But, then, they offer what has become the COIN mantra: "The United States certainly can't kill its way to victory." The solution has to be political and developmental; we have to protect and win over the population.
They naturally mention the two most irksome issues for all proponents of the war, the use by the Taliban of sanctuaries in Pakistan and long-standing connections between Pakistani intelligence and Afghan insurgents, something Pakistan sees as a counter balance to India, its hated neighbor.
Fick and Nagl, of course, don't mention huge, overarching factors like the possibility of political eruptions across North African and the Middle East seeping into Pakistan or Afghanistan.
They certainly don't mention the growing international scandal of CIA agent and possible assassin Raymond Davis arrested for murder by Pakistani authorities and what effect this deepening affair may have on the US presence in the region. Boiled down to its essence, the Pakistanis are complaining about being treated like lower-status wogs by the US. They are demanding the US reveal all its covert CIA and other intelligence agents loose in Pakistan, which would be a major setback for US proponents of the cross-border war.
The mantra of current US policy is to "protect the Afghan population." Such a policy revolves around the imperial confidence that, with enough troops and materiel, we could "protect" Afghanistan and Afghanis from insurgents forever. But as everyone knows, to effectively do that would mean deploying so many US soldiers for an indefinite period that the notion is impractical. No, it's absurd. Such a martial fantasy would lead to the bankruptcy of the United States and the US population would eventually erupt as in Cairo.
So the solution is, according to Fick and Nagl, a calculus of selectively "protecting the Afghan people in key population centers and hubs of economic activity." This, of course, has to be done in conjunction with very sophisticated public relations and propaganda (now, it seems, even "brainwashing") aimed at the home front and especially key decision makers in Washington. Fick & Nagl's op-ed is, of course, part of that public relations campaign.
Bing West, on the other hand, is currently criticizing the COIN program from the right. He is a highly respected warrior/journalist who thinks the solution to Afghanistan is to give up on counter-insurgency theory and do more of what infantrymen are supposed to do: Kill the enemy. Here's how he puts it in his new book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy and the Way Out Of Afghanistan:
"These social services -- governance, economics, the addressing of grievances -- transformed the military into a giant Peace Corps. ... It is self-defeating to cling to a theory that has enfeebled our warrior ethos. ... Neutralizing the enemy, not protecting the population, must be the main mission."
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