In this essay for The New Yorker, written after Major General Harold Greene became the first U.S. general killed in action since Vietnam, Elliot Ackerman reflects on the Afghan war's lack of a defined strategy, drawing on his own years advising Afghan special-operations units.
"There's Always Good Hunting"
Ackerman recalls his operations meetings with Kareem, an Afghan commander who chose targets village by village rather than toward any larger objective, a rhythm Ackerman says captures how the war was actually fought.
A War Without a Plan to Win
Quoting John Paul Vann's line about Vietnam, that the U.S. had "one year's experience twelve times over," Ackerman argues Afghanistan has followed the same pattern, an endless rotation of American advisers passing through Afghan commanders' much longer, unending war.
Green-on-Blue and a War Without End
Ackerman connects Greene's killing, allegedly by a lone Afghan soldier, to the broader pattern of green-on-blue attacks, which he attributes to a dysfunctional Afghan National Army recruiting soldiers away from their home provinces, and calls for the "sound strategy" and "well-defined mission" that he argues the war has long lacked.
Read the Original Article
This essay originally appeared in The New Yorker.