Word has it that President Obama will commit another 34,000-to-46,000 troops.
Otherwise, he faces dozens of resignations at the Pentagon. These guys believe in COIN warfighting. But still, overwhelming DoD briefings are very different from reality-testing.
Are Petraeus and McChrystal addressing the lowest-level "stupid" facts:
- FOLLOW THE MONEY to heroin: Afghan poppies source 90% of the world's $80,000,000,000-a-year heroin trade. How is this connected to the war? Are we "eradicating" poppy crop? Specifically, what is the policy?
- PASSIVE TACTICS: Are the troops wasted warding off IEDs that get planted randomly? In rural areas, why does the enemy initiate most contact?
- OFFENSE: Are attacks with drones and tip-offs from villagers our main offense? What are our back-tracking capabilities? Is Dutch and Australian experience with bloodhounds being expanded and integrated?
- AP3/CAP -- Afghan Public Protection Program is budgeted for 25,000 local SWAT. How is recruitment going? When does AP3/CAP start generating offense?
More BTF :::
Ronald "St. Ronnie" Reagan hit this type of presidential management problem with a bulls eye:
"Facts are stupid things."
He knew from experience that brilliant people can make a case for just about any policy position. The smarter they are, the easier for them to miss the simplest, lowest-level "stupid" facts.
Reagan was what you call an "intuitive" thinker. Sometimes you want to listen to these people. When they are successful, they are equipped with first-rate Bullshit Meters.
Not sure there's anybody in the White House, now, like that? Maybe Biden?
I'm darn sure there's nobody there with hands-on experience working back-tracking to generate COIN offense. That meant taking a four element operation -- a dog team, command/liaison, two flank units -- and using the scent trail to find a base for insurgent operations. Then you kill people.
Our COIN anti-insurgents absolutely need offense to defeat these guerrillas.
Trained sniffer dogs are also critical to cleaning out explosives shops. That was a major contribution from Military Police Command, that made The Surge reasonably effective at driving criminal gangs out of northwest Baghdad. Obviously, bloodhounds are better for this than the usual sentry dogs -- shepherds and Malinois.
Facts matter.
Same difference for poppies and heroin. The Afghans are estimated to get $3- to $4-billion a year back from the heroin trade. Less than a fourth of that gets to the poppy farmers.
Are we going to buy up the poppy crop?
Are we going to register the farmers? Is AP3/CAP going to spread fast enough to make this work? Can AP3/CAP block the taxation of gangsters and farmers that finances the insurgency?
[CAP is Combined Action Program. Bill Corson. Written up in "The Betrayal. CAP was hated by the Army older Establishment, because it was a logical and effective alternative to Westmoreland's blunder -- killing the most of 2,600,000 Vietnamese with his search-and-destroy mass destruction. ]
What is U.S. and ASIF policy? Is there a real plan, other than bashing rivals to the Karzais and their Durranni tribe. Letting Durranni grow poppies is not working out all that well.
So... if we are going to kill people by the tens of thousand, maybe hundreds of thousands, then we need to know what the policy is on poppy crops, heroin and how these generals intend to generate full-force offense.
Stupid facts. Not malleable by propaganda spin.
We'll see about that when our President speaks to this situation and to his decision.
And God bless America..... indeed.