This is interesting, because this is the same pattern of action that was taken with Iraq. The Joint Chiefs, with the leadership of General Pace, went to town about a new strategy for Iraq.
The product from these Afghan/Pakistan strategy meetings should be interesting, and will probably revolve around the same kind of themes as the Iraq strategy. The plan will probably focus on bringing in more troops to hold what property they have taken over there.
Of course Pakistan will be a huge deal. But most importantly, they must find a way to win over the Pashtun and find a moral legitimacy within the people. That Hamid’s Afghanistan needs to be the people’s Afghanistan, and not looked at as NATO’s Afghanistan. No army has ever been able to succeed there, without winning over the Pashtun. The Taliban know this, they know the dynamics of the villages and warlords, and they know how to play the angles.
We need to beat the Taliban at their own game, and learn from our experiences there to make that happen. Our war machine must be a learning organization* if it wants to succeed in Afghanistan. That is the lesson from Iraq, and that is the lesson of a prior war called Vietnam. We ‘ll see how this turns out, and I look forward to the results of the commision. –Head Jundi
*referencing John Nagl and his COIN book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.
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U.S. COMMANDER CALLS FOR OPERATIONS IN PAKISTANI TRIBAL REGIONS
9/12/08
By Abubakar Siddique, Ron Synovitz
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, has announced that he is commissioning a new military strategy that will cover both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Mullen’s statement came on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and said plans include the tribal regions of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders are thought to be hiding.
Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional committee in Washington on September 10 that the new strategy will allow American forces to fight militants in Pakistan’s tribal regions as well as in Afghanistan.