Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

What must be done in Afghanistan (Vth and last): Metrics

Sam Damon, our thoughtful officer of last week, concludes by offering some different and unusual ways of measuring whether we are succeeding: Stop counting IEDs. The enemy is a second order effect or consequence. Count how many times tribes use shar’ia law or tribal mediation to settle disputes rather than local government. Count how many ...

578858_091020_ricks3b2.jpg
578858_091020_ricks3b2.jpg

Sam Damon, our thoughtful officer of last week, concludes by offering some different and unusual ways of measuring whether we are succeeding:

Stop counting IEDs. The enemy is a second order effect or consequence. Count how many times tribes use shar’ia law or tribal mediation to settle disputes rather than local government. Count how many days the Afghan elected governor is in his province or district and compare it to how many days the Taliban Commander or shadow governor is there among the population. This is the primary type of Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield that is needed, not the old paradigm that we still teach Military Intel officers.

I like this approach, which strikes me as similar to some of the suggestions Exum and his posse made in their paper titled Triage, in the section about metrics to avoid and metrics to use. 

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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