What type of military strategy is needed in Afghanistan? Not any strategy that the leaks say Obama is considering. We need to think less troops in a fourth generation type warfare, if any at all. Obama should declare victory in Afghanistan as LBJ should have in Vietnam and bail out of Afghanistan in a New York minute.

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Someday we'll be leaving Afghanistan like a beaten dog with our tails between our legs. In this submissive pose we'll wonder why we didn't leave earlier. Just as in Iraq we will have gained nothing from staying one extra second. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have been examples of 4th generation warfare in which the superpowerin this case us, always loses.

The October 27, 2009 article John Kerry's Afghan war speech; Foreshadowing Obama's decision? reminds us of Kerry's thirty-eight year old question how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? relating to the Vietnam quagmire.

Obama is getting a wide disparity of opinions regarding Afghanistan. At one extreme is Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Afghan war report in which he reportedly asked for something like 40,000 more U.S. troops. Kerry is at the opposite end of the spectrum as the article states Maybe more like 10,000 to 15,000 to fight a targeted (limited) counter-insurgency/counter terrorism strategy. In short, Kerry's pitch is, less is more.

Gone, as The Ticket reported three weeks ago, would be the broad defeat of the Taliban, annihilation of Al Qaeda and construction of a viable democracy plan of the past. Said Kerry:

"Achieving our goals does not require us to build a flawless democracy, defeat the Taliban in every corner of the country, or create a modern economy what we're talking about is good-enough governance, basic sustainable economic development and Afghan security forces capable enough that we can draw down our forces.

The US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, has warned against plans to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan, until President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption. The Karzai government remains dogged by accusations of incompetence and corruption. The most glaring example of the latter is that Karzai's brother is a drug dealer who is also being paid by the CIA.

A senior diplomat has become the first US official to resign in protest at the war in Afghanistan, in a move that has shaken the White House, according to reports. Matthew Hoh, 36, a former captain in the Marine Corps who fought in Iraq before joining the US State Department, resigned from his post as the senior US civilian in Zabul province, a Taleban stronghold in Afghanistan. He said that he believed the war only fuelled the insurgency, the Washington Post reports.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," Mr Hoh wrote in his resignation letter, dated September 10.
"I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

He said that many Afghans were fighting the United States largely because its troops were there. While the Taleban was a malign presence, and al-Qaeda needed to be confronted, he said, the US was asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what was essentially a far-off civil war.

You have to understand that the superpower never wins in 4th generation warfare and that each day we are there we make more terrorists than we kill. Even Rumsfeld realized that as exemplified in his October 16th 2003 'slog memo'.

The USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT INTELLLIGENCE STRATEGY FOR FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE states:

War theorists believe we have entered into a new generation of warfare where an evolved form of insurgency uses all available networks (political, economic, social, military) to convince the enemy's decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit. They have named this new era of war fourth generation warfare.

Our technological advanced military is useless against fourth generation warfare as the article continues Fourth generation warfare is defined as an evolved form of insurgency that uses all available networks ( political, economic, social, military ) to convince the enemy's decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit. Unlike past wars, it does not win by defeating an enemy's military forces, but by defeating their political will. Fourth generation warfare is not new, but has been evolving for over seventy years. It is the only type of warfare known to have defeated major military powers. It defeated America in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia; the French in Vietnam and Algeria; and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan".The defeat of major powers by weaker opponents makes it essential to understand this form of warfare and adapt accordingly. Success against a fourth generation opponent is contingent on the willingness and ability of a state to adapt to this fundamentally different type of war.

Every time we use an unmanned drone attack in Afghanistan and kill innocents we are creating entire nations of adversaries.

Does the US understand Afghanistan's culture. If not we are doomed to defeat as the article continues Cultural intelligence is the study of an adversary's culture; it requires an understanding of their habits, intentions, beliefs, social organizations, and political symbols. It not only helps establish interpersonal relationships; it can also help determine the form of warfare, organizational structure, and motivations of a fourth generation opponent. Cultural intelligence is key to ensuring success in humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts.

Any variant of what Obama is discussing now for the strategy in Afghanistan will include the reconstruction of the war ravaged country. The article continues:

Cultural intelligence is key to ensuring success in humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts. Regardless of the mission, engagement with the populace is crucial and the soldiers' ability to interact with them can greatly effect the outcome. Currently, the Department of Defense has a limited strategy on cultural intelligence. The cultural analysis organizations that do exist are under-funded, marginalized, and dispersed.52 Cultural training is only provided to soldiers prior to deployment and is often brief and oversimplified. The Department must develop a holistic approach to cultural intelligence to ensure that it is incorporated into plans and operations at all levels. Training and education programs must be developed that focus on foreign areas studies, language, and political and social structures. In addition, soldiers must be provided the opportunity to be immersed in the culture to learn first hand cultural and social knowledge.

Just remember the failed effort of reconstruction in Iraq. We'd build a bridge in a Sunni area only to have the Shiites come along later to blow it up. We are doomed to have the same problems in Afghanistan if we don't follow the instructions of concentrating on cultural intelligence.

This article castigates the US plan of advancing technology in warfare as the article continues As noted earlier, fourth generation warfare involves non-state actors, organized in decentralized networks, instead of the traditional hierarchical networks of nation states. Human intelligence is the only intelligence discipline capable of penetrating these networks to learn the true plans and intentions of an adversary. This is evident in recent failures of technical intelligence capabilities. Many believe that had the United States maintained a vigorous human intelligence capability, the events of September 11, 2001 could have been averted. In addition, the failure to win the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan has also been blamed on inadequate human intelligence collection capabilities.

When we kill a Muslim in Iraq we generate terrorists not only there but in other Muslim countries also in any impoverished country who hates the US for hoarding too much of our world's resources. What specifically have been our failures in Afghanistan?

At the start of our war in Afghanistan this article told us we were doomed to failure which serves to amplify the point that we haven't adapted to Fourth Generation Warfare. The 5 May 2002 article Military Response to Fourth Generation Warfare in Afghanistan states:

 At this writing, the American military response to 11 September has been confined to the war . It may be too early to look at lessons learned, but it is not too early for an assessment of whether or not we have been successful fighting Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) as operations unfold in Afghanistan against the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Further, it is not too early to adjust our tactics, techniques, and even the American Way of War to combat an illusive, determined, and deadly enemy that operates outside the framework of the nation-state.
While our foes are adapting their ways of war, operating outside the nation-state paradigm, we largely operate as a second generation military trying to fight fourth generation adversaries. We have yet to transition the American military from second generation warfare to third generation warfare even though both the Army and the Marine Corps dallied with maneuver warfare concepts in the 1980s before relapsing into the more comfortable attrition-style warfare. The immediate challenge we face is reviving our third generation maneuver warfare efforts to accommodate the challenges in combating 4GW.

It is refreshing to remember that not too long ago we were in a quagmire only in Afghanistan. Both the Army and Marine have unsuccessfully attempted to change from second generation military tactics.

The article enumerates some similarities between the Vietnam and Afghanistan quagmires and states:

  One of the significant differences is that so far, the US has resisted the temptation of committing large numbers of ground forces to the fight. At present there are about 6,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan compared to a high of 550,000 in Vietnam. According to the Washington Times, General Tommy Franks is keeping the U.S. force levels low to avoid presenting lucrative targets to the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Significantly, if necessary, the U.S. can easily extract 6,000 troops far easier than 600,000. A smaller operational footprint enhances strategic options.

This article also applauds our strategy of having few troops on the grounds because the more that are in danger the more that will be injured or killed. The same concern was raised during the Surge of troops in Iraq.

The article details that we let bin laden escape and said that was due to:

 The real failure was in misreading the cultural intelligence that should have told us that our somewhat erratic allies were not up to this fight. Motivation of the friendlies should have been a top priority. One suspects that our Special Operations Forces advisors knew as much and probably reported it through the chain of command. Eventually, the Afghani warlords were turned around, but by then it was too late.

What does this article written at the beginning of our war in Afghanistan predict? It states Our military forces so far have mixed results in trying to cope with 4GW. We have the potential of dealing with 4GW by learning from the Special Operations Forces and their experiences and applying them in new ways based on people and ideas, not addiction to technological hardware. We will fail if we insist in using traditional 2GW military responses with conventional forces where they are inappropriate.

Can we fight 4GW and win? The jury is still out. We have had some success on the ground in Afghanistan, but the recent employment of conventional forces in Operation Anaconda is regression to a failing concept. No matter how many Predator Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) armed with Hellfire missiles, no matter how many satellite photos, and no matter how many signals intercepts, this war, like all others, will be won or lost by ideas.

How does this concentration on fourth generation warfare in Afghanistan correspond to what Obama is being presented?

The article Too Big to Fail? Why All the President's Afghan Options Are Bad Ones states:

Meanwhile, the U.S. command in Afghanistan is considering a strategy that involves pulling back from the countryside and focusing on protecting more heavily populated areas (which might be called, with the first U.S. Afghan War of the 1980s in mind, the Soviet strategy . The underpopulated parts of the countryside would then undoubtedly be left to Hellfire missile-armed American drone aircraft. In the last week, three U.S. helicopters -- the only practical way to get around a mountainous country with a crude, heavily mined system of roads -- went down under questionable circumstances (another potential sign of an impending Soviet-style disaster.

Who is our ally in Afghanistan? Well, the enemy says he is our hand-picked man-- President Hamid Karzai--"the mayor of Kabul" because the second election has his opponent Abdullah Abdullah withdrawing in protest. The article continues -- the winner will, once again, be the Taliban. (And let's not forget the recent New York Times revelation that the President's alleged drug-kingpin brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, whom American officials regularly and piously denounce, is, in fact, a long-term paid agent of the CIA and its literal landlord in the southern city of Kandahar. If you were a Taliban propagandist, you couldn't make this stuff up.

The GOP loves playing the fear card. Tricky Dick utilized fear in his absurd domino theory to keep us in Vietnam. Now those who are advocating that we stay in Afghanistan are utilizing similar tactics.

The article states:

As things go from bad to worse and the odds grow grimmer, our leaders, like the worst of gamblers, wager ever more. Why is it that, in obscure lands under obscure circumstances, American administrations somehow become convinced that everything -- the fate of our country, if not the planet itself -- is at stake? In Vietnam, this was expressed in the absurd 'domino theory': if Vietnam fell, Thailand, Burma, India, and finally California would follow like so many toppling dominos. Now, Afghanistan has become the First Domino of our era, and the rest of
the falling dominos in the twenty-first century are, of course, the terrorist attacks to come, once an emboldened al-Qaeda has its 'safe haven' and its triumph in the backlands of that country. In other words, first Afghanistan,
then Pakistan, then a mushroom cloud over an American city. In both the Vietnam era and today, Washington has also been mesmerized by that supposedly key currency of international stature, 'credibility.' To employ a strategy of "less," to begin to cut our losses and pull out of Afghanistan would -- they know with a certainty that passeth belief -- simply embolden the terrorist (in the Vietnam era, communist) enemy. It would be a victory for al-Qaeda's future Islamic caliphate (as it once would have been for communist global domination).

This article assumes Obama will send more troops to Afghanistan. Does the US have unlimited resources or will this war bankrupt us as it did Russia? The article continues Let's think about what this means for a moment: According to the U.S.
Congressional Research Service, the cost of keeping a single American soldier in Afghanistan is $1.3 million per year. According to Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post, it costs the Pentagon about $1 billion per year to station 1,000 U.S. troops in that country. It's fair to assume that this estimate doesn't include, among other things, long-term care for wounded soldiers or the cost of replacing destroyed or overused equipment. Nor do these figures include any civilian funds being spent on the war effort via the State Department, nor undoubtedly the funds being spent by the Pentagon to upgrade bases and facilities throughout the country. In other words, just about any decision by the president, including one simply focused on training Afghan soldiers and police, will involve an outlay of further multi-billions of dollars. Whatever choice the president makes, the U.S. will bleed money.

Is Afghanistan going to become our 51st state? Why would we want such a barren, mountain filled hell on earth?

The article concludes:

If the Afghan War is already too big to fail, what in the world will it be after the escalations to come? As with Vietnam, so now with Afghanistan, the thick layers of mythology and fervent prediction and projection that pass for realism in Washington make clear thinking on the war impossible. They prevent the serious consideration of any options labeled "less" or "none." They inflate projections of disaster based on withdrawal, even though similar lurid predictions during the Vietnam era proved hopelessly off-base. The United States lived through all the phases of escalation, withdrawal, and defeat in Vietnam without suffering great post-war losses of any sort. This time we may not be so lucky. The United States is itself no longer too big to fail -- and if we should do so, remind me: Who exactly will bail us out?

Now the GOP is proclaiming that Hasan perpetrate terrorism at Fort Hood. Bin laden is cognizant of that just as he comprehends that having the US puppet Karzai is helping to fuel the Muslim hatred of the US. The extremist Islamic groups know that the GOP thrives on fear mongering and understand that if Obama continues this war in Afghanistan it will be to appease the right-wing GOP, not their base, the liberals. Obama isn't going to attract one GOP vote no matter what he does in Afghanistan. If politics is part of his decision in Afghanistan and why wouldn't it be, then he'd do better to leave Afghanistan right now so that the progressives can think he is a peace lover. We are getting the idea that he has no ideological stances and it is not attractive for us to think that he is a leader who views all decisions by how it will gain him seats.

Who is going to pay for this? We are close to seeing our empire totter and fall as did Russia's because of what? What can we gain? What ending of this war is going to gain us anything more than the ending of Iraq did?

Authors Bio:
Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.

Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"”it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.

I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.