Naming the phases of the Afghan war

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - 10:30 AM Share

The Ink Spots has a good proposal for better names for phases of the Afghan war than "Consolidation II" and so on:

Bombing the Piss out of the Taliban - Sept. 11, 2001 to Nov. 30, 2001

Escape from Tora Bora - Dec. 1, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2001

General Indifference - Jan. 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003

Economy of Force - March 19, 2003 to Nov. 30, 2009

The Good War - Dec. 1, 2009 to June 21, 2011

The Expensive, Disappearing War - June 22, 2011 through a date to be determined

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EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, MILITARY

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JPWREL

2:38 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Simplify

Personally, I would amend the descriptions to basically two from the original six:

--Bombing the Piss out of the Taliban - Sept. 11, 2001 to Nov. 30, 2001

--The Stupid and Thoughtless War – Dec.1, 2001 through a date to be determined

RUBBER DUCKY

3:47 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Add Phase 1.A:

Criminal Neglect: US Army and Bush Administration allow OBL to escape the most powerful military force on the planet - because they don't want to spend the money or the effort to actually do their jobs.

BEARCAT

3:52 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Pay Attention RD

That was when Donald Rumsfeld was trying to prove we didn't need a land component. Just JAC and a few SF folks and a bunch of guys w towels on their heads.

STEVE C

4:31 PM ET

July 6, 2011

I agree

But would argue that there was considerable overlap between these two phases. Some failed to accept that the "war" was over by early December and continued the vengeance through 2002 and into '03. Eventually they got themselves a real war.

STEVE C

4:32 PM ET

July 6, 2011

That was in reply to

JPWREL's comment

WHISKEYPAPA

6:20 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Or...

Or George Bush didn't want OBL caught at all. Either because he wanted OBL for a boogie man for the 2004 election (which happened), or because he promised not to if OBL would do a mass casualty attack on the USA to justify doing away with the Bill of Rights (which has certainly happened). Or because of old times sake since OBL was recruited by the CIA in the first place to oppose the USSR in Afghanistan.

Walt

RUBBER DUCKY

3:44 PM ET

July 6, 2011

General Indifference?

Was he CentCom or the Theater Commander?

ERIC HAMMEL

3:51 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Phases

Lying Phase

Still Lying Phase

STEVE C

4:26 PM ET

July 6, 2011

From the Dept of Some Things Never Change....

When asked why the War Office kept three sets of figures, Herbert Asquith replied: "One to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself."

DUTCH OVEN

4:36 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Phases

You win the contest

RVN SF VET

6:59 PM ET

July 6, 2011

Objection

I object to Lying Phase I.

It should be Economy of Force Phase. Then you got your Lying Phases.

JAYLEMEUX

12:12 AM ET

July 7, 2011

The lying of course over now.

The lying of course over now. As opposed to those announced in all prior proclamations, there are now meaningful if "fragile and reversible" gains that will result in victory if only we'll be smart enough not to constrain the military in any way or to have the audacity to think that resources are better used anywhere else.

FG42

12:27 AM ET

July 7, 2011

Victory???? This is the

Victory???? This is the first time in many, many months that I've heard anyone use that word in relation to our efforts in Afghanistan. What do you mean by "victory"?

STAFF GUY

9:01 AM ET

July 7, 2011

Perhaps it is:

Phase I: Economy of Force Lying
Phase II: Surge Lying
Phase III: Evolution Lying (which is building into buzz-word status - er, not lying....)
Phase IV: Victory Lying

I am tending towards the just claim victory and depart school of thought. Not that I am officially or unofficially stating this as an opinion mind you. I would never (CID: pay attention here) say something that could be construed as critical of US or my command's policy or action.

MICHAEL VREDENBURG

2:10 AM ET

July 7, 2011

Great Line from "Taps"

"Let's just say we won and go home."

MARTY MARTEL

9:32 AM ET

July 7, 2011

U. S. deserved to be duped by Pakistan

All the so-called phases of Tom Rick’s Afghan war started with the recruitment of Pakistan to fight the terrorists that Pakistan had created to begin with.

The seeds of the ‘current Afghan tragedy’ were sowed in Washington when Bush administration decided to allow Musharraf to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz in November, 2001. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan (now relocated to Karachi by Pakistani ISI to protect them from possible US drone attacks) and Haqqani network (HQN) in North Waziristan from where Mullah Omar’s QST and Haqqani’s HQN have been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan, wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly sponsoring four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, as diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

Ambassador Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own State Department and U. S. government.

Following are verbatim quotes from what Gen (rtd) Jack Keane said at a discussion on Afghanistan organized by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank on June 30, 2011:

1. "The truth is, the ISI aids and abets the sanctuaries in Pakistan that the Afghan (Taliban) operate out of. They provide training for them, they provide resources for them and they provide intelligence for them. From those sanctuaries, every single day Afghan fighters come into Afghanistan and kill and maim us".

2. "There's a direct relationship of ISI's complicity and the deaths of American soldiers and the catastrophic wounding of those soldiers. The chief of staff of the Pakistani military is complicit. He used to be the director of ISI. He put the guy in there who is in charge now and he has full knowledge of what I'm just describing".

3. "This partnership has got to be based on that harsh reality. There are two ammonium nitrate factories in Pakistan. 80 per cent of the explosive devices that are used to kill our soldiers, kill Afghan security forces and kill Afghan people come from Pakistan."

4. "All of what I just said to you, when we confront them with this, they lie to us.

With Pakistani Army headed by General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, who once headed ISI, repeatedly lying to the United States, America‘s Afghan mission was doomed from the very beginning.

U. S. has deliberately deluded itself about Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining 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‘.

Duplicitous Pakistan has U. S. under the barrel of a gun - US can NOT use its aid leverage to force Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist groups who kill US/NATO troops in Afghanistan day in and day out because US needs Pakistan’s help in ferrying supplies to those very US/NATO troops.

American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan because of their own government’s misguided policies. For deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections, US deserves to be duped by Pakistan.

FG42

2:51 PM ET

July 7, 2011

Don, if you call Pakistan an

Don, if you call Pakistan an "enemy," then this might well be the first time that we've partnered with an enemy. But I'm not sure we can call Pakistan an "enemy." Isn't Pakistan more like our friend, Saudi Arabia, which finances jihadist movements all over the Muslim world, and which directly contradicts our stated national goal of spreading Democracy and Human Rights in the Middle East (for example, sending tanks and troops into Bahrain to help suppress the pro-democracy demonstrations)? And despite Saudi Arabia's dubious record, we sell some of our best weapons to them and consider them an essential ally. Of course, oil is a key factor in our "marriage" to Saudi Arabia, just as supply routes and border control are key factors in our "partnership" with Pakistan. The point is, we need them both at this point in time, imperfect though the relationships may be. I think our policy makers in Washington are realists and have their eyes wide open, and they're making do with rough partnerships that are useful at the moment. It's just the media and the public (and commentators on this blog) that insist on "consistency" and "purity" in our foreign relations, something which probably has never existed in our history.

FG42

2:53 PM ET

July 7, 2011

Clarification

I should have been more clear. It's Saudi Arabia which sent in tanks and troops to Bahrain, in contradiction of the US goal to support democracy in the region.