The SNAFU Effect in Afghanistan

Jesse Walker | January 18, 2006

Occasional Reason contributor Chris Bray, currently serving with the U.S. Army in Kuwait, is filing a fascinating series of essays for the group blog Cliopatria. His most recent piece includes this description of one Afghan operation:

Meetings over Operation Anaconda, a single operation planned for three days and thought to be aimed against 200 enemy, involved absurd numbers of competing organizations -- and, therefore, competing operational styles and agendas. Here's a typical laundry list for a single meeting: "Representatives from K-Bar, the CIA, Task Force 11, CFLCC, the Coalition and Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force, and Task Force Rakkasan had been invited." And this list is hardly a complete reflection of all the different headquarters involved in Anaconda....Each piece of that stew had its own leadership, with its own agenda and intent. A critical American military effort had become wildly and pointlessly complicated. Four-star generals reviewed plans down to the platoon level.

Second, the coordination of those many different elements and agendas meant that painfully negotiated plans became locked into place simply because they were painfully negotiated. After members of a Delta Force team pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of walking up the side of a mountain in the Afghan winter to get a firsthand look at the valley, operation leaders received reports that there were somewhere around 1000 enemy, not the 200 the American plans had called for -- and then they learned further that the enemy was not in the valley, where the plans put them, but were instead on the high ground around it. Leaders of the battle decided to go ahead with the plan as written, reluctant to throw out weeks of hard-fought staff work on the word of Lt. Col. Peter Blaber's Delta operators. The plans trumped reality, because the plans had come with political and institutional costs.

Finally, one of the ways that Army officers managed the problem of ignoring the Delta Force intelligence showing 1000 enemy on the high ground was to regard the special operators who delivered that intelligence as out-of-control and untrustworthy. Leaders ridiculed the Delta team reports, and "mocked the independent role that Blaber had carved out by calling him 'Peter the Great' and 'Colonel Kurtz.'" The enforcement of institutional orthodoxy allowed leaders to ignore realistic bad news.

In case you were wondering: "The battle, by the way, went poorly."

The earlier installments in Bray's Cliopatria series are here and here. And his excellent Reason feature on the military and the media is here.

Comments

|1.18.06 @ 6:27PM|#

Jesus, that sounds worse than my old factory job.

|1.18.06 @ 6:28PM|#

That's pretty fucking scary. The mindset that you have to throw away human lives on some crackpot endeavor because it involved too much capital to cook up the plan... aye!

I'd love to see Generals and the like who pull shit like this get courtmarsheled and thrown out for incompetence.

|1.18.06 @ 6:41PM|#

io1029 - I hear ya'. I don't know whether shit like that makes me want to join more to put some intelligence into the service or less so I don't have to potentially be fed to wolves in such a fucked-up manner.

|1.18.06 @ 6:46PM|#

Lowdog-
I believe you will find that to reach a level at which you can make a difference, you must first be assimilated. And then it's too late.

|1.18.06 @ 6:53PM|#

We're always fighting the previous war, as they say.

We want force-on-force engagement, but this war is more about small-unit tactics.

|1.18.06 @ 6:57PM|#

Lowdog:

Well, I'm about to find out if I can make a difference. I ship to USMC training camp on Feb. 13th

|1.18.06 @ 7:10PM|#

This is the US Army M.O.

Take the Battle of the Bulge and the Chinese intervention in the Korean War -- two of the many instances where top Army Generals circle-jerked while numerous reports from the front lines and from the native populace indicated something was up.

|1.18.06 @ 7:22PM|#

Erm, take this light-heartedly... but another MO of the US Army is that the Marines always have to come in and bail them out.

Belleau Woods during the Battle of Bulge (where they gained the name of "Devil Dogs" from the Germans), and the whole long slog through Korea.

|1.18.06 @ 7:47PM|#

Hey Jarhead,

Pretty tough for y'all to be at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 when you were busy storming some islet or other in the Pacific.

At Belleau Wood, in 1918, y'all were under the command of the 2d Infantry Dvision any damn way.

I'm all for "Semper Fi,Do or Die" but let's get a little perspective, boot.

|1.18.06 @ 7:50PM|#

Lol, yeah I read a bit more after I posted that and realized I may have been off on those times.

I don't however think all the Marines were in the Pacific in WWII. They were all around.

|1.18.06 @ 8:04PM|#

Malcom Gladwell had a story in his book "Blink" about a former Marine named Paul Van Riper, who is supposedly one of the better tacticians of the modern era. The military was planning a war game that was based around an asymetrical war, one like the one we're fighting. Van Riper was selected to run the campaign for the "terrorist" side of the battle. When the games started, he immediately set to work finding ways to overcome the advantages the American team had, like delivering messages by motorcycle or secreting them in prayers so that sattellite transmissions couldn't be intercepted or setting up takeoff systems that used lighting to avoid giving away the location of air strips with radio white noise. He was incredibly successful; even managed to take out much of the US fleet using a set of small ships and a barrage of cruise missiles. But, rather than learning from this, the military halted the games and insisted that he "play by the rules," start using sattillites to communicate and follow all the methods that the planners expected would give the "US" side the edge. They even insisted that he use only certain weapons or give up the location of his units if the plan required it. It's not surprising that the military was unprepared for this war; these days it's all about finding use for the toys that are created and built so that Senators can have pork for their constituents. Until the leadership realizes that the opposition is neither stupid, nor dependent on technology to the degree that we are, nothing will change.

Yogi|1.18.06 @ 9:17PM|#

It's not surprising that the military was unprepared for this war; these days it's all about finding use for the toys that are created and built so that Senators can have pork for their constituents

I'm really looking forward to the movie, "Why We Fight" for this reason.

|1.18.06 @ 10:18PM|#

Shem,

I took part in that exercise. It was comical. Whole thing here ...

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1060102.php

The blue forces got their buts whipped and anyone who says they didn't is a liar. Can't say if the brass learned anything from the exercise, though.

|1.18.06 @ 10:19PM|#

I want a fiercely moderate America.





(note: you have to read the first article to get the joke.)

joshua corning|1.18.06 @ 10:24PM|#

We're always fighting the previous war, as they say.

yeah but wasn't the last war Vietnam... a guarilla war?

|1.18.06 @ 10:24PM|#

yep, this is pretty much how bureaucracies operate, and the fundamental elements don't change because some people are getting killed. Luckily, the enemy usually has problems to deal with also.

|1.18.06 @ 11:28PM|#

The O.P. and that wargame bit are pretty damn sobering. I really have to question how useful wargames and simulations are. I grew up on Avalon Hill and similar games, and there was never any political bullshit to deal with. Something that really stands out in my mind is that I never recall seeing any successful, well done and good to play game that was based around guerilla warfare. If games contained any guerilla component, it was simply an annoyance, an attrition-type problem. Never political or tactical.

Regarding the "big frontal techno-army vs. small swarms" situation, I have sometimes thought that the only way to successfully counter Al Qaida is with our own decentralized, cell-oriented suicide-minded army. Instead of sending over a huge frontal assault, infiltrate their lands where they live with people willing to drive car bombs and fly airplanes into buildings who are on our side.

I nominate all the domestic hawkish-blowhards to go first. I envision Ann Coulter getting into a target's bed with some explosives tucked you-know-where... I mean, if she really doesn't hate America. Since she hasn't yet done this, I'll have to assume she hates America.


io1029- Good luck, best wishes, and thanks.

|1.19.06 @ 1:33AM|#

From the article, in reference to a retired Marine officer who liked playing the enemy ("red") in simulations:
�What he�s done is he�s made himself an expert in playing Red, and he�s real obnoxious about it,� the retired officer said. �He will insist on being able to play Red as freely as possible and as imaginatively and creatively within the bounds of the framework of the game and the technology horizons and all that as possible.

Doesn't he realize that our enemies are devoid of cleverness? They think in a linear fashion. Hence, when they see an airplane with a fuel tank full of combustible liquid, they see only a transportation device. They don't see a potential guided missile.

Oh, wait.

|1.19.06 @ 2:47AM|#

Thoreau,

It's not like Osama was the first person to think of crashing airplanes into enemy targets.

I know I read about it somewhere ... not Vietnam but some other Asian country ... I'm pretty sure there was a big war going on at the time ...

|1.19.06 @ 3:46AM|#

joshua-then you should join my movement. We're Militantly Apathetic, that is, we don't care, and we'll fight to the death to defend our right to not care. Well, theoretically. If it's not too troublesome.

OK, so it's not compelling, but at least we'll never ask you to ring doorbells, or hit you up for a donation. Even the LP wants your money.

|1.19.06 @ 3:48AM|#

Trooper Jones-That article was fascinating. Sickening, but fascinating. Thanks.

|1.19.06 @ 8:43AM|#

Reminds me of every war and every battle I've ever researched no matter the culture or the time it was undertaken.

|1.19.06 @ 8:48AM|#

Good point, Trooper Jones.

tomWright|1.19.06 @ 11:02AM|#

I read Gladwells book and his description of the Army exercise.

Authority always likes centralized command structures. While they can be effective in keeping control of the organization, they do not react well to dyanmic environments. It is the rare individual that rises to the top of these organizations that can see the advantages of decentralization and autonomy on the part of sub-commands.

This is true in economics, where monopolies are less efficient.

This is true in politics where an isolated monolithic power structure makes horrible decisions. (Nixon, Gore with his "alpha male" couture).

This is true in business, when autocratic control can lead to loss of market share. (Apple PC vs. IBM PC, BETAMAX vs. VHS).

It CAN be true in the military as well. Mass slaughter is one area where autocratic control can work better, but not always. But there are enough examples where decentralization works better here. For example, in the Soviet army, troops were not allowed to have maps, only commanding officers could have them, highly censored ones at that. The Soviet Army was amazed when they learned that even the lowest troops in the US military could have uncensored maps.

But at the same time, the reason Europeans managed to defeat natives in North America was due to more effective command structure and coordination of tactics and training. The native method of warfare was highly individual, less organized and tactically planned. So it works both ways.

|1.19.06 @ 11:26AM|#

Although Bray makes some interesting points, it's useful to consider than he is hardly close to the action (he is stationed in Kuwait), and is hardy in the position to know a whole lot more than we know here (he mostly quotes outside media sources). As far as Anaconda goes, yes, it was a planning failure, with far too many irons in the fire (and special forces guys - Delta, Navy Seals, ASAS, and SAS - running around all over the place with regular troops, never a good idea). However, it was a military success, with a great number of enemy killed. And it hardly resembled the fiasco that some media was painting it at the time, saying we were done in Afghanistan, we had no chance, etc. etc. If anything, it led to a concerted effort to get the troops of the coalition to work together better, and effort spearheaded by British Royal Marines, called in by the Pentagon for an independent voice on what went wrong.

|1.20.06 @ 6:37AM|#

Jesse -- Thanks for linking to the Cliopatria essays.

Don -- If people clicked on the links and read the essays, they will have already seen that I'm in Kuwait. It's a point I put up front.

As for Anaconda, this is a redefintion of "success," and one the army has engaged in as well. The mission, in Anaconda, was to close the valley and kill or capture all the enemy warriors inside it. That mission was not a success; the valley was not sealed, and al Qaeda fighters escaped. If "a great number of enemy killed" is our measurement of success, nearly every military event is a success for all parties involved.