THE PLANK OCTOBER 8, 2009
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Picking the most damning bit from Rajiv Chandrasekran's Washington Post article on the fundamental disconnect between civilian and military officials during the formulation of the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy is tough. The article is full of details that, frankly, make the Obama administration look more than a little inept. But, for my money, this would have to be the most damning:
"It was easy to say, 'Hey, I support COIN,' because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes," said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.
As Chandrasekran's article shows, COIN means something very specific to military planners, which is why, after the Obama administration adopted a COIN strategy for Afghanistan, it was inevitable that, in seeking to execute that strategy, McChrystal was going to request a lot more troops. But, of course, COIN meant something much more nebulous to civilian officials; it was more of a pose than a doctrine, which is presumably why these officials weren't prepared for McChrystal's request.
I'm currently working on a short print piece about an outspoken COIN skeptic, who argues that one of the things that makes COIN so ideologically powerful is that--by emphasizing hearts and minds and development strategy and civilian protection--it appeals to a lot of people (humanitarians, academics, development officers, etc) who'd been critical of military operations in previous conflicts. I'd thought this critic was maybe being a bit uncharitable toward these COIN supporters, but, reading Chandrasekran's article, it's hard not to see some truth in what he was saying, at least as it relates to the Obama administration.
3 comments
That's the same thought I had when I read this in the physical paper on the train this morning. People thought that COIN is this magic thing that will take care of everything, but didn't think out the basic thought that a lot of additional forces would be needed. So either you totally scrap the decision made just a few months ago, and not really commit fully to Afghanistan, or you go all in. Frankly, I think that we can't do a Vietnam-style half-measure: we need to either get in all the way, or get out. And I am a Democrat, by the way.
- flynnb_az
October 8, 2009 at 12:13pm
I'm with flynn, it seems vastly more risky to give up and hope the Taliban don't let Al Qaeda rebuild itself in Afghanistan. And what then, do we actually want to risk invading all over again? The more important question to me is do we actually have 40,000 additional soldiers we can send? I didn't have the impression we were withdrawing from Iraq all that fast.
- acria multa
October 8, 2009 at 1:00pm
Jason---eagerly looking forward to that article. Your source is dead on. This goes to the heart of our national discomfort with "nation building"; a ill-suited term to describe what is essentially the imperative for some sort of thoughtful strategy for the how the U.S. confronts the challenge of weak and failing states. We still don't have a strategy. Thankfully, the NSC is trying to get us there. But in the end, it's going to require investing a lot more in non-traditional capacities (development, public diplomacy) that won the Cold War for us, but which we've allowed to atrophy. The sound-bite narrative of COIN was very appealing to those who advocate rebuilding USAID and other such tools. But COIN is only the military-based component of a more thoughtful, whole-of-government approach to the challenge of weak and failing states.
- gea1434
October 8, 2009 at 3:54pm