When last we looked at the trap of relying on toolboxes, I think one point got underplayed.
In fact, the challenge the Army faces is remarkably similar to the so-called “Tool Box Approach” to policy analysis. As Carl Patton warned many years ago, “Some disciplines spec¬ify analytical routines in detail for many circumstances. This may encourage some people to begin work on a policy problem because it lends itself to their favorite method. Ideally the problem should dictate the methods, not vice versa.” …
[There is] an enormous danger of falling into Patton’s trap [in Afghanistan]: adjusting the situation to fit the approach, and not necessarily letting the situation determine the approach. It’s not quite platitudinous, but it’s awfully close.
The one good thing about the war dragging on this long is we actually have a good record now of failures (and far fewer successes). There was the British agreement to hand over security in Musa Qala, in Helmand Province, to a group of tribal elders and their tribal security forces. Even as Americans tended to criticize the deal, many Afghans at the time lauded the arrangement—Weesa, for example, a Pashto-language newspaper in Kabul, wrote, “such decisions benefit our people.” Yet within a few months, the Taliban had violently occupied the entire area, and despite the high-profile “reconciliation” of Mullah Abdul Saleem, who promised to partner with the British to provide security, there is almost no government security presence beyond the city limits. It was an abounding failure.
The cascading failures of the drone war in Pakistan is yet another example. With the understanding that they are not disinterested observers, Pakistani authorities are claiming that only one in six drone strikes actually kill their intended targets. Most disturbing about their numbers is the realization that, in addition to 14 al Qaeda militants, these drone strikes have killed almost seven hundred people since 2006. Even if the Pakistani numbers are wrong, the point they highlight is obvious—the intelligence behind these Predator strikes is abysmal. Even within Afghanistan itself, the U.S. military would never tolerate that ratio of dead bad guys to dead innocents (it has already resulted in significant changes in posture and engagement). More recent hints that high profile targets—once touted as dead by U.S. and British authorities—might have survived their own Predator strikes, even as many innocents perished.
Both examples hardly exist in a vacuum. They are symptoms of a much broader issue, which is the severe myopia of policymakers. It’s something we’ve been complaining about for years, and it’s not looking to go away. President Obama’s latest “strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan is really little more than a well-meaning list of desired outcomes, while the actual nuts and bolts of how to achieve it seems to be “like Bush but more so.” Missing in that discussing is the idea that, perhaps, the Bush team got it catastrophically wrong and needs a total rethink. Such a rethink won’t happen so long as Afghanistan and Pakistan remain beholden to a short sighted and often willfully blind policy community.