COL David Maxwell, former commander of JSOTF-P and G3 at USASOC, wrote to comment on this article by David Ignatius of the Washington Post. I asked if he would mind if I published his comments, and some of my own. Ignatius' basic point is that the current timelines proposed by the administration will offer very little time for some of the troops to be on the ground creating effects to assess. COL Maxwell responds: The problem we have with talking about the 30,000 troops and the “timeline” is that the way some such as Ignatius below discuss the issues it is as if no work will get started until the last of the 30,000 troops have boots on the ground. By his logic below the timeline should start in November 2010 which will only provide 8 months to do anything until the “withdrawal” begins. The implication appears to be that those that arrive in November will be leaving in July. I am sure that is not the case – what is overlooked is that while the 30,000 are deploying there are probably thousands of troops rotating back at their scheduled redeployment dates. And many of the troops that begin withdrawal in July 2011 will not be those who were part of the 30,000. And of course even some of those 30,000 that deploy beginning in January 2010 will likely “withdraw” in January 2011, 6 months before the “scheduled withdrawal.” There is no mention of how much the current 68,000 troops are getting done and the improvements in Afghan security capabilities that (hopefully) will take place over that time. Yes, the laws of physics apply and there are huge logistic challenges for getting our troops there but the way some in the media report on the situation is that the 30,000 troops are the magic bullet and that nothing starts to work until the last troop hits the ground. We really need more reporting on the strategy and the campaign effects vice the sharp focus on only the 30,000. A lot of work is getting done by those 68,000 US troops plus the NATO forces plus the Afghan forces. They are not waiting for the 30,000 and the 30,000 alone are not the “war winners” (but I guess we have to think of them as the cavalry riding to the rescue!) They can criticize the politics behind the decision but they appear not to understand the nature of the deployments (and redeployment) of forces (other than the law of physics comments) or the work that is getting done before, during, and after the 30,000 deploy. That is a very good point. Mr. Ignatius may be remembering the Iraq surge, where the reporting started the day the first troop of the "Surge" forces deployed, in the spring of 2007. The political opposition was declaring that the Surge had failed by the beginning of summer, before the forces were fully in the field. The rapid success that followed when the full operational weight was available to carry out the new strategy was therefore something of a shock to the press. They may have over-learned the lesson. If they expect the Afghan Surge to work just the same way, they may think that we won't start to see noteworthy results until the full weight is present. I think the chief concerns about the timeline are that it creates a strong negative strategic effect in the contested regions, where village leaders have to believe in our commitment to be willing to risk working with us against the Taliban; and that the timeline sets the Afghan government up for failure. I understand the idea that 'putting them on notice' is meant to encourage them to step up the speed of their efforts, but we know perfectly well that their GDP isn't a third of what it needs to be to support forces on the order COIN theory suggests they will require. Since (as COL Maxell often, and rightly, notes) only native Afghan forces can achieve final victory in the COIN campaign, Afghanistan is going to need a lot of developmental assistance and time to build up to where it needs to be. The December 2010 assessment creates an expectation in the American polity that we'll see significant progress by then to "assess." American political will for a sustained commitment to the region may be undermined if the narrative becomes that the Afghan government has failed to deliver that progress, even if the expectations created were not realistic.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/DDRLEgB1DH4/afghan-surge-timelines-and-strategic-success.html
Posted
Dec 14 2009, 09:27 PM
by
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