Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 46

What is being attempted in the wilds of central
Asia will (and has) inevitably led observers to draw
parallels with the ultimately failed “Vietnamization” effort of the early 1970s. While this paper
does not advance claims of the current conflict in
Afghanistan being another Vietnam, much of the
language is strikingly familiar. Similarities include
talk of halting the spread of alien and hostile ideologies, the need to deny the enemy cross-border
sanctuary, and laments about the corrupt, unreliable, lazy nature of local allies, their fecklessness
made even more aggravating by the contrast with
the bold, imaginative, energetic élan of an enemy
with the same cultural and ethnic makeup.
As the aforementioned transition continues (and
may possibly extend past the formal withdrawal of
combat forces at the end of 2014), it increasingly
falls into the lap of the military advisor to comprehend why “those” Afghans are the stuff of a Kipling
poem, while “these” Afghans are taking naps in the
afternoon between bouts of hashish smoking in the
morning and selling their American-issued gear in
the evening, punctuated by the occasional murderous outburst. From this understanding it is hoped
that a sufficiently robust ANSF can be trained and
fielded to achieve the long-term American political
goal of a relatively stable Afghanistan that is able
to rebuff the encroachments of the odious Taliban
and its Al-Qaeda camp followers, while also
accomplishing the near-term (and politically more
important) objective of withdrawing U.S. forces.
A daunting task to be certain, but fortunately,
the advisor does not stride forth into this land of
confusion unprepared. The American military has
gone to a great deal of effort and expense to train
its advisors before sending them abroad (I attended
the Combat Advisor course at Fort Polk, La. and can
attest to the thoroughness and quality of the training.) These courses typically provided rudimentary
instruction in language and culture, counterinsurgency doctrine, negotiation techniques, simulated
key leader engagements with native Afghan role
players, and combat skills.
However, fine training fails to address the salient
question of why, after over two combined decades
of advisory involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan (not to mention dozens of less prominent
experiences) with countless dollars spent on equipment and countless hours spent on training, the
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local armies were and are seemingly so incapable
of answering the bell.
More simply put, it does not answer the oftrepeated lament of the Vietnam trooper: “Why are
their ‘gooks’ so much better than our ‘gooks’?”3
As expected from the American military, our
training regimen presupposes that the answer lies
wholly with us and our efforts. If only we spoke
the language more fluently, knew the culture more
thoroughly, negotiated with more finesse, drank
the chai with more gusto, ate the local cuisine with
fewer grimaces, then maybe, just maybe, we would
finally discover the much sought-after key and at
long last be able to unlock the puzzle box of the
native psyche.

…it has become commonplace for
the seemingly disparate worlds of
the warrior and the merchant to
look to each other to draw lessons
on management, leadership, organizational structure, logistics, and
a host of other issues.

Unfortunately, as laudable as the attempts to
better our cultural understanding are, our efforts
alone cannot produce the desired results. We must
acknowledge that most if not all of the systemic
pathologies of the Afghan Clausewitzian triangle
of people, government, and military (like the South
Vietnamese before them and a lengthy list of candidates on the verge of anarchic collapse ahead of
us) are beyond our capacity to affect. The Afghans
must reform themselves. The best an advisor can
possibly hope to do is to hew to the counsel of that
famed and influential thinker in the field of business
process improvement, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, and
provide a view from the outside much as he did in
his pioneering work in post-war Japan in the 1950s.
The military advisor’s burden often seems a forlorn cause, especially to those of us who have had
January-February 2014 MILITARY REVIEW