Total Information Dominance Tragedy

Total Information Dominance … and we killed innocents.

 

According to Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., Head of the United States Central Command,

 

"We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or a direct threat to US forces," McKenzie said of the airstrike at a briefing, following an investigation by the Military.

 

"This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport, but it was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology," Mckenzie said, adding that he is "fully responsible for this strike and this tragic outcome." (1)

 

Total information dominance and we can’t identify a legitimate target for a simple drone strike … but we’re basing our entire military future on exactly this kind of unreliable information warfare.  This incident encapsulates everything wrong with the path the military is on.

 

This is the system we want to base our future military on?  If we can’t get this right with total information dominance what chance do we have of beating China with ‘information’?

The administration was desperate for a public relations ‘victory’ in the Afghanistan debacle and murdered  innocents trying to get it. 

 

If McKenzie truly takes full responsibility, he should resign in disgrace and then be recalled to active duty to face a court-martial.  Not because an innocent was killed in a war zone but because he went along with what he had to have known was a PR motivated, unjustified, rush to action.

 

This is reprehensible and disgusting.

 

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(1)Fox News website, “General says it is unlikely ISIS-K members killed in August Kabul drone strike: 'A tragic mistake'”, Kyle Morris, 17-Sep-2021,

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-official-announces-no-isis-k-members-killed-in-august-kabul-drone-which-led-to-civilian-casualties

Afghanistan Post-Mortem

The US has been thoroughly defeated by a bunch of rabble who achieved their overwhelming victory simply by outlasting the US.

 

Of course, it’s legitimate to ask, what were we defeated from doing?  Well, nothing really.  We had no victory goals that I could discern so there was nothing for us to actually lose.  We simply left.  We didn’t accomplish anything but we didn’t seem to have any goals we wanted to accomplish anyway.  You can’t be defeated if you aren’t trying to win anything so …

 

And that’s the major lesson from this entire debacle.  Don’t enter a war without a clear cut end result – a victory condition.  Failure to do so will result in a never-ending quagmire of aimless milling and churning as twenty years of floundering in Afghanistan graphically demonstrated.

 

 

What other lessons can we draw from the Afghanistan experience?  Here’s a few:

 

Information Dominance – Afghanistan proved that this is a complete fantasy.  We had total information dominance over the Taliban and yet we left the country in defeat and humiliation.  Information dominance can’t be achieved against a peer enemy and even in cases where it can be achieved against minor threats, it absolutely does not guarantee victory and yet it’s the foundation that we’re building our future military capability on.  This is an epic failure in the making.

 

Firepower – Firepower is useless if you don’t use it.  We had total firepower dominance in Afghanistan and we did not use it.  We applied firepower only sporadically and inefficiently. 

 

Collateral Damage – We were so concerned with collateral damage that we suborned military objectives to collateral damage avoidance.  If collateral damage avoidance is more important than military objectives then you shouldn’t be ‘fighting’ a war.

 

Nation Building – This probably doesn’t need any discussion.  The very concept of nation building has been thoroughly disproven and discredited.  The only way it can work is to follow the pattern of WWII and our handling of Germany and Japan.

 

Fixation – Our fixation on Afghanistan, and the Middle East in general, cost us dearly.  Our overall military readiness declined, the Marines were turned into a pure land force and completely lost their institutional knowledge about amphibious assault, our military was transformed from an armored, high end force to a low end, lightweight force that was tailored to fight insurgents and is now ill-suited to face China, and we lost sight of why our military exists.

 

Motivation – The Taliban simply outlasted us.  They wanted their victory condition more than we wanted ours which is understandable since we had no victory condition. 

 

Total Destruction - If you do enter a war, end it in as short and violent a way as possible.  Total destruction of the enemy’s military capability is the only way to assure an effective victory.  It is also the quickest way to end the general destruction of war and it is the best way to minimize total collateral damage.

 

 

All of the above can be summed up by stating,

 

Don’t start a war you don’t intend to win. 

 

We entered a war we had no intention of winning and no clear cut victory condition and, predictably, we failed miserably.

 

 

 

 

Note:  We are NOT going to discuss the politics of this so don’t even bother.  Any comments along those lines will simply be deleted.