So Jimbo decided that we ought to do a Freefly interview while we were sitting at the hotel patio. After he set the camera up, I asked what he wanted to talk about and he said “Afghanistan”…
Sadly, the video ended before I could really make the points I’ve been musing over. So here we go…
I’ve been working on a long post about Afghanistan, inspired in large part by Andrew (Abu Muquama) Exum’s blog challenge asking:
Is the war in Afghanistan in the interests of the United States and its allies? If so, at what point do the resources we are expending become too high a cost to bear? What are the strategic limitations of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and operations? And if the war is not in the interests of the United States and its allies, what are U.S. and allied interests in Central Asia – and how do you propose to secure them?
There were seven days of answers (1,2,3,4,5,6,7), culminating in Exum’s own response (read the whole thing, but here’s the nub):
That unknown colors my own thoughts. I believe, contrary to many of this blog’s readership, that Steve Biddle really does get our interests right in Afghanistan:
The United States has two primary national interests in this conflict: that Afghanistan never again become a haven for terrorism against the United States, and that chaos in Afghanistan not destabilize its neighbors, especially Pakistan. Neither interest can be dismissed, but both have limits as casus belli.
I also believe that both interests can be secured, and I believe that neither interest is worth unlimited U.S. and allied blood and treasure.
Go read forward from this post, and see a lot of other chatter about Afghanistan.
So?
Once I read all this, I’m left deeply anxious and concerned. These are among the smartest people in the country who are engaged around this issue; they are all people who have significant experience in foreign and military policy.
And it just seems to me like they are missing the most important point.
A resurgence of terrorist violence across Southeast Asia has exposed links between various Islamist terror organizations that have proved resilient despite a yearslong U.S.-funded crackdown by authorities in the region.
The rise of terrorism has come into focus in the wake of a series of attacks in the Philippines, southern Thailand and, most recently, the suicide bombing here July 17 on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people including the two bombers. The terror resurgence comes after years when authorities appeared to be gaining the upper hand.
As the terror groups expand their activities, investigators are uncovering connections that show how the main organizations across Southeast Asia, many of them inspired by al Qaeda, are providing militants, training and shelter to each other. That has increased their effectiveness and made them especially difficult for authorities to crack.
As this story points out, our conflict is not with a country (Afghanistan or even Iraq); it’s with a movement (that is, to be sure partly fed by state sponsorship – but the most important states doing the sponsoring, in money, manpower, and ideas have been Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt). And as long as we keep defining our strategic objectives in the context of a single country, or maybe a country and its geographic neighbors, we’re misaligning our objectives with the problems we face.
What matters in Afghanistan is how our prosecution of the conflict there impacts the broader movement of radical, violent Islam. Outside of this effect, the conflict in Afghanistan is strategically meaningless.
What matters here is not a spatial geography or Westphalian interaction between states who have authority over their own geography and people; we’re talking about a cultural and intellectual geography – a map of relationships and beliefs.
And as long as were fighting on the wrong map, no matter how hard we try or how smart we are, I worry that we are bound to lose.
–
Excellent point. And that’s a problem for us, as a significant portion of our population doesn’t believe in ideology. That is, they do not believe that people are actually motivated by ideologies other than theirs. And this is constantly reinforced in our schools, where assembly after assembly asserts blithely that people all over the world are just the same; that all differences are superficial – language, clothing, skin color.
Armed Liberal:
You know what I think, and that I would omit what I see as the superfluous adjectives ‘radical’ and ‘violent’. I wouldn’t argue this again, since we understand each other enough, and we won’t agree more than we do.
You also know what Mitt Romney said (link):
What is your opinion on this?
Mine is that Mitt Romney is a weasel saying things that are false but politically convenient; and that the potential military strengths of the ‘Western way of war’ that Victor Davis Hansen believes in cannot be activated on this basis.
That means, the Islamic way of war still applies, but ours doesn’t, so we’re trying to beat something with nothing, in the long run. I do not see any good coming of Mitt Romney, commander in chief. (Mitt Romney, healer of wrecked companies, is another matter.)
You also know what George W. Bush said:
– George W. Bush (October 11, 2000)
My opinion is that this poisoned the well for those trying to lead America to policies that conform to the harsh constraints on American war-making, because you have to preface every promise with ‘I know you’ve heard this before, but I mean it!’.
What’s your opinion?
Infinitely more important, you know what he did. After telling the population to “go shopping” and leave everything in the hands of professionals, he initiated wars to eliminate the Afghan and Iraqi regimes (with the passionate approval of many, including me), established states on a constitutional basis that takes Islam as a source of law, and committed America (and those of its allies that choose to be loyal) to an endless struggle to guarantee the success of such states.
The fundamental requirement for this policy to be sound is that Islam must be a Good Thing, in general and for us. George W. Bush believes that (which is more charity than he gives genuinely harmless Wiccans), and he has boasted that no evidence could shake him on that, it’s just a deep belief of his. I quoted and linked him long ago at Winds, and I don’t see a need to hunt George W. Bush quotes again.
Anyway, regardless of whatever personal credit George W. Bush may deserve for saying false things out of religious conviction rather than expediency, what do you think of this as a sound basis for war?
If you think these statements are sound, then everything is simple: stay the course! And of course, promote the lofty and superior religion of Islam all you can, because that is the natural enemy of jihad, which competes for the same territories and souls Islam does.
(It’s true! Print out a world map, mark off the parts where, according to Islam, Islam ought not to dominate and Muslims ought not to rule, and you’ll find those are the same parts of the world jihadists are willing to leave to non-Muslim control in perpetuity…)
You know what Barack Obama says, because he said it in Cairo. You can also see a lot from the fact that he did not condemn Iran (which I agree with, if only because there’s nothing happening there but Muslims being Muslims), yet is condemning and punishing Honduras.
Do you think that he can succeed by following much the same line as Bush and Romney, but with more appeasement for enemies and harsher treatment for friends? And by persisting with much the same security policies he condemns his predecessors for, plus punishment for CIA guys?
(You know I don’t, and why I don’t. I think his innovations are bad, but the continuities between his policies and assumptions and those of his predecessors are worse. I think a ‘rectification of names’ is essential.)
If not, what fundamentally different course should he be following, and what has to be true for the fundamentally different policy you recommend to be the best policy going?
Definitely a problem in the long run, but sometimes is does work (like for the D’s in 2008 presidential election.)
I tried to watch the video, but it says it was removed by the user. Is it supposed to say that?
I’ve been thinking the same thing. The primary question is not what our strategy in Afghanistan should be, but what our strategy should be against Al Qaeda and the global movement of violent Islamist extremism. Al Qaeda just suffered a significant defeat in Iraq and no doubt they are reorganizing and developing a new strategy. First we need to figure out what their status is and where we can act against them to the greatest effect. Once we have developed this strategy then we should have a better understanding of what we need to do in Afghanistan. Afghanistan may or may not be the main effort, but we won’t know that until we figure out the larger strategy.
Andy McCarthy’s thoughts: (link).
Had to do an edit on the video just to be safe. Here is a link to the new one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X899DFVGOmU
Cordially,
Uncle J
Thanks Uncle Jimbo. That works, and the chat is good.
I think Armed Liberal’s point was a good one, that someone within a couple of miles of where he was sitting should go very public and make the case that Afghanistan is interesting even if you are not a heroin addict.
I don’t think they can do that, because I don’t think they’d know what to say. I don’t think we are fighting for good reasons, or even for bad reasons that anyone knows.
I think it’s all about us having crumbled morally in the face of Islam, from George W. Bush’s adamant refusal to say in his first statement to the nation after the 9/11 strikes that this was war. That’s when we blinked.
Because we have failed to perceive, believe, take responsibility and act, we’re operating in a fantasy world. We’re spinning dreams like Mitt Romney, the point of which is that we don’t have to decide what to do about our real, ideologically empowered, numerous and oil-rich enemies – or the system of Islam, which is our real enemy.
(As you know, I don’t believe that the problem is a tiny group of crazies trying to take over the Muslim world, which is constitutionally, in itself and from its sacred texts and the example of the Prophet and so on, fine.)
I don’t think Mitt is further from the truth than other politicians are on this. I think he’s just crasser. He doesn’t have the gift of making this malarkey sound plausible. He spells things out a little too bluntly.
That’s why important mainstream politicians can’t come out and explain some truth (which they do not know) plainly. If they try, it’ll sound like people do when talking about negotiating with the moderate Taliban, and people with better skills of deviousness than Mitt has have learned not say things like that, even though everything we are doing supposes that these distinctions are not only real (there are some moderate Taleban) but sufficiently important. (The moderates have to be sufficiently stable and intimidating to the true believers, and their moderate positions within Islam, against jihad, against supremacism, in favor of Jews and equal rights for apostates and unbelievers and so on, have to be sufficiently valid and legitimate by Islamic standards.)
It’s like a game where they politicians are all saying they’ve got this covered, and it’s just that they other guys are incompetent or lying torturers or whatever. They can bluff like this, because nobody can really call the guys on the other side of why they’re strategically aimless, because it’s the reason both sides are strategically aimless.
And if you start trying to work out the truth with public discussion, you get branded as a bigot, which is a deadly charge for a politician. George W. Bush eagerly played this card on those who disagreed with him about the ‘Dubai ports deal’ and there’s no chance that Democrats won’t do the same thing.
Daniel Pipes explains better than I can, with the history, why we’re taking empty nonsense to the Muslims we’re trying to influence as well as to each other: Western armies occupying Muslim lands always run into the intense hostility of Muslims to taking orders from non-Muslims, the Westerners always say, it’s all right, we’re your allies and liberators, and historically the Muslims never buy this (link). I don’t think there is any chance whatever they are about to start buying it now.
In the early days in Iraq, there were polls showing that if we came and left quickly that would prove to the Iraqis that we were there for their oil, period. That was taken by some as suggesting: ‘we’ve got to stay and prove we aren’t there for the oil, we’re there for the democracy’.
I think that was the wrong interpretation. We should have realized that Muslims are very inclined to interpret our actions as malign, venial etc., because they think we are evil, or to say they same thing in different words in an Islamic context, we are un-Islamic.
We’re in a ridiculously weak moral position, because the charge is obviously true. We are in fact un-Islamic.
That means, we need to do whatever we came to do, or whatever we should do to write down Islamic assets or turn them over to anti-Islamic forces, and get the heck out of Dodge.
That doesn’t necessarily mean ‘more rubble, less trouble’. But a lot of the time, that’s exactly what it means.
This applies in Afghanistan.
It would be a Good Thing if the poppy-fields of Afghanistan were all salted, so that they didn’t go back into production as money-spinners for international jihad and destroyers of Western youth as soon as we leave, or really ever again. Apart from that, I see nothing of value in Afghanistan, apart from whatever residual holiness may reside in the dust and shattered fragments of what once were the Bamiyan Buddhas.
General Patton said, don’t die for your country, make the other guy die for his. We appear to me to have found a third option: we send good soldiers to die for the enemy’s states, that is to build up states that take Islam as a source of law, and are thus necessarily, inherently instruments of the enemy system. It’s wrong to do that. And I don’t say that because I think that’s a difficult line to argue against or whatever, but because it bothers me.
I like our armed forces to win. But at some point I have to ask, ‘win what, for who?’
Even if we were fighting for nothing, for nobody, I might accept that victory, in the sense of the members of the armed forces feeling like winners in their hearts, has value.
But we’re fighting for the success of Islamic states. That’s less than nothing, for worse than neutrals. To the extent that we’re contributing to the success and potential spread of Islam, it would be better if Western forces had taken the same losses playing extreme sports in America.
You say that one of the reasons to persist in Afghanistan is to block Iran.
OK, imagine this: we render Afghanistan as incapable as possible of making more heroin, and then we leave. (Not that we’d have a choice, given the hatred that would arouse.) Then the Iranians decide that they want to expand into this power vacuum. Yes, it’s time for the Shi’ite legions to kick Sunni tail, and inherit … dust, rocks, and the kindly Afghan people.
Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
I’d raise a temple to Ares (a small one) if the Iranians decided that that was the war they wanted to fight.
An invasion might be too much to hope for, but if the Iranians spent on ‘strategic influence’ in Afghanistan, what we spend every year, while our costs dropped to zero, that would make me smile.
For bonus points, Pakistani Sunnis could also buy “strategic influence” to repel Shi’ite Iran.
Salting the earth and leaving Afghanistan would end any hope for us to win Muslim support for more nation-building occupations like we have in Iraq and Afghanistan. But since I regard the building up of Islamic states at our expense as strategic seppuku, that’s win/win.
The history of Afghanistan, first of the British and more recently the Russians, suggests our attempt to impose civilization on them is doomed to failure. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has few natural resources and no culture of strong centralized government; the local warlords rule the country, much more so than Karzai (or his predecessor “Najibullah”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Najibullah) has ever been able to. Furthermore, the logistical problems we face there, with “90% of our supplies having to come through Pakistan then through the Khyber Pass,”:http://www.captainsjournal.com/2008/11/17/how-many-troops-can-we-logistically-support-in-afghanistan/ looks to me like a prescription for disaster.
There’s a precedent for unilaterally withdrawing from Afghanistan. We did it in Somalia after the “Blackhawk Down” incident, we did it in Haiti, we haven’t intervened in Darfur, etc. Trying to fix every failed nation for fear it could become a harbour for Al-Qaeda is a recipe for exhausting our resources in futility. It also looks as though the EU nations and Canada are even more weary of the conflict than we, so the U.S. may well be forced to bear more and more of the burden for Afghanistan.
Its a lost cause. We should get out.
I think what Richard Cohen said about revenge is true (link).
But, it’s tool late. We’ve never pursued revenge and we won’t do so now.
Our course if we stay is set. We’re there to prove to the highly prejudiced servants of the system that’s our true enemy that we are their friends and allies, that we are the ones that bring the changes they want, and that we can and will provide such goodies, in quantity and quality, that they’ll gladly forget their values, which point to hostility to us, and satisfy themselves with material comforts instead. (We should already know that when we provide more tribute Muslims invest in the population boom that means we can’t kill bad guys as fast as they make them, and they thank Allah for softening our spines and making us stupid, and in gratitude redouble their efforts their efforts on His behalf, rather than abandoning their malign system and imitating us and our generosity. But we prefer to ignore this.)
If it could work (which I don’t think it can), and if it was strategically wise (instead of an attempt at an ‘own goal’), there is still nothing of revenge in it.
All we can do for the dead is say ‘sorry’.
Which we are not doing, or doing wrongly. See: ‘crescent of embrace’ and the fiasco of the rebuilding in New York.
We are at a very similar point in Afghanistan as we were in Iraq pre-surge, but the circumstances are certainly different.
First of all we have to recognize our mistakes. Our previous leaders were the old guard ‘we don’t do nation building’ variety. They tried, to some degree, but their hearts were never in it because they were born and bred kinetic fighters. We’ve done precious little to train the Afghanistan security forces, our attempts to deliver services have been disjointed and underfunded, and our fighting strength has been wasted chasing the Taliban through the hills or babysitting bases and supply lines.
The solution requires vast additional resources, and not just boots on the ground. We need to think outside the box.
1.We can never secure Afghanistan with an enemy able to cross the border at will. This is ultimately our biggest problem with no ready solutions. The upside is that by combining a number of minor solutions we should be able to divert the Talibans attention and interdict their plans, which achieves the same purpose. Hundreds of small groups should be deployed to interdict the border at ever changing locations. They will learn the landscape and if there are choke points at popular crossings, they can be blocked up by engineers with explosives.
This will incur many casualties and we don’t have nearly enough helicopters at the moment to do it (if the Osprey actually worked this would be where it would shine). However the payoff is a running fight at the border which allows the breathing space for the real fight.
2.Disperse forces into the towns and countryside _from the border in_ to provide security and win over allies. We don’t have enough helicopters to do this.
3.Train the Afghan security forces fast and furious, out of country where necessary. Get those trained out into the countryside to work hand and glove with NATO forces.
4. Crank up American industry to provide goods and infrastructure in huge quantities to the Afghans. Don’t send hundreds of generators send thousands, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. Give these people something to lose. We don’t have the logistics infrastructure to deliver this. Fix that.
We need to either stop treating Afghanistan like a sideshow, or get out. If we want to stay in its going to require a massive infusion of money and resources, for a long time.
Maybe we’re not up for this, but walking away will exact a huge price as well.
If Afghanistan is not a sideshow, is it the main game?
If Afghanistan is a sideshow, shouldn’t we treat it as one? Including getting out, if it’s not worth it?
What is the main game, if Afghanistan isn’t?
I agree with Armed Liberal that:
But there is no consensus on the true map.
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the [American’s] burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
The goal of a strong central gov’t is the problem — the goal should be strong, functioning, local governments.
And successful, profitable businesses.
The gov’t model should be Switzerland, or the US before the Civil War, when States were really different from each other.
Warlord-Tribal cantons should be encouraged, with Afghan leaders.
Only Afghans can win in Afghanistan. The US can choose a few Afghans that will NOT win, but can’t easily choose which ones will win.
Long term the US will lose in Afghanistan unless heroin is more legalized and a legal, law-abiding poppy-heroin trade can develop.
Andrew C. McCarthy, with What Is Victory?, makes a case that when we take real victory off the table, by excluding the global struggle, and when we seek local “victory” through nation-building in Afghanistan instead, “victory” is not worth it and may even be counterproductive (link).