Metrics Smetrics 083109

A new battlefront has opened in the Afghan War this one down Washington’s Pennsylvania Ave. At one end is the White House and the other the Capital. Congress, as it has every right to do, is asking questions of how do we know how we are doing in Afghanistan. Congress is about eight years late in exercising its prerogative but the White House is on the defensive.

Lawmakers set a deadline in the spring for measurable progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a condition for additional war funding. The White House is now in a race to come up with metrics to measure progress before Congress develops its own measurements. The high ground is not progress but rather who controls the message to the public.

The war in Afghanistan has repeatedly been compared to that in Vietnam and there are many parallels. Another benchmark in that comparison has just been reached. Before the United States became decisively engaged in what would become known as the Vietnam War then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara developed his own metrics. McNamara was a numbers and charts wonk; under his direction the entire military establishment developed new things to count and charted the uncharitable. His system analyst produced massive tomes stating that America had won in Vietnam before it had even begun to fight. The proliferation of metrics led to a piecemeal buildup of forces and a fighting withdrawal. In later years even McNamara admitted it was an unwinnable war, despite his great metrics.

Every graduate student, studying statistics learns how to lie with metrics; they also get a large dose of ethics on why not to lie. Unfortunately politicians and bureaucrats understand the numbers but not the ethics. It is easy to chart how many bullets are delivered and expended, not so easy to determine with what effect. It easy to count the number of soldiers receiving training, but not so easy to determine if they learned of even if they are loyal. Miles of road laid can be measured but do the miles serve the people or the foreign military. Dollars appropriated for civil infrastructure can be tabulated but not the waste and corruption. A decline in the numbers of civilian casualties can be charted, but past dead can’t be resurrected or forgotten.

The Afghans and Pakistanis have incredibly long memories and they have their own metrics. The White House is proposing 50 metrics and Congress will probably add a few more to the count. The question should be what are the local citizens counting as progress?

Progress will be decided in Shari courts, markets, local councils, coffee shops, bus stops and on pilgrimages. This is where progress will accurately be measured. America likes to shout down those that disagree with them, they will have to learn to do what is particularly hard for them, listen. They will have to moderate their belief in those that profit from the American presence. They will also have to objectively consider native opinions and ethically report those metrics to policy makers.