We approach the topic again - this time comments from our Allies spark the debate. Although I think that the US Army's 15-month tours have the potential to kill an army, I agree with the General when he says the advantage comes with intimately knowing the terrain. Perhaps a longer tour (8 months, 9 months?) would provide an optimal balance between familiarity and fatigue?
Fair Dealings blahblahblah
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/301698
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Longer troop deployments urged
TheStar.com - World - Longer troop deployments urged
NATO commander says 6-month tours undertaken by Canadians in Kandahar too short to get job done
February 08, 2008
Mitch Potter
EUROPE BUREAU
VILNIUS, Lithuania–Last month, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates frayed tender NATO nerves by suggesting some allied troops in southern Afghanistan come up short in the battle against insurgents.
Now the senior U.S. commander on the ground in Afghanistan has elaborated on the theme, saying that six-month deployments such as those undertaken by Canadian soldiers lack the longevity to get the job done American-style.
In a blunt assessment of the alliance's shortcomings in Afghanistan, top NATO commander Gen. Dan McNeill told reporters at the Pentagon he is hamstrung by "a minimalist force" too few in number and too burdened by political and military obstacles to match the counter-insurgency efforts of U.S. troops.
Praising the "absolutely amazing" progress in U.S.-controlled sectors of eastern Afghanistan against the struggles encountered by Dutch, British and Canadian troops in the south, McNeill contrasted the elongated 15-month rotations of American troops against the six-month rotations that are the norm for Canadian soldiers.
"What does 15 months mean? The American soldier ... develops a relationship with the terrain, with the indigenous people and their leadership, and with the enemy. And they have sufficient time to exploit that relationship to their advantage," McNeill said. "Secondly, ... Congress well endows the commanders in the U.S. sector with reconstruction money, bureaucratically unencumbered, more or less, so that they can apply those monies in a pure and comprehensive way in counter-insurgency operations, and they can see to immediate and genuine needs, not just once."
Asked to contrast that approach against other nations involved in the fractious south, where most of Canada's 2,500 troops are deployed, McNeill said: "Most of the other forces are typically on a six-month tour length. They probably are not as well-endowed by their governments as U.S. soldiers are. Some of them don't have the same level of pre-deployment training."
McNeill did not specifically mention Canada in his comments at the Pentagon. In a separate interview published yesterday, he told The Washington Post he prefers that Canadian troops "stay in the fight" rather than shift their emphasis toward training and mentoring Afghan forces. But he also suggested that NATO should consider the idea of U.S. forces taking charge of the southern command, where the Taliban insurgency is strongest.
A former commander of the U.S. Army's force generation headquarters, McNeill said, "I know the level to which (U.S. military trainers) go to replicate battlefields, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, before we send the unit into either of those locations. It pays off greatly ..."
McNeill's comments on short-term deployments are a familiar complaint among aid workers in Afghanistan. One United Nations official who spoke to the Toronto Star in Kabul in December described the dynamic as being like the movie Groundhog Day.
"You sit down with a commander who just arrived and bring him up to speed on the humanitarian situation," the official said. "Six months later, you sit down with the next one and do the same thing over again. If we find it frustrating, imagine what the Afghans think."
Asked at the NATO gathering in Vilnius yesterday whether he agreed with McNeill's assessment, Gates answered cautiously.
"If you are addressing it as an intellectual matter, then a longer tour and a greater familiarity does enhance your ability to carry out a counter-insurgency," Gates told the Toronto Star. "The other side of that coin, though, is that longer tours have a real wearing effect on the troops ... Frankly, I would like to get back to 12-month tours (for U.S. soldiers) if that's possible."
-- then perhaps a better system could be adopted (don't ask me what it is) its hard to mobilize the army for a theatre that you cant employ them (wrt kit and equipment beyomnd the deployed BG).
