How To Win In Afghanistan Part 4

THE MECHANICS OF IT ALL
Okay, now we move into the basic mechanics of my thesis- how it’s supposed to work. Presuming all of the aforementioned deconstruction work has been completed, the first thing we should do is to withdraw all of our conventional forces. We should do this to return to a state of balance and readiness as well as to reduce our footprint in Afghanistan. Concomitant with this move, we (the U.S) should leave behind CIA officers who will act as observers- ensuring that neither the government of Afghanistan nor its people are cooperating with Al Qaeda. In order to help protect the CIA officers, Green Beret teams will also be deployed providing force multiplication- by befriending local powerbrokers and training their forces to assist our own in combat operations (should the need arise.) Along with the CIA operatives and Green Berets, we would deploy United States Air Force Combat Controllers. They would be responsible to coordinate the continuous and aggressive halo of multi-force fighter jets and bombers providing a continuous watch overhead. The aircraft would most likely originate from several Aircraft Carriers cruising both the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean and be supplied in an unbroken chain of jets.
Accompanying all those already mentioned, I would include some Psychological Operations troops. They would act like a thermometer- by establishing, maintaining and constantly gauging the level of support and rapport the team has with the local populace; looking for shifts in attitudes or feelings (symptomatic of contact with the enemy) while simultaneously developing and implementing counters to any enemy propaganda encountered. They will also help to determine how best to maintain the support from and reward all those Afghans working with our forces (their team).
In other words, I would have us recreate the force configurations that existed early on in the war (plus or minus a few changes), while we go into neighboring Pakistan to blitzkrieg the Al Qaeda forces and their recalcitrant Taliban allies and quickly get back out afterwards (in order to find the next target). This is the basic mechanics behind the concept I put forth in my thesis.
SUMMARY
Fundamentally, this whole debacle in Afghanistan is the result of a failure on the part of our previous leadership to shift gears properly and to continue the fight (through pursuit of our real enemy Al Qaeda.) We should not have stayed in large numbers in Afghanistan after the escape of Bin Ladin. We should have followed him and the remnant of his forces fleeing Afghanistan right into Pakistan, as soon as it became apparent, that our ‘ally’ was either incapable of or unwilling to continue the fight for us.

SUMMARY (cont.)
This is why I have proposed: That in order to win in Afghanistan and interdict resurgent terrorist activity there, the United States should perform a holding action, through real diplomacy with the Taliban and by leveraging its use of Special Operations Forces who would be aggressively and continuously supported by a much larger conventional force (most likely an Aircraft Carrier Group) just outside of the country.
The ultimate purpose, of course, being: to free ourselves up to continue the fight with Al Qaeda in some far more significant and appropriate locale (i.e., Pakistan at the present time).