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address to kansas state university on military strategy
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are experts at counterinsurgency warfare; the British have a long tradition of service
in that part of the world and bring unique insights; the Germans and the French and
the Italians have superb national police organisations for Afghans to emulate. In my
view, whatever drawbacks of alliance management there may be, they are more than
outweighed by the benefits of operations in unison. With the US providing the bulk
of forces, it should come as no surprise to anyone that some may avail themselves of
lesser contributions. But that doesn’t detract from the very real impact many of them
make. It also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t exhort them to do more. For our part, we
have become the best counterinsurgency force in the world and we didn’t do it alone.
We had a lot of help.
That brings me to number two: force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied
in a precise and principled way. War costs the societies that engage in it a great deal;
lives and resources diverted from pursuits that a more peaceful time would allow. Even
now, as we are poised to reach 1000 troop deaths in Afghanistan, we’re reminded of the
thousands more Afghans who have been killed and the hundreds of coalition soldiers who
have likewise perished; not to mention the property and infrastructure damage that will
yet take years from which to recover. Though it can never lessen the pain of such loss,
precisely applying force in a principled manner can help reduce those costs and actually
improve our chances of success. Consider for a moment ongoing operations in Marja in
Afghanistan, General McChrystal chose to move into this part of Southern Afghanistan
specifically because it was a hub of Taliban activity. There, they had sway over the people;
there, they were able to advance their interests to other places in the country. It wasn’t
ground we were interested in retaking so much as enemy influence we were interested
in degrading. And so this is a much more transparent operation. We did not swoop in
under the cover of darkness. We told the people of Marja and the enemy himself when we
were coming and where we would be going. We did not prep the battlefield with carpetbombing
or missile strikes. We simply walked in on time. Because frankly the battlefield
isn’t necessarily a field anymore. It’s in the minds of the people. It’s what they believe to
be true that matters. And when they believe that they are safer with Afghan and coalition
troops in their midst and local governance at their service, they will resist the intimidation
of the Taliban and refuse to permit their land from ever again becoming a safe haven for
terror. That is why the threshold for the use of indirect fire in this operation is so high.
That’s why General McChrystal issued more restrictive rules for night raids. And it’s why
he has coalition troops operating in support of Afghan soldiers and not the other way
around. In this type of war, when the objective is not the enemy’s defeat but the people’s
success, less really is more. Each time an errant bomb or a bomb accurately aimed but
against the wrong target kills or hurts civilians, we risk setting our strategy back months,
if not years. Despite the fact that the Taliban kill and maim far more than we do, civilian
casualty incidents such as those we’ve recently seen in Afghanistan will hurt us more in
the long run than any tactical success we may achieve against the enemy. People expect
more from us. They have every right to expect more from us.