To the Editor:

Frederick W. Kagan’s critique of U.S. strategy in the war in Afghanistan is half right [“Did We Fail in Afghanistan?,” March]. He is correct to argue that, at the start of that campaign, the U.S. did not deploy a ground force large enough to ensure the destruction of al Qaeda and control over the country. He is also correct to assert that U.S. operations in Afghanistan emphasized the use of air-power. But he is incorrect when he suggests that the United States should have—or could have—deployed a multidivision ground force in Afghanistan in time to ensure the capture of fleeing senior al Qaeda leaders. He is also wrong when he ascribes the decision not to attempt such a deployment to the Bush administration’s infatuation with airpower.

Mr. Kagan simply does not appreciate the difficulty of deploying such a ground force halfway around the world. He argues that the 24 days between the time planning for war began and the bombs began falling should have been sufficient “to put a substantial portion of a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) on the ground in Afghanistan.” This force, in turn, could have swiftly established bases for “a substantial influx of troops from the 101st Airborne and its parent XVIII Airborne Corps,” making possible their deployment within 40 days from the decision to go to war.

The idea of moving a force this size into a country like Afghanistan in the timeframe proposed by Mr. Kagan boggles the mind. An MEF consists of approximately 45,000 Marines, several hundred tanks and armored vehicles, thousands of trucks and support vehicles, more than 100 artillery pieces, and 300 or so helicopters and aircraft. The 101st Airborne alone has some 17,000 soldiers with 260 helicopters. The XVIII Airborne Corps consists of tens of thousands of people, thousands of vehicles, weapons systems, and kilotons of equipment. These forces required more than 40 days to deploy to Kuwait and attain combat-ready status before the war in Iraq, even though their equipment was moved largely by sea. In Afghanistan, U.S. forces would have had to deploy entirely by air, and once there would have had to be re-supplied largely by air.

The only rapidly deployable force in the U.S. Army is the 82nd Airborne division. Other so-called light-infantry divisions are light only in comparison to the mechanized and armored divisions. The Marine Corps can deploy the battalion-sized Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU), three of which are on continuous patrol around the world to provide rapid response. Although one MEU containing some combat vehicles and Cobra gun-ships was deployed in southern Afghanistan in November, Central Command considered it too light to engage Taliban forces in the Kandahar area.

Further, it is difficult to find evidence to support Mr. Kagan’s accusation that the campaign in Afghanistan was based on an infatuation with airpower. With the exception of Special Operations units, airpower was the only effective force that the U.S. could deploy rapidly. The value of these long-range bombers and naval strike forces—including carrier-based aviation, cruise-missile-capable ships, and attack submarines—cannot be underestimated. Given the difficulties associated with acquiring access to local air bases, these capabilities provide the most responsive military force available to us.

In hindsight, some additional U.S. ground forces might have been useful in the fighting around Tora Bora. But it is not clear that the postwar situation in Afghanistan requires, as Mr. Kagan suggests, a large contingent of U.S. ground forces. What is more urgently needed is a Marshall Plan for that country.

Daniel Goure
Lexington Institute
Arlington, Virginia

_____________

 

To the Editor:

“Did We Fail in Afghanistan?” is badly in need of balance. Frederick W. Kagan states that the Special Operations units fighting alongside local forces in the north failed to route the Taliban and al Qaeda. But he neglects to mention that large mechanized forces cannot simply roll through high mountain ranges; they depend on close air support, a tactic he is wrong to consider a new style of warfare. It was used by the U.S. Army in Vietnam, by the Marine Corps in Nicaragua in the 1920’s and 30’s, and even in the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

I wonder if Mr. Kagan understands the kind of logistical support required to marshal several battalions of infantry via helicopters on such short notice. He would have us believe that adding an extra Marine Expeditionary Unit or Army division would have put an end to al Qaeda. What about the caves, bunkers, and open borders? How would he have deployed these forces to capture all the fleeing elements?

Staff Sgt. Seth E.
Davis (USMC)

Twentynine Palms, California

_____________

 

Frederick W. Kagan writes:

Current discussions of U.S. armed forces and their future show three salient features: a wild exaggeration of the capabilities of airpower, a similar exaggeration of the limitations on ground forces, and an almost complete disregard for the political aspects of warfare. Daniel Goure and Seth E. Davis offer a number of thoughtful comments that nevertheless highlight these tendencies. In particular, they make every aspect of the deployment and use of ground forces sound difficult or impossible, with Mr. Goure referring to the “kilo-tons” of material that need to be moved to support a Marine Expeditionary Force and Sgt. Davis arguing that armored vehicles cannot operate in the terrain of Afghanistan. Neither of them addresses the real and serious problems that the air campaign in Afghanistan encountered, the limitations on its success, or the political problems that ensued from the path we pursued.

The truth is that the rapid deployment of ground forces is not as impossible as these and other writers make it out to be; that heavy forces can operate successfully both in mountainous and in urban terrain; and that the adverse political consequences of the way we now choose to wage war can far outweigh whatever technical difficulties might inhere in the use of ground forces.

Are ground forces impossibly slow to deploy? Over and over, we hear that it took fully six months to get the necessary troops to Saudi Arabia in 1990 in preparation for the first Gulf war. But that is not really so. Between mid-August and early October, a period of about eight weeks, we moved three entire divisions—the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Air Assault, and the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized)—from the U.S. to the Gulf. A pause then ensued as the political leadership considered options, only later deciding not only that we would attack Iraq’s forces in Kuwait but that we would do so with two corps. In short, the total deployment period lasted six months not because we were unable to move faster but because of the incremental way we decided on what we would send and what our intentions were.

As the recent war in Iraq showed, we can deploy even faster when time really presses. The order for the 101st Air Assault Division was issued on February 6; the unit began loading its equipment onto ships on February 11; the equipment started to arrive in Kuwait on February 28; by mid-March it was ready for war. Total deployment time: about six weeks. As the war went on, it emerged that a limited number of heavy forces could be moved still faster. Thus, elements of the 1st Infantry Division (a heavy unit based in Germany), ordered to northwest Iraq in late March, flew their tanks and other equipment to an airfield that had been seized by the 173rd Airborne Brigade (stationed in Italy) and were engaged in operations two weeks later.

All of which is to say that, as I suggested in my article, we should have been able to get several battalions of the 101st Air Assault Division into position in Afghanistan before beginning operations around Tora Bora. Contrary to Mr. Goure, the problem was not that such a deployment was impossible but that little or no creativity was applied to the question at the highest levels of the administration. Instead, the movement of ground forces was simply dismissed from the outset as being “too hard”—a dismissal that itself reflected the tendency to believe that everything connected with land power is hard and everything connected with airpower is easy. We will not be able to achieve any of the “balance” that Sgt. Davis rightly demands until we approach the debate over land vs. airpower in a much less biased way.

But this entire discussion misses the main point of my article. In the immediate aftermath of our invasion, the political situation in Afghanistan was terrible. Over the ensuing months, it has deteriorated further. The reason is not that Afghanistan needs a Marshall Plan but that we pursued a military strategy detrimental to the development of a stable political order in that country.

The fact that we did not use our own ground forces, whatever difficulties might have been involved in their deployment, meant that we had to rely on indigenous soldiers to do the fighting for us. The only game in town was the Northern Alliance, primarily Tajik warriors whose ranks included a number of radical Islamist groups. Since they were the ones who won the war on the ground and seized the capital, we were compelled to place them in power. But a Tajik government of Afghanistan, with or without a Pashtun figurehead, cannot be stable. What is more, since we had no significant ground forces of our own in the country when the war ended, rival warlords, using money the CIA had given them to provide us with soldiers, set up their own palatinates around the country.

The upshot is that we have had to spend more than a year trying, with very limited success, to restore central control over Afghanistan. Where there is no such central control, there can be no Marshall Plan. By using the airpower approach, we won the war and set ourselves up to lose the peace. The final outcome still hangs in the balance.

There is no denying that it is in many respects easier to employ airpower than to deploy and use ground forces, even if the difficulties attending the latter are fewer than is routinely alleged. The goal in war, however, is not to find the easiest, cheapest solution; it is to find the solution that achieves the political objective. Otherwise, there is no point in fighting at all. If we are to succeed in future conflicts, we must begin by recognizing that it is the synergy of land power, sea power, and airpower that brings rapid, decisive, and, above all, politically meaningful victories. It is astonishing how thoroughly this basic lesson of military history has been forgotten today.

_____________

+ A A -
You may also like
Share via
Copy link