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December 02, 2009 04:00 AM UTC
103 Comments
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n/t
What’s your solution, or would you just rather gripe?
I agree with Congressman Polis completely
This is the wrong path to take.
The fact is, after nine years of war, our mission in Afghanistan remains ambiguous.
The fact is, there is one question and one question alone that must be answered. Is our continued involvement to prop up an ineffective government which is not supported by the Afghans themselves vital to the protecting the national security of the United States?
My answer is a resounding no. As Congressman Polis states, there is no military solution and we should not commit one more American soldier. Just as in Vietnam, there is no light at the end of the tunnel after nine years of war.
It’s time to bring our brave men and women home, because the failure to recognize there is no military solution in Afghanistan is a dishonor to their service to our country.
You may wish to read my article posted on Pols on 10/2.
http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
Use this – Pols article on 10/2
http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting in Afghanistan
From the Washington post 10/27/09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
In 1958, General Matthew Ridgeway resigned from the Joint Chiefs in protest over increasing U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”
Pres. Obama just gave a very good and compelling reason to answer his question.
Was 1958 “too soon” for General Matthew Ridgeway to resign the Joint Chiefs of Staff over our increasing involvement in Vietnam?
I listened to LBJ give “very good and compelling reasons” why he was escalating the war in Vietnam.
I’ll listen to a man who was there on the ground and saw what was happening over some politician on a TV screen. I learned that from Lyndon B. Johnson.
….as a member of the Naval Reserve while Congressman. He did not get it, but did work directly for FDR in the Pacific and was in some sort of air skirmish while an observer.
Not exactly 35 missions over the Romanian oil fields (McGovern, another politician), but real war experience nevertheless.
Some politicians DO have real war experience, like George W. Bush……..oh, wait….never mind.
Few actually knew it, because he never really talked about it, but McGovern was a decorated war hero. On one mission, he crash landed his crippled plane on a small island airstrip and saved the lives of his crew.
Interesting that those who have actually experienced the horror of war are the ones most cautious when we hear the rattling of sabres.
Have you read “The Boys in Blue?” I think that’s the title. While a general look at the bomber pilots flying out of Italy, it used McGovern as sort of a focal point.
The Repugs, even way back then, were stooping low. They were questioning GM’s patriotism and heroism because of his VN war stance, all the while being a genuine war hero.
He also kept flying with his crew after he got to 35 missions when he could have taken a desk job.
But it’s on my list.
Several years ago I bought it and gave it to my nephews wife (they are both AFA grads class of ’97) for her to read. Now retired raising her children, she flew C-130’s and flew into Afghanistan taking on enemy fire when the war first started. I gave it to her for my appreciation to her bravery and service to our country.
but there it is.
“30,000 more troops (+ x number of contractors) needed to bring peace!”
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https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=op…
The Army is setting up yet another contract vehicle for bringing even more “security guards” to provide security for our military.
.
Whoa…
who gets the contract to provide security to the ones who are providing security to our military?
Maybe the military and contractors have to watch each others’ backs.
http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
to a degree. I would have supported an increased effort over the 30,000 proposed. I say this because no one has convincingly made the case to me as to how withdrawal from Afghanistan will make anything better for them or us. I would eagerly listen to such a case, but right now it seems that the best course, unpalatable though it may be, is to bring the full force of the American military to put down militants long enough for the Afghanistan government and military to maintain the country on their own.
but what would you recommend we do at this time?
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I think that people who agree with my assumptions will come to similar conclusions and recommendations.
First note that I have never been to Afghanistan, nor to Iraq. I left the Army in 1989, when the primary contingency we prepared for was a Soviet break-out crossing the Fulda Gap. As an Army Captain, Battalion S-4, I trained to provide battlefield logistics support to mechanized infantry units trying to delay the sweep of Motorized Rifle Regiments Westward out of Czechoslovakia.
My most relevant military experience was as a Staff Sergeant heavy weapons specialist on a Special Forces Team in Company B, 5/19 SF, in the Colorado Army National Guard. We trained for Internal Defense and Development, a mission now called Counterinsurgency.
ASSUMPTIONS
1. It is my understanding that, under a UN Security Council Resolution, the US and NATO are conducting a military occupation of Afghanistan. The UN has approved us occupying the country. The official reason for the occupation is to protect other countries, not primarily to benefit Afghanistan.
2. American politicians deny to the American public that we are conducting an occupation. They fear that, if the American public knew this significant “fact on the ground,” they may not support it. Americans believe in our hearts that people ought to be able to govern themselves, not have outsiders control their lives and communities.
That’s why Bush repeatedly insisted that we invaded Afghanistan to liberate them from oppressive governance. That’s actually the motto of Army Special Forces, de opresso liber. But it would be more accurate to say that we invaded so that we could control them ourselves because we disagreed with how they governed themselves, and to eliminate the threat posed by al-Qaeda.
3. Striking al-Qaeda was not only justified but necessary. On 10 September 2001, the Bush team knew that the Taliban government of Afghanistan was harboring al-Qaeda, but overlooked that because US oil companies hoped to sign a deal for a pipeline. Al-Qaeda had already conducted several attacks on US targets, but that was considered collateral damage in the oil business. The Bush Administration was almost as much to blame for the 9/11 attacks as the Taliban.
On 12 September the Taliban government offered to arrest bin Laden and send him to a Muslim country for trial if the US would present evidence of his culpability.
The Bush Administration got angry at the Taliban for asking for proof and started saying that Taliban was cooperating with al-Qaeda, which they didn’t dare say before 9/11.
4. We are no longer fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. For the most part they aren’t even there. If bin-Laden isn’t already dead, I suspect he’s in Yemen, where his family is originally from.
We are no longer fighting the former Taliban government of Afghanistan. For the most part they are in Pakistan.
Today in Afghanistan we are fighting against a legitimate Resistance to foreign occupation. This Resistance is like the French Resistance during World War II: decentralized. Each village has their own small band of fighters.
5. We are also fighting against a number of crime organizations that double as religious organizations: the groups led by Gulbuddin Hektyamar, etc. Since the warlords running these criminal enterprises formerly served in some capacity in the Taliban government, we blame Mullah Omar. But it looks like a bum rap to me.
We are fighting Mullah Omar only indirectly. Rather than being the organizer and controller of the Resistance, he serves more as a cheerleader and, to a lesser extent, as a financier. I think his entourage sends emissaries out to the field, but I don’t think we face them in combat.
We are allied with other warlords, from the Taliban’s opponents of the “Northern Alliance,” some of whom are even more evil than the “Taliban” warlords. General Dostum, for example, suffocated 2,000 Taliban POW’s in shipping containers. The “Northern Alliance” is based on ethnicity: everyone in Afghanistan who isn’t a pure Afghan (the term originally meant the people we now call Pashtoons.)
6. As it is a military occupation, the US/NATO military is governing Afghanistan, and the “government” of Karzai and his ministers is just a puppet under their control. US “advisors” make the actual decisions.
The gig pays pretty well, and has lots of perks, serving in that “government.” Perks include kickbacks. If the perks weren’t available, there would be scant reason to belong. The idea that this corruption can be scaled back is bewildering. For the participants, its the whole reason for belonging.
There is no basis for thinking that this “national government” could actually govern. And Afghanistan isn’t actually a nation in the sense we usually use that word to indicate.
7. The Provincial “Governors” are appointed by Karzai. He gets kickbacks for those appointments. He relies heavily on “Northern Alliance” warlords for these posts. In Pashtoon areas, the Provincial Governors mostly don’t even speak the local language.
8. The “Afghan National Army” and Afghan National Police” are mostly Tadjik and Hazara, not Pashtoon. They are nominally controlled by the Ministries of the Interior and Defense, but in actuality are commanded by US officers.
9. The only functional indigenous architecture for governance is at the tribe level. Regardless of how much we invest in trying to force the Karzai “national government” to function like a western national government, or how long we stay, once we leave, power and authority will devolve back down to this level.
10. Tribal leaders find it insulting that the US Colonels controlling their territory ask for their advice and then ignore it.
They don’t want the misfits and teenagers of the local “Taliban” running their affairs, but they really don’t want American teenagers in charge.
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I believe that, if you accept my assumptions, you will come up with pretty much the same solution as I did.
It’s a variation on the old song popularized by Paul McCartney:
“Give Ireland back to the Irish;
Don’t make them have to take it away.
Give Ireland back to the Irish;
Make Ireland Irish today.”
Al-Qaeda deserved to be hunted down and destroyed. We did a little of that, then got bored. It’s too late to go back and pick up where we left off.
Enough with the punishing. It’s only poor stone-aged hillbillies we are hurting anymore.
If we feel that we have to do SOMETHING, that we can’t just leave, then the thing to do would be to hand over control to those tribal leaders, help them retake control from the Resistance fighters, and give them money to do some basic development, like clean water and health services. But do all development through these local leaders. What may look like graft to you at the local level, patronage and baksheesh, is how they govern, and have governed for centuries.
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Its ironic that the complexity of the Afghan situation actually lends itself to the simplistic assertion that we are there “to fight the terrorists”, because the average person has no idea what’s going on there.
In Vietnam we were constantly told we were there to fight “communism” and if South Vietnam “fell”, all of Southeast Asia would likely fall to the “communists” under the “domino theory”. Thirty four years after the fall of South Vietnam to the “communists”, not one Southeast Asia country has “fallen” to the “communists”, but we’ve got a Wall in Washington with the names of 58,159 (my cousin included) who made the ultimate sacrifice believing what their government told them.
Let’s not be so ready to drink the Kool Aid this time folks.
Here at Pols, we are now the press. Let the questioning and the debate begin as was intended when the Founders wrote the First Amendment.
As far as a criticism of the speech, he struck the right tone in having to grudgingly admit he has to send troops to Afghanistan. Giving a Dubya “Get yer guns and git them A-rabs” would completely destroy his support with his progressive base, and leave him open to attack from everyone else.
As far as the plan proposed, I’m going to withhold judgement until I can get more info. From what little I know so far, it appears almost all of the troops will go to Kandahar, encircle the city and secure it. Then, they’ll move west and secure a route to the Valley to the west (crap, can’t think of the name) and secure the valley and it’s farmlands.
The idea is to get the lines of commerce open between the countryside and Kandahar, and let the farmers make money off the resulting peace. (Worked great in Bosnia, BTW).
What I hope is that we’re abandoning this idea that we can put a battalion of infantry out in the mountains, and bother the Pashtoon hillbillies with our presence.
One thing I wanted to hear was about a joint Saudi-US Special Ops hit team to get that SOB Bin Laden. Been talked about, heard some rumors, but why not tell the American People we’er going after the sunabitch?
If we manage to secure Kandahar that would be big.
If we also secure the roads and ag of the Agrandab valley- plant the flag and send ’em home.
You’re not suggesting we have to secure all the way to the western border though, right? I mean the neighbor on the west is already pretty jumpy and I hate the idea of adding them to the shootin’ war unles and until absolutely necessary. Preferrably never.
Unlike previous “Blow ’em up” plans, IT SEEMS like they get that folks need to thrive under the plan in order to cast their lot with the Afghan government.
I also want to hear about either moving forward with the Poppy for Medicine program, and/or this idea I heard about growing saffron….might have been from you!
but the cash power of the poppy is impossible to replace.
if the poppies are used to actually make medicine and given away cheaply — and encouraged to be used — by Third World countries.
Hell, we could probably grow the entire world’s supply of medicine in one tiny corner of Northern California. Maybe we ought to…
http://www.nhpco.org/i4a/pages…
And no, I don’t accept all of your assumptions but I do accept enough of them to agree that staying in Afghanistan is simply prolonging the inevitable outcome that the Russians faced while more and more Afghans and soldiers continue to die.
but I also have some confidence that, unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration will continue to reevaluate the situation and will be flexible enough to adjust in the face of on the ground realities.
As far as the disappointment of the left, I am continually amazed that the left has apparently bought, lock stock and barrel, the rightie spin that Obama is a some kind of ultra liberal peacenik. It is just as puzzling as the Colorado Dem grassroots’ baffling choice of the centrist Romanoff as some kind of progressive standard bearer hero.
Obama, like the Clintons before him, never ran as liberal and always promised to return focus to the war in Afghanistan, the war he always said was, unlike the war in Iraq, a war of necessity.
The progressive wing of the party can disagree. I disagree. But why they seem to be so bitterly disappointed that Obama is doing in Afghanistan pretty much exactly what he promised to do throughout his campaign is puzzling. Personally still hopeful that Obama will be more willing than Bush (Cheney and neocons) ever was to insist that if certain goals aren’t met it will be time to say enough.
Also would like to hear more on what those opposed think would be an effective means of preventing the fall of Pakistan’s nukes into Al Qaeda and/or Taliban hands. I do think it’s the conundrum posed by the Pakistan situation that has the Obama administration desperately grasping at this option as the least bad (though I don’t see how their solution really helps there) that accounts for their final decision to go ahead with the escalation for now.
and one that has worried me for months–Pakistan. What the hell do we do about Pakistan? They have nuclear capabilities and their country is under siege. They are the primary reason I refuse to get vocal about Obama’s decision–because every pacifist, every opponent of this decision cannot tell me what the hell we are going to do about Pakistan. And frankly, I don’t have any more ideas than they do.
But I would bet that smart people already have well thought out and prepared plans to secure loose nukes hat involve tough, well trained people with guns and uniforms and security clearances.
Likewise, I would be a little surprised they haven’t done so once or twice already.
thank you
He made a plausible argument that this is a national security issue and he has to do what he seems as possible. I am disappointed that he could not cite more troops being sent by NATO allies….
Throughout his campaign, he consistently focused on the need to secure Afghanistan…..
I wish him well. He has my support.
Propping up a corrupt government and interjecting ourselves into the infighting between tribal leaders and warlords (see Barron X’s post above) has little to do with fighting terrorism and does not serve the vital national security interests of the United States.
His difficult and well-reasoned speech convinced me. I appreciate his frank, honest assessment. I am also grateful for an exit strategy.
I support the president.
that will probably disappoint everyone.
What seems to get overlooked is our military. They aren’t just passive observers wandering around the countryside doing nothing. Obama is betting that our military will be able to accomplish this mission. If nothing else he is showing the military that he has confidence in their abilities and feels for their sacrifices. Bush too often looked like a sociopath who used the troops as props for his photo ops. You can say that Obama was using the cadets as props for his photo ops but you can also make a case that he was talking to them about their roles and responsibilities. Terrorists with nukes is a bad situation and unlike Iraq, there are nukes in Pakistan that make such a scenario plausible.
The Barron can moan and groan about what Obama did or didn’t do but Obama inherited gigantic military and economic messes and nothing is going to be resolved easily. The silver lining is that we have an intelligent president who is capable of learning and adjusting. Iraq will be in the rear view mirror shortly and that will take some pressure off the military and allow it to focus on Afghanistan. We yet know what will happen when the proper resources are applied with the proper focus. Time will tell if this is the big failure the Barron hopes it to be.
That is spot on.
First off Obama spoke very little about the biggest problem in Afghanistan. The government there at all levels is corrupt, ineffective, and does not have the respect or acceptance of the people. If we don’t have a credible way to address this issue, then any effort in Afghanistan is a waste of our treasure (human and financial).
Second, he did not speak at all about the second biggest issue – the safe haven in Pakistan. Some of the Taliban leaders that “cannot be found” in Pakistan have been interviewed on the TV stations there. We can make Afghanistan more modern & peaceful than Denmark and all we have done is move the terrorists 100 miles into Pakistan.
So putting aside if we should take on this fight, I didn’t hear anything that leads me to believe we will see a change that can give us a win. Absent a winning scenario, why stay?
On the flip side…
As Obama said, it’s not the terrorists could attack us – they have attacked us. And they are continuing to try. This is a problem that must be addressed. So we can’t just take off and only catch the terrorists after they enter the U.S.
So we need a solution. But I don’t think I heard it tonight.
The president fully recognized the corruption in Afghanistan and extensively spoke to the Afghan/Pakistan dynamic.
Again, thank you Mr. President for your incredibly visionary leadership.
speech transcript here
We “expect”??? Not we “will insure” or something that makes us believe that we will improve this. Sorry, I see this as a few vague words that don’t promise anything more than a wish & a prayer.
No argument about the facts he listed out above. But does that mean the safe havens in Pakistan will be eliminated? Who knows – because he didn’t speak to that critical issue.
Acknowledging a problem is step 1. But then comes figuring out how to resolve it and then implementing that effort. All he did was step 1 with no mention of steps 2 & 3.
Bush never leaned on Karzai, but Obama is.
Obama and Clinton have a major effort in place re: Pakistan that you are ignoring.
I just wish I could shake the suspicion that McCrystal doesn’t know his ass from a hot rock.
I also think that looking at this as a binary matter of the Afghan government forces vs the Taliban is ridiculous. There are who knows how many tribal and political factions with conflicting and sometimes interacting goals, not just a neat little our guys (if any of them are our guys) vs the other guys going on here.
His 19-month time frame runs out during his first term of office, so he can he held directly accountable in 2012 for what does or doesn’t happen with Afghanistan. For that, I give him credit.
Guantanamo, troops out of Iraq…
If he hits it, that would be fantastic. But I wouldn’t bet money on it.
Pres. Bush and Pres. McCain would have done neither. He’s getting it done.
Guantanamo is still open and we still have tons of troops in Iraq. Once he’s “done” then we can discuss how long it took. Until then we’re still on an indefinite unknown timetable.
since the Depression David and we’re still waiting for him to deliver on a viable renewable fuels industry. Am I correct that you think Obama is a real slacker who reneges on his promises or something like that.
FYI: Normally I’m not a links guy but here is link on the logistics draw down going on in Iraq.
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…
You can decide if the military is moving forward with the draw down in Iraq. The violence will be there after we leave but a government is in place and it appears to be working. If the US can disengage from Iraq and not have the place fall into total chaos, the international situation will be altered in Obama’s favor to do what we need to do in Afghanistan. There are no easy choices for Obama but hopefully he is making intelligent decisions that will lead to better outcomes even if they aren’t perfect or satisfy everyone.
My point is they are happening a lot slower than Obama initially promised. So don’t assume we will hit deadlines in this case as they will likely also stretch out.
I understand that life is complicated and some things take longer. But I don’t see why we’re still in Guantanamo – that could have been closed down in months.
Bush left a really f-d up mess. Gitmo is a no-man’s land. We imported people there, did Bad Things to them – some of them innocents, some Bad People – and now we have to figure out how to get them away from there.
We could just let them into Cuba proper – but I doubt Cuba wants them. We want to ship some of them back to their native countries – but either can’t because we’re afraid they’ll be unfairly treated or because the country doesn’t want them… We’d like to take some of them over to US prisons – except there’s been a legal bottleneck to doing that.
And then there’s the legal implications. The Bush Administration has apparently royally screwed up against many of these prisoners – and the ones they screwed up the most are often the ones who actually did Bad Things. The Obama Administration does not want to import prisoners until they’re reasonably sure they’ve got things under their legal thumb; I can’t blame them for that.
If it were really simple, it would have been done by now. My guess is, we don’t know the half of how badly the previous administration screwed up at Gitmo.
I think they slip for good reasons.
Because at the end of the day, the Afghan people will end their war on their terms and on their timetable, just as the Vietnamese people ended their war after they kicked us out.
was a civil war while Afghanistan resembles more violent drug gangs along the Mexican border who are bribing officials and killing anyone who gets in their way. Afghanistan is not a civil war. The sectarian violence in Iraq is probably closer to a civil war than what’s going on in Afghanistan. The warlords are drug dealers times x
Like almost everybody else (me and you included), I don’t know because I’ve never been there.
But Matthew Hoh, the U.S. Foreign Service Officer who resigned in October stating “my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end” has. And this is what he is saying:
“A far off civil war” Hmmm, seems like we’ve been down that path before, haven’t we?
Full text of the 10/27/09 WP article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
Mr. Hoh asks of our Afghanistan involvement “why and to what end?” My President tonight failed to answer that question to my satisfaction.
You make good points.
There are still fundamental differences between a North Vietnam that was directly supported by superpowers China and Russia and the Taliban who are being financed by rogue millionaires like Bin Laden. To equate the two conflicts as identical is to ignore these fundamental differences.
no two situations are ever exactly alike. But I believe there are some fundamental similarities that warrant examination from a historical viewpoint. There are lessons to be learned from our tortured involvement in Vietnam that that do apply here. There can be no more fitting tribute to those who served and sacrificed in Vietnam than doing just that, and that alone will have made their sacrifice honorable.
The NLF (National Liberation Front) in Vietnam received minuscule support from Russia (especially when compared to the massive U.S. aid to South Vietnam).
The Chinese gave very little support to North Vietnam and the NLF because historically the Chinese and the Vietnamese did not like each other. (Vietnam had been invaded and occupied by China in the past). Richard Nixon went to China in the spring of 1972 and was warmly received by the Chinese communists, while at the same time bombing the hell out of North Vietnam. The fact is, that wouldn’t have happened if the Chinese really had a dog in the fight.
The Vietnamese War was a war of national liberation in which the Vietnamese eventually succeeded in expelling the U.S., just as they had fought earlier expelling the French, and just as they had fought a thousand years earlier expelling the Chinese.
Mao Tsetung 1937
assessment that what we are involved with is a distant civil war.
I disagree with his assessment and I hope had enough years in service to get his pension.
We are involved in a military action, to achieve military objectives that increase our national security.
I have an idea- let’s find the “good guys” over there and be on their side. Oh,, wait….
Right after the fall of Bagdad, the plan was to have only 30 to 40,000 occupation troops in Iraq by the 2003-04 winter.
Granted the “high functioning moron” and his sidekick Donald Dumbsfeld are no longer in power, but I take little stock in any timetable no matter who comes up with it.
we now know that timetable was a lie. And a lot of what the Bush administration did was…deceptive.
Remember “stay the course”?
The prior administration was much more concerned with appearing tough and resolute and unpersuadable than with being right and efficient.
I voted for the current President in part because it appeared he would be more reflective and intellectually engaged in a decision process that would yield more thoughtful, even if more nuanced, decisions.
from her statement on the speech
I am hopeful she means this (no percentage is stating it otherwise). Having Congress sit down and do their job here and drill Obama on the specifics will be incredibly helpful
Now where was Congress again when we passed that weaselly resolution on Iraq?
Obama has been criticized for spending so much time on this decision, and now that he’s made it, many of us seem to be running around on half-assed assessments criticizing him for selling out or taking some simplistic route. I give him more credit than that.
I hope that Congress takes a (reasonable) amount of time (and a lot of effort during that time) to listen to the specifics that led to this decision. And I hope they say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ based on the facts and not so much on kneejerk feelings.
…but please tell me that he didn’t call it “the surge.” And he didn’t say, “We’re turning a corner in Afghanistan.”
The sad part is that this is war that we should have been fighting after 2001. The folks in Afghanistan actually were acoomplices to the people who brought us 9/11.
But someone got the brain fart of an idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that were threatening us. And so distracted us from pursuing the people who actually attacked us.
But isn’t this pretty much what he said he was going to do in 2008? This may be something I disagree with President Obama on, but I’m pretty sure this is exactly what he promised to do during the campaign.
In 2008, Obama proposed sending two extra brigades to Afghanistan, which is about 22,000 troops. He ended up sending about twice as many, but the basic strategy is the same. Here’s a quote from a foreign policy speech he gave in 2008:
The bolded part, aside form energy independence, was the meat of his speech tonight. I might disagree with the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan, but there’s no denying that we got what we paid for when it comes to this president.
we all really voted for him imagining that he was a socialist cipher, stating positions to fool the flyover rubes while secretly planning to liberate the proletariat.
Where is the Communist revolutionary I convinced myself I was supporting?
speak for yourself, comrade.
If in 36 months we’re still arguing the point with each other, we’ll also be talking about the recently victorious R president-elect.
…how do we judge whether or not President Obama’s objectives have been realized? Inability to state the specific thing aimed at or sought at the onset of a conflict has been at the core of most failed post WWII US warmaking. This time around is no different.
You cannot compare GW’s war in Iraq with the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban are demeaning to women, keep children uneducated, kill others if they have different religious beliefs, and think they are doing God’s work. Can you imagine the number of non-fundamentalist Afghani women, children and men who will be killed or tortured if we leave Afghanistan. Are you OK with allowing the Taliban to kill decent, non-fundamentalist, men, women and children in Afghanistan? In my opinion, if there was ever a war to fight, it is this one.
Now, few would agree.
Not many Westerners would support the Taliban. OTOH, they effectively eradicated most of the poppy crop and I believe were governing as we wished we, excuse me, Karzai could. The society was stable.
Now we go in, break all the China, and yes, the options are few.
We will lose, just like the Brits did, just like the Russians did. We can’t fight a “war” without an identifiable enemy, and there is none other than the people themselves. Like the Brits and the Russians, there is no way to win a war against “the people.” (See: American Revolution.)
If you have a counter analysis to the Barron’s, I’m all eyes and ears.
time to secure the loose nukes in the region and deprive these terrorists a chance to get their hands on one? Would that not be an acceptable outcome to prevent a bigger catastrophe? Candidate John Kerry in 2004 said that loose nukes were the number one security issue. If President Obama buys time to put in place safeguards on nuclear weapons in the region would that not count as helping our national security?
The “it’s Vietnam all over again” proponents miss the other factors involved in this situation.
How do you choose amongst only bad choices?
Least bad?
Move the goalposts and redefine success?
I vote for “best outcome”. Starting with more or at least not less national security for the US.
You may not agree that increasing our military presence does that- but do you think the President believes that?
Or do you think he’s down some unwinnable, war at all costs, politicized, rabbit trail?
but we don’t have the resources or the right to correct everyone else’s social issues. The only threat the Taliban poses to us is in it’s ability and inclination to support al Qaeda. Other than that, it’s not our job to die to change Afghan society.
It will either evolve into something more akin to what westerners are comfortable with or it won’t. We shouldn’t ask our youth to fight a war for the independence of Afghan women in their society. It won’t work a in any case.
except that we broke it and we should “fix it” in the most productive or useful way to US as we can.
The situation involves more than eliminating “honor killings” or protecting schools for girls to attend. The president was very specific last night that the effort wasn’t geared towards endless nation building but should be used to transition responsibility for the protection of the Afghan people to a legitimate government. This isn’t false bravao and political calculation ala the monkey man. Obama is going to take a big hit politically for this decision with those who are further left than me (and I’m so far left that I’m left handed) who are going to accuse him of being no different than Bush. I have to trust that he made a decision that he hopes will reduce the chance that a rogue nation or group of political terrorists will acquire nuclear weapons with the intent to use them against the US. The right wing tea baggers will always hate him so he reaps no political benefit with them for this decision. He did what he thought was in the best interests of our country and I pray that it is a carefully considered and achievable plan.
waging war to impose values. Am not saying there are no other valid reasons to give a final try to leave a better situation for all concerned in Afghanistan. Tend to think 30 thousand more troops probably isn’t the answer but am willing to give the President’s policy a chance. Just not for the feel good reason of empowering Afghan women or any other social value motivations.
There is also the wee problem of bankrupting ourselves. See USSR. And yes, I know we aren’t the USSR and that system had more problems than just their war with Afghanistan but I do think we are indebted enough to China as it is and nobody wants to pay for this war. It’s all going on the tab.
It can’t go on forever and Afghanistan may never be much more stable than it ever has been. So when do we say OK, we can leave now? When they have a functional competent central government? Why should we believe that will ever happen?
At what point and for what reasons will we eventually switch from “We need to get more of our youth killed and maimed to justify those who have already made those sacrifices” to “We are done getting killed and maimed for this.”? We all know that’s how this ends. We don’t know if anything we accomplish on the way will do us or anyone any lasting good. Lets’ hope so.
Are you OK with setting daughters-in-law on fire when the dowry money is disappointing in India? Female circumcision in many nations in Africa? Forced abortions in China? Nothing like equal rights for women in Saudi Arabia? Modern slavery? Child selling? Extortionate bribes as the only way to get any kind of license or conduct any business in Russia? we’re talking the equivalent of thousands of dollars in bribes for a fifty dollar license needed to operate a small business? Absence of free press or any individual rights in more places than I could name?
Well neither am I but we can’t very well try to change those practices by conducting hundreds of invasions, wars and occupations. We can try to influence other societies by example, diplomacy and economic carrots and sticks but we can’t wage endless wars to impose our values on those societies. The world isn’t Madison Wisconsin and it’s never going to be.
It’s not as if we don’t have any work to do on human rights issues here at home, such as cleaning up our own act on torture, secret prisons, letting people with less money die for want of adequate healthcare, etc.
I totally agree with your view..
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Fucking spammers. What? You think we want to deal with you after being a hole?
What would have persuaded you?
More to the point- do you believe that President Obama was persuaded that this course of action makes you safer? Sure you can disagree and ultimately, of course, you get to decide how you feel about anything. But do you think that the President is doing this for some other reason or do you at least believe that he’s ordering the increase because he believes it makes America safer?
Well that’s just silly.
Is that why we initiated Desert Storm back in 90/91? Because either the Kuwaitis or the Saudis were all about American values? Or consent of the governed?
Is that why we fought in Kosovo, Somalia, or anywhere else?
I’d argue that supporting those nations (Afghanistan is not a nation) that share our values might sometimes be appropriate for that reason alone.
But I would argue more forcefully that a national security interest trumps the values of others. And that escalating in Afghanistan now makes us safer. And even if I didn’t think so, I believe the Commander in Chief thinks so.
I’ll save the political analysis for later- but I supported invading Iraq in 2002 & 2003 because I thought if Iraq had nukes or other NBC/WMD we had to disarm Saddam. And doing so before Iraq invaded Iran or Israel or Turkey or attacking the USA directly was far better than anything we could have done after.
When we found out all the nuke and other WMD talk was lies and spin, I thought first- leave now. But I respect General Powell quite a lot; yes, even though he delivered some of the spin and lies. But from a military and geo-political perspective I think he was right about the whole PotteryBarn thing. We broke it- abruptly leaving in 04 or anytime since would not have made us safer and likely would have made us less safe.
So here we are in Afghanistan- where we should have been since 9/12. We’ve been here before. It’s possible we’ll be here again.
What course of action regarding AFPAK right now makes the US safer? Stability? Nation building? An Iraq-like “surge”? Complete and immediate withdrawal? None of us knows. Not really. Because we lack adequate information to make a rational assessment of whatinhell is going on over there. And because none of us (I’m guessing) speaks Pashtun, none of us can just cold call into the Afghanistan area code and start asking.
What I was hoping for last night was a clear statement of objectives; not strategy, not tactics, not political spin. Just our goal is X or our goals are X, Y, and Z.
The closest he got was
These sound like militarily feasible objectives. And I’ve no doubt that his military commanders & staff have indicated they are achievable.
I would have preferred to see “disarm” as one of the first two d’s. But perhaps that’s too much.
I would have also preferred to see an overt statement that it is better that we disrupt, dismantle and defeat them there instead of here. Far better. But I think that would be better done in a classified briefing because you’ve implied an awareness of a threat assessment that is not public. It also raises a tactics and strategy question because the natural question is how high are we willing to build the stack of skulls? Seriously- no one defeats the Afghani tribes in their home, in their mountains, in their winter.
Does this mean we have a long and difficult presence? I don’t care if it makes us and the ROTW safer.
I do care how we pay for it. And making us safe to wallow in a national depression without health care and other important domestic investments is not real safety.
And so I’ll expect to see celebrities out hawking war bonds, or what ever we do now to pay for stuff like this. (Though I think a good ole’ fashioned war bond drive would be useful- the last one was way before my time.)
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I do not have any knowledge of any threat assessment that is not in the public domain. I apologize for implying that.
As I’ve mentioned before, I was a contributor to the 2009 Global Strategic Assessment published by the INSS, a think tank at the National Defense University. I furnished about half of the graphics.
I was copied on an email last August from someone at DNI with a draft of the National Intelligence Council’s July 2008 “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.”
I read a lot of open source stuff on Iraq and Afghanistan, but its all stuff you could get if you looked for it hard enough.
In his review process, the President was told by the Army that we just don’t have enough soldiers to send another 80,000, which is what I believe McChrystal requested, unless we pull out of Iraq, where our soldiers don’t have a mission right now. Best I can tell, they are waiting around to help shut down all traffic on the roads during the next elections, which were supposed to (according to their Constitution, which was written by Americans) happen in January, less than 2 months from now. Of course, with no election law in place, who knows when they get to vote.
One problem with letting Iraqis vote is they were supposed to have a referendum last June on whether to expel our troops in June 2010. That was in the November 2008 SOFA Agreement, added by the Majlis. Hmmm. I have my own ideas about how that vote would go.
I don’t think Obama chose to stay the course because he thinks it will be the best way to protect us; I think he is acting like any other politician and trying to preserve his political career by triangulating a compromise. I don’t think any course suggested to him jumped out as being the best way to proceed, so he tried to find a way to look decisive while putting off any decision about either pulling out or going all in.
Frankly, I’m 100% sure that 600,000 troops for 25 years would guarantee a very good outcome. There IS a military solution. I just don’t see any way that we would invest that heavily in solving what is only a little more than a peripheral (non-existential) threat.
My thinking, if we’re eventually going to pull out before making any real difference anyway, let’s just get it over with. But as we cut and run, we could spend about 10% of what one year’s worth of hostile foreign occupation costs (now up to $100 B per year) and make the tribal leaders strong enough to stabilize and secure their own communities. No chance of a functioning national government, but functioning local (village, town, district, but not provincial) government was in place in the not too distant past. That stability would do a lot more to hinder a resurgence of al-Qaeda than any health clinics or road construction.
That part about “consent of the governed” was not well-stated. I meant that it goes against the grain of the idea of “America” to colonize foreign lands. We’ve done what we could to disrupt al-Qaeda, and now they’re gone. But we still have US Colonels barking orders to officials in the national government in Kabul and to the Provincial Governors, making the Karzai “government” our puppets. Maybe if we were doing a competent job of running their country the Afghan people might be more tolerant of our interference, but we’re not.
Finally, “loose Pakistani nukes.”
Dawn is the #1 English language website and newspaper in Pakistan. English is the official language of government in Pakistan, by the way.
Dawn reported last year that the US Air Force had deployed a nuclear security team, about 100 people + aircraft, to an air base on the SE shore of Lake Tarbela, near Haripur. I believe that’s where all Pakistani nukes are; that’s where all their nuke capable aircraft and missiles are, so it would make sense to have the bombs / warheads there, too.
Anyway, USAF technicians have the serial numbers and 16-digit grid coordinates of every single Paki nuke. Locations are tracked in real time, though they don’t move much. These airmen are able to either seize every one, or destroy the ones they can’t, within about 45 minutes, the time it takes to scramble an F-18 on the USS Enterprise, loitering in the Indian Ocean, and vector it to its target in Haripur.
That’s one thing our $7.5 B in aid buys.
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To clarify.
When I wrote “… because you’ve implied an awareness of a threat assessment that is not public.”
I was referring to the conditional
“I would have also preferred to see an overt statement that it is better that we disrupt, dismantle and defeat them there instead of here. Far better.”
And I followed that by indicating that kind of statement shold only be made “in a classified briefing”
because that statement implies awareness of a not public threat assessment.
Hooey.
He’s not “staying the course”. He is changing course.
And I think he just went all in multiple ways for the 2012 election.
Here’s two.
the left that hated this war hate it no less now. We’ll see the demonstrations start back up as soon as they mobilize. It’s odd- as posted elsewhere- this is almost exactly what Obama campaigned on. But plenty of the left is nervous now cuz, you know, we’re not the party of war.
And he set a timetable guaranteed to be a hot button on both sides. I disagree with the assessment that he did as an attempt to appease the domestic left. I think he did it as a coordinated part of the strategy on the ground in AFPAK. You have our help for now, but get it together, and right now, because we’re not in it for your long haul… you lying, corrupt, fake gov’t rat bastards (Ok- the rat bastards was a bit much and not really a Chicago thing.)
But that time time table will come and go in plenty of time for the 2012 election cycle. Assuming he wants to be re-elected, he succeeds or fails on that alone.
Yeah, yeah- it’s the economy and yada-shmada
But even he acknowledged the private sector has to fix that. If they don’t he has no chance.
As for leaving now or later- I agree with you. sort of.
Stablized neighborhoods and regions does seem feasible. Though I doubt very much significant irrigated poppy land can be converted to saffron or any other less cash crop.
Kandahar and the growing areas to the south and west. Not all the way to the west border- some of those guys across that border are just itching for us to get over there.
And I’m not so sure I agree about the colonial thing.
We talk a good anti-imperialist game here. But when it comes to walking the walk- we’re not quite so sincere.
In fact, I think we should at least consider re-opening the negotiations on a one or two deals with the express goal of expanding the star count on the flag. Trist screwed up.
The Taliban are not the only players in Afghan. They are almost entirely Pashtun, comprising around 40% of the population; the rest is divided among Tajik (27%), (Hazara (9%), Uzbe (9%), Aimak (4%), Turkmen (3%), and Baloch (2%). Moreover, there is no evidence that the Pashtun widely support the Taliban. There is at least some parallel to the situation to Arabs in Anbar province reacting to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. It’s unclear that the Taliban are primarily a movement of national independenistas. Moreover, Pakistan’s FATA serves as a base for both Afghan and Pakistan Taliban–largely separate groups–as does southern Afghanistan for the Pashtuns in Pakistan. Both pose a threat to Pakistan. My point is that Afghanistan is not only an American occupation on one hand and a native Afghan independence movement on the other; there are other issues.
I would also suggest that Obama’s speech could be viewed from two different angles. On one hand, he announced an increase in troops, suggesting a further commitment to defending the Karzai government. But he also announced a deadline for withdrawal in 18 months, as well as suggesting that U.S. support may go direct towards regional leaders, rather than through the corrupt central government. There’s no guarantee on that deadline, but we could view the prime thrust of his policy as setting limits, rather than an open-ended policy (such as McCain seems to support, for example). Perhaps we should consider putting the emPHAsis on a different sylLABle, i.e. on the deadline instead of the surge. There is at least some parallel to Iraq: once a deadline was set, Maliki seemed to have taken action in negotiating with the Sunnis and succeeded, at least to some degree, in building an effective military/police.
Lastly, it seems to me that at least one major consideration is Pakistani politics, and possibly Islamabad’s relationship to India. Certainly one issue is the Pakistani military’s long-time support of the Taliban (at least the ISI’s) as a counter-measure to India, which is a major investor in Afghanistan. If the U.S. were to abandon Afghanistan, what impact would that have on Pakistan’s military?
Not exactly related to Afghanistan, but since you brought up Maliki, I would say that it was a lot easier to negotiate with the Sunnis after the Shi’a had already slaughtered thousands of them in the civil war.
But more to the topic, I agree that Obama’s dual emphasis on increased force now, but no open-ended commitments later is important.
Political analysis is hard when it is conflated with military or diplomatic analysis.
Politically- I think you’ve got it.
Oh, and btw, the deadline makes Obama completely vulnerable to accountability on this in 2012.
Or venerable.
No matter how you feel about Obama’s plan, how can anything Bush did or failed to do in Afghanistan be looked back on as right? From letting Bin Laden walk out un-molested right on down the line, where’s a good Bush decision?
Obama can’t have liked any of the options presented to him; like Iraq (and the economy, and global warming, and the budget…) he was handed a fucked-up mess and now has the sad responsibility of trying to untangle it all.
Gilpin Guy has noted the Pakistani nuclear angle, so I won’t go there. More important than just the nuclear problem IMHO is the general stability of Pakistan and the implications for wider regional stability. If we can manage to force what co-ordinated Taliban forces there are into a two-front skirmish, then Pakistan gets a chance to solidify its own position; if some kind of agreement with India is added to the pot (allowing Pakistani forces to move from the stagnant Indian front to insurgent pockets), then the Pakistani government might stand upright quite forcefully and provide a necessary boost to regional stability.
But what I think has slipped through the cracks over the years is that when we invaded Afghanistan, we broke a stable (if dysfunctional) government. As an occupying force, we have degraded the country’s stability and infrastructure. When we went in, we promised we wouldn’t drop them like a rock through a wet paper sack like we did in the ’80s. We owe it to the people of Afghanistan to at least make the attempt to leave them with a functioning society. (IMHO we also owe it to them under the UN Charter and various laws of war…).
The Afghanistan peoples are still, from what I’ve heard and read, interested in having a stable and fair government and a functioning economy. They (some who still remember) know it can happen. But they have serious doubts. We aren’t the Russians; we aren’t the British – we don’t want to build a colony or expand our empire (though given Karzai as head of state, one might question our oil motives…). IF – and that’s a big ‘if’ – we can get the current government to clean itself up, restore the balance of forces in the Afghanistan army and police forces (yes, they were originally balanced after we took over…), secure enough territory to effectively leave a “stable” country, and show benefit/progress to the citizens, then the investment Obama outlined will be more than worth it in regional stability and in international goodwill.
A precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan could be a mega-disaster of the first order, especially when considering (as Phoenix Rising does) the role of India in the subcontinent.
India seems largely to have remained out of the spotlight, but Delhi has made significant investments in Afghanistan and certainly plays a major role in Pakistan’s relationship with Islamist groups active in Kashmir.
And that’s to say nothing of the political scene in this country. History does not repeat itself, and this ain’t another Vietnam.
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would be to put them in Eastern Pakistan, just across the border from India, as a tripwire to prevent an Indian invasion.
Now, I don’t think there’s much chance of India invading, but since that fear drives everything else in the region, this would be a good way to free up Pakistani forces to solve the FATA troubles.
And US forces in Azad Kashmir or Eastern Punjab would be safer and a lot easier to resupply.
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…I’d be entirely astounded if any Pakistani even imagined the prospect of stationing American troops in Pakistan, especially at this point.
But you do make a very good point: good ideas aren’t always feasible in the political context (unless you believe that ideas feasible in the political context are the only good ones, which is another discussion we could have). That said, Obama is faced with a genuine dilemma. For the moment, I’ll go with the bright side–listen to plans to withdraw in 18 months. Whether that will be “realistic” when the time rolls ’round, we shall have to see.