Does Obama understand his strategy?

Captain's Quarters:

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So assuming that Obama has selected population-centric counterinsurgency as his strategy, he certainly doesn’t appear to understand exactly what that entails. We have been training the ANA and ANP for eight years now, and had Provincial Reconstruction Teams deployed throughout Afghanistan for years. Army human terrain teams have studied the tribes, agricultural experts have advised and counseled Afghan farmers, and U.S. Soldiers and Marines now must be aligned with Afghan Army in order to conduct operations.

Yet in the Afghan Security Forces, drug addiction continues, they sleep on duty, they refuse in cases to go on night patrols, they have proven to be generally inept and unreliable in fire fights, and the Afghan people hate the corruption within their ranks. Training up an Afghan Army is not about teaching them to fire a weapon or go on patrol. Instilling esprit de corps, reliability, commitment and faithfulness is not about thirteen weeks or even a year of basic training. It’s about a culture, country and social and religious milieu that can sustain such an institution.

Pointing to an end date for troop presence is the height of irresponsibility. It’s either an intentional lie (in which case he is a liar and the troops’ families have false hope for and end date), or it’s the truth, in which case he clearly has confused ideas on just how long counterinsurgency takes to succeed – if it can succeed at all.

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The average counterinsurgency last about 11 years. Some like that against FARC have been going on for 40 years. The length depends on the nature of the insurgents and the resources committed to fighting them. It requires a commitment to stay until they are defeated. In the case of the Taliban they can just go to areas not under our control and wait a year until we leave the inept Afghan forces for them to defeat.

We should remember why we are fighting this war. It is to defeat those who would give sanctuary to an enemy trying to destroy us. While it would be nice if the Afghan government contributed to that fight, it is unrealistic to think they can do it on their own in 18 months.