oyuki

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Something to ponder

From Aces of Spades and Karagush comes this gem of a possible strategy on securing Afghanistan for its people. To paraphrase Carville, "Its the people stupid."

To boil it down to one single sentence is a tall task since Major Gant's has a lot of hard won knowledge to buttress his arguments. Go read it and think on it some.

He is adapting the current COIN strategy and tuning it to meet the realities of Afghanistan. Classic COIN is what Gen. McChrystal is arguing for with his troop request. And that comes down to making the local villages/tribes small fields of peace guarded by sheep dogs and fences. And once a few are established, to expand the peaceful fields further out. This in turn will force the feral curs who wage terrorism into smaller and smaller spaces until there is no room left for them. An insurgency can not be sustained when there is no populace that is willing to shelter them.

Go read Major Gant's article and think on it. Make your own decisions on whether he has anything worthwhile to bring to the conversation. But while we sit in front of our computers in relative luxury, there are brave Special Forces soldiers on the pointy end of the spear keeping us safe. They deserve the best leadership possible and our support.

4 comments:

pat said...

Let me add that Kara has spent a bit of time among these people.

Anna said...

Yes she has so I listen to her. Too bad Obama and Biden won't listen to real experts.

Mike's America said...

Isn't this similar to what we did in Iraq? And didn't that work?

Anna said...

It did work but that was Bush. So instead Biden wants to resurrect the Soviet plan for pacifying Afghanistan - hole up in the cities and just bomb the countryside. It really worked for the Soviets. Do I need a sarcasm tag?