Reviews Raise Doubt on Training of Afghan Forces – NYTimes.com

In September, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, recommended increasing the Afghan Army as quickly as possible — to 134,000 in a year from the current force of more than 90,000, instead of taking two years, and perhaps eventually to 240,000. He would also expand the police force to 160,000. The acceleration is vital to General McChrystal’s overall counterinsurgency plan, which also calls for more American troops but seeks more protection against the Taliban for the Afghan population than the Pentagon could ever supply.

“The most significant challenge to rapidly expanding the Afghan National Security Forces is a lack of competent and professional leadership at all levels, and the inability to generate it rapidly,” concluded one of the reviews, a grim assessment forwarded to Washington in September from the American-led training headquarters.

via Reviews Raise Doubt on Training of Afghan Forces – NYTimes.com.

This article shows the two basic and related strategic strategies of the same Grand Strategy, of the US military, at work in Afghanistan right now.

The first paragraph that I site from the article tells of a strategy of Isolation, while the second paragraph is a strategy of subversion between the military, government and the civilians of Afghanistan. Both strategies fall under the Grand Strategy of Modern Warfare, which are two simultaneous waves of energy with the acronyms: OODA and PISRR.

After the US military Penetrates a country, by Americans or American trained troops such as was the case in Cuba and the Bay of Pigs expedition, there is a need to create a force of change. This force of change is done by creating a force vector between areas of Isolation. Isolation means killing (the ultimate short-term Isolation), but that is not all it means. Isolation also means to create a center of gravity or, in other words, potential energy.

The penetrating army Isolates the Citizens, Government, and the Opposing military from, at times, life and, more importantly, from each other. This Isolation creates a force vector between potentials inside Afghanistan (the potential government, Citizens, and military). This force can be an attractive or repulsivie force, and the potentials can be one of want or need. By building-up the Afghan military and police force, the US military believes it can, with coalition forces, form an Isolation of 50-1 inside Afghanistan, which the civilians will need the coalition forces for security and want the government to support these forces.

At 50 civilians to 1 American trained military personnel, Gen. Stanley A McChrystal believes the US military can bring security to Afghanistan. At least enough security that Afghanistan can maintain its GDP without subversion by the insurgency.

Between the 3 Isolations, civilians, government, and military, the US military is most able to subvert the Afghanistan military. The US military can stand-up a one-star Afghan General with the implicit rule-sets constant with the standards of the Constitution of the USA, support it, and hope it becomes a part of the Afghan military. A part of this subversion says that the civilian leadership has control over the military of the country. This act of subversion connects two of the three potentials inside Afghanistan, i.e, government, and military.

While the US Government has allocated 3 years worth of the Afghanistan GDP towards this subversion, the article clearly explains it will take a lot longer. It has been said that it takes approximately 10-years to standup a one-star General in a country that has been penetrated by Modern Warfare. After reading this article, it does not look like this subversion (the One-star General) is even close to a beginning.

Perhaps the Government of Afghanistan needs to be further Isolated (create a potential that the civilian and military need) and the 50-1 Isolation of the civilians to the insurgency needs to happen, before a One-star General can come forward out of this mess.  This is certainly something the civilian leadership of the USA needs to be thinking about.

The long arm of the long war (Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog)

The Long War changes that: the military comes back to society and the defense sector comes back to economic reality.

via The long arm of the long war (Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog).

I think TPMB is right; the military will come back to society. As it is, those coming back are coming back to corporations and in one capacity or another they will be contractors. The economic reality will put a squeeze on these contractors, which will put the squeeze on those who the contractors are  hiring, which will include those coming back from real shit-holes.

We will have those coming back working for just above minimum wage. The promise of middle class will be gone like the American dream. This is not something pretty to come home to and unsustainable in a nation.

All warfare is generational and those of a generation are really just a gender-nation. A nation of people, of both genders, of a curtain time, if not of the same place or orientation. Because of the generational nature of warfare, the only way to win a war is by phrasing the war in terms of nations.

The only way to form a nation of Americans will be to begin the Draft and replace the volunteers, who end up trapped in place they didn’t volunteer for, with a nation of Americans–a  nation of draftees. Once the Draft is re-authorized, the war/wars will be over within four years.

Draftees are not a “better” fighting force, just more generational in nature.

Joshua Kurlantzick — What Vietnam teaches us about winning the peace – washingtonpost.com

The stated goal of the Vietnam War was the defeat of communism. But three decades later, the United States has gotten much of what it really fought for: a stable friend who could prove an ally against China. After all, it was China, the expansionist giant, that terrified American policymakers and sparked U.S. interest in Indochina in the first place.

via Joshua Kurlantzick — What Vietnam teaches us about winning the peace – washingtonpost.com.

Tip of the hat to TPMB

Comment posted on TPMB:

We could have achieved this result decades earlier, and saved thousands of lives (including some friends) if we had followed our national DNA in 1945 and supported the anti-colonial Vietnamese freedom fighters instead of trying to reinstate the pro-fascist French colonialists. The lesson of Vietnam: promoting globalization is not the same thing as trying to preserve colonialism. In fact, they are the opposite.

As Communism moves down into Australia and up from South America, I hope he is right, in that, promoting globalization is not the same thing as trying to preserve communism.

But on the larger issue of comparing Vietnam with Afghanistan. I think the person commenting on TPMB that our DNA tends to support the anti-colonial powers is correct. However, to assume the US military tried to reinstate the pro-fascist French colonialists is pure fiction, unless you believe our DNA is pro-fascist French colonialism, which it is not. It may seem like at times that the USA’s  DNA is pro-fascist, but that is only because of the heavy influence of corporations inside the Military/Industrial Complex.

Pro-fascist French colonialism is neither written into our Constitution nor into the Image of our country itself,and it is into these two objects, the Constitution and the Image of ourselves, that our DNA is written. It is this DNA that the US military uses in warfare.

All warfare is generational, and the US military carries out warfare directly by cloning, which, in the case of US, warfare is the duplication of the civilian DNA. In Vietnam, the South Vietnam military, through corruption or complexity, failed in this cloning process, the North did not. The North did not let Russia or China take command and control of their country and moved to crush the Kalmar Rouge, when they needed to Act against this Subversive DNA within their area.

Afghanistan is the center of a religious movement, and I see little evidence that the US military is spreading our DNA into the ranks of the Afghanistan military, as was done in Iraq.

In Iraq, the Surge was a tactic, but the strategy remained, i.e. build-up a One-star General with the rule-sets consistent with our DNA and then duplicate throughout the ranks. This process takes approximately 10 years. If we inject another 40,000 troops into Afghanistan, I believe it will represent year one. The use of contractors in the protection of the Afghan Government, has subverted our military strategy in Afghanistan. If we continue this madness, the only Afghans with anything like our DNA will be the Taliban, but, because they are at the center of a religious movement, the outcome will not be the same as Vietnam. As TPMB said, “The larger point: Vietnam became normal by connecting to the global economy.” In other words, Vietnam did not spread Communism, it used communism to duplicate its DNA, DNA heavily influenced by its war with French colonialist and the US military.

An Afghanistan that has beaten the West will look to the East, as the posting from Zen shows they already have gone there in their thinking.

If we continue this effort (madness?) in Afghanistan, our effort to control AQ will be successful, but fake. Unlike Vietnam, we will continue to pour money into Afghanistan, but these resources will go towards a movement that is not compatible to our DNA, At least that part of our DNA which is not religious or corporate.

Jules Crittenden » McChrystal’s Afghanistan

Jules:

NYT’s Dexter Filkins goes deep with a profile of McChrystal in action that includes an intimate look at what he wants to do in Afghanistan, the difficulties he faces, some reasons for hope, a lot of ugly truths, and for a refreshing change in current American reporting trends, some comparison and contrast on the fact that these guys have done this before in Iraq.

The bulk of Al Qaeda’s leadership, Haass pointed out, is now in Pakistan. That’s where the United States should really be focused — in Pakistan, with a population six times larger than Afghanistan’s and with at least 60 nuclear warheads.

Critics might say that Filkins, whose reporting notes the military view that Afghanistan and Pakistan are intricately entwined and cannot be separated strategically or tactically, doesn’t give the so-called Biden plan a full airing. However, it is a McChrystal profile, not a Biden one. Though that might be entertaining. Embedded in the District of Columbia.

via Jules Crittenden » McChrystal’s Afghanistan.

If the military’s view is that Afghanistan and Pakistan are intricately entwined and cannot be separated strategically or tactically, then I don’t understand the controversy between McChrystal and Bidden. McChrystal is in charge of Afghanistan, Bidden should be in charge of nothing. Bidden, along with the rest of the civilians in command of the military, should be looking at the situation as it will affect generations of people from the USA. If Afghanistan and Pakistan are really intricately entwined, then the war on this second front should be coordinated between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The statement that there is no AQ in Afghanistan has no meaning. It may be that there should be AQ in Afghanistan, but it is not in AQ’s interest to be there. In fact, McChrystal’s effort maybe working too good and the pressure from AQ is being felt in Pakistan or is building up in Pakistan to the detriment of both countries. If the Pakistan Army is making a push, as I have read it is, then the two sides, Pakistan army and the Coalition forces in Afghanistan, have to coordinate their effort or risk the possibility of breaking the resiliency of the Pakistan army. This will possibly cause the Pakistan army to break and the Taliban/AQ in Pakistan to displace forward, only to later rebound back into Afghanistan, as the US military moves out of Afghanistan towards more strategic fronts.

In my last post I said, to paraphrase myself, that corporations don’t really care who wins, because, to a corporation, that goes back to saying who can pay more. I also said that winning is more important to Kings and Generals. The uniqueness of the US system of war is that Kings and Generals are replaced by civilians. It is the civilians in command and not control of the military who need to think like Kings and Generals. Kings and Generals, who are not tyrants, think generationally. With the gap between connections between generations, getting closer, the King or Generals no longer have the luxury of time. Our civilian commanders need to think past this war and closer to home. There needs to be a coordinated effort between those in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The US effort needs to be made by the civilian command, the US doesn’t have any Kings and we don’t encourage our Generals to think generationally. We are still fighting a war on two fronts far from home. Pakistan is on the wrong side on one of those fronts.

From Macgregor House Presentation

“Afghanistan is not strategically vital to U.S. interests.”

“•The LBJ government had unfounded, naive, and unrealistic expectations of Vietnam’s near-term potential to evolve into a modern social democratic constitutional republic if the US put the “right people” in charge and provided a pile of cash and some “military assistance.” ”

I am not sure I agree with the first statement. Afghanistan has some strategic interests, if we want to get in on the oil pipeline connecting the “Stans” to the India ocean. Also, it wasn’t like putting the “right people“  in as the quotes show, it was like putting the right corporation in charge. Charge has a certain element of both command and control, and that “charge” becomes the logic of the War. 

Like Iraq, Vietnam was fought by corporations, so of course some mistakes were made. Maximizing profits is no way to run a war. War is too important than to let corporations in charge of wars. War is generational, while corporations are not. Corporations just die and rise again, exactly as they were.

On the other hand, War is between humans, which are generational. And of course the biggest problem is that humans are too smart for corporations. The humans always run towards the corporation that is going to win, so those penetrating into a foreign land always run to the corporation that they think is going to win, or in other words, pay better. Market forces don’t always care who “wins”, Kings and Generals do.

Update:

“•Remember, no matter what happens in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan, al-Qaeda will survive and remain a threat, but not an existential threat. There are many options for them from Morocco to London, England!”

“The goal is to make the AQ “irregular” bleed for his tribe/ religion/country while we expend as little blood and treasure as possible to secure vital US interests. (Key point is vital!)”

If that is the case, then Morocco is probably the next “dollar” involvement. Morocco and Algiers have been in an arm’s race and it sounds like things are starting to get hot. Let us hope it is true that we are expending as little blood and treasure there as possible, if Morocco or Algiers is even a vital US interest, even if there is a King there or not.

It is going to come down to how far do we withdraw from the situation, which includes Afghanistan. You do know, the shit will probably hit the fan when Cheney’s pipeline hits the Indian Ocean? This will probably happen in nine years, or not.

“In 1959, President of France, Charles de Gaulle confronted similar circumstances [fighting an insurgency and not AQ] when he decided to leave Algeria. French generals insisted a withdrawal would deliver Algeria into the hands of Soviet-backed communists. It did not and de Gaulle replaced the generals.”

 

That sounds good, “decided to leave”. It does sound familiar, but with Pakistan having nukes, I don’t think that will ever happen (going communist). But the nukes are probably pointing north as well as any direction. North maybe the real reason for them anyway. The movement of the EU, USA and China is really about power, and the most common source of that power is oil, or in a few years, gold.

“•However, if the Afghans harbor anyone – al Qaeda or anyone else who threatens the United States and its allies, we must state clearly we will annihilate those who threaten us without concern for the welfare of those Afghans who harbor them.”

This is the real sticking point. We are going to become France, and I am not sure they still say they are going to annihilate anyone. I mean what was France’s relationship with those they decided to leave in Algiers? If the government had decided to team up with AQ, could France have stopped them?  

Of course this probably will not be a problem as long as we pay them off to keep AQ out. But this is from a position of weakness, which is going to be especially true if we begin to meet the Asian challenge in the South of America.

Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Crowdsourcing a Presentation: The History of Warfare

“…the history of military organization and doctrine is largely a history of the progressive development of four fundamental forms of engagement:…”

via Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Crowdsourcing a Presentation: The History of Warfare.

There is no progressive or gradient form of warfare; there are only armies who fight that way.

Indian embassy blast kills 17 in Afghan capital – washingtonpost.com

KABUL (Reuters) – A large bomb exploded outside the Indian embassy in central Kabul on Thursday, killing 17 people and wounding 76, in the latest of a series of militant attacks on diplomatic and government buildings in the capital.

via Indian embassy blast kills 17 in Afghan capital – washingtonpost.com.

At least it wasn’t nuclear, yet.

Get on With It

So, if nothing else, just take what we have learned about war and file it under some lessons-learned East-coast think-tank. Leave China and India out of Afghanistan and bring in the Sysadmin team from Persia to help the Afghan government set-up an administration in Afghanistan that will work. While there was fraud during the elections in Iran, I have not heard a single person say the outcome would have been different; of course I don’t get around much.

It appears that the Taliban are becoming powerful and wealthy off of the US and it needs to stop. We are beginning again to fund the same people we are fighting, not good.

In America, corporate wealth has maxed-out, and our guys are hold-up in the low-ground and are going to get picked off one-by-one, especially after 6+ terms. This is true in Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

Give China the smart grid from South America to here (BPA) and let India write the program and control the app’s, and divide the logistics up with whoever is left. They are already dividing up their southern hemisphere.

This will give America back its Army and, if nothing else, we can use it to fight the guys we trained, just across the border in Mexico. It would be a lot closer to home and the guys could come home on weekends.

Or go to plan B.

We Are Making Progress

From a post by Dan:

Christianity and the Military-Industrial Complex

by tdaxp ~ November 26th, 2006

Larry Dunbar, a polymath interested in genetics, psychology, and many other subjects has a new post synthesizing his thoughts on Christianity and the Military-Industrial Complex:

Take for instance the statement: the military/industrial complex will bring about world peace. Someone, a lot smarter than I, said something to that effect, and actually believes this to be true; it is his reality.

The real amazing thing is that this person pretends to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Although I have never read the teachings of Jesus, I have been around the practitioners of Jesus all my life.

The military/industrial complex is what Howard Bloom calls a resource shifter. In Jesus’ time the moneychangers would represent them. I think Jesus had something harsh to say about moneychangers. I may have misunderstood, but I don’t think it had anything to do with world peace.

Larry is referring to my writings on Embracing-Defeat and Jesusism-Paulism. In the former series I argue that a military-industrial complex is necessary for victory in protracted struggles, and that are defeats in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia are tied to a lack of a military-industrial-counter-insurgency complex. In the latter, I explain how early Christians used 4GW to conquer the Roman Empire and establish an order based on universal human dignity.

I’m interested in Larry’s thoughts, and I hope he expands on them. However, I don’t think the point he uses in his post is persuasive. Of course anything shifts resources, because anything costs. The question is whether the shifted resources are worth it. In the case of the Military-Industrial Complex the answer is a clear yes. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a more Christian task for a great nation than building one.

Thank God, truly, that we are half-way there.

 

His comment:

“We are making progress…”

 

The following is my reply to his comment:

From your comment, I believe you have reached the same age as my wife’s youngest nephew, 17. At 17 the human male becomes the smartest he will ever be in his life. I don’t say this lightly or in a way that is meant to cause you to lose face. I am simply adding a spatial location in time and space.

 

From your answer you seem to believe you have the way forward, in a historical sense, figured out, and maybe you do as any 17 year-old can tell you. If there is anything this world needs now is a level of certainty.

 

However, as any 17 year-old has to learn, the day when you become the smartest that you will ever be is the same day you begin the journey in which you eventually learn how little you know, that is if you remain human and an adult human. I wish you, and possibly the world, a save journey.

 

The key word in Military Industrial Leviathan Complex (MILC) is the word Complex. The MILC or in general the Military Industrial Complex is really just a complex adaptive system, which Howard Bloom describes in his book “Global Brain”. The “sixth element” as I described was really the sixth element that should have gone with the five Bloom describes: Conformity enforcer, Diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters, and Intergroup tournaments. The sixth element is the potential (potential energy) that moves the complex adaptive system from the past to the future. In war the potentials are generally fear, interest and honor. In the Military Industrial Complex that potential is growth, or as the corporate identity of want or need inside the complex adaptive system demands, the maximizing of profits.

 

The profits are the advantage the complex adaptive system has in its orientation from observing its environment. The Military Industrial (and some people correctly state, as it becomes corporatized, government) complex will bring peace as long as its profits and your expectations match. As you become more and more incorporated, your expectations (peace) from the Military Industrial Complex will more closely match. You will become more profitable and the world will become more peaceful as total war comes into play.

 

As warfare between humans is all generational and the Military Industrial Complex is neither a part of the human complex adaptive system nor generational in nature, the warfare will be between systems and not humans. Of course the ironic element is that humans are also the ones that will be fighting on the side of the Military Industrial Complex, so one complex adaptive system has a tremendous advantage over the other. The real trick will be for the humans to retain their advantage.

 

While you seem to think the MILC will adapt and become a Military Industrial Sysadmin Complex, I am less than sure. The thing with complex adaptive systems is that they emerge out of complexity. In other words, the complex adaptive system seeks simplicity and the Leviathan represents a very simplistic way of maximizing profits. While the technology can be very complex, once learned, it simplifies any situation. Of course technology can be used to simplify the logic of Sysadmin complexity; the reality of overriding complexity with Leviathan force is always present.

 

The great irony is that the human and other complex adaptive systems are living inside another complex adaptive system (the world) which appears about to make a great change. It is yet to be seen if either the human complex or the military industrial complex can survive. Also both systems are adapting in different ways. It seems to me that while the humans are looking towards some kind of messiah figure, the MIC is looking to move North and South i.e. check out Honduras and Australia. While the Gaps between complex adaptive systems are mostly East and West, the various human complex adaptive systems have decided that survival requires adaptability in both the Northern and Southern parts of the world. As I have surmised before, the people in nature have always been the same North and South, and it was only through technology that the Gaps have been crossed between other systems East and West. And again, that is just because the world turns, and the magnetic field runs north to south.

I am not sure what it all means, but I thought it was interesting in how it flows. I wanted to remain respectful, but also bring in the element of doubt. Socrates was said to not have believed himself smart. I believe we can all learn from him, because what we don’t know is always greater than what we do know. The only difference is we all reach this conclusion at a different age, and some of us never go there. It helps if you are married.

If We Are Going Green:

My wife asked me a question this morning, as I was driving her to work, that I had to think about. To paraphrase: if we are going green, what would stop a person from getting into the business of scraping the cars, we see on the road, out now? She could see that there is going to be a whole new business created in converting the cars we see on the road now into scrap, if not sooner, then later.

She does make a good point. My comment was that they already scrapped the cars when they built them. In other words, just like obsolescence is built into every car, every part used in the assembly of cars, in America, has been given a destination when its time has run-out. At least that was before the Reagan Revolution, when it was implicitly decided that looking out for the next generation wasn’t really that important anyway.

I mean, it seems obvious now that many of the Reaganites were end-of-timers, so regulation, good governance, and looking out for the next generation probably weren’t on the first line of their agenda. In fact, much of the wealth, since the time of Reagan, was borrowed from generations that many probably don’t feel even exist anymore.

So, as my wife implicitly implied, perhaps there is a market, ready to be built, in finding ways to best dispose of the stuff we are now putting in automobiles. Perhaps deregulation put an end to the proper disposal of the things we build and will create a business from out of this new mindset of deregulation. In that case, maybe those people, who climbed aboard the Reagan train for the right reasons, are now going to create jobs and opportunities that are under the US radar, so to speak. If so, I wonder where I sign-up? May I take your car sir?

Of course that is if we decide first that the world is not really going to end, that we should start planning for a future, and that future does not look like the one we have today. Otherwise it’s the same-O, same-O.