A lot of people have reached out to me in the last 48 hours because of the rapid downfall of the Afghan government. Some want to offer their support, some want to discuss my perspective, some want to make sure that I know their perspective. I welcome all the texts and emails and appreciate you all for reaching out.
I thought I would send out a quick newsletter with some of my initial thoughts about Afghanistan.
Before I offer my thoughts, I want to give a little bit of my background. I deployed to Afghanistan three times between 2012 and 2018. On my first deployment, I was an infantry platoon leader in Kandahar. Most of that deployment was spent on combat missions. Sometimes on these missions, we would talk with villagers, sometimes we would hit IEDs and spend the day towing vehicles back to the base, sometimes we would get in gunfights with the local fighters.
On my second deployment, I spent the first three months on the staff of the Train, Advise, Assist Command – South. This command was responsible for Kandahar, Zabul, and several other surrounding provinces. I spent the next six months as a liaison to the Resolute Support Headquarters in Kabul, which is the headquarters in charge of the entire theater of Afghanistan. On my third deployment, I was a company commander for the theater reaction force. We were responsible for responding to emergencies all throughout Southern Afghanistan.
I served at every level in Afghanistan from the tactical to the strategic. I planned and executed patrols, I served on staffs that made operational plans, I briefed those plans to General officers for approval, and I was in the room as the four-star General received briefs from the commanders and civilians around the country and around the world. I am not the world’s greatest expert on Afghanistan, but I am not exactly clueless, either.
You will read a lot of journalists and analysts in the coming weeks peddle their pet theories about Afghanistan. They will provide all manner of explanations for what happened, and what we did wrong, and whose fault it is, and what we should have done, and what we shouldn’t have done, and so on. But, as it turns out, you don’t have to know that much about the details of what happened to prevent another Afghanistan. In fact, most of the details you will read about are pure noise. If you are familiar with The Incerto, or if you’ve read Systemantics, then you will have a very good understanding about why we lost. A much better understanding than anything you will read in the newspaper or see on the news.
But before I get to my very simple rules for preventing another Afghanistan, I want to offer some personal insight. I am very disappointed in Army leadership. Not just for losing the war, (we’ll come to that) but because I haven’t heard a peep from any senior officer about our massive failure as a military.
When Warren Buffet makes a mistake, most recently with Precision Castparts, he comes right out and says, “I made a mistake. Here’s what I did wrong.” That sends a message, not only to the shareholders but also to all of Berkshire Hathaway, that when something goes wrong, he owns the mistake. Buffet never comes out and says, “Well, it’s Charlie’s fault.” (Charlie Munger is Buffet’s longtime business partner). He doesn’t say, “the business was great when I bought it, but then the management screwed it all up.” He certainly doesn't just sit quietly and hope that no one bothers him. He owns the problem and the solution. And then he does what he says he is going to try to not let it happen again. And then he delivers results.
I have, as of now, seen no such leadership from Army Brass. We just lost the longest war in the country’s history, and I haven’t seen a single officer stand up and take ownership for the situation or for implementing solutions. I haven’t seen a single senior officer stand up and say, “Here’s what we did wrong. Here’s what we are going to do to fix it. We will never let this happen again.” I don’t even need specifics, I just need someone wearing some stars to reach out to me and all the other officers and say, “I know we got our ass kicked. Don’t lose faith. I won’t let this happen again. Whatever it takes, as long as I live, we will never lose another war. As God as my witness, we will win, or I will die next to you on the field of battle.”
I used to be proud to tell people that I am in the Army and that I served in Afghanistan. Now, I feel embarrassed. I don’t want to be associated with the losing side. But I don’t think it is just me who feels this way. If you are an American (or if your country fought alongside us and trusted us), your Army lost. I get the sense that many of you also feel defeated. The Brass doesn’t just owe its officers leadership, it owes you some leadership, too. Some of you may feel let down by the military in which you placed so much trust, and you are right to feel that way. Why should you trust the Army to keep you safe from foreign threats if it can’t win a relatively small war like Afghanistan? Army Brass has an opportunity to own the situation and start to rebuild the trust that was squandered in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. I hope it seizes this opportunity before it slips away.
But enough of that. How do we keep this from happening again?
Here is a key question to ask. Whose fault is it that we lost in Afghanistan? Forget the bullshit partisan answers like, “it was Bush for putting us there! It was Obama for showing signs of weakness! It was Trump’s fault because oRaNgE mAn BaD! It’s Biden’s fault for pulling us out!” This is a critically important question because the answer is that it is no one person’s fault. And that, in and of itself, is a problem.
Ownership of a decades-long disaster is related to the tragedy of the commons. Imagine that a small village by a lake has a very hearty appetite for fish. People spend all day fishing on the lake until all the fish are caught. Whose fault is it that all the fish are gone? Well, villagers, it’s all y’all’s fault (apparently the lake is in Alabama). There is no one person to blame for the fish being gone. No one is responsible for the lake.
“But Austin,” you might say, “we have Generals that we placed in charge. Surely, it must be their fault.” You aren’t wrong, but let’s stick with our fishing village analogy to discover why it is more complicated than that (and simpler).
Imagine that after a horrendous year of no fish, the village decides to spend an enormous amount of money to pay a company to stock the lake with new fish. To make sure that the lake does not get over-fished, and that the fish population remains at a healthy level, the town council establishes a fishing regulatory agency to oversee the lake fishing activities. The agency will have a staff and a czar. The czar can only serve a one-year term and then retires.
The first czar is a very conscientious and strict man. But he quickly finds out that none of the villagers are very happy that his policies severely limit the number of fish that they can catch. They used to be able to fish as much as they want, but now there are limits to when they can fish, how long they can keep their boat in the water, and how many fish they can catch. They constantly harass the fishing czar about being too stringent. When his year-long term is over, he is all too happy to pass the reigns to the next czar. The next Czar has no intention of being harassed like the last czar. He wants to make sure the villagers stay happy and don’t bother him. So, what does he do?
Naturally, he goes to the town council and says, “look, I don’t want to say anything bad about the last guy, but this fish situation is way worse than I thought. The fish population is way below the levels that we need to sustain a healthy population. We need to spend the money to bring in more fish and stock the lake again." Because the council suffers from a severe case of sunk cost bias, they order another stock of fish to be dumped in the lake.
Now that the lake has a healthy stock of fish, the new czar can be a lot laxer with the rules about fishing. The villagers are much happier with the new rules which allow for longer fishing times and more fish to be caught. This Czar now has every incentive to make the situation look as rosy as possible to the town council to demonstrate how effectively he is managing the fish population.
Halfway through his one-year term, the czar’s staff comes to him and says, “look, the fish population is dropping too fast, we need to place restrictions on fishing immediately!” But the czar can’t be wrong because he is the czar, so the staff must be wrong. He tells the staff, “No, no, you miscounted. You aren’t counting close enough to the shore, you’re missing at least half the fish. If you don’t know how to count in such a way that demonstrates that the fish population is as strong as I know it is, then I guess I’ll have to find a staff that can. And that means that none of you will ever be the fish czar.” The staff very quickly learns to count the correct way, which is the czar’s way.
At the end of his term, the czar, with the help of his cowed staff, demonstrates to the town council that the fish population is as healthy as ever. There is a big ceremony where the new czar (czar number three), thanks the outgoing czar (czar number two), and tells everyone how honored he is to be the czar and how he will try to live up to the example of his predecessor.
Czar number three assumes responsibility. Part of his staff is newcomers and part of the staff has been there from the beginning. After a little probing, czar number three is shocked to find that the population isn’t nearly as strong as the previous czar had said, in fact, it’s in rough shape. But he can’t blame the previous czar publicly, after all the previous czar got him the job and has friends on the town council. Czar number three is clearly in a bind. Luckily, he only has to hold out for one year. He knows they are going to need more fish. He goes to the town council and says, “we need more fish because of, ummmm, the weather! Yes, the weather was much colder than we thought, and a lot of fish died as a result. Therefore, we need to spend the money to have the lake restocked.” Reluctantly the council agrees, not seeing another option as the town must have fish. If not, they might not get re-elected!
Czar number three emplaces some light restrictions that are just enough to keep the fish population healthy but strict enough to enrage the villagers once again. Near the end of his term, czar number three, with the help of his staff who know the drill, does the same conjuring tricks with the population data as czar number two to make his own performance look good. Czar number four takes over, and the cycle repeats. Czar number four will lift the restrictions to pacify the villagers, quietly reveal that the situation is not good, but if the council spends the money to restock the lake, or build new boat ramps, or purchase new blockchain-powered fish counting equipment (enabled by state of the art machine learning, artificial intelligence algorithms), or purchase a new speed boat so that they can count the fish faster, then all will be well. At the end of his term, he goes to the council and the newspapers and talks about how great things are at the lake. Of course, large fisheries are always in need of the expertise of previous czars, and czars typically go on to have very successful careers elsewhere in the fishing industry.
My learned and discerning audience is almost certainly able to understand exactly how this metaphor relates to Afghanistan. There is a lot more I could add to this metaphor and a lot more I could relate to it. I can't give it a full treatment here, but I will ask one simple question about the fishing regulatory agency: what is its purpose? Ostensibly, its purpose is to manage the fish population to make sure that the village always has enough fish. But, obviously, it does not serve this purpose in reality. In reality, its purpose is to justify its own existence, ensure that it obtains an ever-larger portion of the village's budget, and produce more fishing czars. For those of you who have read "Systemantics" by John Gall, this answer came to your mind almost as a reflex.
In the case of Afghanistan, we have had ten fishing czars commanders since 2007. Only two of them, Nicholson and Miller, served for longer than two years. Just like the fishing czars, each commander in Afghanistan wanted to make the situation look bad but manageable if more money and resources were allocated. Once they got the resources allocated, they would talk about how good everything was going. Just like the czars, they each were fulfilling a tour of duty as the commander, not as someone who was there until they achieved victory. They knew they were simply playing with a clock that would run out before the war could be won.
But it isn’t just the top commanders in Afghanistan who acted like this, it was virtually every commander at every level. At the beginning of a deployment, many Commanders wanted to paint an ugly but manageable picture of their situation to get as many resources allocated to them as possible, and then talk about all the great things they were doing and all the progress they were making. No one was trying to lie really; they were just acting in accordance with their incentives. The best thing to do, in most cases, was as little as possible. Nothing says, “I am not good at my job,” like getting soldiers killed, especially if none of the other units are taking casualties. This led to a high degree of risk aversion, especially later in the war. Commanders wanted to make sure that their boss knew how good of a job they were doing without actually doing anything.
With most deployments lasting between nine and twelve months (some deployments were as long as eighteen months), no commander had an incentive to think more than a year ahead. When I was a platoon leader in 2013, I had the feeling that there wasn’t really a master plan for Afghanistan. After all, why was I patrolling and getting blown up every day and obviously making no progress? I knew that we weren’t really accomplishing anything. But there must have been a plan, right? We had thousands of people working at the Pentagon, and a NATO headquarters with thousands of people. We had planners and strategists in headquarters all over the United States. Someone must have thought to make a long-term master plan. But no one did.
You might think I am exaggerating or oversimplifying things. I am not. While I was serving at Resolute Support Headquarters, a Colonel sat me down and handed me something called the Afghanistan Sustainable Security Strategy. “What’s this?” I asked. The Colonel very smugly told me, “you see, Captain Caroe, because we rotate units and commanders so often, we’ve only ever had plans that lasted a year or two. But now we’ve figured out that what we really need is a five-to-ten-year plan for Afghanistan.” I gave him a blank stare, which he took to mean that I was confused. As he began to elaborate, I thought to myself, “Are you effing kidding me, dude!? This whole time there was no plan!? No one thought it might be a good idea to make a plan!? Is this a joke?” But it wasn’t a joke. We spent a decade and a half fighting a war with no master plan.
Imagine if in World War Two that the supreme allied commanders rotated every year. What would have happened? My guess is that we wouldn’t have invaded France until at least the 1950s. Each new supreme commander would have taken over and said, “There’s no way I can invade in these conditions! We need more money, more men, more training, more planning, and more bombing!” As their year came to a close they would say, “Alright, I’ve set us up for success. All the next commander needs to do is waltz into France. Good luck!” Then the next commander would do the same thing, and so on. Eventually, the civilian leaders would exert enough pressure to force an invasion. That unfortunate General would have no incentive to think or plan beyond the initial invasion. He would have no incentive to save resources for the exploitation phase. He would use everything to make sure that the initial invasion was a success. This would place the next commander at a disadvantage in trying to finish the war.
Luckily, that isn’t what happened. Eisenhower was singularly accountable for the conduct of the war. It gets passed around on LinkedIn a lot, but it is worth mentioning that prior to D-Day Eisenhower wrote the following letter,
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
The problem is not that no Army General will write this type of letter for our failure in Afghanistan, it is that there is no General who can write it. Not for lack of character, but simply as a matter of practicality. General Miller, the most recent (and longest serving) commander in Afghanistan, is a brilliant leader and a fierce warrior. And he is no stranger to military disasters. If you have ever seen the movie Blakchawk Down, he was a young Delta Force officer who fought in the battle of Mogadishu. How could he possibly say, “the last 20 years are my fault.” It wouldn’t even make sense to do that. His predecessor, General Nicholson, was the first commander to think longer than his own term of service. It wouldn’t make sense for him to own the entire failure, either. No one commander was ever responsible for victory or defeat, and that is a huge part of the problem.
This leads us to some very basic rules that can help us avoid another Afghanistan.
Rule 1: When fighting a war, have a long-term plan that works toward a long-term vision. (I can’t believe I have to type this).
Rule 2: Have one person responsible for implementing the plan and accountable for results.
Rule 3: There is no clock on command. Commanders stay in command until their vision is achieved (IE the war is won). If a General wants to quit, he’s a quitter who couldn’t get the job done. There are no atta-boys and no cushy corporate jobs waiting for you. If a General feels he is too constrained by Washington to achieve victory, then it is his duty to resign and very publicly declare his reasons for doing so. This also applies to Vietnam.
Rule 4: Commanders who aren’t winning get fired, publicly. But we are willing to give them another shot. Read Thomas Rick’s The Generals for more on this topic.
Rule 5: When the government deploys the Army, no one comes home until we achieve victory, or we decide to withdraw. No rotating units in and out. Occasionally individual soldiers, not officers, can come back to the US for few weeks at a time. This keeps the war from getting pushed out of the public eye. If soldiers are gone for three to four years and victory is nowhere in sight, the pressure to end the war will be too great for politicians to ignore. This also puts pressure on every single soldier and their officers to win the war as quickly as possible. This would also have likely forced the Vietnam War to a faster end (either in victory or in withdrawal). You might ask, “Then how do we fight guerilla wars?” This is a fair question. I might explore this topic in another newsletter.
Rule 6: Either fight to win or don’t fight. Don’t place arbitrary constraints on the situation that will prevent victory. We should have learned this in Vietnam. To win in Vietnam we either had to stay long enough to see the global collapse of communism, or we could have invaded North Vietnam. Those were pretty much the only answers. A huge problem in Afghanistan, if not the problem, was that fighters took refuge in Pakistan. This point is almost banal. But if it’s banal, then why didn’t we ever really deal with the problem? If we weren’t going to deal with this huge problem, why did we stay? It’s like playing a football game and being told, “well, you can’t really tackle the guy with the ball, but you can certainly stand in his way.” For some reason, we just took for granted that dealing with fighters going into and out of Pakistan with relative impunity was an insoluble problem. But we kept on staying and fighting year after year.
These rules aren’t comprehensive, but they are a decent start. These rules are, in my opinion, necessary, but probably not sufficient in preventing another Afghanistan.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I don’t speak for the Army, but for what it’s worth, I am going to do everything I can as an Army officer to make sure that we don’t ever have another Afghanistan.
Discussion about this post
No posts