The House Upon a Rock Speech

A Speech Built on Sand

 
Vincent J. Curtis 


 15 April 2009

            President Barack Obama is evidently used to speaking in front of his intellectual inferiors or to friendly people who turn off their critical faculties when listening to him.  Obama speaks in clichés, offers half-baked ideas, compares things of different genera, and never offers reasons for why he thinks as he does.  Yet his audiences never seems to react, and say “huh?”  His speech to Georgetown University entitled “The House Upon a Rock” is a case in point.

            At the opening of the speech President Obama promised to speak in prose, not poetry, so we can rightly expect serious analysis, thoughtful examples, and an absence of metaphor, forgiving the metaphor in the title.

            Nevertheless, the audience was fed a diet of opaque cliches:  ‘a larger vision of America’s future,’ ‘lead the world,’ ‘the downward spiral,’ ‘clear away the wreckage,’ ‘repair the damage,’ ‘a larger collapse,’ ‘a vicious economic downturn,’ ‘no choice but to attack on all fronts,’ ‘a 21^st century financial system governed by 20^th century rules.’  And the granddaddy of environmentalist clichés: ‘it is not sustainable.’

            His audience was promised intellectual fish, and they got rhetorical stone.

And no one seems to notice his bewildering shifts of ground, so calm and impassive is this figure speaking before them.

            Obama’s half-baked ideas on the economy collapse upon the most cursory analysis.  Obama’s economic program he says is aimed at ending the economic cycle, which he calls “boom and bust,” and “unsustainable.”  He has assembled an impressive team of liberal economists to advise him.  But none of these economists, or anyone else, has published a paper explaining how economic cycles can be ended.

Since cyclic behavior has been the economic order for the last several hundred years, to call it ‘unsustainable’ is clearly wrong.   Cycles may be undesirable, but anything going on for hundreds of years ought to meet the criterion of ‘sustainable.’

            In his speech, President Obama never said what was wrong with an economic boom

 It must be the ‘bust’ he is opposed to.  But if there is to be pleasure, there must also be pain.  If one is as allergic to excitement as the cool Obama is, and there must be no more pleasure followed by pain, then it must be a neutral numbness that Obama holds as the economic ideal.

The ‘sustainable’ economy is one of a ‘steady-state,’ neither growing nor shrinking, for growth implies increasing demand for the earth’s finite resources and variations in rate of growth are what economic cycles are.

            What makes Obama’s thrust of argument so much twaddle is not the unreality of an undisturbable steady-state economy, but that he promises economic growth at the same time.

It is for the sake of being competitive in the world economy that Obama wants a national health-care system, as well as new investments and new jobs in so-called renewable energy, a better educated and better paid work force, and reductions in the national debt.  He promises new rules for Wall Street that rewards innovation as opposed to reckless risk-taking – as if a rule on paper can spot the difference, since all innovation involves risk.

            Both the magic of the man and the unreality of his proposals are found in his promises to find savings in the Federal budget that will “bring down the debt for future generations.”  After criticizing President Bush for his deficits, Obama’s plan more than doubles the deficit in fiscal 2010 to a trillion dollars, and will eventually double the US national debt.

All his plans are aimed at a ‘sustainable’ economy; that is, one that is not able to pay back debt because it is just able to sustain itself.  If debt were to be paid back, it would be due to rising tax revenues collected from a growing economy, and a growing economy is not sustainable to Obama’s reasoning.

Raising taxes to pay down debt, on the other hand, tends to depress economic activity; and since the ideal economy operates at the sustainable level, a tax increase depresses activity below the sustainable.  Hence, bringing down debt is impossible without violating the principle of a ‘sustainable’ economy; and bringing down debt is said to be necessary for a sustainable economy.

            Barack Obama is used to bewitching and bewildering his audience with quick-footed shifts of ground.  Nobody quick enough to notice seems to point it out.

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Storms in Washington, Sunshine in Ottawa

Vincent J. Curtis


October 6, 2009.

The war news that has been roiling Washington since February has been about Afghanistan.  And it has been bad.  The US/ISAF/ANA forces are losing, and soon will be reached a tipping point when victory by the Taliban becomes inevitable. So goes the storyline.  The latest chorus of this dreary refrain was sung in Washington last month with the leaking of a 66 page report from the US Commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

The leak was clearly made by someone near the top of the military chain of command to provoke US President Barack Obama into action.  So far, President Obama has done nothing beyond deploying the additional 21,000 US troops to Afghanistan that had been committed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

The attitude in Ottawa could not be more strikingly different.  While there is a recognition of a need for more resources to pursue a clear-and-hold strategy, and an admission that Afghanistan has been an underresourced effort since the start of the war in Iraq, talk of a tipping point or of defeat in Afghanistan is dismissed.

In my interview of BGen Denis Thompson, published in the May 2009 issue of Esprit de Corps magazine, I asked him specifically about this difference in perspective between Washington and Ottawa.  He dismissed it as “politics.”  What he meant was that the apocalyptic forecasts of the war in Afghanistan were an example of the way in which political forces in Washington negotiate with each other.  While the Taliban had been giving us a hard time of late, only 15 – 20% of the population supported the Taliban Thompson said, and this is not enough to win an insurgency.  And given the Taliban’s past and current governance practices, it is unlikely that they are going to become more popular in the future.

I received a confirmation of this moderate view from a brief chat I had with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during the CIVITAS conference that was held in Toronto in May.  While he was circulating among what he thought was a friendly audience, I told him of BGen Thompson’s outlook and asked him what he thought of it.  Prime Minister Harper replied that he thought it to be on the optimistic side and said that he felt the war would go on a long time and would be a difficult one to win.

In saying that the war is going to be lost, the Republicans in Washington are overreaching themselves in a attempt to separate President Obama from his political base, the left wing of the Democrat party.  Between victory and defeat, there is a big thing in the middle called “stalemate.”  And that is where we are in Afghanistan.  So long as the US/ISAF/ANA are able to maintain a military force in the field, they are not defeated.  Similarly, so long as the Taliban are able to maintain a force in the field, they are not defeated either.

We already outnumber the Taliban in terms of soldiers in theatre by at least 9:1, and so an increase in combat forces by another 40,000 US troops is not going to decisively change the force ratios.  What needs to be done to tip the scales our way is in the political sphere, and here President Obama  himself can contribute to the cause of victory more than any increase in troop levels.

President Obama is considered, in many parts of the world, to be a closet Muslim, as his reception in Cairo indicates.  He possesses an authority in the Muslim world lacked by nearly any other leader except perhaps Osama bin Laden.  If Obama were to point out that al Qaeda and the Taliban were religious heretics, i.e. Taqfiri, and not jihadi, this would cut the ground of righteousness out from under the movement.  Righteousness is the bedrock of Islamism.  Turn righteousness, the destruction of Taqfir, into one’s own cause, and the forces of the West will have made the essential link with that 15 – 20 % who support the Taliban that the destruction of the movement is possible.

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 A version of this post was published in Esprit de Corps magazine.

McChrystal Expresses Fears of Failure in Afghanistan

Vincent J. Curtis


September 22, 2009.

The Washington Post reported a secret 66 page long memo from the US Commander in Afghanistan to the top brass in Washington that without more forces within the next year, the conflict “will likely end in failure.”  Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal states “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.

The opinion that the mission will likely end in failure and that defeating the insurgency is no longer possible stands opposite to the one expressed to me by Canada’s Brig-Gen. Denis Thompson when I interviewed him last spring.  Thompson was the commander of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and returned from a nine month tour in February, 2009.

It could be that McChrystal makes these defeatist noises in order to make his job easier.  The more troops and more resources he has, the less thinking and less deciding necessary on his part.  Or it could be that he is preparing the ground for a less than boffo success story by the end of his tour.

What is ridiculous, however, are the statements that without more the mission will likely end in failure and defeat of the insurgency will no longer be possible.

According to Canada’s BGen Thompson, at any one time in Afghanistan there are between 20,000 and 25,000 Taliban.  There is a reserve of Taliban in Pakistan, and these fellows do their tours, and return to Pakistan for R&R similar to what western forces do.  But at any one time, the 60,000 US/NATO/ISAF troops currently on the ground in Afghanistan are opposed only by a third of their number of Taliban.  And the western troops are the best trained, best equipped troops in the world while the Taliban are a rag-tag outfit of illiterate, poorly equipped hill tribesmen.

The ANA/ANP add a further 150,000 security personnel, raising the ratio over the Taliban to at least 9:1.  The ANA/ANP receive equipment and training from the western forces and are the same manpower material out of which Taliban are made.

How is it possible that the Taliban could win, as Gen McChrystal warns, against odds as long as this?

What is evident from reading McChrystal’s prescriptions is the confusion under which the western effort is laboring.  In the first place, it supports a government that is admittedly corrupt.  It places captured insurgents into civilian prisons and is astonished to find that ordinary criminals are radicalized into insurgents.  It applies military force in a doctrinaire way to a situation that obviously requires a lot of discretion and the application of native intelligence by the leadership on the ground.  It is fearful of the “Human Rights” enforcers at home, inordinately fearful of taking casualties, and is especially fearful of accusations of imperialism.

The result of this confusion is that all these friendly forces remain curled up in a defensive posture on their bases and leave the countryside to the Taliban.

The statement that there will be reached a point at which defeating the Taliban will no longer be possible stands no scrutiny at all.  The people of Afghanistan would have to be prepared to throw themselves into the arms of the Taliban for the insurgency to succeed, and this is not about to happen.  First, only 15-20% of the Afghan people in the Kandahar sector support the Taliban, according to BGen Thompson.  Second, the Afghans already tried Taliban rule once, and were happy to see it gone.   Finally, the Taliban insurgency is a tribal phenomenon.  Outside the Pashtun, there is no support for the Taliban among the tribes of Afghanistan.

The problem faced in Afghanistan by western military forces is not the superior force they face.  The problem is political, and the politics lies in the capitals of the western powers, especially Washington.

US President Barack Obama is uniquely positioned to solve Gen. McChrystal’s problem for him, just as only a Nixon could go to China.  The question is whether Obama is willing to solve them since he and members of his cabinet were part of the problem in the first place.

It was Obama and the extreme left wing of the Democrat party that blackened the Bush Administration with accusations of torture at Gitmo and Abu Graib.  US Attorney General Eric Holder, whose law firm represented Gitmo detainees, is even now investigating CIA operatives and lawyers of the Bush Justice Department for possible prosecution and disbarment for war crimes.  Obama protected himself from Republican accusations of weakness by declaring the Afghan war the good war, one he would fight.

McChrystal is now about to make Obama pay a price for saying that.  The price will be either in additional American blood and treasure, or in Obama’s political capital with the left wing of his party.

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 A version of this posting was published in The Buffalo News on Sept 27, 2009, under the headline: "Obama doesn't need to send more troops to Afghanistan"

Interview with S/SGT Dan Purdy from Jamestown, NY

Vincent J. Curtis

Dateline: FOB Sharana, Paktika province, Afghanistan

Date: Dec 2, 2010

Note:  FOB Sharana is the location of Brigade Headquarters of Task Force Currahee.  TF Currahee is based on 4^th Brigade Combat Team, 101^st Airborne Division.  TF Currahee deployed to Afghanistan in August and September, 2010, and was among the last of the “surge” brigades ordered to Afghanistan under the strategy agreed to between President Obama and General Petraeus.

Vincent J. Curtis is a free-lance journalist who was embedded with Task Force Currahee Nov-Dec 2010.

S/SGT Dan Purdy is a native of Jamestown, NY.  S/SGT Purdy did a quick interview.

“Sir, I work in the tactical operations center for our brigade.  I’m what is called a battle NCO.  I monitor the situation on the ground.  I help the soldiers when they are in the fight, and when they are not in the fight make sure that they have all the proper equipment.  I get soldiers who are injured off the battlefield, whether it’s combat related or not combat related.  I give them the assets they request to win that fight or make their lives a little bit better.”

“I entered the military service in 1994, sixteen years of active duty service with the army.  I’ve been deployed six times:, this is my third time in Afghanistan, twice to Iraq, and once to Kosovo.  I spent four years in Germany prior to coming to Fort Campbell and deploying all the time.”

“I’m grateful that I provide a quality service to our country, and I’m just proud to be a western New Yorker that’s serving our great country.”

“I’ve spent eleven years in the 101^st.  Before that I spent four years at a training center replicating the bad guys, the enemy.”

In response to the question, “what do you think of the Afghan mission, S/Sgt Purdy said, “Honestly?” 

“This is your third time here, what do you think of the mission now?”

“This mission now?  It’s kind of sensitive.  We’re trying to provide a quality, stable government, a good quality of life that these Afghan people have not previously had.  It’s rough; there’s a lot of fighting; some people don’t want us here; some people do; hopefully there is more good than there is bad.  The mission that we have here is to provide a stable government and to give the Afghan people what they have not had.   Instead of tyranny they may have democracy.”

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Sapping Insurgent Strength in Afghanistan

By:  Vincent J. Curtis

Date:  14 Dec 2010

Dateline: Kabul, Afghanistan

The view from inside Afghanistan of the insurgency is considerably different from image portrayed by the main stream media.  From the outside, you hear experts talk of the “Haqqanni network,” of Islamic fanaticism driving a political struggle against the Karzai regime, and of a country swarming with insurgents.

From the inside, you never hear of a political struggle.  You learn that the number of hard-core insurgents is surprisingly small.  And you never hear of differentiated insurgents like the “Haqqanni network.”  Inside Afghanistan there are just a few hard-core Taliban who throw their weight around, and some enablers.

In Paktika province, where I was embedded with Task Force Currahee of the 101^st Airborne Division, the highest estimates for Taliban was 500.  Paktika, with a population of about 400,000, borders on the Pakistani provinces of North and South Waziristan, which are major centers of Taliban activity within Pakistan.  The results of a band of 500 taking over the governance of 400,000 would be farcical.  The Taliban here are very effective at intimidation, but they could never govern.

In a poor country where unemployment is high, you can make your insurgency seem much bigger than it is with a little bit of money.  In Afghan society, marriage gives a man a certain status.  A young Afghani man can only enjoy female companionship in marriage, and young men cannot get married in Afghanistan without money.  A young man in the village is “ready to do a lot” to earn the money necessary to get married.  Here, a young man can earn five dollars a day shooting at somebody or planting an IED.

According to Major Eric Chamberland, young men are also, in effect, press-ganged by the Taliban into joining their band.  The culture of Pastunwali, the code of honour of Pashtun men, can easily trigger a requirement for revenge, and the Taliban provide a means of satiating the need for revenge.

The result is that a significant portion of the low and mid-level operatives of the Taliban insurgency are not strongly motivated by a political cause and are susceptible to reconciliation with their old community.  The community against which they took up arms needs to forgive these men, however, before they can be accepted back.

“Asking people to throw down their weapons in this country is a crazy idea.  You have to go with the culture,” says Cumberland.

A long time Afghan political figure, the president of Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996, and presently the leader of the largest political block in opposition to President Karzai is Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani.  He proposed at the High Peace Council of Afghanistan the establishment of a program of Resettlement and Reintegration through which these low and mid-level fighters who were not international terrorists, criminals, or narco-traffickers could make peace with their community.

Reintegration is “based on the community and an interaction with the elders and people of the village,” says Cumberland.

Such a program is in keeping with the COIN strategy of ISAF commander General Petraeus, and he directed that ISAF assist with the program.  The ISAF program of assistance is overseen by a Canadian officer, Major Eric Chamberland and his deputy, Gary Younger, a civilian employee of the US Department of Defense.

Chamberland, 38, is a direct entry officer with eighteen years experience in the Regular Force.  He began as an armoured officer, spending the first six years of his career with the Lord Strathcona Horse (Royal Canadians) and the last twelve with Public Affairs.  He is assigned to Strategic Communications of ISAF HQ, having begun his tour on 8 July 2010 and finishing in July 2011.

Younger, 51, is a Public Affairs Officer with ISAF, having over twenty years experience in Public Affairs in the US DoD.  He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism, and says he joined the DoD because he “wanted to make a difference.”  He claims, with a grin and without a trace of modesty, that he got his present assignment though “good looks and charm.”

The resettlement and reintegration program supported by ISAF is a new program, having been in existence as of Dec 2010 for only four months.  According to Chamberland and Younger, the number of reintegration events “number in the low hundreds.”  The main reason given for reintegration is that the men are “tired of fighting, tired of running.” “It’s time to make a decision about the future.”

“They’ve seen the action of military forces against them, and they are saving their skin,” says Younger.  “Every night, you don’t know where you’re going to sleep.  You never know when someone will appear in the door, “ making reference to the precision night raids undertaken by Special Forces.

“It is known that guys disappear in the middle of the night.  They either die or go into jail.”

Making known that there is a program by which a fighter can make peaceful settlement explains why public affairs people are involved in the project.  In the larger centers, broadcast media and local journalists are used as disseminators of information.  In smaller centers and in the countryside, Shuras with local elders are a means of making known the program.  And the Afghan Ministry of Religious Affairs informs mullahs and imams so that the program can become a topic of discussion at Friday prayers.

Since money is a motivator for helping the Taliban, a paying job is a way of promoting reconciliation on the part of the fighter, and where the reconciliation program is doing well the ISAF plan is to make more development aid forthcoming.  There is a benefit to the community also for having its young men come back.  “You pony up some dollars, and build capacity,” says Younger.

“You’re never going to win hearts and minds here,” says Younger, “You forge a link.”

Given that western forces are going to withdraw by 2014, will there be enough time for the program to work, I ask.  “I think so,” answered Chamberland.  “We’re trying to create a ‘bubble of security’ and we are seeing good signs,” he says mentioning Kabul itself and Mazar-e-Sharif, a major city in the north of Afghanistan, and “eventually Kandahar and Marjah.”  In smaller areas, “You bring in forty people and you create a sense of security.  You bring peace.”

A program that is run primarily by Afghans aimed at sapping the insurgency by providing the followers an equal financial incentive as well as the benefits of peace fits in to Patraeus’ COIN strategy.  It can tamp down the violence so long as the carrot and sticks of ISAF are more powerful incentives than what the Taliban can provide.  The question will be what happens after 2014 when the western forces leave and the Karzai regime has to shift for itself.

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 A version of this post appeared in Esprit de Corps magazine, Vol 18.3

What Victory In Afghanistan Will Look Like

By: Vincent J. Curtis

Date: 9 Dec 10

Dateline: Forward Operating Base Rushmore, Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a putrid cesspool of corruption and poverty.  What is victory going to look like in Afghanistan?  In a word: ugly.  It is going to look very much like what we are seeing now, but with Afghan forces gradually taking over responsibility for the tasks presently performed in the field by US forces.  I say ‘responsibility’ because given what I’ve seen there is little likelihood that Afghan forces will actually do them, or if done, done with anything like the vigor and thoroughness exhibited by US forces here.

In Kabul, General Petraeus has instilled a great sense of optimism among the staff at ISAF Supreme Headquarters.  Nothing but sunshine emanates from ISAF HQ.   But here in the field, remote from the capital, the sense among senior Afghans is that some sort of NATO, UN, or ISAF presence will be required beyond the withdrawal date of 2014.

This presence will be necessary, first, to awe Pakistan and Iran to inhibit them from stepping up the pressure of their efforts to destabilize the Kabul regime.  Secondly, westerners will be required to provide adult supervision of the Afghan forces, for there are not enough Afghans who “get it” to enforce duty and discipline upon the Afghan forces, regardless of how much training they receive.  The average Afghan soldier or police may be taught, he may know what to do, but his actually doing it is an altogether different matter.  Finally, since there are not enough educated and honest people in Afghanistan to go around, a western presence will be needed to administer the Afghan field forces in the matters of pay, leave, promotions, training, personnel services, and so on; services that are vital to keeping large organized forces functioning in the field.

Afghanistan has no banking system to speak of and no system of taxation by which the government gets money from the people to survive and operate.  The Kabul regime gets its cash from friendly governments, not from taxation; and the pay of the Afghan forces is provided and administered directly from western governments to ensure that the money is not stolen and the soldiers and police are paid regularly.  The government of Afghanistan is not going to be ready to take over administration of its forces by 2014.

FOB Rushmore lies a short, half hour convoy drive from the sprawling main base for the Currahees at FOB Sharana.  Rushmore is actually in the city of Sharan, the capital city of Paktika province.  A couple of heavily barricaded streets lead from a residential area of the city to the main gates of the FOB.

The security hardware here is double or triple that of FOB Sharana.  Rushmore houses the main instructional schools for the Afghan Uniformed Police, the operational headquarters of their intelligence agency, the NDS; a battalion sized Quick Reaction Force of Afghan Uniformed Police, and the headquarters of the Provincial Police chief of Paktika, Afghanistan.  The actual amount of security at both bases may be the same, but Rushmore is so much smaller that the layers of security are separated by dozens of yards, and there is no large secure area inside Rushmore as there is at the sprawling Sharana.

Instruction in the security and police work that the AUP are intended to perform is provided by the Headquarters & Headquarters Company, Brigade Support Troops Battalion of the 4^th Brigade Combat Team of the 101^st Airborne Division.  To get the nicknames out of the way, HHC are “The Warhawks,” the 4^th BCT are “The Currahees,” and the division is of course the famous “Screaming Eagles.”  The company has a number of specialized support functions, one of which is a Military Police platoon.  The company is commanded by Captain Wayne L. Stiles, 44, of Syracuse, NY, and is himself an MP.

Stiles is a blend of apparent contradictions.  Once a boxer, and a school teacher, a trained MP, Stiles is a devout Christian, a thoughtful, patient, and yet determined man, an avid hunter with rifle and bow, and, like many police nowadays, a skillful diplomat.  He is also a leader in a fine, military sense.  Stiles is a big believer in the efficacy of trust.  He the sort of man well equipped to lead the Afghan horse to water and to teach it how to drink.  This is Stiles’s first deployment to Afghanistan, and was on the parade the week prior to my visit when a suicide bomber attacked a graduating class of Afghan police, killing eleven AUP, wounding nine Afghans, and one US soldier.

The first Sergeant of the Company is Ryan Brassard, 32, of Hudson, New Hampshire.  Brassard has done six tours in Afghanistan between 2002 and now.  A devout New England Patriots fan, he too is a blend of contradictions.  When he has to, he can exhibit the tough as nails, no nonsense demeanor that one associates with a sergeant-major type.  Yet, like Stiles, Brassard, when he lets his guard down, is a pleasant and intelligent conversationalist.  His experience in the Afghan theatre makes his opinion a factor to weigh on operational matters.

If teaching, training, and equipping were all that was necessary to create a police force that would do Afghanistan proud, you could not ask for better hands to do the molding than Stiles, Brassard, and the troops of HHC.  In baseball, there is pitching, and there is catching.  If the catcher can’t catch, the battery is not going to work.  In Afghanistan, there is the instruction and there is the actual performance of the job.

One of the major points Stiles tries to impress upon the Afghans is security.  A suicide bomber should not just be able to infiltrate through three layers of security and attack a graduating class of police.  Yet, it happened, and the Afghan force responsible for maintaining security exhibited the lassitude of a boring outpost where nothing ever happens barely a week after the attack.  The helmets and rifles of the guards at the main gate I saw stacked on a table in front of them, and their body armor rested against the back of their chairs.  A machine gun lay unmanned and unprotected by sandbags on the roof of the guard hut.  The AUP cannot seem to tolerate the slightest personal discomfort however much it might save his life.  Stiles - a company commander - leads a small patrol out past the main gate, himself a living model of what he expects the AUP to be.  He questions them about what they were taught but does not direct them to live up to the standard.  Giving orders to Afghans does not work.  They perhaps can be mentored, but not ordered.

Through a “terp,” Sitles points out to them that General Dowlat Khan, the commander of the Paktika province police, has his compound within the base that these four jokers are supposed to protect, and he might not like being attacked on his own base by the Taliban.  The four lower their heads but are otherwise unmoved to improve.

Rushmore also houses a battalion sized Quick Reaction Force of AUP, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Haroom.  Stiles visited Haroom in his quarters to present him with a poster in praise of the work his men have done.  Haroom is a large man in his late fifties or early sixties.  His lower teeth are all of gold.  Dignified and phlegmatic, his men eye him intensely.  In talking with Stiles through the terp, Haroom is non-committal and unenergetic.  There is no evidence of the merit by which he attained his position; perhaps it has something to do with his tribal status.

The head of the Afghan National Police in Paktika province is Brigadier General Dowlat Khan, and is Haroom’s boss.  Dowlat Khan is an entirely different proposition from Haroom.  Dowlat Khan is energetic and charismatic.  A constant stream of visitors come in and out of his office for decisions.  He spends a lot of his time out of his office inspecting and speaking to his men.  A photograph of his giving a speech to the people of the province sits on his desk.  He seems to understand that the role of police in a civil society is to protect the people and not oppress them.  His American counterpart, the Commanding Officer of 4^th BSTB, is Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Beckman, 43, of Hampton, IL.  He rates Khan as “effective.”  Kahn gave me a personal interview, and I rank him as one of the Afghans who “gets it.”

Khan believes that while his police will be able to bear most of the burden of policing the countryside and keeping Taliban and bandits at bay, Afghanistan is surrounded by countries that sponsor and support insurgent activity in Afghanistan, and a small NATO/ISAF presence would be helpful at keeping the power balanced.  He told me he is not comfortable with a complete western withdrawal after 2014.  He argues, albeit self-servingly, that freedom from terrorism in the world is dependent upon keeping the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and that is the reason why some western forces need to stay after 2014.

Beckman is also pessimistic that the AUP will be able on their own to carry the whole burden of security after 2014.  Not only are there profound training issues that will take time to resolve and overcome, but due to the acute shortage of educated people, the personal Administration of the police forces, essential for developing a mature and stable force, is lacking and will continue to lack until Afghanistan is able to raise the general literacy level of the country.

In Kushamond and in Rushmore the same story seems to recur.  Here and there are individual Afghans who are “switched on” and “get it.”  However, there is a general lassitude among the population as a whole, and this lack of grip permeates into the police forces and government agencies of Afghanistan.  “Inshallah” The will of Allah is the excuse for every failure.

Here and there are individual Afghans who inspire hope in westerners that this war will end with an Afghanistan that can stand on its own and begin to progress again.  To those who have worked and fought and shared danger with these individuals it would be heartbreaking to see them go down in a defeat to the Taliban.  But personal emotions and romanticism cannot impair the judgment concerning what is best for America.

The soldiers I have seen in Afghanistan are among the finest people America has to give.  They are here because their country sent them here.  They are here fighting for the cause of America, and some of them died here for the cause of America.  That they fought and died here is because America and Americans needed to be defended and protected, and it was only by chance that the battlefield was here.  And there are men like Stiles prepared to stay here for as along as necessary to prevent another 9/11 in America.

We owe it to them, those who fought and those who died, to do what is best for America in the widest sense.  In cooperation with its allies and the Afghan government, the plan is to begin a military drawdown in 2011, passing the burden along to the forces of Afghanistan.  By 2014, even the training mission will be over and the entire burden of maintaining their constitution and system of government will be carried by Afghans.  That is a reasonable schedule from the point of view of America and its allies.  “The prospect of hanging in two weeks concentrates the mind wonderfully” said Benjamin Franklin.  No foreign power was around to nursemaid the American constitutional government, and it is not unfair to expect an ancient people like those in Afghanistan to be able to look after their own affairs.  Some help against foreign intervention is not unreasonable to ask for, or provide.

Four different sources gave me their estimate that no more than 500 Taliban were in Paktika province, which has a population of about 400,000.

The Taliban taking over Paktika province, and indeed Afghanistan, would be like a small but violent motorcycle gang taking over governance of the city of Buffalo.  Yet, conditions in the countryside here make that prospect not unreasonable, however bad, indeed farcical, for the country such results would bring.  Most of the people just don’t care.  It seems that Americans care more about keeping the Taliban out of Afghanistan than Afghans do.  No amount of money or development can win the “heats and minds” of the Afghan people: the money is stolen and development is “inshallah” – to be enjoyed while it lasts.

It would be a loss of face for America for the Taliban to move back in after American forces leave.  That may be a prospect America has to face and account for in the years beyond 2014.

Afghanistan does not need another surge of combat forces.  What it needs is a surge of accountants, engineers, intelligence and special forces operators.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a free lance writer who has previously reported on the War on Terrorism from Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  He was recently embedded in Task Force Currahee, 4^th Brigade Combat Team, 101^st Airborne Division, in Paktika province, Afghanistan.

Versions of this post appeared in The Buffalo News and the Syracuse Post-Standard early in 2011.