The Redhunter

GEN. MCKIERNAN:...But I would like to reinforce what the president has said, that this is not going to be won by military forces alone. And while this will give us a security foundation, we certainly need additional contributions, civilian capacity building programs that will enable people in Afghanistan to feel hope and to develop their abilities to take the lead for their governance....

It was during the early days of the surge that I noticed that the left ramped up their theme of "there can be no military solution to Iraq." What's interesting is that nobody ever said that there was an exclusively military solution. The whole point of the surge was to stop the violence so that political, social, and economic progress could take place. As I trust we're all aware, so far it has worked out very well.

In the end, to defeat an insurgency the people need to believe that the counterinsurgents will win and that the government has their best interests at heart. During any insurgency most people want to sit on the fence, committing to neither side. To win the counterinsurgents must get them off the fence and into their camp.

All of this is part of the "additional contributions" and "civilian capacity building programs" that the general was talking about. But the lesson of the 20th century as spelled out in Petraeus' US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24 is that this sort of progress can only take place after the populace has been secured.

Now let's get to the exchange that prompted the title to this post;

Q You couldn't -- if you got the full complement of the 30,000 and you combined that with the Afghan army, the ratio of troops to civilians would still be lower than it is in Iraq and lower than what most counterinsurgency doctrines suggest. Why the 30,000 cap? I mean, can you see it --

GEN. MCKIERNAN: It's not a -- it's not a cap. I've never approached it as a cap. And it's also related to the fact that we need to continue this to be an international effort. So there are NATO contributions and other troop-contributing nations. So it's not just U.S. military capabilities, it's international military capabilities while we are growing the Afghan army, the Afghan police, because what we want to get to is what I've called the tipping point, where the lead for security is in Afghan units, police and army, and we increasingly are more of in a training and mentoring role.
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Q (Off mike) -- looking at the big picture, what is the earliest that you would project that this time -- that that tipping point might be reached?

GEN. MCKIERNAN: You know, that's a million-dollar question. I don't -- it's always hard to predict years out. But we have a program to accelerate the growth of the Afghan army, as we talked about earlier, to 134,000. We know we need to increase the size of the police and train and focus our efforts there and reform in many cases. Those are programs that are at least going to go out over the next three to four years.

So I -- let me answer the question by saying for the next three to four years, I think we're going to need to stay heavily committed and sustain -- in a sustained manner in Afghanistan.

Anyone who has followed my extensive posting on Iraq knows that we reached the point where Iraqi forces were in the lead last year (the exact time varied by region). We are nowhere near that point in Afghanistan, and in fact the situation has deteriorated in the south.

Let's be clear; when McKiernan mentioned "three to four years," that wasn't a time until all would be finished and we could pull out all of our troops. As I have said innumerable times, most recently in Afghanistan and the Long War, no insurgency has been defeated in less than 10 years. That's the absolute minimum, and most last longer. That said, I hasten to add that insurgencies don't end World War II style, they peter out. So if all goes well we may be able to draw down troops somewhat in a few years.

But even then it's not so simple. At least Iraq was relatively isolated. We had trouble from Syria and Iran, to be sure, but we could and did defeat the insurgency without striking into their countries. Not so with Afghanistan. Too much of the insurgency has sanctuaries in parts of Pakistan.

This exchange really gets to the heart of the matter:

Q General, why should the U.S. expect to succeed in Afghanistan where other superpowers have failed?

GEN. MCKIERNAN: Because it's in our vital national security interest to succeed as the United States of America. It's a country that is absolutely worth our commitment, the Afghan people. And it's a region that is absolutely worth the commitment of the international community to ensure that it's stable at the end of this.

And I know there is -- especially with the history of Afghanistan, there's always an inclination to relate what we're doing now with previous nations and history that have been in Afghanistan for other reasons. And I think that's a very unhealthy comparison.

We're in Afghanistan with the support of the Afghan people, to bring stability and a better future to that country. That's a, certainly, far different reason than, say, for instance, the Soviets were in there. So I think that to a certain degree is comparing apples with oranges.

And I think the insurgency is not going to win in Afghanistan. The insurgency is not going to win in Afghanistan. By any metric, by any polling data, the vast majority of the people that live in Afghanistan reject the Taliban or other militant insurgent groups. They have nothing to offer them. They do not bring any hope for a better future. The insurgency will not win in Afghanistan.

It was a great question, and the general gave a near perfect answer. The only thing he couldn't say is "whether we win depends on whether we have the willpower to stick it out." The Democrats wanted to abandon Iraq as early as 2004. Despite all of their talk about wanting to fight the "real war" in Afghanistan, it is not at all clear to me that they'll have the fortitude to stick it out. If the economy tanks more than it has, the cries to save money will get louder and louder. And if progress is uneven, we may see a resurgence of the Copperheads.

The last exchange that I'll quote is interesting mostly for it's insight into counterinsurgency tactics:

Q Sir, are you just going to shape, clear, hold and build? What conditions would you not in clear, hold and build?

GEN. MCKIERNAN: Well, I like to put the word "shape" in front of it, because there are a series of actions in terms of understanding the environment where you're going to work, understanding who lives there, what are the dynamics of the people that live in that area, what are the dynamics of the agriculture system, of the terrain, of the irrigation systems, of governance, intelligence building? What needs to happen before you move a capability in there to clear -- meaning separate the insurgent from the population? There's a whole series of actions that can run from being very non-kinetic, such as coming in with projects, to very kinetic.

I am happy that President Obama is sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. We need to send more. We asked our "allies" to help us by sending more themselves, and once more we have been betrayed. If we win this, it will because the people of the United States and Afghanistan do not give up.