Inside Afstan...and out

1) From BruceR. at Flit:

First:

This post was disappointing. Leaving aside the sheer impossibility at this point of the U.S. demanding and getting the mass firing of "Karzai cronies", this part is just obtuse:

"We need to turn these villages into anti-insurgent strong points... We should approach the villagers and ask what they most need. It could be a well, an irrigation project, an access road or something else. The bottom line is that the project(s) should be a local call, not something that we assume that they need. The deal in providing the project should be that the village population will form a popular force unit to protect itself and the project(s). We can arm them and pay for the militiamen's time, but they need to do the defending themselves. If we use mobile air assault forces to back up these popular forces, we can deny the Taliban the quick, relatively bloodless victories that they have achieved so often in the past."

Look, we've been there a while now. It's safe to say we've tried that. Over and over again, all over the place. Now there are arguments why it hasn't often worked, sure: undermanning/underresourcing being an obvious one. But any insightful piece about Afghanistan needs to start by acknowledging that this approach has been tried many times before, and so far seems rarely successful.

Here's the most-likely enemy COA in 2008-09 in the above scenario...

Second:

Josh Foust has repeatedly criticized American writer Ann Marlowe for being in the tank with the military as regards Khost Province. I don't find her writing very compelling [see here] - although the approach her favourite soldier, Lieut. Col. Scott Custer, reportedly used in Khost in 2007-08 with the local U.S. maneuver force divided into platoon-sized teams living at district centres with the ANP rather than brigaded (and thus shut up) in a FOB, seems worthy of further study and possible broader application as a COIN option for the Afghan countryside.

That said, I found her Bloggingheads appearance with Robert Wright deeply uncomfortable "turnaway TV", like watching the David Brent character an episode of the UK series of The Office. She may have a lot of time in country, but she simply doesn't seem very smart...

2) And now outside Afstan:

U.S. official resigns over Afghan war
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting

When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed [one battalion of the US Army's 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, concentrated in Kandahar province, is there along with a Romanian battalion].

"It's something I'll carry for the rest of my life," he said of his Iraq experiences. "But it's something

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter [text here] to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay...

Update: From BruceR. at Flit:

...Junior-grade diplomat with PTSD pulls pin after 2 months. Check. The simple statistical fact is that PTSD sufferers are more likely to jump ship or otherwise be sent home from tours. And the two-month point of a tour is about the lowest you go, and the most bewildered you feel. The only notable thing about this seems to be the better-than-average quality of the departure letter...