# Friedman Op-ed



## Viper1 (Jul 22, 2009)

Posting here for your thoughts and comments....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/opinion/22friedman.html?scp=2&sq=friedman&st=cse

July 22, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Class Too Dumb to Quit
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan

I’m here in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. This is the most  
dangerous part of the country. It’s where mafia and mullah meet. This is  
where the Taliban harvest the poppies that get turned into heroin that  
funds their insurgency. That’s why when President Obama announced the more  
than doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, this is where the Marines  
landed to take the fight to the Taliban. It is 115 degrees in the sun, and  
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is addressing  
soldiers in a makeshift theater.

“Let me see a show of hands,” says Admiral Mullen, “how many of you are on  
your first deployment?” A couple dozen hands go up. “Second deployment?”  
More hands go up. “Third deployment?” Still lots of hands are raised.  
“Fourth deployment?” A good dozen hands go up. “Fifth deployment?” Still  
hands go up. “Sixth deployment?” One hand goes up. Admiral Mullen asks the  
soldier to step forward to shake his hand.

This scene is a reason for worry, for optimism and for questioning  
everything we are doing in Afghanistan. It is worrying because between the  
surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are grinding down our military. I don’t  
know how these people and their families put up with it. Never have so  
many asked so much of so few.

The reason for optimism? All those deployments have left us with a deep  
cadre of officers with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, now running  
both wars — from generals to captains. They know every mistake that has  
been made, been told every lie, saw their own soldiers killed by  
stupidity, figured out solutions and built relationships with insurgents,  
sheikhs and imams on the ground that have given the best of them a  
granular understanding of the “real” Middle East that would rival any  
Middle East studies professor.

I’ve long argued that there should be a test for any officer who wants to  
serve in Iraq or Afghanistan — just one question: “Do you think the  
shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer  
“yes,” you can go to Germany, South Korea or Japan, but not to Iraq or  
Afghanistan. Well, this war has produced a class of officers who are very  
out-of-the-box thinkers. They learned everything the hard way — not in  
classes at Annapolis or West Point, but on the streets of Fallujah and  
Kandahar.

I call them: “The Class Too Dumb to Quit.” I say that with affection and  
respect. When all seemed lost in Iraq, they were just too stubborn to quit  
and figured out a new anti-insurgency strategy. It has not produced  
irreversible success yet — and may never. But it has kept the hope of a  
decent outcome alive. The same people are now trying to do the same thing  
in Afghanistan. Their biggest strategic insight? “We don’t count enemy  
killed in action anymore,” one of their officers told me.

Early in both Iraq and Afghanistan our troops did body counts, à la  
Vietnam. But the big change came when the officers running these wars  
understood that R.B.’s (“relationships built”) actually matter more than  
K.I.A.’s. One relationship built with an Iraqi or Afghan mayor or imam or  
insurgent was worth so much more than one K.I.A. Relationships bring  
intelligence; they bring cooperation. One good relationship can save the  
lives of dozens of soldiers and civilians. One reason torture and Abu  
Ghraib got out of control was because our soldiers had built so few  
relationships that they tried to beat information out of people instead.  
But relationship-building is painstaking.

And that leads to my unease. America has just adopted Afghanistan as our  
new baby. The troop surge that President Obama ordered here early in his  
tenure has taken this mission from a limited intervention, with limited  
results, to a full nation-building project that will take a long time to  
succeed — if ever. We came here to destroy Al Qaeda, and now we’re in a  
long war with the Taliban. Is that really a good use of American power?

At least The Class Too Dumb to Quit is in charge, and they have a  
strategy: Clear areas of the Taliban, hold them in partnership with the  
Afghan Army, rebuild these areas by building relationships with district  
governors and local assemblies to help them upgrade their ability to  
deliver services to the Afghan people — particularly courts, schools and  
police — so they will support the Afghan government

The bad news? This is State-Building 101, and our partners, the current  
Afghan police and government, are so corrupt that more than a few Afghans  
prefer the Taliban. With infinite time, money, soldiers and aid workers,  
we can probably reverse that. But we have none of these. I feel a gap  
building between our ends and our means and our time constraints. My heart  
says: Mission critical — help those Afghans who want decent government. My head says: Mission impossible.

Does Mr. Obama understand how much he’s bet his presidency on making  
Afghanistan a stable country? Too late now. So, here’s hoping that The  
Class Too Dumb to Quit can take all that it learned in Iraq and help  
rebuild The Country That’s Been Too Broken to Work.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company


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## AWP (Jul 22, 2009)

I think he's optimistic to the point of being delusional, BUT I agree with him on our chances in Afghanistan.


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## Marauder06 (Jul 22, 2009)

We're "too dumb to quit" because we're committed to winning our nations' wars and making sure the terrorist organizations that attacked our country and killed thousands of our countrymen can't follow us back home and do it to us again?  Fuck off 

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard:


> I’ve long argued that there should be a test for any officer who wants to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan — just one question: “Do you think the
> shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer
> “yes,” you can go to Germany, South Korea or Japan, but not to Iraq or
> Afghanistan. Well, this war has produced a class of officers who are very
> ...



No you dumb shit, the shortest distance between two points IS a straight line.  It's just that most of the time in an insurgency, the straight line isn't going to get you to your destination.  If you're going to use a one-question litmus test to determine whether or not a servicemember belongs in Iraq or Afghanistan, a better one question would be, "in an insurgency, is the direct or indirect approach more likely to result in a favorable outcome over the long term?"

I get so tired of hearing people spout off about "out of the box" thinking like it's some kind of panacea for solving all the military's ills.  It's becoming another trite, overused buzz phase that people who don't know what they're talking about toss out there to sound cool.  There's a very fine line between "out of the box" and "out of control."  Too often, "out of the box" is code for, "the rules don't apply to me," with all of the attendant deaths, mission failures, integrity compromises, and loss of credibility that results.  

Initiative=good.  Loose cannons=bad.  

Signed,

Heading Off To My Seventh Deployment, and Still Too Dumb To Quit.


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