Afghanistan redux, AGAIN!

It is hard not to be sarcastic sometimes when writing about our involvement in Afghanistan.

For example

Early this morning the CBC Radio hourly news had a brief clip with General Hillier struggling to answer questions about the chit-chatting that seems to be going on over there in Afghanistan with the Taliban. [I can't find the clip on the CBC website but maybe it will be up later.]

Hillier, to my ear, wasn't prepared for the question the CBC reporter asked which likely explains his baffle-gab response. Which if I can remember and paraphrase was that, of course, chit-chatting is going on and has been going on since 2002 but it's only with the moderate Taliban.

Huh, what?

But didn't MacKay, Minister of Foreign stuff other than American which is handled by Harper, say this wasn't the case, and never would be, because if it was, the next thing someone like Jack Layton might suggest would be having tea and cookies with that guy those US people are either scared to death of or hate. What-is-his-name again, Osama bin something or other.

Someone down at the DND palace has got to keep poor Hillier's briefing and speaking points up-to-date. And please, in order to maintain some level of confidence it maybe useful to coordinate with PMO, so everyone who has little trips over there, can get their stories straight when trying to spin to the public.

It could just be a matter of definitions or there's a sliding scale. Yah, that's the ticket, there's a scale. Yah and it's colour coded. Yah, yah it goes from white (or maybe taupe), through peach puff, up to violent, sorry, violet. We only talk to the taupe guys and some of the peach puff characters the rest are "real, real" bad, oops, "evil people" real "civilization destroyers", eh.

And then we have this article in today's Toronto Star by Thomas Walkon, wondering about the approach we seem to be taking in Afghanistan.

I like that he specifically raises the matter that anyone questioning the Conservatives, the military establishment or the crazed flag wavers, on what we are doing and why we are in Afghanistan, is treated like the village idiot, at best, or as a threat to Canada, at worst.

It's awful, I know, but I sometimes like people who express similar world-views to my own on issues, particularly matters of such importance, to any real democracy, such as free speech, and criticism and questioning of government.

But that is about as far as it goes, in terms of his criticism of what we may actually be doing on the ground. We are doing, I think, exactly what the Americans and British troops are doing.

Mr. Walkon seems to think that the US military might have had a reincarnation (William Lind is keeping his fingers crossed). This is based on the announcement in the New York Times that the Pentagon has now issued the new joint army/marine field manual called, FM 3-24/FMFM 3-24, Counterinsurgency. And that some, Frist for one, are wondering whether the Taliban shouldn't be brought into the Karzai government.

His skepticism about our military's approach, the tank thing as a demonstration, is likely the appropriate frame of mind to have, but, will the US change? - well time may tell - but it is, I'll bet, too late already for Afghanistan, even if the approach does change. And Walkon certainly doesn't seem to have read what others think, see Jeffrey Record for example, on US attitudes and military sea-changes regarding counterinsurgency.

If the mess we have gotten ourselves into, is really just a continuation of the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, then all bets are off, and Walkon is right that in two years time our political and military leaders will be singing completely different songs, but it won't be because of the tactics NATO has adopted. It will be because we didn't really know what we were getting into.

A question I'd still like someone in the MSM to ask our military thinkers and planners "what are you reading?". There are enough studies out there on the pros and cons of past both failures and successes in dealing with the counterinsurgency approach to war to provide the basics for considering what is going on in Afghanistan. So has Hillier et al read any of them? Every counterinsurgency, similar to every war, will be unique in terms of physical terrain, society and culture, as well as the local political landscape, in which it takes place. So how are we adapting? Unfortunately I don't have any sense from what I hear from our government or military that I should have confidence in how they are going about creating a success in Afghanistan - other than the kill - build approach, which may not actually work in a clannish culture.

In fact my sense is that we are stalled. We may have had the 3D plan when we started back there in force in January 2006, but, as Hillier indicated during his last trip over there, the death of the foreign affairs officer stopped the development function which is only beginning to get started again, now.

It seems that our plans keep getting knocked off-balance. But maybe tanks will help? I guess we'll see.

Just for interest, below are links to a few other post on the new manual:

New Counterinsurgency Manual, Same Old Military

The Pentagon Rediscovers Counterinsurgency

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