going to protect America from anyone. And that certainly wasn't the case with WW II in general. But if your kid was with the 36th Texas Division on the Rapido River in early 1944, getting its butt kicked all over the place in the face of entrenched, well led, well armed Germans would the doubts have been the same?

I know this isn't really a fair question. But I think of all those kids, in B-17s over Schweinfurt, or in the mud in front of Cassino, and a zillion other places, (the Somme in 1916 might be the best example) getting killed for nothing, even if the effort as a whole was righteous.

"I don't want to overstate this but, we became reasonably good at detecting threats." That is simply capital good general, but the the terrorist only needs a one percent success rate ratio.

The former four star goes on to say, "In the future, it is most likely that al- Qaeda (Al-Qa'idah) orchestrated attacks will be far less complex organizationally and less lethal if they do succeed. They will just be more numerous." Is this a good thing? it is the word numerous that bothers me.

I also like Bruce Hoffman's analysis "we should employ a dual strategy of capturing terrorists and breaking the recruitment cycle by better reaching the youth demographic." Well no shit Sherlock, the problem isn't with the capturing, it's with the recruitment demographic.

How do we break the terrorist recruiting cycle of Muslim youth who are attracted to organizations such as al-Qa'idah out of fustration with illegitimate, repressive, and authoritarian regimes, America openly supports, while we peddle democracy out the other side of our mouth with presidential speeches in Cairo?

Ok, no more rants. . . .this week anyway.

I just finished the final meeting of a seminar on the WoT I've been teaching, and my students have largely come to the conclusion that we're sorta f'd. Not completely, because AQ can't win (and never really could) but partially because in a very real sense we can't win either. Ain't reality grand?

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that the United States and its allies have the right of self-defense by detecting and attacking terror threats directed against them. Who could object to a robust counter-terror campaign on the part of these same nations based upon perpetual reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and sharing and where appropriate sending in a SOC team or a Hellfire armed UAV to do its business.

TYRTAIOS wisely states: ”Perhaps more importantly, we need to begin addressing the existing issues of recruitment toward terrorism, of which America’s foreign policy is one of those issues, as to why young Islamic terrorists want to attack us.” This is more complex and difficult but perhaps in the long run will actually pay greater dividends than the neo-con/FOX News smash and bash show.

But the point is that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan fell into the category of self-defense but rather fell into the province of a malicious urge to force our will upon a weaker and backward foreign people. We had a right to attack al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001 but we badly muffed the job and called it victory. All we did is push AQ from their Afghan sanctuary into an even safer Pakistani sanctuary. The subsequent occupation of Afghanistan and war against the Taliban was the result of foolish choices made on our part and was totally unnecessary.

I challenge anyone to give an honest and logical defense of the actions of this country in the past nine years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Allowing certain politicians and the military to continue a war merely to avoid the embarrassment and humiliation of an admission of a phenomenal blunder is hardly a satisfactory answer.

Iraq was not a threat to us particularly since almost the whole country was a no fly zone controlled by the USAF and RAF. The land locked Taliban in Afghanistan were never a threat to us unlike al Qaeda whom we merely brushed aside in favor of a nation building war in the most difficult place in the world to reconstruct a new nation.

As JP and TYRTAIOS and many others have pointed out, we can't do much about the recruitment side when we are pushing democracy while actively supporting the repressive regimes where the AQ recruits live.

And, as TYRTAIOS points out, speeches in Cairo won't help much.

But there's another problem - a bigger one that will keep the US pursuing its dual strategies (supporting repressive regimes while preaching democracy and tolerance) tll we run out of cash, human capital, and whatever respect we have left out there in the big bad world.

And that problem is, WE DON'T HAVE ANY INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY!

How many Americans know what the US did to Iran in 1953? 1%? 5%? I have no idea, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Iranians remember.

First we drum up a coup and depose a moderate socialist who has been legally elected. Then we bring back the Shah - his Dad was kicked out for being pro-Nazi (think about that). Then we support his repressive regime for almost 30 years, training his SAVAK agents (how many Americans know what SAVAK was - I bet the Iranians haven't forgotten).

And do we try to moderate the guy? Of course not. If we had said to the Shah, maybe it isn't a good idea to diss all the mullahs all at once ni the name of "modernization." No reason not to take your time. But no - that would have been "meddling." Sheesh.

After all, even the revolution (or whatever it was) that booted the Shah out was 31 years ago - how many Americans even remember that? But again, I promise you, the Iranians do.

Multiply by the number of countries the US has done this sort of thing to and we see what we are up against. Macro-blow-back? I dunno what to call it.

So, what do we do about this unfortunate history? Maybe own up, maybe meddle less, maybe at the least, understand this, try to do a better job of educating Americans, and not act as if this stuff didn't happen less than a lifetime ago. A lot of the world is just fed up with the US and most Americans don't have a clue as to why.

When speaking about poverty, I'm always interested to learn how the US expects to deal with Afghanistan's looming environmental crisis: shrinking glaciers which means less water in a country already hurting for lack of water (much less potable water), loss of forestland, and loss of farmland. This is the elephant in the room that you don't hear much about. But it can sneak up on you and, bam! For an "AfPak" example, witness the Indus flooding which has significant political and military consequences.

The "How much are you going to pay me to not be corrupt" quote is just a joke in Afghanistan. I heard it from more than one Afghan when I was there. I doubt American personnel are actually hearing that from members of GIRoA. Is corruption a problem, sure. But to put that out there as a "reality on the ground" is probably misleading and irresponsible. I dont know, maybe the quote was taken out of context and as a result I misread it.

"People feel no connection with the government." Uhh....yeah. I'm pretty sure we know that. When I read stuff like this it makes me realize everything has already been written about Afghanistan. Are all these papers and conference speeches just being written for people who have no prior knowledge? You're not getting anyone anywhere they haven't already been. Is that the point? Nothings changing? There are plenty of great things not being resourced in Afghanistan because it cant be morphed into something everyone can do everywhere, or be managed from higher, or because the funding rules dont allow it for no good reason.

No one knows "what terrorism strategy is" because there is no singular solution to the problem. But that's what America wants/expects. Its not going to be a two pronged solution either. There are several highly dedicated players on the friendly side; to expect them to coordinate a perfect plan and deliver it with a bow on it is not going to happen.

How are we going to reach out to "potential terrorist" youth without making it look like thats what we're doing? I'm sure overt attempts would infuriate people on both sides, evoking responses from both. When we think about things in terms of generating a single effect on a single target, this is what you get, way too many "good ideas." The way America extends its reach globally, specifically by the MNCs, will always leave plenty of have-nots willing to take up arms.

A reality everyone should face: The "Taliban" and some other more well defined political groups are going to be in Afghanistan for a long long time and we aren't going to stop them from having influence. Will Al Qaeda stage and train there? We'll probably drop some guys in and whack them all for the foreseeable future. It could be a deterrent.

Whatever, I dont have a Ph.D.

These posts are getting deeply philosophical and really high-quality. I like it, gets the old brain juices flowing.

I always tread lightly when GSF and JPWREL are talking because I know the costs of what we are dealing with. They do too.

What we seem to be talking about here is the difference between short and long term gains and costs. I can assure you that any good historian could make a good argument that WWII was an unnecessary evil - esp with regard to American involvement. (e.g. just our economic policy in the Pacific Rim could justify the Japanese agression, so we're complicit; our concession of the Sudetenland to Hitler made us complicit, our abusive reparations for WWI set the conditions for German nationalism etc. etc. I can go on and on).

Vietnam we can say is NOW borderline capitalistic, but would it have become so it it hadn't gone through the turmoil of the 60s/70s? Who knows? Would the Soviet Union have collapsed under its own weight if we hadn't waged a proxy Cold War? Is it even important that it did collapse? To us, yes, IF they were really a threat. To them, well I am sure they would have rather had a better livelihood and economic existence since that collapse. Those folks might have felt wistful for the Czarist times. Who knows. Ancient Klingon proverb says "Only Nixon could go to China."

This gets back to the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane elsewhere. You either believe in destiny or you believe in free will. But either way we can be revisionist and say "well if we hadn't financed and supported the mujaheddin against the Soviets we wouldn't have had this blowback." I say you could make that argument about anything...shoulda, woulda, coulda. And you could examine your navel with the same ferocity until it sucked you in like a blackhole - but you still won't have a definitive conclusion.

In the long term none of this will matter. In a hundred years our kids will be strapped into Idiocracy-like TV and masturbation machines - so they don't have to deal with reality at all. They have no sense of history as it is right now - what can we expect in the future? (I sound like the old guy yelling "Get off my lawn" sigh). Do we need a sense of history? Seems the folks in Bosnia or the Middle East (Shia v. Sunni) - as just a few examples - might could do with less. They're still killing each other over slights that were a thousand years ago.

But what do we do in the near term? Nihilism really doesn't appeal to me. Cynicism I can live with. There are no good answers, they're just the answers that get us through each day.

Back to GSF, JPWREL, myself and anyone else that wears a uniform or has someon they love in uniform. Pre-emptive apologies if this is too crass. Dennis Hopper - in Speed - said "a bomb wants to explode, otherwise it isn't a bomb." We military guys - like it or not, we want to explode too - it doesn't mean we're warmongers. It means that we might feel our short term purpose is to "soldier." I do it because I love working with guys that can bust their ass, refuse to accept the idea that anything is impossible. Guys/gals who want to be a team and look out for their buddy no matter what - or even if the guy is the asshole in the platoon that they hate most of the time. Guys who can live in the nastiest of conditions and still muster a smile. There's immediate purpose in that. There's honor in that, even if the overall mission is somehow misguided or wrong.

My brother, who used to be a Finance officer (dirty little secret we don't talk about), told me..."6 figure bonuses for Special Forces guys are stupid. It's economic rent. Guys like that wouldn't want to be doing anything else anyway." You may not like it but he's absolutely right.

As a student of motivation theory I don't even like extrinsic motivators like money, I am looking for that intrinsic motivation ("gotta be a bomb, gotta be a bomb"). But the point is that people who are motivated to be soldiers (or sailors, airmen, Marines) have to have somewhere in them an iota of that intrinsic motivation.

JPWRELs SEAL son would be doing what he is doing anyway. If not in Afghanistan, maybe in some other dark place that none of us even know he is there.

I've said a lot and not said much. But my summary is this - we as humans make meaning where there is none. Indeed we're the only creatures who do so. That meaning is based on our experience, our foibles, our knowledge of the past, and our wishes for the future. Ask yourself what that span of time is that is important to you. 10 years? Til you die? Tie your children die? Til their children die? The Civil war already looks like a frightful waste, but millions of African-Americans are pretty happy it happened today. In how many decades will WWII fade to black - likely not long after the dwindling Greatest Generation passes. This is about context, but which is the right context? I dunno.

Hunter I am glad you responded because you already bring an inside the military perspective where I can only give an outside looking in view. As far as six figure bonuses are concerned it is the Navy’s way of holding onto SEAL operators they have sunk a ton of money into training. Even the most gung-ho SEAL operator who loves his work finds that he spends maybe at best on 4 months out of twelve at his home base so he might actually visit his wife every now and then. Even when not deployed and theoretically home SEALs are never home. My take on the issue is that the bonus for EM’s is a fraction of what it would cost to train a new guy to replace an operator who likely has had multiple deployments and has thoroughly learned his craft.

My kid who has a degree in Mathematics and speaks Spanish has had feelers from the CIA, FBI and even the CBI in California. Very tempting offers for a guy who would love to start a family but doesn’t think it is fair to have a child and then essentially abandon it leaving his wife almost as a single parent. Couple of years ago when he decided to become an officer and make Naval Special Warfare a career of course all the financial inducements disappeared. But he absolutely loves working with his guys. If he ever has to sit on his butt someday in an office counting paper clips is the day he takes some of those offer seriously.

Hunter, you have brought out the essence of what it all means to those who serve and I would say, to the way that this nation, or any nation, operates its foreign policy. It seems obvious, but it must be said. It is no to do any self congradulations, no look at me, the Great American Warrior. Actually, far from it.
It is the intrinsic value that we place upon service to the land we love. Value to the Service that we submit to. During the last Executive realm and following my loss, I had this near hatred of the national colors. I hated the nationalism that spurred on preventative war, this blind frenzy to kick moslem ass, post 9/11. I swore the national flag would not fly from my front porch until sanity returned. However, the USMC flag does proud flap from the front of my house. I can't figure out either why it works that way...
And how do we measure time--history--within the parameter of worth? Were any of our wars of any value? Were any of the uniformed lives lost since the Revolution worth more in death than in what those who died could have contributed to society? I have stated that history is what it is. It is the analysis, the 20-20 hindsight, that determines value and worth. The lives lost in victory in Europe and Asia in 1945 led to the Marshall Plan and prosperity for millions. Couldn't we have just done that Marshall Plan thing without all the bloodshed? Couldn't we have just granted freedom and equality to former slaves without the calamity that finally allowed that action? Those who hate war have an easy "yes" answer to that mind blower. But the dynamics of war usually prevail.
So. ...what happens now that Richard Holbrook is gone? Will we just stumble-bum through a few more years of COIN/CT in Afghanistan before we finally tire and things in that culture go back to where they should--self-determination? A few more years of this shit of American kids on patrol means more coffins coming home. America--that great big mass of TV fantasy addicted people--already yawn at the scenes from Dover.
A few of us in this country know the true costs of wasted effort. Pissing in the wind says a wise man Ducky.
My daughter's Eleven Bravo BF comes home this weekend--"mid tour" thing from the Kandahar Games. I've been down this road before and I still have the shakes.

Here in Spain we are a little closer to the end of ETA. So, feel optimistic, somewhere in the world, some progress is being made

I've been reading Insurgency and Terrorism by Bard O'Neill. He has this to say about Al Qaeda and transnational terrorism:

"A transnational strategy like Al Qaeda's poses a more complex problem...Organizational threats call for a variety of political and social measures to undercut insurgent appeals and activities, while violent threats call for differential responses to guerrilla warfare and terrorism, depending on which is prevalent in particular places. Since Al Qaeda is a polycentric organization operating in many locations, the formulation and implementation of policies must, perforce, vary from place to place."

So I guess I understand what people are getting at with the dual approach, but to claim that no one knows what the strategy is, I feel like my previous post covered that, but...

He goes on to say:

"...an effective response [to an insurgency] involves a sophisticated military strategy that avoids one form of warfare applied indiscriminately in all sectors and, instead, adopts a flexible policy that coordinates a variety of countermeasures in different areas, depending on the nature of the threats."

I realize this is old hat, but I think it helps show that we need to focus on the toolbox or the "variety of countermeasures" he speaks about, as well as the analysis of the complex adaptive system that is transnational terrorism or even an insurgency. Good analysis will make the decisions for us on the tools used to fight it, and THAT IS the strategy.