Afghani-where?

By Cernig

Spencer Ackerman, writing at the Washington Independent, has an excellent breakdown on some of the implications of Petraeus' elevation to regional command. He calls it "the rise of the counterinsurgents" and writes:

Several military analysts who respect Petraeus expressed concern that his promotion to Central Command will end up placing the needs of the Iraq war above the broader U.S. interests in the Middle East -- including the Afghanistan war, and the reemergence of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. They also sound worried that the new Iraq commander Bush nominated, U.S. Army Gen. Raymond Odierno -- Petraeus' corps commander in Iraq -- is not up to the task.

"Both Petraeus and Odierno are, for understandable reasons, very invested in Iraq," said Colin Kahl, a counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University and the Center for a New American Security. "Putting an 'Iraq guy' in charge of Centcom and pairing him with a field commander that, historically, has endorsed maxing out our presence in Iraq may make it more difficult to shift needed resources to Afghanistan. This could create friction with an incoming administration if the new president chooses to make Afghanistan a higher priority."

Justin Logan, a foreign-policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, agreed on this. "It may be time to change Centcom's name to 'Iraq Command,'" Logan said. "The move also raises concerns whether the White House expects Petraeus to mount a propaganda offensive against Iran." Fallon fell out of favor with the Bush White House over Iran, while Petraeus has cited Iran as a major source of concern during his two rounds of congressional testimony.

On one of the counterinsurgency community's premiere blogs, Abu Muqawama, a measure of anxiety rose over Petraeus' inclination and ability to see beyond the Iraq war. "Just how much attention will King David pay to Afghanistan?," wrote the pseudonymous "Charlie." "(Can you put a decimal point on "slim to none"?)"

A similar note was struck by her co-blogger, the blog founder "Abu Muqawama." "Is a commander who has seen the region solely through the prism of Iraq for this long going to be able to take a step back and examine America's regional interests dispassionately?" he blogged. "And when the commander in Iraq demands more soldiers and material for the war effort that might be more needed in Afghanistan, is David Petraeus really going to be the kind of man who can say no?"

...Terrence Daly, a retired Army officer and long-time mentor to many counterinsurgency theorists, considered the appointment auspicious for both the course of both ground wars -- though not necessarily for the rise of counterinsurgency within a military often reluctant to embrace it. "This moves Petraeus into an important post from where he will be able to oversee the prosecution of both of our major counterinsurgencies, Afghanistan and Iraq," Daly said. "It moves him away from the Army, however, where he was regarded as a possible successor to Gen. George Casey as chief of staff of the Army; and, unlike Casey who wants to take the Army back to the emphasis on conventional fire and maneuver warfare, one who would carry out far-reaching reforms to enable it to deal with COIN [counterinsurgency] more effectively."

Like many others interviewed, Daly expressed more concern about Odierno's move to Iraq commander than Petraeus's move to Central Command. "The big question," Daly continued, "is did Odierno, who was reported in Tom Ricks's classic [book] 'Fiasco' to be totally lacking in any understanding of COIN when he was in Iraq as commander of the 4th Infantry Division in 2003, really change his thinking?"

Brandon Friedman, an Iraq veteran and blogger for the veterans-advocacy group VoteVets, called the shift "wrong, wrong, wrong." "I'm less concerned with the fact that Petraeus is moving to CENTCOM than I am with the fact that Odierno is taking over for him in Iraq," Friedman wrote in an email. "He's already been there for well over a year. He's not supposed to stay in theater this long without a break. They're supposed to alternate between command jobs and staff-type jobs. By keeping a commander in theater like this, he runs the very real risk of 'going native,' as we say in the Army. The Army is supposed to get fresh eyes on the situation with every new rotation -- and that's for a reason. Keeping this one guy there to do Bush's job tells me that the Bush administration doesn't trust any other generals -- out of the dozens qualified."

It's definitely one of the best analyses of these promotions on the web today, and definitely bears close reading and thinking about. Afghanistan is still far more of a mess than even Iraq, and the actual high command of Al Qaeda is still safe and regenerating thier capabilities just across the Pakistani border. It's unlikely that Saint Pet will take his eyes off his old command long enough to give the real primary front a second glance. Even if he did, his previous reliance on troop surges rather than reconstruction efforts wouldn't work in Afghanistan anyway. Joshua Keating at FP Passport quotes analyst Anthony Cordesman as saying that even if a few extra brigades of troops could be shaken loose from Iraq:

You can't suddenly move those brigades to Afghanistan. They require retraining. They will have to be re-equipped and restructed to fight a different kind of war on different terrain, dealing with a different culture with different values.

I also have to say that while troops are important... far more important are the aid teams and advisory teams... rapid turnover of deployments in a country where personal relationships are even more important than they are in Iraq, the inability to take aid workers out into the field where they are really needed... The problem isn't troop levels and it won't be solved by moving out of Iraq."

Keating notes that:

It seems ironic that the takeaway message of a national-defense conference was that what we traditionally think of as defense can only do so much. The next president's foreign-policy team will need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time if it wants to begin to address the problems left over from the current one.

As a team, Petraeus and Odierno may be too focussed on one theatre to do that.