O = W
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“O=W” is a bumper sticker beginning to show up on liberals’ cars. After the President’s speech Tuesday night at West Point, I suspect it will spread rapidly.
For eight years, conservatives endured the agony of watching President George W. Bush attach the label “conservative” to a host of policies that were anti-conservative: Wilsonian wars, American empire, vast budget and trade deficits, increased entitlements, and the subordination of America’s interests to those of foreign powers. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and liberals are bidden to hold their tongues as President Obama makes Bush’s wars his own. The usual Washington sell-out is in gear.
It should not come as a surprise. America is now a one-party state. The one party is the Establishment party, which is also the war party. Unless you are willing to cheer permanent war for permanent peace, you cannot be a member of the Establishment.
What can we say militarily about Obama’s surge? Understand that in Afghanistan, 30,000 troops is a drop in the bucket. The size of the country, the wide extent of Taliban and other anti-occupier action, and the largely mountainous nature of the terrain make Afghanistan a troop sponge. A serious effort would require 300,000 more troops, not 30,000.
Obama’s surge only makes strategic sense if it is intended to strengthen our position politically as a preliminary to negotiating with the Taliban. By holding a few areas in the Taliban’s heartland, we might make such negotiations worthwhile for Mullah Omar. The deal would be a coalition government including the Taliban, to last until we withdrew, coupled with a promise not to invite al Qaeda back. Is that the White House’s intention? I can only say that I have seen no evidence of it.
On the operational level, we are adopting a fortress strategy: Festung Kandahar. The Taliban’s operational countermove is obvious: take the rest of the Pashtun areas, isolate us in our fortresses, then work to sever the supply lines running to the fortresses, including Kabul. The Taliban is already attempting to do this; our concentration should make it all the easier.
Tactically, the Taliban will withdraw from areas where we concentrate rather than trying to defend them: “when the enemy advances, we retreat.” Then, they will penetrate those areas with small raids, ambushes, IED-placing parties, and suicide bombers: “When the enemy halts, we harass.” We will face a war of the flea inside our fortresses.
If we add all this up, we see that militarily it makes no sense. Of course, that is true of any military option in the Afghan war. We are fighting the Pashtun, and in the end, the Pashtun always win Afghan wars. “This time is different” is, as always, the battle cry of Folly.
So what lies behind President Obama’s decision? Domestic political considerations, of course. He has done what politicians always do when faced with difficult choices: he has kicked the can down the road, to a specific date, July, 2011. That is when the President promises we will begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan. The date is meaningless beyond its political meaning, i.e., at that point Obama will again be faced with the same decision he just punted. With a Presidential election looming, he will punt again. Meanwhile, the war’s price, in money and casualties, will have risen, making it even harder to walk away from sunk costs.
The real choice Obama faced was not how many troops to send. We do not have enough troops to commit a militarily meaningful number. The real choice was to get out now or get out later. His duty as Chief Executive, the state of America’s treasury (empty), concern for the well-being of our troops and their families, and the hopelessness of the situation all dictated he get out now. By punting the decision, he showed America and the world what he is made of. December 1, 2009, was the date the Obama Presidency failed.
Mr. Lind … I agree! Well said. But I am hoping that the argument against the war builds in strength over the next year. Actually, I’ll say it’s likely (in truth, my hope is gone anyway). So I think the political pressure in 2011 will be quite strong for a significant withdrawal ahead of the 2012 campaign.
An EXCELLENT article, and spot-on in most respects.
I have a different read on your paragraph 3. You say “one party” and “establishment”. Actually, there is a struggle between groups of crooks, up on a level that is largely invisible to the US public. (The reason this distinction is important, is that my scenario implies that the antidote is an honest class of citizens rising to re-take the country.)
And, in paragraph 9, you say he is “kicking the can down the road” for political reasons, but implying that it is not relevant to the 2010 US elections. I would argue that it is precisely BECAUSE of the elections, and wanting to use the war as a liberal tool leading up to the elections, that Obama is taking this tack. Obama’s timing has been precise, in the delaying of McChrystal’s request, to precisely place the “18th month” about 8 months past the 2010 elections. The left will get a “bump” from the antiwar.com folks prior to the 2010 elections, and the left will have another “crisis” in the summer of 2011, to be used as fodder for the 2012 elections.
Our job, then, is to get the antiwar.com folks to wake up and quit being “tools” for such Liberal machinations.
Let us pump honesty and personal responsibility into the left half of the populus, and let us convince the right half that being “security at home”-oriented does not necessitate foreign interventionism, nor necessarily force upon us a secularism or feminism-gone-awry. (Let’s convince the “neocons” that dead US babies are every bit as important to us as foreign “bombed-out” babies. Let’s convince the “libs” that we can honor Human Life without removing a woman’s-or a man’s-right over their own body or personal space).
This is the start, this is where we build our tent for the American public to overthrow the crooks.
As much as President Obama fears the gradual derailing of the Aghan war, I believe that he fears the specter of a radical Islamist takeover of the Pakistani government even more. One maxim that the Iraq war did establish was that whenever America’s military shows up in the Middle East, the hardcore Islamists will line up to attack us. Nations such as Syria were only to happy to allow a constant stream of their hardcore militants over the border to be killed in battles with American soldiers. This same suction effect will most likely draw fighters away from Pakistan into Afghanistan thereby making the Pakistani governments security job “easier”. Remember, Pakistan doesn’t just have nukes it also has ballistic missiles to carry them. The fall of Pakistans government would be a security nightmare beyond belief. Can you imagine Obama trying to explain that one to the American people? Pakistan also serves as a counter to Iranian influence since Iraq no longer is. In conclusion, no illusions exist in my mind about the Herculean task of salvaging Afghanistan. However, as explained above, the withdrawal strategy also carries substantial risk as well. America will have to find some way to win over at least a portion of the Pashtun people before we can even begin to show a glimmer of optimism about Afghanistan.
I agree – I daresay John McCain might have ignored Bush and Obama’s shared commitment to Russo-American nuclear disarmament, but beyond that, all three men seem to be different-textured shells in the same shell game.
It is heartening, at least, to hear more voices pointing out the Imperial nature of the presidency – I would not be the first to suggest a “coalition of the small”, those in favor of a less burgeoning empire in some fashion or another.
GB wrote:
“[U.S. forces being in Afghanistan] will most likely draw fighters away from Pakistan into Afghanistan thereby making the Pakistani governments security job ‘easier.’”
While I think there’s some logic in this I suspect its effect will be greatly swamped out by A.) the tremendous increase in fighters generally in both Afghanistan and Pakistan who just don’t like seeing their countries occupied/made into U.S. satellites, and B.) the number of Afghan fighters who will go over into Pakistan and use it as a relative safe-haven, much as the N. Vietnamese and VC did with Cambodia and Laos. (And remember what happened there.)
No, in the first place I think one has to acknowledge that it was our occupation of Afghanistan in the *first* place that has *already* destabilized Pakistan to a very significant degree. We just pushed the Fundies over the border where their Fundie brothers felt they had to welcome them in, and then we had Pakistan go after them all and, one can argue, they are now in the process of kicking Pakistan’s ass pretty well. (Esp. in having gotten rid of Mushareff, and killing Benazir Bhutto.)
Seems the better argument to me that if we left Afghanistan that it would act as a pressure release valve allowing the Fundies to go back in *from* Pakistan, and might give Pakistan enough breathing room to survive as a non-Fundie nation.
Not 100% sure, but that’s where the odds tilt it seems to me at least.
Cheers,
It is the jihadists’ doctrines themselves that are most in need of attacking. The West needs to educate itself and the rest of the world more thoroughly about jihadist ideology so that other nations do not perceive jihadists as simply victims of an oppressive foreign policy and that they,too, can be offensive and belligerent. That way all of those nations will be prepared to put pressure on Muslim governments to constrain jihadism–freeing America to pursue non-interventionism–and the latter would be in a far more secure position to deal with their radical dissidents.
TomB wrote:
“While I think there’s some logic in this I suspect its effect will be greatly swamped out by A.) the tremendous increase in fighters generally in both Afghanistan and Pakistan who just don’t like seeing their countries occupied/made into U.S. satellites, and B.) the number of Afghan fighters who will go over into Pakistan and use it as a relative safe-haven, much as the N. Vietnamese and VC did with Cambodia and Laos.”
You definitely make a good point. The situation in Afghanistan certainly is dissimiliar to Iraq in that we shouldn’t count on Al Qaeda’s barbarism to help us appear as the lesser of two evils in the eyes of the local populace.
“Seems the better argument to me that if we left Afghanistan that it would act as a pressure release valve allowing the Fundies to go back in *from* Pakistan, and might give Pakistan enough breathing room to survive as a non-Fundie nation. ”
You may be right. Much of this is contingent on how we conduct the operation. After all, there has not been a popular uprising in Afghanistan as some predicted, at least not yet. Unfortunately, the number of American casualties that would probably be sustained in order to avoid enraging the locals with airstrikes, artillery, etc… will not be tolerable to the American public. Then comes the withdrawal option.
I think we can agree that, whether we stay or go, substantial risk is involved.
One can’t help but wonder, can Afghanistan in its present form be governed? Can Pakistan?
O ~ W (POTUS approximately equals ex-POTUS)
And we suspect neither of them understand any of that 4GW stuff. At least here at TAC, we have to assume Bush was a complete fool. And so the accident that he picked his battles, and pulled those 4GW muslim extremists into a more civilized environment, so they could come from all over the mid-east and fight us where there were roads… Lucky break.
A lucky break that might have given Afghanistan it’s chance.
Now if I were the head of the Afghanis, and could pull my own head out of the corruption for a moment, I would make a proposal to the US.
Let the US finance building a 4-lane highway that circumnavigates Afghanistan, and spokes to the major cities. In return, central govt can become a reality, and the economy of Afghanistan is jump-started, and the Afghanis can create their own rapid-response forces. Control the road, and win hearts and minds of rural towns, and pull those 4GW enemy fighters onto a civilized battlefield. Where the enemy attacks the road, they attack the livlihood of the folks who would come to depend on it.
Should be about 2-cents worth there.
Does anyone else think that analyzing the jihadist ideology in depth and informing the world of their radicalism–and that it is not always the West’s foreign policy that spurs them to arms–would allow America to take a more non-interventionist posture since other nations will then concentrate on the threat jihadists pose as well?