Formulating the Afghan Mission, Part I

By Shoshana Bryen

WASHINGTON, D.C. –There is a military adage, “Don’t tell military people to ‘do’ something; tell them what you want done.” Give commanders a mission and they can tell you what resources, strategy and tactics they need to carry it out. The Obama Administration’s inability to formulate a coherent military mission in Afghanistan was blindingly exposed in Sunday’s Washington Post. It is best to quote:

In June, [General Stanley} McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.”

“Is that really what you think your mission is?” one of those in the Situation Room asked… (T)hat was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, and it was enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan-the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.

“I wouldn’t say there was quite a ‘whoa’ moment,” a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. “It was just sort of a recognition that, ‘Duh, that’s what, in effect, the commander understands he’s been told to do.’ Everybody said, ‘He’s right.’ ”

“It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent” of the NSC document, said [NSC Adviser James] Jones, who had signed the orders himself. “I’m not sure that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same thing, as a military commander.” But what McChrystal created in his assessment “was obviously something much bigger and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended.”

Whatever the administration might have said in March, officials explained to McChrystal, it now wanted something less absolute: to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, deter it and try to persuade a significant number of its members to switch sides. “We certainly want them not to be able to overthrow the government,” Jones said.

On Oct. 9…the “mission” slide included the same words: “Defeat the Taliban.” But a red box had been added beside it saying that the mission was being redefined, Jones said. Another participant recalled that the word “degrade” had been proposed to replace “defeat.”

Military commanders execute the mission they are given. It is not their responsibility-indeed it seems out of place to expect them to “interpret” the “intent” of the Commander in Chief. As a retired four-star general, NSC Director Jones knew that. Gen. McChrystal’s decision to apply a counterinsurgency strategy, with its accompanying troop request, was based on the requirement of the March mission to defeat the Taliban and secure the population.

What appears to have happened is that the Obama Administration constricted its vision on Afghanistan at some point after the March strategy document and didn’t tell Gen. McChrystal. Monday’s Post confirmed that Defense Secretary Gates told the House Armed Services Committee the U.S. effort in Afghanistan would be more focused and limited. “A good part of the debate and the discussion,” he said, “revolved around ways to narrow the mission.”

From “Defeat the Taliban and secure the population,” to what?

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Bryen is special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. (JINSA). Her column is sponsored by Waxie Sanitary Supply in memory of Morris Wax, longtime JINSA supporter and national board member.