John R Ballard - From Kabul To Baghdad And Back: The U.S. at War in Afghanistan and Iraq

The U.S. at War in Afghanistan and Iraq

John R. Ballard, David W. Lamm, and John K. Wood

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS
Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402

2012 by John R. Ballard, David W. Lamm, and John K. Wood

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ballard, John R., 1957-

From Kabul to Baghdad and back : the U.S. at war in Afghanistan and Iraq / John R. Ballard, David W. Lamm, and John K. Wood.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61251-168-9 (ebook) 1. Afghan War, 2001-Campaigns. 2. Iraq War, 2003-2011Campaigns. 3. War on Terrorism, 2001-2009. 4. United StatesMilitary policyHistory21st century. 5. United StatesHistory, Military21st century. 6. Strategy. I. Lamm, David W. II. Wood, John K. III. Title.

DS371.412B34 2012

956.7044'3373dc23

2012026125

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 129 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

For the over 3,000 men and women who gave their lives during the conflict in Afghanistan.

Military service is the ultimate form of patriotism.

The armed forces must have the capability to swiftly defeat adversaries in overlapping campaigns while preserving the option to expand operations in one of those campaigns to achieve more comprehensive objectives. Prevailing against adversaries includes integrating all instruments of national power within a campaign to set the conditions for an enduring victory.

The National Military Strategy of the United States of America, 2004

I t seems simple. This book is designed to explain the key strategic and operational actions that marked Americas decade-long campaign in Afghanistan; it will pay particularly close attention to the impacts of the parallel campaign in Iraq on the success of the effort in Afghanistan. The book will not only assess the ability of the United States to conduct two nearly simultaneous campaigns in two distant theaters of operations but also take a close look at whether the national command authorities attempted to manage the two as coordinated efforts focused on a single strategic goal. The book also is intended to highlight critical decisions, both political and operational, made during combat operations in the two theaters that dramatically affected the outcome of the Afghan campaign and the ability of the United States to achieve an enduring victory in a nation that has known nothing but war for well over thirty years.

This was certainly not the first instance the United States had been driven to conduct more than one significant military campaign at the same time. The Germany First strategy of the Second World War is well known, and with some study it becomes readily apparent that simultaneous campaigns have been part of nearly every American war since the British decided in 1778 to conduct the Southern Campaign during the American Revolution. Still, the national decision in 2002 to embark upon a second, major military campaign against Iraq will remain both controversial and burdensome for decades, particularly as it most certainly prolonged the development of stability in Afghanistan and severely reduced the flexibility of the United States as the threat in the region grew over time. Regardless of the merits of the decision or the necessity for the attack into Iraq in March 2003, scholars and policy makers should question the real value of conducting more than one military operation at the same time.

Since the end of the Second World War in 1945 the essential character of war has changed. War has incorporated a wide variety of actions over the course of history, so this change has not been unique; what has been significant is the seemingly irrevocable nature of the change due to the loss of preeminence of the nation-state as the primary actor in war and the lack of decisive resolution of the wars that have occurred since 1945. Non-nation-states have engaged in warfare in important ways throughout history, but the role of both the Taliban Wahhabi political movement and the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda in the Afghan campaign was exceptional. Although the sources of the Afghan conflict were not from nation-states, both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strongly endorsed the military response against Taliban-governed Afghanistan.

The use of the term global war on terror by the United States has only added to the complexity of this general trend in the changing character of war in the twenty-first century. One can understand why President George W. Bush and key members of his administration began to use the term in late 2001 to indicate the novel nature of the conflict they had been forced to wage against Al-Qaeda. The use of the term war incited a whole-of-nation approach, validated the significance of the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., and demonstrated in advance the seriousness of the response envisioned. Any effort aimed at Afghan organizations was certain to be global in reach and would ideally become an international response against what was viewed as a common threat to many Western nations. There being no other convenient moniker, since the effort was clearly seen as opposing terrorist acts, and because no one could rationally support terrorism, it was labeled as a war on terror, even though terror in itself was but the product of the terrorist acts.

This label seemed understandable and even appealing at the time, but it soon became fraught with difficult challenges. The international nature of the war was confusing to nations that had been fighting terrorists with legal and security tools for years. The status of combatants in Afghanistan from an international legal perspective was overly vague, and of course the attack by the sole superpower on another impoverished nation simply because it was harboring a terrorist organization appeared a gross violation of the new, United Nationsbased international order that permeated global thinking at the time. Though a number of coalition partners signed up to assist the United States in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, once the Bush administration linked an axis of evil to the war in the presidents State of the Union speech in January 2002, some nations began to distance themselves. Once President Bush decided to include Iraq in the overall context of the global war, even normally staunch allies, such as France, reduced their support.

Military theorists and doctrine writers most frequently use a continuum of actions, starting with battles at the tactical level of conflict, to characterize war. Operationally, military activities are grouped into campaigns, which have the same objective but synchronize multiple battles to achieve desired effects on the enemy. Strategies most frequently coordinate the elements of national power (diplomacy, economics, information, law enforcement, and military power) in order to compel other nations to act in certain ways. Thus the effort in Afghanistan was initially envisioned as a single, short, operational campaign to eject Al-Qaeda and destroy its Taliban host while bringing a better quality of life to the average Afghan. What actually occurred was very different indeed, at the tactical, operational and strategic levels, thus, the U.S. war in Afghanistan requires further study so that future such campaigns can achieve better results.