more opinion about Afghanistan

A friend and I were debating Afghanistan and whether counterinsurgency would work without sufficient troops to implement security for the population.  His suggestion was to pursue a strategy of counterterrorism.  The following article has something to say about that.

Excepts from the Afghanistan Myths article by Tom Cotton 

1) A counterterrorism campaign is an effective alternative to counterinsurgency.  Some analysts believe precision counterterrorism strikes can defeat al Qaeda without a simultaneous counter-insurgency. This logic is faulty for several reasons.

First, General McChrystal is a counterterrorism expert, yet he has proposed a full-spectrum counterinsurgency. A decorated Green Beret, he has commanded the Army's Ranger Regiment, Delta Force, and Navy SEALs. His recommendation is entitled to great weight.

Second, a counterterrorism-only approach will lack actionable intelligence. Senior al Qaeda operatives are extremely hard to track at a distance: They move constantly, live among fierce loyalists, and avoid phones, radios, and computers. The best intelligence tends to come as tips from cooperative locals who have come to trust troops on the ground. Locals can't provide such tips if there are no troops to give them to.

Third, our counterterrorism tools have fatal limitations. Predator drones and special-operations forces have limited ranges and need in-country bases, which generate large protective forces, vulnerable supply lines, and sensitive political questions. Aerial or

2) The Afghan people don't want us there.  Although we frequently hear that the fiercely tribal and proud Afghans instinctively rebel against foreign forces, I did not encounter this sentiment during my deployment. Afghans rarely objected to our presence, but they did complain that we haven't provided basic security. When I asked if they would accept more American troops in exchange for improved security, the overwhelming answer was yes....

3) America cannot win a war in Afghanistan, the "graveyard of empires." How can America succeed where Alexander the Great, the British, and the Soviet Union struggled? This refrain belongs, as they say now in the military, in the graveyard of analogies....

4) America needs a new political partner before committing more troops. This myth stands counterinsurgency doctrine on its head. A government battling an insurgency is by definition weak, else the insurgency would never have gained strength. We must accept this inescapable fact and focus on helping improve President Hamid Karzai's government, not use it as an excuse to abandon his government....

5) We should not put troops in harm's way without thorough debate. True, but we already have 68,000 troops very much in harm's way, and they urgently need reinforcements. The continuing delay demoralizes those soldiers and puts them at greater risk. Also, our allies among the Afghan people and government and in the Pakistani government are wondering if America is truly committed to victory. According to General McChrystal, the security situation is deteriorating and may be irreversible unless we can seize the initiative in the next year--and he made that assessment in August. To put it bluntly, we are not winning in Afghanistan, and without more troops we will lose....

6) The military will break if we send more troops to Afghanistan. This fear, heard often about Iraq in 2004-06, is no truer now than it was then. At the 2007 peak, the United States had 200,000 troops deployed to Iraq (170,000) and Afghanistan (30,000). Currently, there are 110,000 troops in Iraq and 68,000 in Afghanistan, well below that peak. And 60,000 troops are expected to leave Iraq by next August as more troops flow into Afghanistan. Thus, overall deployed troop levels in 2010 will remain the same or fall....

Read the whole thing.  Points 1 and 4 are the ones that interest me.  When I was having the debate on counterterrorism, Tom's first point above, the second sub-point Tom makes is the one that struck me.  We need actionable HUMINT to generate targets for counterterrorism units.  How do we get that without a counterinsurgency force in country?

Point 4 concerns me, as there is no strong ties between local government and the national government, and there is a lot of corruption at both levels.

Several items that concern me that were not on Tom's list are the existence of sanctuaries in Pakistan, seemingly out of our reach, and whether there are sufficient troops for counterinsurgency.  You can't win a counterinsurgency with untouched sanctuaries, so the theory tells us.  The lack of sufficient troops means that we will have to pursue an oil spot strategy, where we secure specific towns and grow security outwardly.