Foreign Policy magazine recently introduced a host of new blogs on their site and they totally rock (I know, not exactly a recommendation loaded with gravitas but cut me some slack, I’m writing this on a weekend). One of those blogs, Shadow Government, had a host of recommended readings about Afghanistan that I’m slowly working my way through.
The first two are pro/con set for withdrawl in U.S. News & World Report. Andrew Bacevich begins with a piece that is a general attack upon the ‘Long War’ and argues that we should leave Afghanistan merely because of its inclusion in that category by the instigators of the Iraq War. Oddly enough, in an article that is supposed to argue that the “Afghanistan Surge Is Not Worth the Cost in Blood and Treasure”, Andrew hardly mentions Afghanistan until the last two paragraphs and prefers to talk about what a disaster Iraq was/is. I do not understand, nor does he make the case for, how the failure that has been Iraq necessarily means we need to leave Afghanistan.
I think, ultimately, I just don’t buy the idea that we have to consider these conflicts linked at the hip. Certainly, I know that was the intent of the Bush administration who wanted people to give the war in Iraq the same level of support they gave Afghanistan but Bacevich’s argument looks a bit too much like he’s trying to do the mirror opposite. He doesn’t discuss the merits of staying or going but rather just wants to paint every military adventure associated with the events of 2001-2008 with the same broad brush. Hardly an example of reasoned, careful thinking.
The argument for staying in Afghanistan is provided by John Nagl. He takes the (now) conventional approach that Afghanistan can’t be won by military force alone while advocating huge increases in American forces deployed there are massive increases in Afghan soldiers and police. Clear, hold, build is back as is the ‘oil stain’ theory which just served to remind me of something I heard years ago: Americans love wars of attrition. We don’t seem to get the concept of strategic initiative and prefer to grind our opponents down (so long as it doesn’t take too long). Now the arguments I heard in favor of that position were World War II, Korea (hard to try to grind down the resources of a nation with almost a billion people), Vietnam (too long), and Grenada but it seems to apply here as well. Nagl doesn’t talk about separating the Taliban from their loci of support other than to argue for stationing Afghan military/police forces in every village, town and city that coalition forces clear.
Nagl’s option isn’t particularly attractive because he argues for minimizing our mission there to:
“ensuring that terrorists never again have a sanctuary on Afghan territory from which to launch attacks on the United States and our allies, and preventing Afghanistan from further destabilizing its neighbors, especially the fragile, nuclear-armed state of Pakistan.”
Wait…Afghanistan is destabilizing Pakistan? Uh…if I remember correctly that street has tended to run in the other direction. Who’s been providing support to the Taliban since 2001? Who’s been supporting terrorist groups on the subcontinent?
What’s lacking in Nagl’s argument is exactly what’s been lacking in our entire approach to terrorism and the insurgencies since we began. We seem determined to allow our opponents to frame the conflict how they want and make us fight on their terms. We, on the other hand, don’t even put up a fight. Despite his talk of ‘clear, hold, build’ and hat tips to counterinsurgency strategy, his arguement looks an awful lot like advocating ‘Let’s scale back our goals…way back, kill our way to the finish line and get the hell out of there as fast as possible.’
So eight years after 9/11 we still
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have no meaningful public diplomacy strategy
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We continue to ignore narcotics production in Afghanistan (perhaps the most source of funding for the Taliban) except for some half-hearted eradication efforts that just further alienate the population and drive them into the arms of insurgents.
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Place too much emphasis on air strikes in Afghanistan that make getting married in that country only slightly less dangerous than being al-Qaeda’s number three man
Afghanistan is a mess, that much is clear. It is worth remembering, however, that despite being eight years old, the war in Afghanistan has never had a coherent strategy, adequate resources or the attention of the administration or the senior levels of the Defense Department. Of course, I’d like to see a real strategy with a clear definition of ’success’. Surely it won’t be Afghanistan as a shining jewel of western democracy in Central Asian but some sort of good outcome is possible. There is still significant goodwill towards the coalition by Afghans. Granted, not as much in the early years but it’s still there. To claim that it is impossible to achieve some sort of acceptable outcome in Afghanistan at this point is to give up without even trying.
Two much more well thought out and developed cases for staying in Afghanistan and not watering down our goals are this testimony by Marin Strmecki, who gives a great overview of the current situation vis-a-vis Pakistan and makes some solid recommendations, and a speech by John McCain at the AEI. I might quibble at the edges of some of what they say but for the most part these are the sorts of arguments that need to be presented to the American people. Hopefully that’ll happen in the near future.
One of the things that struck me as odd from both of those reports was an assertion that the years of 2003-2005 marked as a time when we were doing everything right. I skimmed over that and just thought it was a bit strange but Jari picked it up and writes about it more detail (which is probably why he’s a journalist and I’m just a schlub). I would normally think that McCain got the idea from Mr. Strmecki (since McCain is on the committee which Strmecki testified in front of) but given that McCain gave his speech one day before the Strmecki testimony , I have to wonder if there isn’t a bit of collusion in getting the message out. Now, admittedly, I had a very limited view of our progress from 2003-2004 but I certainly didn’t have the impression that we were making substantial progress. As I’ve said before, my overwhelming impression at the end of my tour was that we were in a state of inertia with very little significant change. It’s a bit scary if that’s now the new ‘gold standard’.
