Zenpundit wrote a very nice post about my arguments late last week.  He excerpts several of my posts on the subject on COIN, and provides some very thoughtful responses.  I’d like address some of his comments:

zenpundit.com » Blog Archive » On COIN and an Anti-COIN Counterrevolution?

COIN gained policy ascendancy because:1) The  ”Big Army, the artillery, B-52’s and Search & Destroy=counterinsurgency” approach proved to be tactically and strategically bankrupt in Iraq. It failed in Mesopotamia as it failed in the Mekong Delta under Westmoreland – except worse and faster. Period.

2) The loudest other alternative to COIN at the time, the antiwar demand, mostly from Leftwing extremists, of immediately bugging-out of Iraq, damn the consequences, was not politically palatable even for moderately liberal Democrats, to say nothing of Republicans.

If there was a third alternative being effectively voiced at the time before “the Surge”, please point it out to me, I am not seeing it.

That is not quite right.  First, the debate about Iraq was not between “big army” and COIN.  It was initially between people who thought there was an insurgency, and those — close to the administration — who denied that anything was going wrong.  As late as 2005, every uptick in violence was met with the idiotic response that more violence was a good sign because it showed that the “dead enders,” “foreign fighters,” and “former regime elements” knew they were losing and were “getting desperate.”  People forgot how much of an uphill struggle it was to get the Bush Administration and its supporters to acknowledge that there was anything wrong, that the whole thing was not going according to plan.

Second, it is not fair to conflate the arguments of anti-war activists with those of professional analysts in favor of a relatively rapid withdrawal.  There were plenty of people writing about measures to mitigate the consequences of withdrawal, including, inter alia, the need to maintain a force in the region capable of rapid response to threats, the desirability of continuing  a training relationship with the Iraqis, the importances of prepositioning supplies in case we needed to established catchment sites for refugees and on and on and on.  The Iraq Study Group was merely the most prominent example of thoughtful people grappling with the issue.  Brookings had a major report on it at the time as well, though I can’t find it right now.

Zen continues:

Fast forward to today. The problem with COIN is that it is an operational “How to”doctrine whose primary advocates are very reluctant to step up and deal with formulating a strategic, global, framework for the use of COIN.  Or if they are contemplating the strategic “Why/When” angle right now at CNAS, they are not yet finished doing so. Possibly, some of the reluctance to deal with the plane of strategy stems from most COINdinistas coming from a professional “Powell Doctrine” military culture that emphasizes -no, indoctrinates – thinking at the tactical level and demands that strategic thinking be studiously left to civilian policy makers. Getting a coherent operational paradigm in order, proselytized and grudgingly accepted by the DoD establishment was no small achievement by the COINdinistas. It’s huge.

This is all true, but it disguises the cause and effect relationship. The COINdinistas waged a successful insurgency to get their views accepted.  But like many successful insurgencies they turned authoritarian once in power.  It is now something very close to professional suicide to criticize the COIN consensus.  COIN critics are deliberately excluded from debates and are often subject to various very nasty whispering campaigns about their credentials, experience, and judgment.

I can’t speak for other COIN critics, but I feel a measure of betrayal here.  Many of us were on the same side in trying to get the Bush Administration — or at least the public — to realize that things were going very wrong in Iraq.  But the moment that occurred, the COINdinistas swooped in, sold Bush on a plan to rescue Iraq and then set about systematically purging doubters.  I don’t want to over-stress the analogy, but it was all very reminiscent of the way that radical movements come into power disguised as part of a popular front, and while everyone is celebrating the fall of the dictator, they are seizing power.  2006… finally the public gets it that Bush has made a hash of things.  Finally, Rummy gets his walking papers.  And then boom, while many of us were looking at things like the Iraq Study Group to kick-start a debate on what happens next, the issue is settled.

The COIN consensus though is very fragile… because it is ahistorical and relies on a wholly incoherent strategic logic.  This authoritarianism reinforces the group consensus, but it also stiffles the sort of serious debate that would either allow COIN to be integrated into a broader strategic framework or allow for adjustments to the doctrine/dogma that might improve the arguments.

Finally, Zen writes:

The critics of COIN, such as Col. Bacevich are largely arguing for a non-interventionist foreign policy as a strategic posture ( a well argued example of that school of thought would be Dr. Chet Richards’ latest book If We Can Keep It: A National Security Manifesto for the Next Administration) for the United States, largely waving away the messy tactical and operational realities. Such a position has legitimate pros and cons that deserve being debated on their own merits for the future but for our current difficulties their advice amounts to closing the barn door 8 years after the cow wandered away. It may be time to leave Iraq; Afghanistan, by contrast, presents unsolved problems with al Qaida’s continuing as a functional organization in Paktia and in Waziristan-Baluchistan across the border in Pakistan. While circumstances do not require our turning Afghanistan into the Switzerland of the Hindu Kush, al Qaida is not business that we should leave unfinished.

I think this is half-right.  Yes, some COIN critics are indeed anti-interventionism.  Chris Preble is another prominent example.  But actually, I am coming from the opposite perspective in a way.  While I do agree that restraint is a good policy, I also want to keep open the option of being able to use force when appropriate:

BernardFinel.com » A Hawk Rationale for Ending the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

It is precisely my desire to keep open this option for military force that drives my recommendations. Simply put, we won’t be able to use force when we need to if the assumption is that any significant use of force some requires us to engage in a decade long occupation and open-ended commitment to nation building. We need to be able to have the disciplined capacity to whack our enemies without then surrendering our autonomy to their ability to construct stable, democratic regimes.

The decision, for instance, that we want to eliminate a potential threat from someone like Saddam Hussein should not have to hinge on whether we think Shiite/Sunni/Kurd reconciliation is possible.

I also think that the notion that AQ is unfinished business begs the question of when it would be “finished”? We’ve gotten rid of their fixed infrastructure.  They now operate in a way that is relocatable anywhere, I think.  Do we have to continue until no one supports AQ?  Until UBL and Zawahiri are dead?  I mean, what is the endgame?

I don’t want us to come home.  I just want us to recognize “success” when it stares in the face.  The restraint I want to see is the ability to distinguish between using force to accomplish policy goals versus the desire to use force in a way that will prevent it from ever being used again in the future.  If you want to stay in Afghanistan until you can be sure that no threat will ever emerge from there in the future, you are going to be there forever… and still won’t accomplish your goals.