The Redhunter

In recent months, our President and many others have highlighted the need for additional forces in Afghanistan to reverse the downward spiral in security, help Afghan forces provide security for the elections on August 20th, and enable progress in the tasks essential to achievement of our objectives....

As Senator Lieberman highlighted in his Brookings speech, a surge in civilian capacity is needed to match the increase in military forces in order to field adequate numbers of provincial reconstruction teams and other civilian elements....

First and foremost, our forces and those of our Afghan partners have to strive to secure and serve the population. We have to recognize that the Afghan people are the decisive "terrain." ....

It is also essential that we achieve unity of effort, that we coordinate and synchronize the actions of all ISAF and Afghan forces -- and those of our Pakistani partners across the border -- and that we do the same with the actions of our embassy and international partners, ....

Indeed, as Vice President Biden observed recently, Afghanistan likely will get harder before it gets easier. And sustained progress will require sustained commitment.

There's a lot here, more than I really have time to address properly tonight.

I've blogged on this until my fingers are blue, but since I'm sure my readers do not have encyclopedic knowledge of all of my posts on this, let's go through each of the issues the general raises.

Our Allies

One of the biggest problems in Afghanistan has been getting our European allies to send adequate forces. Bluntly, they've betrayed us, as I've noted time and again (and again).

Just as bad, many of our allies insist on such strict ROE (Rules of Engagement) for their troops that they end up in safe areas guarding things that are not likely to be attacked anyway. As such, there is a split command between ISAF and OEF.

This is not to say that all of our allies do not fight, for that is untrue. The Netherlands, Canada, and UK troops stand out. But even with them there are far too few.

Worse, it's not getting better. We were told that the Obama Administration would make nice with the world and our relations with everyone would improve, but that hasn't carried over to the area of additional troops for Afghanistan. From the Telegraph

Washington had hoped to persuade European allies to contribute more in the wake of the President Barack Obama's election and the announcement this week of the deployment of 17,00 extra American soldiers.

American defence secretary Robert Gates condemned their failure to do so far as "disappointing" with European states promising to deploy no more than just a few hundred extra troops....

With public opposition to the Afghan war hardening across Europe, and disquiet in many European capitals over a command structure in Afghanistan that keeps the vast bulk of the 55,000-strong American force separate from Nato, few expect any member to commit significant additional forces.

And I thought that Afghanistan was the war we were all supposed to want to win.

One can object that that Bush so screwed up the war and poisoned our relations that this is what we get. If so, then they weren't allies worth having to begin with, and anyway the minimum it's ever taken to win against insurgents is 10 years.

Perhaps Obama just needs more time to convince them to come around. Perhaps, but I'm not optimistic. For reasons that have been explained elsewhere I don't think the Europeans care about Afghanistan.

A Surge in Civilian Capacity

By this, I believe, Petraeus is referring to Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and Human Terrain Teams(HTTs).

PRTs bring civilian expertise to various projects designed to defeat insurgencies by providing essential services to the people. Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret) noted that they have been extremely successful in Iraq, and recommended that while we've been using them in Afghanistan too, they'd work a lot better there if the international community would step up and provide some help

I've blogged about HTTs here and here. Essentially, the HTT is part of a "counter-insurgency effort of the United States military which embeds anthropologists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to help tacticians in the field understand local cultures." There is some question about how effectively we are using them in Afghanistan, but I don't have enough information to make a complete judgment.

Secure and Serve the Population.

The key lesson of Petraus' Field Manual 3-24(linked to above) was that political progress cannot come before military progress. In other words, you must secure the population through proper counterinsurgency tactics before you can expect social and political progress. One of our key mistakes in 2004-6 was that we got this backwards. The left made the same mistake when the opposed the surge, insisting that political progress was the only route. The truth is that both need to occur, but in the proper order. See Iraq II 2007 - 2008 for about a zillion posts on the subject.

Afghanistan likely will get harder before it gets easier

I don't think anyone disagrees with this. After all, although President Obama has pledged another 17,000 troops to the fight, a wise idea and I applaud him for it, we have had these things go wrong for us recently

You have the agreement of the government of Pakistan to essentially turn over the Swat Valley to the Taliban, which is a disaster. You've got the announcement two weeks ago our base in Kyrgyzstan is being shut down under the pressure of the Russians. And you have the blowing up of our bridges in our supply areas into Afghanistan.

And just the other week DOD Press Secretary Geoff Morrell admitted to a "deteriorating security situation" in Afghanistan.

I actually think Obama's biggest challenge, assuming he really wants to win there, that is, will come from the American left. For the past several years they've been saying that Iraq was a "distraction" from the "real war" that they wanted to fight oh-so-badly in Afghanistan. Now that they're in power, they'll have to make good on this promise. This story in the Washington Post last month isn't encouraging, and as Charles Krauthammer notes, Obama has been amazingly weak in responding to foreign policy challenges thus far.

So for reasons both at home and in Afghanistan, it is going to get a lot harder before it gets easier.