The FP transcript (III): How did we back into the strategies we used, and why?

[Here are Parts I and II.]

Crist: I agree on the notion of the tendency of the U.S. military. In Vietnam, they used to call it the “Little Brown Man Syndrome,” which is: The Americans come in and show you how to really fight your war. But I think with Afghanistan the fundamental problem is a lack of a long-term strategy. What do we want Afghanistan to do? And I see we sort of evolved into it without a lot of thinking.

The initial force went in; we got enamored with the idea of SOF [special operations forces], light footprint, using the Northern Alliance — in fact we probably should have had more conventional forces. We missed a lot of opportunities as these guys skirted across Pakistan, and we, frankly, allowed them to do it because the Afghans wouldn’t go after them. If they wanted to sit up in the hills, the Northern Alliance was more than happy to let them sit in the mountains, and we didn’t have that capability.

Then the problem is, as we slowly evolve with, frankly, not a lot of thought — if you look at the force incrementally increasing, it’s not a well-articulated strategy. Then it comes to the point where, well, we have the force, we need to start doing this ourselves, and we sort of fall back on our natural patterns and tendencies and things that are comfortable with an effective military that likes to solve problems. So I lay it on the long-term strategy that went in in 2001.

Jabouri: Let me say something from my experience: I think American forces focus just on the enemy, on al Qaeda, and they forget about the people.

I think if you want to win the war against al Qaeda, you should protect the people first. The American forces always, in the beginning, in Iraq, they put their eyes on al Qaeda, and they don’t care about the people. I think the security forces can’t create the security without the long-term forces. If you now go to Kurdistan in Iraq, if you see the images, Kurdistan has very good security, but they do not have many checkpoints or forces. The people have, and the government has the security forces to keep the security. They are the people in other parts of Iraq, the people not interested in the security forces of Iraq because they do not have to create the security.

Ricks: This seems to go to Phil Mudd’s question of space versus targeting, but it seems to me also to Colonel Alford’s comments because one of the answers to reconciling space and targeting is to have local forces occupy the space, not American forces that alienate locals.

Dubik: But a strategy, correctly or not, a strategy that emphasizes local forces, building local conditions, is de facto a long-term strategy. It gets right back to the question of — we backed into both these wars.

Ricks: Not unlike in Vietnam, where we put in ground troops originally to protect the air bases.

Dubik: And it sucked us in. We just backed ourselves into the problem we faced, and had we thought that the solution was going to be a 10- or 15-year solution, we certainly would not have committed. We would have changed many of the decisions that we made, but we didn’t adopt the indigenous force because we thought we could solve it and leave.

Fastabend: I think the reason we do that consistently is, as I hinted at in my question (I really liked your question; I’ll explain to you why), is because we think strategy and we keep strategy, and our theory of strategy is the linkage of ends, ways, and means, which is how I got here, which is how I’ll do my job tomorrow.

It is pablum; it is a way to avoid making a real choice, so no one in or out of the government ever said to themselves, “Let’s decide what we’re going to do. Are we going to target individuals regardless of space, or are we going to go in there and have space?” No, what we said is, “We need a stable government in Iraq, so therefore, you need a stable government in Iraq.” Deductive logic tells you that you need to control everywhere in Iraq. And then you have to worry about the security forces; you’ve got to make sure they’ve got border patrols. And we never went back to the fundamental choice about what do we really need to do. We hide choices. We never talk about choices because choices are hard and choices mean making a decision. Choices mean taking responsibility for who makes the choice and which choice they take — and that, in my view, is the biggest flaw we have institutionally in this country, is we’ve got very shallow theory and doctrine about what strategy really is.

Ricks: This is a great comment.

(Much more to come)