Not with a bang but with a whimper: An obituary for the Prov. Reconst. Teams

By
"Pierre Tea"

Best
Defense guest columnist

Two
months from now, in May 2013, the debate on COIN, as applied to Iraq and
Afghanistan, will become academic, historical, and ripe for serious
post-application analysis beyond the walls of the Pentagon.

The
COINs will have all been spent, the PRTs' tents folded, and whatever hearts and
minds purchased, leased, or lost can be counted, weighed against our costs, and
their results. To quote Omar Khayyam, "The moving finger writes, and
having writ, moves on."

No
credible analysis could avoid the obvious: that "something" had to be
done about Saddam Hussein who ruthlessly threatened his neighbors (our allies)
and his own populations, and about Osama bin Laden and his list of supporters,
who directly attacked the United States. 
How did the "something" done work out?

As
a first-hand civilian witness to the application and aftermath of "money
as a weapon" surged by the billions into active and highly-fragmented war
zones, I look forward to post-application debates on the key questions of COIN
and PRTs: Did they help, hurt, or just
fuel the multi-year conflicts to which they were continuously re-applied?

The
U.S. dream of a peaceful and democratic Iraq and Afghanistan, however, has not been
realized, and instability in adjacent Syria and Pakistan threatens to unravel
anything enduring that we may have, through COIN, hoped to purchase from these
two countries without any agreement with the Old Man in the Mountain (Iran),
whose negative influence remains substantial, and undermines an accurate audit
of what actual hearts and minds were purchased, for how long, and to what end.

My
suspicion is that once all the COINs are spent, serious post-engagement
analysis will end and the domestic shroud of myths needed to justify the
honored dead and injured's contributions will drop in place, with little
institutional learning, and even less than myths to show for it.

Leave
it to Hollywood to mythologize the region, its history, and the heroism of
individuals and incremental missions accomplished and we guarantee that history
will repeat itself.

We'll
see.

"Pierre
Tea" probably has shaken more Afghan sand out of his shorts than you've walked
on. This post doesn't necessarily reflect the official views of anyone but it
sure does reflect the unofficial views of some.