For a GLOOMY perspective on Afghanistan read this piece from someone who thinks US troops should stay even longer. Surely it is past time to let Afghanistan stand on its own two feet? Do they really still need more Western meddling?
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Friday, 26 September 2014
Thursday, 25 September 2014
Hooray for Ashraf
The Presidential inauguration is with us in a day or two. Karzai is going around trying to be independent by saying how much better off Afghanistan would be if the USA and Pakistan simply did not exist.
But the point is that Ashraf Ghani, the new President, is such an intellect. He is one of the world's great thinkers. He's given to bouts of anger. But what a star. Can we but hope he may be Afghanistan's redeemer. We certainly need some better way. Ashraf is the future whereas Abdullah Abdullah is the representative of the warlords of the past.
But the point is that Ashraf Ghani, the new President, is such an intellect. He is one of the world's great thinkers. He's given to bouts of anger. But what a star. Can we but hope he may be Afghanistan's redeemer. We certainly need some better way. Ashraf is the future whereas Abdullah Abdullah is the representative of the warlords of the past.
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
U.S. Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan
The following article has created quite a stir in Washington (note especially the part at the end concerning elections):
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Mark Mazzetti and Matthew Rosenberg
08 July 2013
WASHINGTON — Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.
Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.
Mr. Karzai had made similar accusations in the past. But those comments were delivered to Afghans — not to Mr. Obama, who responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost propping up Mr. Karzai’s government, the officials said.
The option of leaving no troops in Afghanistan after 2014 was gaining momentum before the June 27 video conference, according to the officials. But since then, the idea of a complete military exit similar to the American military pullout from Iraq has gone from being considered the worst-case scenario — and a useful negotiating tool with Mr. Karzai — to an alternative under serious consideration in Washington and Kabul.
The officials cautioned that no decisions had been made on the pace of the pullout and exactly how many American troops to leave behind in Afghanistan. The goal remains negotiating a long-term security deal, they said, but the hardening of negotiating stances on both sides could result in a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where a deal failed to materialize despite widespread expectations that a compromise would be reached and American forces would remain.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” said a senior Western official in Kabul. “It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path.”
The official, however, said he hoped some in the Karzai government were beginning to understand that the zero option was now a distinct possibility, and that they’re learning now, not later, when it’s going to be too late.
The Obama administration’s internal deliberations about the future of the Afghan war were described by officials in Washington and Kabul who hold a range of views on how quickly the United States should leave Afghanistan and how many troops it should leave behind.
Spokesmen for the White House and Pentagon declined to comment.Within the Obama administration, the way the United States extricates itself from Afghanistan has been a source of tension between civilian and military officials since Mr. Obama took office.
American commanders in Afghanistan have generally pushed to keep as many American troops in the country as long as possible, creating friction with White House officials urging a speedier military withdrawal.
But with frustrations mounting over the glacial pace of initiating peace talks with the Taliban, and with American relations with the Karzai government continuing to deteriorate, it is unclear whether the Pentagon and American commanders in Afghanistan would vigorously resist if the White House pushed for a full-scale pullout months ahead of schedule.
As it stands, the number of American troops in Afghanistan — around 63,000 — is scheduled to go down to 34,000 by February 2014. The White House has said the vast majority of troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of that year, although it now appears that the schedule could accelerate to bring the bulk of the troops — if not all of them — home by next summer, as the annual fighting season winds down.
Talks between the United States and Afghanistan over a long-term security deal have faltered in recent months over the Afghan government’s insistence that the United States guarantee Afghanistan’s security and, in essence, commit to declaring Pakistan the main obstacle in the fight against militancy in the region.
The guarantees sought by Afghanistan, if implemented, could possibly compel the United States to attack Taliban havens in Pakistan long after 2014, when the Obama administration has said it hoped to dial back the C.I.A.’s covert drone war there.
Mr. Karzai also wants the Obama administration to specify the number of troops it would leave in Afghanistan after 2014 and make a multiyear financial commitment to the Afghan Army and the police.
The White House announced last month that long-delayed talks with the Taliban would begin in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban opened what amounts to an embassy-in-exile, complete with their old flag and a plaque with their official name, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
But the highly choreographed announcement backfired, with Afghan officials saying the talks gave the insurgents undeserved legitimacy and accusing the Obama administration of negotiating behind Mr. Karzai’s back.To the surprise of American officials, Mr. Karzai then abruptly ended the negotiations over a long-term security deal. He has said the negotiations would not resume until the Taliban met directly with representatives of the Afghan government, essentially linking the security negotiations to a faltering peace process and making the United States responsible for persuading the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government.
The Taliban have refused for years to meet directly with Afghan government negotiators, deriding Mr. Karzai and his ministers as American puppets.
There have been other points of contention as well. Meeting with foreign ambassadors recently, Mr. Karzai openly mused that the West was to blame for the rise of radical Islam. It was not a message that many of the envoys, whose countries have lost thousands of people in Afghanistan and spent billions of dollars fighting the Taliban, welcomed.
The troop decisions are also being made against a backdrop of growing political uncertainty in Afghanistan and rising concerns that the country’s presidential election could either be delayed for months or longer, or be so flawed that many Afghans would not accept its results.
Preparations for the election, scheduled for next April, are already falling behind. United Nations officials have begun to say the elections probably cannot be held until next summer, at the earliest. If the voting does not occur before Afghanistan’s mountain passes are closed by snow in late fall, it will be extremely difficult to hold a vote until 2015.
Of potentially bigger concern are the rumors that Mr. Karzai, in his second term and barred from serving a third, is trying to find a way to stay in power. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly insisted that he plans to step down next year.
The ripple effects of a complete American withdrawal would be significant. Western officials said the Germans and Italians — the two main European allies who have committed to staying on with substantial forces — would leave as well. Any smaller nations that envisioned keeping token forces would most likely have no way of doing so.And Afghanistan would probably see far less than the roughly $8 billion in annual military and civilian aid it is expecting in the coming years — an amount that covers more than half the government’s annual spending.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Mark Mazzetti and Matthew Rosenberg
08 July 2013
WASHINGTON — Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.
Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.
Mr. Karzai had made similar accusations in the past. But those comments were delivered to Afghans — not to Mr. Obama, who responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost propping up Mr. Karzai’s government, the officials said.
The option of leaving no troops in Afghanistan after 2014 was gaining momentum before the June 27 video conference, according to the officials. But since then, the idea of a complete military exit similar to the American military pullout from Iraq has gone from being considered the worst-case scenario — and a useful negotiating tool with Mr. Karzai — to an alternative under serious consideration in Washington and Kabul.
The officials cautioned that no decisions had been made on the pace of the pullout and exactly how many American troops to leave behind in Afghanistan. The goal remains negotiating a long-term security deal, they said, but the hardening of negotiating stances on both sides could result in a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where a deal failed to materialize despite widespread expectations that a compromise would be reached and American forces would remain.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” said a senior Western official in Kabul. “It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path.”
The official, however, said he hoped some in the Karzai government were beginning to understand that the zero option was now a distinct possibility, and that they’re learning now, not later, when it’s going to be too late.
The Obama administration’s internal deliberations about the future of the Afghan war were described by officials in Washington and Kabul who hold a range of views on how quickly the United States should leave Afghanistan and how many troops it should leave behind.
Spokesmen for the White House and Pentagon declined to comment.Within the Obama administration, the way the United States extricates itself from Afghanistan has been a source of tension between civilian and military officials since Mr. Obama took office.
American commanders in Afghanistan have generally pushed to keep as many American troops in the country as long as possible, creating friction with White House officials urging a speedier military withdrawal.
But with frustrations mounting over the glacial pace of initiating peace talks with the Taliban, and with American relations with the Karzai government continuing to deteriorate, it is unclear whether the Pentagon and American commanders in Afghanistan would vigorously resist if the White House pushed for a full-scale pullout months ahead of schedule.
As it stands, the number of American troops in Afghanistan — around 63,000 — is scheduled to go down to 34,000 by February 2014. The White House has said the vast majority of troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of that year, although it now appears that the schedule could accelerate to bring the bulk of the troops — if not all of them — home by next summer, as the annual fighting season winds down.
Talks between the United States and Afghanistan over a long-term security deal have faltered in recent months over the Afghan government’s insistence that the United States guarantee Afghanistan’s security and, in essence, commit to declaring Pakistan the main obstacle in the fight against militancy in the region.
The guarantees sought by Afghanistan, if implemented, could possibly compel the United States to attack Taliban havens in Pakistan long after 2014, when the Obama administration has said it hoped to dial back the C.I.A.’s covert drone war there.
Mr. Karzai also wants the Obama administration to specify the number of troops it would leave in Afghanistan after 2014 and make a multiyear financial commitment to the Afghan Army and the police.
The White House announced last month that long-delayed talks with the Taliban would begin in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban opened what amounts to an embassy-in-exile, complete with their old flag and a plaque with their official name, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
But the highly choreographed announcement backfired, with Afghan officials saying the talks gave the insurgents undeserved legitimacy and accusing the Obama administration of negotiating behind Mr. Karzai’s back.To the surprise of American officials, Mr. Karzai then abruptly ended the negotiations over a long-term security deal. He has said the negotiations would not resume until the Taliban met directly with representatives of the Afghan government, essentially linking the security negotiations to a faltering peace process and making the United States responsible for persuading the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government.
The Taliban have refused for years to meet directly with Afghan government negotiators, deriding Mr. Karzai and his ministers as American puppets.
There have been other points of contention as well. Meeting with foreign ambassadors recently, Mr. Karzai openly mused that the West was to blame for the rise of radical Islam. It was not a message that many of the envoys, whose countries have lost thousands of people in Afghanistan and spent billions of dollars fighting the Taliban, welcomed.
The troop decisions are also being made against a backdrop of growing political uncertainty in Afghanistan and rising concerns that the country’s presidential election could either be delayed for months or longer, or be so flawed that many Afghans would not accept its results.
Preparations for the election, scheduled for next April, are already falling behind. United Nations officials have begun to say the elections probably cannot be held until next summer, at the earliest. If the voting does not occur before Afghanistan’s mountain passes are closed by snow in late fall, it will be extremely difficult to hold a vote until 2015.
Of potentially bigger concern are the rumors that Mr. Karzai, in his second term and barred from serving a third, is trying to find a way to stay in power. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly insisted that he plans to step down next year.
The ripple effects of a complete American withdrawal would be significant. Western officials said the Germans and Italians — the two main European allies who have committed to staying on with substantial forces — would leave as well. Any smaller nations that envisioned keeping token forces would most likely have no way of doing so.And Afghanistan would probably see far less than the roughly $8 billion in annual military and civilian aid it is expecting in the coming years — an amount that covers more than half the government’s annual spending.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Afghanistan: time to face reality
Ranj sent us his latest article - he's a prop up Karzai man:
Afghanistan continues to edge towards the precipice. State-building efforts in the country are still plagued with inefficiency, corruption and disorganisation, whilst international coalition forces in the form of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) find themselves at the losing end of a battle to dominate the public perception on the Afghan street: ongoing daily violence, coupled with increasing calls for a firm withdrawal among the international community has signaled to average Afghans that the West will soon pack up and go, whilst the resilient, unwavering Taliban are there to stay.
All is not yet lost though. The international community will have to soon start taking tough decisions and bring the conflict back to its basics if it is going to achieve the underlying objective that took it to the country in the first place.
The US and its international partners’ objectives in Afghanistan have generally fallen under three over-arching categories: stability, representative governance and the rule of law. The stability objective in specific terms means ensuring Afghanistan does not once again become a place from which extremist forces can attack the West and its interests. The narrative, as diplomats, analysts and academics alike, currently tell it is that this can only be achieved once the other objectives are met. In other words, Afghanistan cannot be secured until you have an efficient and legitimate government that can implement some respectful standard of democracy and human rights.
It is now clear that this argument and strategy is utterly flawed and unrealistic. What the nine-year conflict has shown is that the numerous over-arching objectives cannot be met in their entirety, will certainly not be achieved should the US begin its drawdown in July 2011 or within the five year troop withdrawal deadline being proposed by Prime Minister David Cameron, and will most certainly not be achieved within the next ten years – if the current record is anything to go by.
The realities on the ground justify this inconvenient truth.
Firstly, there is no political strategy in Afghanistan that can reconcile the Karzai-led government with other rival tribal and political factions, all vying for power and a serious stake in the country. The reality is that the current government is entrenched in a tribal and political web of patronage and corruption that has become impossible to remedy.
Beyond this, and secondly, there is no clear consensus on how, and whether, to negotiate and reconcile with the fragmented Taliban. The Taliban is not the cohesive, hierarchical and organised entity that they may come across as being. Three disparate entities are currently fighting in the country: the Taliban, which is led by Mullah Omar but whose whereabouts remains elusive; the Haqqani network, led by the former mujahideen warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj Haqqani and, finally, a collection of domestic and foreign fighters that includes al-Qaida. There is, therefore, no leadership to negotiate with.
Finally, even if a grand strategy was offered, elements within and beyond Afghanistan in neighbouring states have become convinced that the west will not be around long enough to enforce it. The now clear commitment to withdraw troops within a fixed deadline or, at the very, least reduce troops in the country justifies their concerns.
More importantly, what this means is that Kabul will have little incentive to carry out the reforms essential for any counter-insurgency initiative to work. The Afghan government, suffering from a legitimacy crisis, is not committed to maintaining stability. It is aware of the above limitations in the state-building process and thus individuals within its upper echelons will continue to maximise their political and financial gain while they are in a position to do so, convinced that an ISAF withdrawal and potential defeat lies on the horizon.
The west, unwilling to publicly repudiate the government and its shambolic elections, or advocate an alternative, has inadvertently consolidated their positions and is now unable to displace them and their obstructive networks of power, so that reform takes place. To remove them from power now would invite a violent backlash of epic and uncontrollable proportions.
The international community must accept that a stable and representative government is no longer feasible, and certainly not one able to adequately implement the rule of law and enforce human rights. These are values that may have to be sacrificed. Sadly, Afghans never had such luxuries in the first place, at least not in recent times, and in truth the west is unlikely to ever be in a position to provide them with it.
To carry on in denial and futility will be a waste of human lives (civilian and military), resources and in essence unfair on the Afghan people. Instead, the west must go back to what it does best: make do with what it has and pursue its historic policy of supporting suspect regimes in the middle east, Asia and Latin America.
Karzai and his government may have to be propped up; heavily supported (financially and militarily) and assured, so that it becomes the West’s bulwark against the insurgency and extremists – the ultimate objective. The West would therefore leave Afghanistan to Afghans but without handing the state back to the Taliban and al-Qaida.
To make this effective and rewarding, focus must continue to be on the Afghan security forces, ensuring they are up to the task of countering the insurgency. Defeating them may not be an option, at least according to on-the-ground observers. Containing and reducing them to sporadic attacks is though.
That requires maintaining, beyond any withdrawal, an international force of military and police advisors, engaged in non-combat duties and comprised of the renowned EU police training missions. At present there are some 3,600 trainers on the ground. There is still a shortfall of nearly 500 trainers, but once the focus turns from combat to training that can be rectified by states who may have previously been reluctant.
More challenging is keeping at bay Afghanistan’s neighbours. The proxy conflict between the Pakistani intelligence service (the ISI) and the Indian intelligence service (RAW) suggests that Pakistan will not cooperate with the west in Afghanistan, despite pretences to the contrary. In reality, Pakistan seeks instability in Afghanistan since a stable Afghanistan will likely be pro-India. India has a vested interest in the current government, possibly more so than the West, because it is a means of containing Pakistan.
China feels that NATO’s presence in Afghanistan is an effort at securing a strategic base in the region whilst securing access to energy resources and encircling China. Iran, meanwhile, will be ill at ease with a stable NATO ally on its Eastern border. Keeping NATO resources tied up in Afghanistan means the probability of war against Iran is reduced.
All this renders it even more imperative to ensure the current government is consolidated, lest the withdrawal of ISAF leads to a civil war intensified by regional neighbours and which leads to the collapse of the Karzai government, much like the 1992 collapse of the Najabullah government three years after the Soviet withdrawal.
Pursuant to this, it is also an option to maintain the above-mentioned international force of advisors for at least another twenty-years. There is no reason why these non-combat personnel cannot be deployed alongside Afghan forces in the most extreme and unlikely of cases, upon the request of the Afghan government and in the event the government does edge towards the brink.
In short, the strategy in Afghanistan must revolve around what is viable and sustainable. Propping up Karzai is not the ideal choice to take but it is perhaps the only realistic option amidst what is a complex political, security and geopolitical environment.
Afghanistan continues to edge towards the precipice. State-building efforts in the country are still plagued with inefficiency, corruption and disorganisation, whilst international coalition forces in the form of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) find themselves at the losing end of a battle to dominate the public perception on the Afghan street: ongoing daily violence, coupled with increasing calls for a firm withdrawal among the international community has signaled to average Afghans that the West will soon pack up and go, whilst the resilient, unwavering Taliban are there to stay.
All is not yet lost though. The international community will have to soon start taking tough decisions and bring the conflict back to its basics if it is going to achieve the underlying objective that took it to the country in the first place.
The US and its international partners’ objectives in Afghanistan have generally fallen under three over-arching categories: stability, representative governance and the rule of law. The stability objective in specific terms means ensuring Afghanistan does not once again become a place from which extremist forces can attack the West and its interests. The narrative, as diplomats, analysts and academics alike, currently tell it is that this can only be achieved once the other objectives are met. In other words, Afghanistan cannot be secured until you have an efficient and legitimate government that can implement some respectful standard of democracy and human rights.
It is now clear that this argument and strategy is utterly flawed and unrealistic. What the nine-year conflict has shown is that the numerous over-arching objectives cannot be met in their entirety, will certainly not be achieved should the US begin its drawdown in July 2011 or within the five year troop withdrawal deadline being proposed by Prime Minister David Cameron, and will most certainly not be achieved within the next ten years – if the current record is anything to go by.
The realities on the ground justify this inconvenient truth.
Firstly, there is no political strategy in Afghanistan that can reconcile the Karzai-led government with other rival tribal and political factions, all vying for power and a serious stake in the country. The reality is that the current government is entrenched in a tribal and political web of patronage and corruption that has become impossible to remedy.
Beyond this, and secondly, there is no clear consensus on how, and whether, to negotiate and reconcile with the fragmented Taliban. The Taliban is not the cohesive, hierarchical and organised entity that they may come across as being. Three disparate entities are currently fighting in the country: the Taliban, which is led by Mullah Omar but whose whereabouts remains elusive; the Haqqani network, led by the former mujahideen warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj Haqqani and, finally, a collection of domestic and foreign fighters that includes al-Qaida. There is, therefore, no leadership to negotiate with.
Finally, even if a grand strategy was offered, elements within and beyond Afghanistan in neighbouring states have become convinced that the west will not be around long enough to enforce it. The now clear commitment to withdraw troops within a fixed deadline or, at the very, least reduce troops in the country justifies their concerns.
More importantly, what this means is that Kabul will have little incentive to carry out the reforms essential for any counter-insurgency initiative to work. The Afghan government, suffering from a legitimacy crisis, is not committed to maintaining stability. It is aware of the above limitations in the state-building process and thus individuals within its upper echelons will continue to maximise their political and financial gain while they are in a position to do so, convinced that an ISAF withdrawal and potential defeat lies on the horizon.
The west, unwilling to publicly repudiate the government and its shambolic elections, or advocate an alternative, has inadvertently consolidated their positions and is now unable to displace them and their obstructive networks of power, so that reform takes place. To remove them from power now would invite a violent backlash of epic and uncontrollable proportions.
The international community must accept that a stable and representative government is no longer feasible, and certainly not one able to adequately implement the rule of law and enforce human rights. These are values that may have to be sacrificed. Sadly, Afghans never had such luxuries in the first place, at least not in recent times, and in truth the west is unlikely to ever be in a position to provide them with it.
To carry on in denial and futility will be a waste of human lives (civilian and military), resources and in essence unfair on the Afghan people. Instead, the west must go back to what it does best: make do with what it has and pursue its historic policy of supporting suspect regimes in the middle east, Asia and Latin America.
Karzai and his government may have to be propped up; heavily supported (financially and militarily) and assured, so that it becomes the West’s bulwark against the insurgency and extremists – the ultimate objective. The West would therefore leave Afghanistan to Afghans but without handing the state back to the Taliban and al-Qaida.
To make this effective and rewarding, focus must continue to be on the Afghan security forces, ensuring they are up to the task of countering the insurgency. Defeating them may not be an option, at least according to on-the-ground observers. Containing and reducing them to sporadic attacks is though.
That requires maintaining, beyond any withdrawal, an international force of military and police advisors, engaged in non-combat duties and comprised of the renowned EU police training missions. At present there are some 3,600 trainers on the ground. There is still a shortfall of nearly 500 trainers, but once the focus turns from combat to training that can be rectified by states who may have previously been reluctant.
More challenging is keeping at bay Afghanistan’s neighbours. The proxy conflict between the Pakistani intelligence service (the ISI) and the Indian intelligence service (RAW) suggests that Pakistan will not cooperate with the west in Afghanistan, despite pretences to the contrary. In reality, Pakistan seeks instability in Afghanistan since a stable Afghanistan will likely be pro-India. India has a vested interest in the current government, possibly more so than the West, because it is a means of containing Pakistan.
China feels that NATO’s presence in Afghanistan is an effort at securing a strategic base in the region whilst securing access to energy resources and encircling China. Iran, meanwhile, will be ill at ease with a stable NATO ally on its Eastern border. Keeping NATO resources tied up in Afghanistan means the probability of war against Iran is reduced.
All this renders it even more imperative to ensure the current government is consolidated, lest the withdrawal of ISAF leads to a civil war intensified by regional neighbours and which leads to the collapse of the Karzai government, much like the 1992 collapse of the Najabullah government three years after the Soviet withdrawal.
Pursuant to this, it is also an option to maintain the above-mentioned international force of advisors for at least another twenty-years. There is no reason why these non-combat personnel cannot be deployed alongside Afghan forces in the most extreme and unlikely of cases, upon the request of the Afghan government and in the event the government does edge towards the brink.
In short, the strategy in Afghanistan must revolve around what is viable and sustainable. Propping up Karzai is not the ideal choice to take but it is perhaps the only realistic option amidst what is a complex political, security and geopolitical environment.
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Succeeding in Afghanistan?
The Henry Jackson Society has put out a positive report on Afghanistan:
http://henryjacksonsociety.org/cms/harriercollectionitems/Succeeding%20in%20Afghanistan.pdf
I wish I could share their optimism. And with regard to Afghanistan: When will journalists use normal terminology - calling a spade a spade? Not that their report is culpable at that level. But sending reinforcements is not "a surge" and an increase in violence is not "a spike". I heard the great polemiscist Robert Fisk saying as much yesterday in Old Chelsea Town Hall. Not that I agree with him on much but on this he and I are one.
We have lost control of the border Afpak area and are swiftly losing control of the entire country. Minister of Defence Wardak cannot even visit his own province. Things aren't good.
http://henryjacksonsociety.org/cms/harriercollectionitems/Succeeding%20in%20Afghanistan.pdf
I wish I could share their optimism. And with regard to Afghanistan: When will journalists use normal terminology - calling a spade a spade? Not that their report is culpable at that level. But sending reinforcements is not "a surge" and an increase in violence is not "a spike". I heard the great polemiscist Robert Fisk saying as much yesterday in Old Chelsea Town Hall. Not that I agree with him on much but on this he and I are one.
We have lost control of the border Afpak area and are swiftly losing control of the entire country. Minister of Defence Wardak cannot even visit his own province. Things aren't good.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
The 256th soldier to die!!
The Independent on Feb 9th seems to make us aware that there are contradictory messages coming from Afghanistan. This death toll is more than the no. killed in the 1982 Falklands war.
Gen Stanley McChrystal the US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan is aiming to retake Marjah which is now in Taliban hands; he wanted the citizens to know that an Afghan Government will be there to replace the Taliban. But the Taliban are not going to leave without a fight. They said that they would "defeat the infidel invader". They also have brave international Mujahedin behind them.
Mahar now looks empty; most of the families have now gone, but as a farmer says: he has no money to leave with his family and cannot move them to safety.
With accusations being levelled at MI5 today Feb; and there are prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that "committed suicide" simultaneously by hanging themselves in their cells, yet the cells are checked every 10 minutes, with 5 guards for 28 prisoners but the bodies weren't discovered for two hours!
Lord Newburger cited that MI5 must have known about the treatment and torture of Binyam Mohamed with apparently all those condoning this treatment. The trials go on and the public get more and more disillusioned with the institutions that they had trusted for so many years.
We are from a first world country, but how will the Afghans be able to trust the US, UK,China and the big powers.
Gen Stanley McChrystal the US commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan is aiming to retake Marjah which is now in Taliban hands; he wanted the citizens to know that an Afghan Government will be there to replace the Taliban. But the Taliban are not going to leave without a fight. They said that they would "defeat the infidel invader". They also have brave international Mujahedin behind them.
Mahar now looks empty; most of the families have now gone, but as a farmer says: he has no money to leave with his family and cannot move them to safety.
With accusations being levelled at MI5 today Feb; and there are prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that "committed suicide" simultaneously by hanging themselves in their cells, yet the cells are checked every 10 minutes, with 5 guards for 28 prisoners but the bodies weren't discovered for two hours!
Lord Newburger cited that MI5 must have known about the treatment and torture of Binyam Mohamed with apparently all those condoning this treatment. The trials go on and the public get more and more disillusioned with the institutions that they had trusted for so many years.
We are from a first world country, but how will the Afghans be able to trust the US, UK,China and the big powers.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
The Insurgency
There is a disturbing element to this insurgency. In 2010 more Afghans are dying in their country's dispute than anytime since 2001. This is due to the Taliban's use of roadside bombs. This contradicts the fact that the Afghans are less in conflict with them than the imposed forces of the US, UN and NATO. The UN, stated that at least 2,412 civilians were killed last year and a further 3,566 wounded as a direct result of the war between Taliban led insurgents and the Western backed government. A friend who is a traveller in the area is quick to point out that the Afghans, apart from their treatment of women, admire what the Taliban are doing on the ground getting electricity working, but "These suicide attacks and roadside bombs most often kill innocent Afghans, not international forces," a human rights advocate said. "This is not the way of Islam and is against international law. This disregard for lives, must stop."
A vindication of US General Stanley McChrystal's policy of restricting the use of air strikes, even so 359 were still killed in air strikes. He told President Karzai that everything would be done to protect civilians. Yet he is the architect of a troop surge, that will see 37,000 more foreign soldiers arrive in Afghanistan this year, and this will certainly result in more violence and deaths.
A vindication of US General Stanley McChrystal's policy of restricting the use of air strikes, even so 359 were still killed in air strikes. He told President Karzai that everything would be done to protect civilians. Yet he is the architect of a troop surge, that will see 37,000 more foreign soldiers arrive in Afghanistan this year, and this will certainly result in more violence and deaths.
Friday, 4 December 2009
The elephant is down
Jonathon sent this: From The Times : December 4, 2009
Barack Obama’s plan is seriously flawed. We need more
By Paddy Ashdown
The Taleban’s favourite phrase in recent months has been: “The elephant is down, now all we have to do is slay it.” The best thing about this week’s Obama speech was that they now know the elephant is not down; it is engaging the fight with renewed strength, determination and vigour. The Taleban are now under real pressure in northern Pakistan and, with the right resources, the right leadership and the right military strategy on the ground, we now have a chance to begin to turn the military tide in Afghanistan. So is this enough for success (however limited your definition)? The answer is no. The Obama speech gave us was a military plan — but not yet a political one. It was, in short, necessary, but not sufficient.
When General Stanley McChrystal sent his proposal to the President, it included a carefully integrated plan for both the military (broadly, an extra 30,000 troops and a focus on protecting the people, not chasing the enemy) and the political aspect. The speech contained the first but was almost silent on the second. Perhaps this is still to come. But if it is not, then what we have heard so far will not be enough. What the President intended was for audiences in the US and Afghanistan to hear different things. His message to the domestic audience was supposed to be “troops home in 18 months” and to the Taleban, “30,000 extra troops”. My worry is that the wrong people got the wrong message. What the US heard was “30,000 more troops” while what the Taleban heard was “in 18 months, they’ll be gone”. The Taleban commander Mullah Omar once famously said: “They may have the watches, but we have the time.” I fear we may have inadvertently given volume to that message. I understand the temptation of timelines and exit strategies for those who have to win domestic support. But they also tell our enemies how long they have to wait before we give up. It is far better to deal with these things through milestones rather than timelines. For instance we could set milestones for the growth and professionalisation of the Afghan Army and police, set target times for them to be delivered and, as they are, hand over our functions to Afghan structures and pull out as we do so. In Bosnia, we formulated this into a Mission Implementation Plan, a public document that served not just to hold us to key tasks, but also to provide accountability to our political masters. A mission implementation plan for Afghanistan, capable of being debated in national parliaments at home and providing a visible road map of progress for Afghans as well, is a better way to gain public support than artificial deadlines that, in the case of July 2011, look to me almost undeliverable. It is not difficult to see why the President felt that he needed, for domestic purposes, to say that withdrawal would start in July 2011. But this does not make it right. Other elements of the strategy were also either missing or too lightly glossed over. First and foremost, there was nothing about the absolute necessity to ensure that, at last and after six damaging years of muddle, the tower of Babel that is the international community in Afghanistan will now work to a single plan, act on a single set of priorities and speak with a single voice. It is the absence of this, more than anything else that has caused our failures and cost us so many lives. The only person whose authority is powerful enough to bash international heads together and make this happen is the US President. Yet there was nothing of this in his speech. Second, what political element there was in the President's speech seemed to rely still on the belief that President Karzai is reformable and will reform. Some might think this a triumph of hope over experience. Of course we cannot change Afghanistan’s newly elected President; of course we have no option but to support him. But that does not mean we need to pile all our eggs into this rather rickety basket. One of the impediments to success in Afghanistan is that we have been trying to force a Western-style centralised constitution on to a country whose traditions have been tribal and local for 1,000 years. This is a golden opportunity to begin to shift the weight of our effort away from strengthening Kabul, to building up governance from the bottom. This would at once give us a political strategy that runs with, rather than against, the grain of Afghan society, while creating the best context for a serious programme of reconciliation with the tribally based Taleban. Taleban reconciliation was mentioned in the President's speech — but only with a single, almost off-hand, remark. Yet this was a main plank of the McChrystal strategy. We need to be clear here. Taleban reconciliation is not an easy option to hard fighting. It may always be possible to split the oddly low-level Taleban commander away with a bag of gold or the promise of a job. But serious negotiation with a Taleban prepared to put aside the gun in favour of pursuing constitutional means will never come while they think — with justification — that they are winning on the battlefield. But if in the next year or so we can begin to turn this around we will need a serious, thought-through, heavyweight programme to bring those Taleban who will lay aside the gun for the ballot box into the fold. And that needs to be much more clearly laid out now if it is to have significant impact and be properly prepared for — especially among non-Pashtun Afghans who regard such an approach with deep suspicion. I had also hoped to see, in the President’s speech a clear statement of a wider regional strategy that would include not just Pakistan but also Iran, India, and maybe even Russia and China. Without this, success will be much more difficult. One other thing struck me about this week’s speech. The old Obama so famously comfortable in his own skin, seemed distinctly uncomfortable in that of a war leader. Gordon Brown, too, looks especially miserable talking of conflict. I do not think either feels comfortable with this — and who would? We all understand that our Prime Minister will never be Henry V before Agincourt. But the US President has formidable gifts of oratory and he will need to deploy them more confidently, if he is to pull this one off. As my colleague Nick Clegg has said, you cannot win a war on half horsepower. Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon was the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia
Barack Obama’s plan is seriously flawed. We need more
By Paddy Ashdown
The Taleban’s favourite phrase in recent months has been: “The elephant is down, now all we have to do is slay it.” The best thing about this week’s Obama speech was that they now know the elephant is not down; it is engaging the fight with renewed strength, determination and vigour. The Taleban are now under real pressure in northern Pakistan and, with the right resources, the right leadership and the right military strategy on the ground, we now have a chance to begin to turn the military tide in Afghanistan. So is this enough for success (however limited your definition)? The answer is no. The Obama speech gave us was a military plan — but not yet a political one. It was, in short, necessary, but not sufficient.
When General Stanley McChrystal sent his proposal to the President, it included a carefully integrated plan for both the military (broadly, an extra 30,000 troops and a focus on protecting the people, not chasing the enemy) and the political aspect. The speech contained the first but was almost silent on the second. Perhaps this is still to come. But if it is not, then what we have heard so far will not be enough. What the President intended was for audiences in the US and Afghanistan to hear different things. His message to the domestic audience was supposed to be “troops home in 18 months” and to the Taleban, “30,000 extra troops”. My worry is that the wrong people got the wrong message. What the US heard was “30,000 more troops” while what the Taleban heard was “in 18 months, they’ll be gone”. The Taleban commander Mullah Omar once famously said: “They may have the watches, but we have the time.” I fear we may have inadvertently given volume to that message. I understand the temptation of timelines and exit strategies for those who have to win domestic support. But they also tell our enemies how long they have to wait before we give up. It is far better to deal with these things through milestones rather than timelines. For instance we could set milestones for the growth and professionalisation of the Afghan Army and police, set target times for them to be delivered and, as they are, hand over our functions to Afghan structures and pull out as we do so. In Bosnia, we formulated this into a Mission Implementation Plan, a public document that served not just to hold us to key tasks, but also to provide accountability to our political masters. A mission implementation plan for Afghanistan, capable of being debated in national parliaments at home and providing a visible road map of progress for Afghans as well, is a better way to gain public support than artificial deadlines that, in the case of July 2011, look to me almost undeliverable. It is not difficult to see why the President felt that he needed, for domestic purposes, to say that withdrawal would start in July 2011. But this does not make it right. Other elements of the strategy were also either missing or too lightly glossed over. First and foremost, there was nothing about the absolute necessity to ensure that, at last and after six damaging years of muddle, the tower of Babel that is the international community in Afghanistan will now work to a single plan, act on a single set of priorities and speak with a single voice. It is the absence of this, more than anything else that has caused our failures and cost us so many lives. The only person whose authority is powerful enough to bash international heads together and make this happen is the US President. Yet there was nothing of this in his speech. Second, what political element there was in the President's speech seemed to rely still on the belief that President Karzai is reformable and will reform. Some might think this a triumph of hope over experience. Of course we cannot change Afghanistan’s newly elected President; of course we have no option but to support him. But that does not mean we need to pile all our eggs into this rather rickety basket. One of the impediments to success in Afghanistan is that we have been trying to force a Western-style centralised constitution on to a country whose traditions have been tribal and local for 1,000 years. This is a golden opportunity to begin to shift the weight of our effort away from strengthening Kabul, to building up governance from the bottom. This would at once give us a political strategy that runs with, rather than against, the grain of Afghan society, while creating the best context for a serious programme of reconciliation with the tribally based Taleban. Taleban reconciliation was mentioned in the President's speech — but only with a single, almost off-hand, remark. Yet this was a main plank of the McChrystal strategy. We need to be clear here. Taleban reconciliation is not an easy option to hard fighting. It may always be possible to split the oddly low-level Taleban commander away with a bag of gold or the promise of a job. But serious negotiation with a Taleban prepared to put aside the gun in favour of pursuing constitutional means will never come while they think — with justification — that they are winning on the battlefield. But if in the next year or so we can begin to turn this around we will need a serious, thought-through, heavyweight programme to bring those Taleban who will lay aside the gun for the ballot box into the fold. And that needs to be much more clearly laid out now if it is to have significant impact and be properly prepared for — especially among non-Pashtun Afghans who regard such an approach with deep suspicion. I had also hoped to see, in the President’s speech a clear statement of a wider regional strategy that would include not just Pakistan but also Iran, India, and maybe even Russia and China. Without this, success will be much more difficult. One other thing struck me about this week’s speech. The old Obama so famously comfortable in his own skin, seemed distinctly uncomfortable in that of a war leader. Gordon Brown, too, looks especially miserable talking of conflict. I do not think either feels comfortable with this — and who would? We all understand that our Prime Minister will never be Henry V before Agincourt. But the US President has formidable gifts of oratory and he will need to deploy them more confidently, if he is to pull this one off. As my colleague Nick Clegg has said, you cannot win a war on half horsepower. Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon was the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Four Ways to Fix Afghanistan Without Guns
Robin sent this in:
Once before, Clare Lockhart was charged with rebuilding Afghanistan. Now, as the new administration sends her — and 30,000 troops — back there, she has a new plan. Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/clare-lockhart-1209#ixzz0YfhrgRRU
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Where do we go from here?
This is a really muddling situation, which Obama is trying to see his way through, as Andrew Sullivan states in his article this Sunday October 4th will he send the extra troops? which some members of the senate are all for, but the American public is not certain of and there is a lot riding on this decision and a lot of lives that could be lost.
Now, with him just being awarded a Nobel peace prize very unexpectedly "what has he done" I hear you ask? It's just two months since he took over. Well I am sure that his stance about the nuclear issue has helped - and he is all for more countries to disarm, and he wants to distance himself from the Bush premiership. He calls for more countries to unite and made the pivotal speech to the Muslims in Cairo saying that the US were holding out a hand of friendship.
Now Leitifa (which is a pseudonym) has written "My Forbidden Face" about her growing up in Kabul unable to go to Kabul university as the Taliban did not agree with women being educated and to become a journalist and was able to publish her book. She comes from a well educated family with parents both working, her mother a doctor and her father running an export business.
I don't think we can know what she must have gone through to write this book, we from a "democratic" country without the fear of being arrested by the Taliban for being a woman walking about outside without being in the presence of a man either a husband or a relative.
Now, with him just being awarded a Nobel peace prize very unexpectedly "what has he done" I hear you ask? It's just two months since he took over. Well I am sure that his stance about the nuclear issue has helped - and he is all for more countries to disarm, and he wants to distance himself from the Bush premiership. He calls for more countries to unite and made the pivotal speech to the Muslims in Cairo saying that the US were holding out a hand of friendship.
Now Leitifa (which is a pseudonym) has written "My Forbidden Face" about her growing up in Kabul unable to go to Kabul university as the Taliban did not agree with women being educated and to become a journalist and was able to publish her book. She comes from a well educated family with parents both working, her mother a doctor and her father running an export business.
I don't think we can know what she must have gone through to write this book, we from a "democratic" country without the fear of being arrested by the Taliban for being a woman walking about outside without being in the presence of a man either a husband or a relative.
Monday, 21 September 2009
Is this the end of the Taliban?
It was reported in The Independant on Mon Sept 21st from Islamabad that the infamous Sher Mohammed Qasab was captured in a raid at Mingora, he was wounded and his three sons were killed. A military spokesman said "He was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds early this morning." Another Military Official said the death of Qasab who killed many civilians, policemen and troops would reassure the residents of the tourist valley that the "Taliban were finished!" Pakistani troops have made significent gains against the militants in their Swat offensive after Taliban advances raised fears for the nuclear armed Pakistan future and contributed to a slide in investor confidence.
Maybe the Taliban have just moved across the border into Afghanistan.
There is in the Helmand province a couple of buildings known as "Rose Cottage" here 60 soldiers are making the "final journey" home, as this has been the deadliest summer of the British forces time in Afghanistan. A couple of soldiers with decades of experience between them have been in charge of the army's morgue, this must have been one of the most depressing jobs.
Could this be because of the British soldier unlike the U. S. soldier does not have armour to cover their groin and neck. A senior surgeon said that "We have seen a lot of groin and neck injuries in U.K. not otherwise seen in US Marines because of this piece of equipment" Wheras the US Kevlar is a lighter body armour and has the important groin plate and they have modular neck and shoulder protection!!
It is not a lot to ask that in giving there lives for this cause they have the resouces to finish the job.
Maybe the Taliban have just moved across the border into Afghanistan.
There is in the Helmand province a couple of buildings known as "Rose Cottage" here 60 soldiers are making the "final journey" home, as this has been the deadliest summer of the British forces time in Afghanistan. A couple of soldiers with decades of experience between them have been in charge of the army's morgue, this must have been one of the most depressing jobs.
Could this be because of the British soldier unlike the U. S. soldier does not have armour to cover their groin and neck. A senior surgeon said that "We have seen a lot of groin and neck injuries in U.K. not otherwise seen in US Marines because of this piece of equipment" Wheras the US Kevlar is a lighter body armour and has the important groin plate and they have modular neck and shoulder protection!!
It is not a lot to ask that in giving there lives for this cause they have the resouces to finish the job.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
The War We Can't Win
Jonathan writes:
The problems with Bacevich’s article start with the premise of his title – that wars like Afghanistan and Iraq can be won. They can be lost, but they cannot be won – however, prudent use of military force can make it possible to resolve the conflicts by other means. Britain did not win in Northern Ireland, but the Army did ultimately make possible a settlement, once large parts of both communities were tired enough of war to accept the solution on offer. There are lots of Afghans who are equally tired of war.
The ‘graveyard of empires’ story is a common story about Afghanistan, but it is just a story, and one that tells as much about the teller as the subject. By repeating it, Bacevich is engaging in a selective reading of history which ignores both most of the history of counter-insurgency operations and the differences between the Anglo-American presence in Afghanistan and earlier invaders. If we are seen as occupiers today, it is a self-inflicted wound, and one that can be healed. Much of Afghanistan welcomed us as liberators in 2001 and even today Pashtun tribal chiefs tell me they don’t want American troops to leave: ‘We trust you more than Karzai.’
Like Bacevich, I opposed the Iraq invasion before the fact, but now it is hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. When it was announced, I thought the surge was too little, too late, but I was overly pessimistic. Changes in operating doctrine and the Sunni awakening did bring results out of proportion to the modest increase in U.S. troops. One consequence of the surge was that we gained leverage with Maliki, and were able to moderate his Shia particularism. With the announcement of our departure, that leverage has been lost. All parties in Iraq are jockeying for position in life after the Americans. Since we will not be there they no longer listen to us. In 2006 I thought that partition, or at best a loose confederacy, might be the only way to deal with Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions. In 12 to 18 months partition might be looking attractive again.
Bacevich argues for relying on Afghanistan’s tribal leadership to keep out terrorists. ‘Provided appropriate incentives, the tribal chiefs who actually run Afghanistan are best positioned to prevent terrorist networks from establishing a large-scale presence. ‘ In fact, this is exactly what the ethno-counter-insurgents (Kilcullen, Nagl, Malkasian, et al) propose, and it also at the foundation of my own proposals for building an Afghan state locality-province-nation. It is not clear, though, when Bacevich talks about ‘…who actually run Afghanistan…’ he actually means the tribal chiefs, or the warlords. The warlords may not run the country, but, empowered by Karzai, who depends on them for support, and to some extent by various coalition powers, they do run (and rob) the government. While sampling of Afghan public opinion is uncertain, the evidence we have is that the warlords are deeply unpopular and a large majority of Afghans want them not just removed from power, but brought to justice.
It is true that in many areas tribal leaders do exercise considerable power on a local level, and it is possible to work with them to rid their communities of insurgents and foreign terrorists, the incentives to get them to do that usually begin with a western security presence to keep them alive and continue on to rural development programmes (which can only be implemented with a security presence). Nevertheless, realise that tribal chiefs have much less authority to make unilateral decisions than do their counterparts in Iraq, and the tribes in many regions have been weakened by a generation of war, destruction, and displacement, and have lost a lot of power to the warlords.
The real question about Iraq and Afghanistan is not what the U.S. Army has learned about counter-insurgency, but what it has learned about learning. If the lessons of Iraq about the relevance of classical counter-insurgency doctrine to our post-9/11 conflicts in the Middle East become a new orthodoxy, a recipe which can be used again and again at different times in different places, then we have learned nothing about learning ande we will fail in Afghanistan. But if we treat the lessons as a set of principles which must be adapted and applied in light of local conditions (the message of the ethno-counter-insurgents), then we have a way forward.
The War We Can't Win
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:22:51 -0400
CommonwealVolume CXXXVI, Number 14 The War We Can’t Win
Afghanistan & the Limits of American Power
Andrew J. Bacevich
History deals rudely with the pretensions of those who presume to determine its course. In an American context, this describes the fate of those falling prey to the Wilsonian Conceit. Yet the damage done by that conceit outlives its perpetrators.From time to time, in some moment of peril or anxiety, a statesman appears on the scene promising to eliminate tyranny, ensure the triumph of liberty, and achieve permanent peace. For a moment, the statesman achieves the status of prophet, one who in his own person seemingly embodies the essence of the American purpose. Then reality intrudes, exposing the promises as costly fantasies. The prophet’s followers abandon him. Mocked and reviled, he is eventually banished—perhaps to some gated community in Dallas.Yet however brief his ascendancy, the discredited prophet leaves behind a legacy. Most obvious are the problems created and left unresolved, commitments made and left unfulfilled, debts accrued and left unpaid. Less obvious, but for that reason more important, are the changes in perception.The prophet recasts our image of reality. Long after his departure, remnants of that image linger and retain their capacity to beguile: consider how the Wilsonian vision of the United States as crusader state called upon to redeem the world in World War I has periodically resurfaced despite Woodrow Wilson’s own manifest failure to make good on that expectation. The prophet declaims and departs. Yet traces of his testimony, however at odds with the facts, remain lodged in our consciousness.So it is today with Afghanistan, the conflict that George W. Bush began, then ignored, and finally bequeathed to his successor. Barack Obama has embraced that conflict as “the war we must win.” Those who celebrated Bush’s militancy back in the intoxicating days when he was promising to rid the world of evil see Obama’s enthusiasm for pressing on in Afghanistan as a vindication of sorts. They are right to do so.The misguided and mismanaged global war on terror reduced Bush’s presidency to ruin. The candidate whose run for high office derived its energy from an implicit promise to repudiate all that Bush had wrought now seems intent on salvaging something useful from that failed enterprise—even if that means putting his own presidency at risk. When it comes to Afghanistan, Obama may be singing in a different key, but to anyone with an ear for music—especially for military marches—the melody remains intact.Candidate Obama once derided the notion that the United States is called upon to determine the fate of Iraq. President Obama expresses a willingness to expend untold billions—not to mention who knows how many lives—in order to determine the fate of Afghanistan. Liberals may have interpreted Obama’s campaign pledge to ramp up the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan as calculated to insulate himself from the charge of being a national-security wimp. Events have exposed that interpretation as incorrect. It turns out—apparently—that the president genuinely views this remote, landlocked, primitive Central Asian country as a vital U.S. national-security interest.What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.Tune in to the Sunday talk shows or consult the op-ed pages and you might conclude otherwise. Those who profess to be in the know insist that the fight in Afghanistan is essential to keeping America safe. The events of September 11, 2001, ostensibly occurred because we ignored Afghanistan. Preventing the recurrence of those events, therefore, requires that we fix the place.Yet this widely accepted line of reasoning overlooks the primary reason why the 9/11 conspiracy succeeded: federal, state, and local agencies responsible for basic security fell down on the job, failing to install even minimally adequate security measures in the nation’s airports. The national-security apparatus wasn’t paying attention—indeed, it ignored or downplayed all sorts of warning signs, not least of all Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States. Consumed with its ABC agenda—“anything but Clinton” was the Bush administration’s watchword in those days—the people at the top didn’t have their eye on the ball. So we let ourselves get sucker-punched. Averting a recurrence of that awful day does not require the semipermanent occupation and pacification of distant countries like Afghanistan. Rather, it requires that the United States erect and maintain robust defenses.Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it’s also likely to prove impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires. Of course, Americans, insistent that the dominion over which they preside does not meet the definition of empire, evince little interest in how Brits, Russians, or other foreigners have fared in attempting to impose their will on the Afghans. As General David McKiernan, until just recently the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, put it, “There’s always an inclination to relate what we’re doing with previous nations,” adding, “I think that’s a very unhealthy comparison.” McKiernan was expressing a view common among the ranks of the political and military elite: We’re Americans. We’re different. Therefore, the experience of others does not apply.Of course, Americans like McKiernan who reject as irrelevant the experience of others might at least be willing to contemplate the experience of the United States itself. Take the case of Iraq, now bizarrely trumpeted in some quarters as a “success” and even more bizarrely seen as offering a template for how to turn Afghanistan around.Much has been made of the United States Army’s rediscovery of (and growing infatuation with) counterinsurgency doctrine, applied in Iraq beginning in late 2006 when President Bush announced his so-called surge and anointed General David Petraeus as the senior U.S. commander in Baghdad. Yet technique is no substitute for strategy. Violence in Iraq may be down, but evidence of the promised political reconciliation that the surge was intended to produce remains elusive. America’s Mesopotamian misadventure continues.Pretending that the surge has redeemed the Iraq war is akin to claiming that when Andy Jackson “caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans” he thereby enabled the United States to emerge victorious from the War of 1812. Such a judgment works well as folklore but ignores an abundance of contrary evidence.Six-plus years after it began, Operation Iraqi Freedom has consumed something like a trillion dollars—with the meter still running—and has taken the lives of more than forty-three hundred American soldiers. Meanwhile, in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, car bombs continue to detonate at regular intervals, killing and maiming dozens. Anyone inclined to put Iraq in the nation’s rearview mirror is simply deluded. Not long ago General Raymond Odierno, Petraeus’s successor and the fifth U.S. commander in Baghdad, expressed the view that the insurgency in Iraq is likely to drag on for an-other five, ten, or fifteen years. Events may well show that Odierno is an optimist.Given the embarrassing yet indisputable fact that this was an utterly needless war—no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, no ties between Saddam Hussein and the jihadists established, no democratic transformation of the Islamic world set in motion, no road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad—to describe Iraq as a success, and as a model for application elsewhere, is nothing short of obscene. The great unacknowledged lesson of Iraq is the one that the writer Norman Mailer identified decades ago: “Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.”For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbor—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude.If one believes that moral considerations rather than self-interest should inform foreign policy, Mexico still qualifies for priority attention. Consider the theft of California. Or consider more recently how the American appetite for illicit drugs and our liberal gun laws have corroded Mexican institutions and produced an epidemic of violence afflicting ordinary Mexicans. We owe these people, big-time.Yet any politician calling for the commitment of sixty thousand U.S. troops to Mexico to secure those interests or acquit those moral obligations would be laughed out of Washington—and rightly so. Any pundit proposing that the United States assume responsibility for eliminating the corruption that is endemic in Mexican politics while establishing in Mexico City effective mechanisms of governance would have his license to pontificate revoked. Anyone suggesting that the United States possesses the wisdom and the wherewithal to solve the problem of Mexican drug trafficking, to endow Mexico with competent security forces, and to reform the Mexican school system (while protecting the rights of Mexican women) would be dismissed as a lunatic. Meanwhile, those who promote such programs for Afghanistan, ignoring questions of cost and ignoring as well the corruption and ineffectiveness that pervade our own institutions, are treated like sages.The contrast between Washington’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and its relative indifference to Mexico testifies to the distortion of U.S. national security priorities induced by George W. Bush in his post-9/11 prophetic mode—distortions now being endorsed by Bush’s successor. It also testifies to a vast failure of imagination to which our governing classes have succumbed.This failure of imagination makes it literally impossible for those who possess either authority or influence in Washington to consider the possibility (a) that the solution to America’s problems is to be found not out there—where “there” in this case is Central Asia-but here at home; (b) that the people out there, rather than requiring our ministrations, may well be capable of managing their own affairs relying on their own methods; and (c) that to disregard (a) and (b) is to open the door to great mischief and in all likelihood to perpetrate no small amount of evil. Needless to say, when mischief or evil does occur—when a stray American bomb kills a few dozen Afghan civilians, for instance—the costs of this failure of imagination are not borne by the people who inhabit the leafy neighborhoods of northwest Washington, who lunch at the Palm or the Metropolitan Club, and school their kids at Sidwell Friends.So the answer to the question of the hour—What should the United States do about Afghanistan?—comes down to this: A sense of realism and a sense of proportion should oblige us to take a minimalist approach. As with Uruguay or Fiji or Estonia or other countries where U.S. interests are limited, the United States should undertake to secure those interests at the lowest cost possible.What might this mean in practice? General Petraeus, now commanding United States Central Command, recently commented that “the mission is to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and other transnational extremists,” in effect “to deny them safe havens in which they can plan and train for such attacks.”The mission statement is a sound one. The current approach to accomplishing the mission is not sound and, indeed, qualifies as counterproductive. Note that denying Al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan hasn’t required U.S. forces to occupy the frontier regions of that country. Similarly, denying Al Qaeda safe havens in Afghanistan shouldn’t require military occupation by the United States and its allies.It would be much better to let local authorities do the heavy lifting. Provided appropriate incentives, the tribal chiefs who actually run Afghanistan are best positioned to prevent terrorist networks from establishing a large-scale presence. As a backup, intensive surveillance complemented with precision punitive strikes (assuming we can manage to kill the right people) will suffice to disrupt Al Qaeda’s plans. Certainly, that approach offers a cheaper and more efficient alter-native to establishing a large-scale and long-term U.S. ground presence—which, as the U.S. campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, has the unintended effect of handing jihadists a recruiting tool that they are quick to exploit.In the immediate wake of 9/11, all the talk—much of it emanating from neoconservative quarters—was about achieving a “decisive victory” over terror. The reality is that we can’t eliminate every last armed militant harboring a grudge against the West. Nor do we need to. As long as we maintain adequate defenses, Al Qaeda operatives, hunkered down in their caves, pose no more than a modest threat. As for the Taliban, unless they manage to establish enclaves in places like New Jersey or Miami, the danger they pose to the United States falls several notches below the threat posed by Cuba, which is no threat at all.As for the putatively existential challenge posed by Islamic radicalism, that project will prove ultimately to be a self-defeating one. What violent Islamists have on offer-a rejection of modernity that aims to restore the caliphate and unify the ummah [community]—doesn’t sell. In this regard, Iran—its nuclear aspirations the subject of much hand-wringing—offers considerable cause for hope. Much like the Castro revolution that once elicited so much angst in Washington, the Islamic revolution launched in 1979 has failed resoundingly. Observers once feared that the revolution inspired and led by the Ayatollah Khomeini would sweep across the Persian Gulf. In fact, it has accomplished precious little. Within Iran itself, the Islamic republic no longer represents the hopes and aspirations of the Iranian people, as the tens of thousands of protesters who recently filled the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities made evident. Here we see foretold the fate awaiting the revolutionary cause that Osama bin Laden purports to promote.In short, time is on our side, not on the side of those who proclaim their intention of turning back the clock to the fifteenth century. The ethos of consumption and individual autonomy, privileging the here and now over the eternal, will conquer the Muslim world as surely as it is conquering East Asia and as surely as it has already conquered what was once known as Christendom. It’s the wreckage left in the wake of that conquest that demands our attention. If the United States today has a saving mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right: “Come home, America.” The prophet of that era urged his countrymen to take on “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking—in our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves, King remains today the prophet we ignore at our peril. That Barack Obama should fail to realize this qualifies as not only ironic but inexplicable.
ABOUT THE WRITERAndrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.
The problems with Bacevich’s article start with the premise of his title – that wars like Afghanistan and Iraq can be won. They can be lost, but they cannot be won – however, prudent use of military force can make it possible to resolve the conflicts by other means. Britain did not win in Northern Ireland, but the Army did ultimately make possible a settlement, once large parts of both communities were tired enough of war to accept the solution on offer. There are lots of Afghans who are equally tired of war.
The ‘graveyard of empires’ story is a common story about Afghanistan, but it is just a story, and one that tells as much about the teller as the subject. By repeating it, Bacevich is engaging in a selective reading of history which ignores both most of the history of counter-insurgency operations and the differences between the Anglo-American presence in Afghanistan and earlier invaders. If we are seen as occupiers today, it is a self-inflicted wound, and one that can be healed. Much of Afghanistan welcomed us as liberators in 2001 and even today Pashtun tribal chiefs tell me they don’t want American troops to leave: ‘We trust you more than Karzai.’
Like Bacevich, I opposed the Iraq invasion before the fact, but now it is hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. When it was announced, I thought the surge was too little, too late, but I was overly pessimistic. Changes in operating doctrine and the Sunni awakening did bring results out of proportion to the modest increase in U.S. troops. One consequence of the surge was that we gained leverage with Maliki, and were able to moderate his Shia particularism. With the announcement of our departure, that leverage has been lost. All parties in Iraq are jockeying for position in life after the Americans. Since we will not be there they no longer listen to us. In 2006 I thought that partition, or at best a loose confederacy, might be the only way to deal with Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions. In 12 to 18 months partition might be looking attractive again.
Bacevich argues for relying on Afghanistan’s tribal leadership to keep out terrorists. ‘Provided appropriate incentives, the tribal chiefs who actually run Afghanistan are best positioned to prevent terrorist networks from establishing a large-scale presence. ‘ In fact, this is exactly what the ethno-counter-insurgents (Kilcullen, Nagl, Malkasian, et al) propose, and it also at the foundation of my own proposals for building an Afghan state locality-province-nation. It is not clear, though, when Bacevich talks about ‘…who actually run Afghanistan…’ he actually means the tribal chiefs, or the warlords. The warlords may not run the country, but, empowered by Karzai, who depends on them for support, and to some extent by various coalition powers, they do run (and rob) the government. While sampling of Afghan public opinion is uncertain, the evidence we have is that the warlords are deeply unpopular and a large majority of Afghans want them not just removed from power, but brought to justice.
It is true that in many areas tribal leaders do exercise considerable power on a local level, and it is possible to work with them to rid their communities of insurgents and foreign terrorists, the incentives to get them to do that usually begin with a western security presence to keep them alive and continue on to rural development programmes (which can only be implemented with a security presence). Nevertheless, realise that tribal chiefs have much less authority to make unilateral decisions than do their counterparts in Iraq, and the tribes in many regions have been weakened by a generation of war, destruction, and displacement, and have lost a lot of power to the warlords.
The real question about Iraq and Afghanistan is not what the U.S. Army has learned about counter-insurgency, but what it has learned about learning. If the lessons of Iraq about the relevance of classical counter-insurgency doctrine to our post-9/11 conflicts in the Middle East become a new orthodoxy, a recipe which can be used again and again at different times in different places, then we have learned nothing about learning ande we will fail in Afghanistan. But if we treat the lessons as a set of principles which must be adapted and applied in light of local conditions (the message of the ethno-counter-insurgents), then we have a way forward.
The War We Can't Win
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:22:51 -0400
CommonwealVolume CXXXVI, Number 14 The War We Can’t Win
Afghanistan & the Limits of American Power
Andrew J. Bacevich
History deals rudely with the pretensions of those who presume to determine its course. In an American context, this describes the fate of those falling prey to the Wilsonian Conceit. Yet the damage done by that conceit outlives its perpetrators.From time to time, in some moment of peril or anxiety, a statesman appears on the scene promising to eliminate tyranny, ensure the triumph of liberty, and achieve permanent peace. For a moment, the statesman achieves the status of prophet, one who in his own person seemingly embodies the essence of the American purpose. Then reality intrudes, exposing the promises as costly fantasies. The prophet’s followers abandon him. Mocked and reviled, he is eventually banished—perhaps to some gated community in Dallas.Yet however brief his ascendancy, the discredited prophet leaves behind a legacy. Most obvious are the problems created and left unresolved, commitments made and left unfulfilled, debts accrued and left unpaid. Less obvious, but for that reason more important, are the changes in perception.The prophet recasts our image of reality. Long after his departure, remnants of that image linger and retain their capacity to beguile: consider how the Wilsonian vision of the United States as crusader state called upon to redeem the world in World War I has periodically resurfaced despite Woodrow Wilson’s own manifest failure to make good on that expectation. The prophet declaims and departs. Yet traces of his testimony, however at odds with the facts, remain lodged in our consciousness.So it is today with Afghanistan, the conflict that George W. Bush began, then ignored, and finally bequeathed to his successor. Barack Obama has embraced that conflict as “the war we must win.” Those who celebrated Bush’s militancy back in the intoxicating days when he was promising to rid the world of evil see Obama’s enthusiasm for pressing on in Afghanistan as a vindication of sorts. They are right to do so.The misguided and mismanaged global war on terror reduced Bush’s presidency to ruin. The candidate whose run for high office derived its energy from an implicit promise to repudiate all that Bush had wrought now seems intent on salvaging something useful from that failed enterprise—even if that means putting his own presidency at risk. When it comes to Afghanistan, Obama may be singing in a different key, but to anyone with an ear for music—especially for military marches—the melody remains intact.Candidate Obama once derided the notion that the United States is called upon to determine the fate of Iraq. President Obama expresses a willingness to expend untold billions—not to mention who knows how many lives—in order to determine the fate of Afghanistan. Liberals may have interpreted Obama’s campaign pledge to ramp up the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan as calculated to insulate himself from the charge of being a national-security wimp. Events have exposed that interpretation as incorrect. It turns out—apparently—that the president genuinely views this remote, landlocked, primitive Central Asian country as a vital U.S. national-security interest.What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.Tune in to the Sunday talk shows or consult the op-ed pages and you might conclude otherwise. Those who profess to be in the know insist that the fight in Afghanistan is essential to keeping America safe. The events of September 11, 2001, ostensibly occurred because we ignored Afghanistan. Preventing the recurrence of those events, therefore, requires that we fix the place.Yet this widely accepted line of reasoning overlooks the primary reason why the 9/11 conspiracy succeeded: federal, state, and local agencies responsible for basic security fell down on the job, failing to install even minimally adequate security measures in the nation’s airports. The national-security apparatus wasn’t paying attention—indeed, it ignored or downplayed all sorts of warning signs, not least of all Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States. Consumed with its ABC agenda—“anything but Clinton” was the Bush administration’s watchword in those days—the people at the top didn’t have their eye on the ball. So we let ourselves get sucker-punched. Averting a recurrence of that awful day does not require the semipermanent occupation and pacification of distant countries like Afghanistan. Rather, it requires that the United States erect and maintain robust defenses.Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it’s also likely to prove impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires. Of course, Americans, insistent that the dominion over which they preside does not meet the definition of empire, evince little interest in how Brits, Russians, or other foreigners have fared in attempting to impose their will on the Afghans. As General David McKiernan, until just recently the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, put it, “There’s always an inclination to relate what we’re doing with previous nations,” adding, “I think that’s a very unhealthy comparison.” McKiernan was expressing a view common among the ranks of the political and military elite: We’re Americans. We’re different. Therefore, the experience of others does not apply.Of course, Americans like McKiernan who reject as irrelevant the experience of others might at least be willing to contemplate the experience of the United States itself. Take the case of Iraq, now bizarrely trumpeted in some quarters as a “success” and even more bizarrely seen as offering a template for how to turn Afghanistan around.Much has been made of the United States Army’s rediscovery of (and growing infatuation with) counterinsurgency doctrine, applied in Iraq beginning in late 2006 when President Bush announced his so-called surge and anointed General David Petraeus as the senior U.S. commander in Baghdad. Yet technique is no substitute for strategy. Violence in Iraq may be down, but evidence of the promised political reconciliation that the surge was intended to produce remains elusive. America’s Mesopotamian misadventure continues.Pretending that the surge has redeemed the Iraq war is akin to claiming that when Andy Jackson “caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans” he thereby enabled the United States to emerge victorious from the War of 1812. Such a judgment works well as folklore but ignores an abundance of contrary evidence.Six-plus years after it began, Operation Iraqi Freedom has consumed something like a trillion dollars—with the meter still running—and has taken the lives of more than forty-three hundred American soldiers. Meanwhile, in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities, car bombs continue to detonate at regular intervals, killing and maiming dozens. Anyone inclined to put Iraq in the nation’s rearview mirror is simply deluded. Not long ago General Raymond Odierno, Petraeus’s successor and the fifth U.S. commander in Baghdad, expressed the view that the insurgency in Iraq is likely to drag on for an-other five, ten, or fifteen years. Events may well show that Odierno is an optimist.Given the embarrassing yet indisputable fact that this was an utterly needless war—no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, no ties between Saddam Hussein and the jihadists established, no democratic transformation of the Islamic world set in motion, no road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad—to describe Iraq as a success, and as a model for application elsewhere, is nothing short of obscene. The great unacknowledged lesson of Iraq is the one that the writer Norman Mailer identified decades ago: “Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.”For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbor—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude.If one believes that moral considerations rather than self-interest should inform foreign policy, Mexico still qualifies for priority attention. Consider the theft of California. Or consider more recently how the American appetite for illicit drugs and our liberal gun laws have corroded Mexican institutions and produced an epidemic of violence afflicting ordinary Mexicans. We owe these people, big-time.Yet any politician calling for the commitment of sixty thousand U.S. troops to Mexico to secure those interests or acquit those moral obligations would be laughed out of Washington—and rightly so. Any pundit proposing that the United States assume responsibility for eliminating the corruption that is endemic in Mexican politics while establishing in Mexico City effective mechanisms of governance would have his license to pontificate revoked. Anyone suggesting that the United States possesses the wisdom and the wherewithal to solve the problem of Mexican drug trafficking, to endow Mexico with competent security forces, and to reform the Mexican school system (while protecting the rights of Mexican women) would be dismissed as a lunatic. Meanwhile, those who promote such programs for Afghanistan, ignoring questions of cost and ignoring as well the corruption and ineffectiveness that pervade our own institutions, are treated like sages.The contrast between Washington’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and its relative indifference to Mexico testifies to the distortion of U.S. national security priorities induced by George W. Bush in his post-9/11 prophetic mode—distortions now being endorsed by Bush’s successor. It also testifies to a vast failure of imagination to which our governing classes have succumbed.This failure of imagination makes it literally impossible for those who possess either authority or influence in Washington to consider the possibility (a) that the solution to America’s problems is to be found not out there—where “there” in this case is Central Asia-but here at home; (b) that the people out there, rather than requiring our ministrations, may well be capable of managing their own affairs relying on their own methods; and (c) that to disregard (a) and (b) is to open the door to great mischief and in all likelihood to perpetrate no small amount of evil. Needless to say, when mischief or evil does occur—when a stray American bomb kills a few dozen Afghan civilians, for instance—the costs of this failure of imagination are not borne by the people who inhabit the leafy neighborhoods of northwest Washington, who lunch at the Palm or the Metropolitan Club, and school their kids at Sidwell Friends.So the answer to the question of the hour—What should the United States do about Afghanistan?—comes down to this: A sense of realism and a sense of proportion should oblige us to take a minimalist approach. As with Uruguay or Fiji or Estonia or other countries where U.S. interests are limited, the United States should undertake to secure those interests at the lowest cost possible.What might this mean in practice? General Petraeus, now commanding United States Central Command, recently commented that “the mission is to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and other transnational extremists,” in effect “to deny them safe havens in which they can plan and train for such attacks.”The mission statement is a sound one. The current approach to accomplishing the mission is not sound and, indeed, qualifies as counterproductive. Note that denying Al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan hasn’t required U.S. forces to occupy the frontier regions of that country. Similarly, denying Al Qaeda safe havens in Afghanistan shouldn’t require military occupation by the United States and its allies.It would be much better to let local authorities do the heavy lifting. Provided appropriate incentives, the tribal chiefs who actually run Afghanistan are best positioned to prevent terrorist networks from establishing a large-scale presence. As a backup, intensive surveillance complemented with precision punitive strikes (assuming we can manage to kill the right people) will suffice to disrupt Al Qaeda’s plans. Certainly, that approach offers a cheaper and more efficient alter-native to establishing a large-scale and long-term U.S. ground presence—which, as the U.S. campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, has the unintended effect of handing jihadists a recruiting tool that they are quick to exploit.In the immediate wake of 9/11, all the talk—much of it emanating from neoconservative quarters—was about achieving a “decisive victory” over terror. The reality is that we can’t eliminate every last armed militant harboring a grudge against the West. Nor do we need to. As long as we maintain adequate defenses, Al Qaeda operatives, hunkered down in their caves, pose no more than a modest threat. As for the Taliban, unless they manage to establish enclaves in places like New Jersey or Miami, the danger they pose to the United States falls several notches below the threat posed by Cuba, which is no threat at all.As for the putatively existential challenge posed by Islamic radicalism, that project will prove ultimately to be a self-defeating one. What violent Islamists have on offer-a rejection of modernity that aims to restore the caliphate and unify the ummah [community]—doesn’t sell. In this regard, Iran—its nuclear aspirations the subject of much hand-wringing—offers considerable cause for hope. Much like the Castro revolution that once elicited so much angst in Washington, the Islamic revolution launched in 1979 has failed resoundingly. Observers once feared that the revolution inspired and led by the Ayatollah Khomeini would sweep across the Persian Gulf. In fact, it has accomplished precious little. Within Iran itself, the Islamic republic no longer represents the hopes and aspirations of the Iranian people, as the tens of thousands of protesters who recently filled the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities made evident. Here we see foretold the fate awaiting the revolutionary cause that Osama bin Laden purports to promote.In short, time is on our side, not on the side of those who proclaim their intention of turning back the clock to the fifteenth century. The ethos of consumption and individual autonomy, privileging the here and now over the eternal, will conquer the Muslim world as surely as it is conquering East Asia and as surely as it has already conquered what was once known as Christendom. It’s the wreckage left in the wake of that conquest that demands our attention. If the United States today has a saving mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right: “Come home, America.” The prophet of that era urged his countrymen to take on “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking—in our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves, King remains today the prophet we ignore at our peril. That Barack Obama should fail to realize this qualifies as not only ironic but inexplicable.
ABOUT THE WRITERAndrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.
Friday, 8 August 2008
Kudos Robert Gates
The US Defense Secretary is a refreshing figure in the Bush administration. A recent op-ed by David Ignatius in the Washington Post commends Gates very highly, and rightly so.
"He is still firing on all cylinders, working to repair the damage done at the Pentagon by his arrogant and aloof predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. Gates has restored accountability in the military services by firing the secretaries of the Army and Air Force when they failed to respond forthrightly to problems. And he has been an early and persuasive internal administration critic of U.S. military action against Iran."
And this morning, Gates proposed a noble plan to resucitate the mission in Afghanistan. $20 billion for a three-year project to double the size of the Afghan army is commendable, as is the restructuring of command. Gates wants all but a few US troops to be under NATO command. At present they are split roughly between NATO and Operation Enduring Freedom, an obvious strategic stumbling block. Gates also wants more troops, but they won't be available in the short term.
What is missing is a strong stance on the poppy problem. Thomas Schneider, a former Pentagon official, in The New York Times Magazine, courageously and cogently argues for aerial eradication of poppy-crop.
In any case, the debate on Afghanistan seems to be converging to a coherent line between the current administration and the next. Everyone seems enthusiastic to redouble efforts in the "good war." And that is very good.
"He is still firing on all cylinders, working to repair the damage done at the Pentagon by his arrogant and aloof predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. Gates has restored accountability in the military services by firing the secretaries of the Army and Air Force when they failed to respond forthrightly to problems. And he has been an early and persuasive internal administration critic of U.S. military action against Iran."
And this morning, Gates proposed a noble plan to resucitate the mission in Afghanistan. $20 billion for a three-year project to double the size of the Afghan army is commendable, as is the restructuring of command. Gates wants all but a few US troops to be under NATO command. At present they are split roughly between NATO and Operation Enduring Freedom, an obvious strategic stumbling block. Gates also wants more troops, but they won't be available in the short term.
What is missing is a strong stance on the poppy problem. Thomas Schneider, a former Pentagon official, in The New York Times Magazine, courageously and cogently argues for aerial eradication of poppy-crop.
In any case, the debate on Afghanistan seems to be converging to a coherent line between the current administration and the next. Everyone seems enthusiastic to redouble efforts in the "good war." And that is very good.
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