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Are all the strategic objectives in Afghanistan clearly defined and acheivable by military force?

Of the operational activities that might support our strategic objectives that require civilian expertise, why in nine years have we not sent adequate civilian agency representation and funding?

If military operations in Afghanistan require a single commander, why does the civilian side of the COIN campaign have authority divided between at least a half-dozen senior officials without anyone having a deliverable “final say” reporting to the President?

If Pakistan’s “partnership” is officially a requirement for strategic success (and it is), why would Pakistan be a “partner” in helping stabilize an independent regime in Afghanistan that would terminate Pakistan’s ability to use Afghanistan as “strategic depth”?

Is the Taliban more important to our national security than is al Qaida?

If we can’t get at al Qaida after nine long years to finish them off, why is that?

If Pakistan’s ISI is sponsoring the Haqqani Network, the Quetta Shura Afghan Taliban and other extremist jihadi groups, doesn’t that make the ISI as a critical component – the strategic “brains” – of the Enemy’s center of gravity?

Shouldn’t we be targeting the Enemy center of gravity if we are to acheive our strategic objectives? (If we are going to be squeamish and pants-wetting about that, how about the retired and bearded “plausibly deniable” ex-ISI guys running around FATA as “advisers” and fixers to jihadi and tribal factions?)

Should we be sending the Enemy’s strategic brains billions of dollars annually?

For that matter, is the size of our own logistical tail effectively funding the guys in black turbans shooting at American soldiers and burying IEDs? Would less be more?

Can we ever gain the initiative if the Enemy has safe sanctuaries – oh, has anyone noticed that Pakistan has twice as many Pushtuns as Afghanistan and how does that affect the odds for winning a purist COIN campaign….in 18 months?

Are COIN warfare and proxy warfare the same thing to be treated with the same policy?

If we assume the Enemy has read FM 3-24, shouldn’t we make certain that a considerable percentage of our tactical moves in AfPak are not coming out of a “cookbook”? Is the element of surprise something we can use, or is it considered unsporting these days in warfighting doctrine?

Given that most of Afghanistan’s GDP is derived from US military spending, how is the Karzai regime going to afford an ANA of the requisite size that COIN theory requires for an operational handoff at our arbitrary political deadline of 18 months?

And on a related note, if the Karzai regime in it’s entirety was suddenly frozen in carbonite like Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, how much more efficient and popular would the Afghan government instantly become with ordinary Afghans compared to how it is now?

If we can’t work with Karzai why can’t we work with somebody else? It’s not like he was, you know, actually elected 😉

If political authorities are not effectively linking  Ends, Ways and Means – some old-fashioned gadflys call this state of affairs “not having a strategy” – and are unlikely to acheive our objectives and said political authorities will not consider changing the objectives, what practical actions can we take in the next 18 months to seize the initiative,  maximize the harm inflicted on our enemies, ensure help for our friends and the furtherance of our own interests?

Pundita detects the Old Gray Lady going off Rahm Emanuel’s reservation:

Afghanistan War: Obama tries to quash New York Times mutiny

I don’t know whether the mutiny is actually against the White House or the ISAF command or both. All I’ve been able to piece together is that after fortifying themselves with rum and the battle cry, ‘We’re nobody’s poodle!‘ the New York Times editorial board gave the heave-ho to NATO’s march to the rear in Afghanistan.

So this is a very strange turn of events and worthy of examination.The mutiny might have started earlier but as near as I can figure it began June 11. On that date the New York Times reported on a version of what transpired during Karzai’s dispute with two officials….

….State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who evidently had not gotten the memo about the mutiny by the time of his June 25 press briefing, only poured fuel on the fire started by the mutineers:

QUESTION: … the New York Times today reported that the Pakistan army has offered to mediate for peace talks with the Taliban and also with the Haqqani network. Is the offer with you?MR. CROWLEY: Well, as we’ve said many times, this is an Afghan-led process, but obviously there are discussions going on between Afghan officials and Pakistani officials, and we certainly want to see ways in which Pakistan can be supportive of this broader process.

QUESTION: Do you see the Haqqani network coming – sharing power with the Afghan Government? Do you support that?

MR. CROWLEY: We have been very clear in terms of the conditions that any individual or any entity need to meet in order to have a constructive role in Afghanistan’s future: renouncing violence, terminating any ties to al-Qaida, and respecting the Afghan constitution. Anyone who meets those criteria can play a role in Afghan’s future.

The White House, more alarmed by the Times mutiny than Crowley’s foot-in-mouth replies, scrambled to do damage control. Yesterday Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and a toady in the GOP camp, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, were packed off to Fox News Cable’s Sunday show to give assurances that if General Petraeus needed more time to win the war in Afghanistan he had it.Leon Panetta was also dispatched to the Sunday morning TV network circuit, which receives close attention here in the nation’s capital. So it came to pass that Panetta made his first appearance on American network television since he became director of the CIA. He appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and faced questions from Jake Tapper, who soon turned discussion to the June 24 Times report:

Pundita has much more here.

The problem for the Obama administration is that if the generally incurious and poorly informed American public ever grasped the nature and an accurate record of Pakistan’s ongoing sponsorship the Taliban, Pakistan would quickly become an object of hatred in the eyes of US voters which, with the right visceral image, could quickly turn passive disquiet into righteous rage. My read, and it is just an informal sense, is that frustrations with the war are building into a dangerous powder keg beneath a placid surface of widespread anxiety and concern for the well-being of the troops.

A mass-casualty act of terror on American soil traced back to Pakistan, or some grisly image broadcast from the Afghan battlefield could unleash a political tsunami.

A useful tool, much like Zenpundit himself.

National Defense University Library has digitized American National Strategy Documents in a searchable archive.

Cool.

Miss P. bangs pots and pans, shoots off fireworks, uses her knee to pound a bass drum while blowing a vuvuzela in an effort to draw attention to the Elephant in the policy room no one wishes to address.

It won’t work until a Pakistani-sponsored terrorist pulls off an act of catastrophic terrorism inside the United States and kills a large number of elite Americans in Manhattan or the Beltway. After that point, we’ll get serious and these views will become conventional wisdom.

I just hope the terrorists don’t succeed in Arizona or Kansas – the story will only make page 2, then and policy will stay the course:

Why General Stanley McChrystal is going straight to hell

On or about August 30, 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates received a detailed assessment of the military situation in Afghanistan that included a request for additional U.S. troops. The report was from General Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. But as noted on the first page the assessment was a joint effort representing input from ISAF staff and the component commands.On the matter of Pakistan the report noted:

Afghanistan’s insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan’s lSI.

A year earlier McChrystal’s predecessor, General David D. McKiernan, delivered a franker assessment of the same situation. He stated flatly that he was certain there was a “level of ISI complicity” in the militant areas of Pakistan and within organizations like the Taliban.McKiernan’s observation came on the heels of a secret visit by a top CIA official to Islamabad; the visit was to directly confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new data about ties between the ISI and militants operating in Pakistan tribal areas.It seems the CIA met with the same stonewalling Britain’s government encountered in 2006 when they brought virtually the same charges to Pakistan because their next move echoed the one taken by Britain’s Ministry of Defense: the CIA leaked news of the trip to a major press outlet — in their case, The New York Times.These naive attempts to embarrass a government comprised of terror-masters, dope dealers and professional beggars skilled at wheedling billions in aid out of the West came to nothing, beyond the ISI’s decision to outsource more of their oversight of terrorist attacks on NATO troops to front agencies such as the SSG.

David Petraeus might study Kashmir if he doesn’t want to repeat Stanley McChrystal’s mistakes in Afghanistan

On Monday the RAND Corporation published a paper titled Counterinsurgency in Pakistan by Seth G. Jones and C. Christine Fair. I don’t agree with most of the authors’ recommendations. However, I think the section of the paper titled Pakistan’s Use of Proxy War, which goes into some detail about Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir, will be instructive in light of Pakistani-sponsored actions against ISAF and the Afghans who resist Taliban rule.The section begins on page 6, chapter two. Although I don’t provide the footnotes I’ve kept the footnote numbering for ready reference. (The paper can be downloaded for free in PDF at the RAND website. A summary in PDF is also available):

Pakistan’s Use of Proxy WarfareMost accounts assume that Pakistan first engaged in using militants as a foreign policy tool during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others supported seven major mujahideen groups operating in Afghanistan.”The Mujahedeen could achieve nothing without financial support,” acknowledged Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who headed the Directorate for Inter-services Intelligence’s (ISI’s) Afghan bureau from 1983 to 1987, and was responsible for the supply, training, and operation planning of the mujahideen. “Almost half of this money originated from the U.S. taxpayer, with the remainder coming from the Saudi Arabian government or rich Arab individuals.”3

In many standard accounts, Pakistan redeployed these battle-hardened operatives to Kashmir in 1990 when the Soviets formally withdrew from Afghanistan. In fact, Pakistan has relied on nonstate actors to prosecute its foreign policy objectives in Kashmir since its independence in 1947. In that year, the state mobilized lashkars (tribal forces) to seize Kashmir while the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, debated whether to join India or Pakistan….

ADDENDUM:

Good things come in threes. A third post by Pundita – The last American helicopter out of Kabul

… Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.

Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset. …

Despite General McChrystal’s 11 visits to General Kayani in Islamabad in the past year, the Pakistanis have not been altogether forthcoming on details of the conversations in the last two months, making the Pakistani moves even more worrisome for the United States, said an American official involved in the administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan deliberations.

“They know this creates a bigger breach between us and Karzai,” the American official said.

The best American general to replace McChrystal is not Petraeus but rather Curtis LeMay.

This strikes me as an exceedingly unwise media strategy for General McChrystal:

(AP)  WASHINGTON (AP) – The top U.S. war commander in Afghanistan told an interviewer he felt betrayed by the man the White House chose to be his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.An article out this week in “Rolling Stone” magazine depicts Gen. Stanley McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to convince even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war.A band of McChrystal’s profane, irreverent aides are quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.McChrystal himself is described by an aide as “disappointed” in his first Oval Office meeting with an unprepared President Barack Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.“I found that time painful,” McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. “I was selling an unsellable position.”Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. And the White House’s troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.

The profile, titled “The Runaway General” emerged from several weeks of interviews and travel with McChrystal’s tight circle of aides this spring….

Jesus.

If this story sounds eerily familiar, it is.

The general has a reputation as a straight shooter and a workaholic commander who is 100 % committed to his mission. Anyone even casually paying attention to Afghanistan is aware of the strain between McChrystal’s HQ and the US Embassy in Kabul under Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, himself a retired lieutenant general with tours of duty in Afghanistan in charge of state and military building programs. The leaking of a confidential cable from the Ambassaador that was extremely critical of US strategy under McChrystal most likely poisoned their relationship for good ( though the leak could easily have been from State Department, White House or NSC officials eager to engage in slimy intrigue and ingratiate themselves with the MSM, rather than from the Embassy itself).

I also agree that the timetable and resources that McChrystal must labor under have been deliberately mismatched to the strategic objectives by the Obama administration to a degree best described as “asinine”.

That said, frustrated, straight shooting, honest to a fault and zealous Army commanding generals should not be encouraged to vent their grievances on the record to reporters. Especially about their civilian political superiors. Good things are not going to happen.

Still less should their intensely loyal inner circle and brain trust staff officers come across as “A band of McChrystal’s profane, irreverent aides ” mocking the Vice-President of the United States. While there’s no shortage of things to mock about Joe Biden, active-duty military officers should not be doing it in major media publications. These are the guys who should be running interference for their boss with the press, not making him look worse.

I have sympathy for General McChrystal. There are people in DC who do not have to be accountable as he does, but possess enough authority to get in his way, demand information, waste his people’s time, leak criticism, impose restrictions or whisper in ears and they do not have to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the results of their machinations. It must be intensely aggravating.

But going out and handing these folks knives ain’t smart.

ADDENDUM:

Danger Room reports McChrystal has issued an apology.

ADDENDUM II.

SWJ has a round-up.

ADDENDUM III.

Rolling Stone – The Runaway General

ADDENDUM IV.

Tom Barnett says this interview is not like what Admiral Fallon did

ADDENDUM V.

Dr. James Joyner is reporting this morning that General McChrystal is out after his meeting with President Obama.