Why Afghanistan?
Posted on September 3rd, 2009
by Philip Giraldi |
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There has been a running commentary in the Wash Post regarding Afghanistan. It started two days ago with a George Will op-ed called “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/09/no_will_no_way.html. Will basically accepted that the war is being lost and indeed might be unwinnable in any conventional sense because it is really all about nation building, which will almost certainly fail. He suggested that the task of preventing al-Qaeda’s return to the country could be managed using “offshore” resources like cruise missiles, drones, and special forces. The offshore bit is more than a little silly, but Will seems to be spot on in assessing the war as a waste of resources and in pursuit of objectives that just cannot be realized.
Not willing to surrender to defeatism, the Post followed up with a Bill Kristol commentary yesterday http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/09/no_will_no_way.html and a lead editorial today http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090203083.html. Both Kristol and Fred Hiatt (presumably the author of the editorial) supported an increased effort in Afghanistan but I wondered, as I was reading, why we should be in Afghanistan at all? The Post provided only a hint, i.e. “preventing al-Qaeda from regaining a foothold in the country,” an objective also mentioned by Kristol. Kristol also said that staying in Afghanistan is important because of Pakistan, without providing any evidence that the US troop presence is either stabilizing or otherwise helpful to the corrupt kleptocrats currently ruling in Islamabad. As Jeff Huber has pointed out, modern technology means that al-Qaeda can operate out of anywhere. including their current digs in Waziristan, so the objective of stopping a return to Afghanistan to neutralize the group would appear to be an exercise in futility.
All of which means a commitment of tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars more in support of an agenda that is a bit hard to frame in terms of the US national interest. Perhaps Kristol came up with the actual reason why he and the Wash Post want to continue the war when he posited at the end of his blurb that leaving would be “defeat.” Interestingly, the numerous comments from Post readers on the Will piece and on Kristol appeared to run about ten-to-one in favor of getting out now. There were a number of particularly nasty comments about Kristol the arm-chair warrior who has never seen a war he didn’t like.
Filed under: Foreign policy, War
Tunnel vision is the enemy in any conflict. By focusing on the negative consequences of leaving Afghanistan, war enthusiasts like Kristol, miss one salient fact. al-Queda would be much easier to attack if they did in fact, move operations back to a post-American Afghanistan. The inevitability of turmoil and decentralization would provide a more flexible environment for intelligence gathering and targeting. Without foreigners to focus on, Afghans tend to fight each other. While this is tragic from a humanitarian point of view, it’s the way they seem to like it. As this is the case, why not take advantage of it?
Speaking of tragedies, why on earth didn’t Obama just announce that the Afghan cake wasn’t worth the candle, point out Karzai’s corruption and inefficiency, and start pulling out. The terms of our leaving gives us more leverage than our dogged determination to stay against our own interest. If I were him, explain that the Afghan Government had seven-plus years to get their act together and failed.
We could secure the borders and reform our immigration system a.k.a actually doing something to mitigate the terrorist threat and it wouldn’t cost a dime. In fact we would save money. Chances of this happening: zero.
Given the ruinious consequences to the Taleban of their prior indulgence of Al Qaeda (which seemed to have as much to do with using them as allies against the Northern Alliance) how do we know Mullah Omar would permit their return?
(AQ is allied with Pakistani Taleban elements now. I haven’t seen anything establishing any current links with Omar’s movement. In fact, NPR carried an interview today that Omar’s movement is disinclined to foreign fighters compared to another Afghan movement.)
The top editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sept. 2 argued that we leave Afghanistan: http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/finepoint/archive/2009/09/02/editorial-afghan-reality-the-war-is-unwinnable-and-ever-costly.aspx
I never liked the idea of trying to occupy and “build” Afghanistan and, with some reservations given how much it looks like abandonment and defeat, think that withdrawing and retreating back “over the horizon/going offshore” isn’t all that bad an idea. But I think that one thing that should always be kept in mind when talking about Afghanistan is that it’s small potatoes. Maybe even just one small potato. Whatever we do ought first and foremost be judged by whether it helps or hurts what we want to see happen in Pakistan.
For instance, right now the reigning concept that even Obama seems to endorse is that we are engaged in what amounts to a “pincer”-type strategy. We push against the Taliban and al Queda from the West and Pakistan does so from the East. (With help from our Hellfires and quietly otherwise I assume.)
But maybe the better analogy is that this is just putting more pressure into the cooker that is Pakistan than it can bear and, as I suspect (but wouldn’t bet my life on) it’s smarter to relieve same by letting the Taliban ooze back into Afghanistan, as bad as that may sound.
And yet back on the other hand there’s also what seems to be the fact that if things were to go seriously Way Bad in Pakistan it sure would be nice to have all those bases and resources we have in Afghanistan.
Rather inexplicably in my book we seem to have stood by without a care in the world seeing Musharef off, with him being in my estimation about the best possible friend we could ever hope for over there. For all that the media seemed to love talking about how much dissent he engendered his putative replacements now seem about as able to prevent Pakistan from tipping over into revolution or civil war as Lear was able to hold back the tide.
And yet, can anyone imagine how bad it could be if the fundamentalists took over Pakistan? For one I think we could kiss goodbye what’s been the truth so far at least that our only real interest in fighting “moslem extremism” in the ME has been a low-level sort of affair in terms of simply fighting same to the extent it produced or tolerated terrorism against us. (What the neo-cons and others always hyper-inflated, but also did so successfully, ominously enough.) Now you’d have Mullah Omar types with the bomb, perfectly happy to give it to anyone and everyone who’d want to use it against us. (Maybe only after first trying to nuke New Delhi, but still….) And this is not to mention all the other incredible dangers that implicate our interests that the situation would present.
Talking about Afghanistan in a vacuum seems to me to be like talking about a mildly inflamed appendix without considering the effects the surgery might have on a sucking great aneurysm that exists in a nearby major artery. You go hacking away at the appendix and the latter might give way. On the other hand you can argue that if you ignore it it might burst and take the aneurysm with it.
I sure hope Obama knows what he’s doing. It seems a delicate and tricky situation to me.