Back in early 2007 there were still some rightwingers willing to quixotically fight against the evidence that the Iraq war made it harder to win in Afghanistan. Let’s see whether we have any of those guys still around today.
The nation’s top military officer said today that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to help tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency but does not have sufficient forces to send because of the war in Iraq.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said insurgent Taliban and extremist forces in Afghanistan have become “a very complex problem” that is tied to the extensive drug trade, a faltering economy and the porous border region with Pakistan. Violence in Afghanistan has increased markedly over recent weeks, and June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began in 2001, with 28 combat fatalities.
Those troops that Admiral Mullen wants would have come out of the deployable reserve forces, but we already surged those into Iraq. In fact Iraq has become a magical money pit where things we could use elsewhere disappear for good – things like the special forces unit hunting Osama Bin Laden, spy satellites, the National Guard, America’s good name and about a trillion dollars.
Let’s game this out for a minute. We don’t have anything more to give Afghanistan than the obviously insufficient force that we already have in the country and the rest of the world isn’t exactly champing at the bit to take up our slack. Imagine for a minute that the Taliban starts to consolidate their gains in the southern part of the country and forces non-American troops to pull back under fire. Couldn’t the insurgent troops just realize that militant Islam is a perversion of the Koran and give up fighting on their own? Call that the best case scenario. There might be other scenarios out there, but who cares? Like a video game, war always turns out great no matter what you do. A few more quarters in Iraq and we’ll free that princess for sure.
You wish that I made up the crazy talk in the above paragraph. It makes national leaders look like emotional infants, the kind of knuckle chewing manic you wouldn’t trust alone in a Chuck-E-Cheese. It’s also the simple truth. Condoleeza Rice:
It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.
Rice was talking about the Surge plan; the topic could have equally covered the postwar plan for Iraq. She could have been talking about forcing Fatah to hold elections in Gaza. Similar words describe the decision to ignore North Korea until Kim Jong Il enriched a crapload of plutonium and tested a nuke. They equally apply to the decision to ignore Iran’s diplomatic contacts in 2003, a decision that effectively turned the country into an adversary with a potent incentive to keep us violently occupied next door (the plan was to intimidate Iran instead of talking; after his engagement failed Iranians turned against moderate President Khatami and elected Ahmadinejad in his place).
Secretary Rice could have been talking about America’s prisoner policy. As far as I can tell the administration did whatever it felt like to whomever it wanted and figured that everything would work out because, uh, things always work out. They were wrong.
Where am I going with this? I guess in a weird sort of way I’m impressed. In matters of global policy (as opposed to important stuff like winning elections) we’re governed by gamblers who roll snake eyes every time.
TCG
They have screwed us over. It is their legacy.
jake
Fixed.
Seriously, these numbskulls like to make WWII analogies but if they’d been in charge during WWII the fReichtards would be complaining about the icky Mexicans who don’t speak good German the way God intended.
pessullivan
How much you wanna bet he’ll be gone in a month? Resign, spend time with family, but never fired, his ass is gone!
nightjar
Well, in the next few months we may get to see the Mother of All Crapshoots cause Cheney wants some Persian heads mounted on his wall and if he gets his way, it’ll be all in for the Apocalypse, or at least, likely all out regional war.
Dennis - SGMM
WTF? I was only a mid-level IT manager and for every big move we made we had to come up with a detailed action plan. We would then try to game out everything that could go wrong for every step of it and develop responses for those contingencies. Guess that we weren’t clever enough for government work.
I don’t have access to the same resources as the administration. Yet reading the world (Not the US) press has made me aware of the steady erosion of the situation in Afghanistan. The need for more troops there was apparent four years ago. Despite that, Bush & Company never did a damned thing to increase the number of troops available. A bigger military would have been theirs for the asking. Whether it was hubris or sheer stubborn stupidity the administration never asked. Now the people stationed in the ME are waist deep in the big muddy with no help in sight. The help is already used up.
Strong on defense my ass.
TenguPhule
Failure is not an option with these people, it’s inevitable.
TenguPhule
Is it considered gambling if it’s always a sure thing?
Delia
It’s the Power of Positive Thinking. If you dare to come up with a Plan B, you’re not thinking Positively enough, which is proof that you hate the troops and hate America and are therefore a traitor. Much better to go with the one and only Plan A and spin the outcome into “Exactly What We Knew and Wanted to Happen All Along.”
Except, of course, when we take a detour to “No One Could Have Predicted That . . . . .”
The Grand Panjandrum
Thank you for once again saying what needs to be said. This should not be news to anyone taking the time to actually read and follow this clusterfuck of an administration.
Criticial SF teams were ordered to stand down in Afghanistan and redeploy for a another mission in December 2001. Weeks after the fall of the Taliban. (I still have a few contacts and know of what I speak.) In other words, the former Cheerleader and his gang of War Criminals were planning the War in Iraq long before the Official run up to that disaster.
I have been asked more than once why I believe these sorry fucks in the Executive should all be hanged. Screwing up the Afghanistan mission is where I start my argument. OBL was NEVER the target. The administration knows it and to believe otherwise is folly.
rachel
The DFHs can’t say, “We told you so,” nearly often enough.
Zifnab
Ok, but seriously, when do I get my pony?
:-p I mean, it wouldn’t be quite so bad if the Cons had good ideas. If, for instance, they’d decided to invade Guam with a contingent of soldiers one tenth the size of the country’s population. Or if they decided to repeal the Iraqi Army but generally keep the existing government in one piece.
If the ideas were sounds from the beginning with a minor chance of failure, I could at least begin to comprehend why they wouldn’t plan for contingencies. But Rumsfeld / Cheney / et al were being told from the get-go that their half-assed invasion wasn’t going to work. They knew from the start that no hard evidence existed for WMDs. And it’s not like they weren’t familiar with the political price of waging a long and unpopular war on the other side of the world – everyone in the War Room had been a power player when Nixon was running Vietnam.
So its not just the high stakes that amaze me. They weren’t just doubling down. They were doubling down on a 19, with full expectation that the dealer would flip them a 2 by some freak miracle. They were bragging about how they’d win big, even as the card was turning over and people could see tragedy coming. And when they had a bust staring them in the face, they somehow had the gaul to demand the dealer hit them again. The dealer – being Congress – for reasons unknown to rational and intelligent human beings, kept the game going card after card. And as the hand got increasingly, ridiculously more absurdly loserish, the GOP just kept on rallying around with insistence that this time they’d flip the negative 15 they need to hit 21.
I mean, it’s just insane.
Patrick
“It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work”
It was alledged when some of us nearly elected these people that we were getting “good businessmen” who would make good business decisions, and run the government efficiently.
Did any of these people take (and pass) a college level risk analysis course at all? When you start a war when you are already at war, don’t you ask yourself what is the worst that can happen? When Rumsfeld was planning the Iraq war he was notorios for not only not planning for post war, but actively subverting the state department or anyone who was (see James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly for the blow-by-blow). That always just drove me nuts. I know he thought we were going to go in, install a puppet government, the Iraqis would be thrilled to be rid of Saddam, and we would be able to leave and still get oil contracts — but how could anyone, even if he felt his chances of being right were 99 per cent, not consider the possibilities that there might be disorder after a war?
Almost all of us buy fire insurance for our homes not because we think our homes our going to burn down, but because if that one in a thousand chance happened the loss would be so catastrophoric that we should be prepared. And that is just for a house — not a war in the middle east. The arrogance of these people has atrophied their sense of reality to the point where I think they can barely be called sane.
To say that it’s bad policy to speculate on failure when planning for something as chaotic as war — I really just don’t have the words.
Ninerdave
I know you’re a busy, elitist, latte suppin’ PhD, but post more Tim.
begin snark
PS how’s that limo treating you with the price of gas? Oh that’s right, you don’t care about the price of gas since you’re so elite!
end snark
ThymeZone
Good post, this is similar to the message material advanced by the Obama campaign Monday, while the blog world was in a dither over the Clark remark and the concern trolls here were bloviating about Obama “throwing Clark under the bus.”
When this election year is over and we look back on what happened, I hope we can remember this week, and what things were thought to be really important in the blogosphere.
Blogdom talked about Clark and the Obama campaign talked about failed foreign policy and military policy.
It’s my opinion that the blogosphere is watching a collapse of its relevance, but that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong. But for Obama’s sake and the sake of a Dem White House next year, and the sake of the country, I hope I am right.
bago
You know, someone should give them a focus group designed parachute, take away the backup chute, and push these people out of a plane. I mean, you really shouldn’t be talking about backup chutes when you’re still trying to untangle the first abortion of a chute you put together. Wouldn’t want to hurt someone’s feeling dontchaknow.
geemoney
Four words: FMEA. It’s a useful tool for these kinds of things. I can guarantee you there are whole loads of employees in our government that are really good at change management. Of course, the fact that they might be well-informed and highly competent at this sort of thing probably took them right out of consideration.
Bedlam UK
Does a Government honestly state to its people that they DO NOT plan for failure?
No back up, no security measures, no think-tanks and support.
And this is acceptable to someone? Anyone?
Governments do stupid things, every single day. But most governments at least pretend that they did their best to cover all the bases.
Un-bloody-believable.
dslak
Federal Management Emergency Agency? We probably could use an agency that specializes in management emergencies!
JGabriel
John Cole:
I blame Ayn Rand.
.
rachel
No, Tim F. (Who, AFAIK, wasn’t for The Glorious Iraq Adventure, but I could be wrong about that.)
Nancy Irving
Guess we’ll have to raise income taxes on the rich and hire some more Blackwater mercs, LOL.
Jody
Actually, that’s incorrect. We’re governed by folks who go to horse races and bet on the one with the broken leg that just got shot out in the parking lot.
And with each new race, they bet on the same horse, raising the stakes, believing that THIS will be the time he defies the odds and makes heroes of them all.
There was plenty of evidence that everything they’ve tried in the Middle East would go to shit. Everything from the intel on the ground to THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE REGION showed that each and every one of their grand plans was going to fail, completely and spectacularly. But they went ahead and did it anyway, visions of plentiful oil, a permanent GOP majority, and Bush’s beady-eyed likeness on Mt. Rushmore dancing in their little pea-brains.
They are, quite simply, beholden to the demented groupthink that has taken hold of the entire American right wing. What’s REALLY scary is that they are still in power, and at this point they have nothing left to lose.
Wilfred
Don’t fall into the Administration line that everyone opposing the US is Taliban. For the last 2 years at least there has been a re-emergence of nationalist resistance to what is now perceived as a foreign occupation that has no intention of leaving.
Taliban were always a specific ideological formation that had little to do with even the more religiously conservative groups remaining in Afghanistan. The term shouldn’t be sued as a global one for any Afghan who shoots at coalition soldiers. Besides, when was the last time anyone saw any reporting from, say, Herat? We have not delivered on our promises to the Afghan people so it’s not surprising if some of them start helping groups intent on pushing us out.
Tim F.
That’s an understatement.
Bill White
What he said . . .
J. Michael Neal
I think that it’s time that someone took a look at the example of the Royal Naval Division, and told the Navy and the Air Force to pony up some ground troops.
bartkid
>It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.
It is also poor planning not to make contigency plans.
Cue the “Nobody could have predicted…” clip.
Cris
Original Lee
I was waiting in the doctor’s office the other day and happened to catch a Dr. Phil segment that is now strongly reminding me of the Bush Administration.
A guy calls in and begs Dr. Phil to talk to his wife. He loves her dearly, but her business venture is driving him crazy. So Dr. Phil talks to the wife. She buys assemble-yourself nail dryer kits. She assembles the nail dryers and packages them up real cute. Occasionally she tries to sell a few if she happens to be in a shop that offers manicures. Nobody wants to buy her nail dryers, though, because they already own what they need and her price is significantly higher than most other nail dryers on the market. Their house is so full of nail dryer kits and nail dryer boxes that they can barely move around in it. They are in a huge pile of debt because she keeps buying kits and not selling the finished product. She has not sold a single nail dryer in 5 YEARS. So Dr. Phil asks her how she plans to grow her business, and she says that someday somebody will come along and buy all of her nail dryers, despite the fact that she is not doing any marketing (except for a web page, IIRC) or making any sales calls. She has faith that this will happen. SHE *IS* THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!
Cris
Over and over, I find myself thinking that the people in charge of this administration believe that real life is just like the movies. Maybe they even think they’re characters in a movie. They’re so divorced from reality, anything might be true.
Dreggas
I said a long time ago that if we had committed as many resources to invading afghanistan as we did to Iraq and kept our eye on the ball with regard to getting the bastards behind 9-11 we would have had OBL’s head on a platter. It’s a big country in which to find one man but had we had a force the size of the invasion force we had for Iraq surrounding tora bora I don’t think a gnat would escape without our knowing it.
Afghanistan was just and excuse. 9-11 was just convenient.
RSA
We create our own reality is one of the signature statements of the Bush administration. If you’re in charge of reality, why plan for failure?
Brachiator
Damn. Condi sounds like she’s channeling a crack-cocaine addled Donald Rumsfeld.
Not gonna happen. The Bush Administration is having hissy fits because — despite its military strength — it is losing its political and diplomatic leverage. Here’s another recent example of US political bumbling being deflected by changes on the ground (Pakistan’s Sharif rebuffs US official’s comment):
Shorter version: The US is antagonizing the very people whose help they need if they are going to be able to deal with the Taliban surge in Afghanistan.
This isn’t just “bad policy.” It is idiot level policy.
nightjar
Uhh, I don’t believe Pakistani’s are considered Persian. I was talking about Iran, as my link makes even clearer.
Brachiator
I abbreviated my comments because the BJ site kept crashing.
What I was trying to get at is the idea that people who talk about “regional war” tend to focus on Israel and Iran. But the regional powers include Pakistan and India, both of which have nukes.
The neo-cons, paleo-cons, and just plain old cons who try to decipher Cheney’s intentions are like the old Kremlin Watchers spouting endless projections about what the Soviet Union was up to, but who totally misjudged everything that actually happened as the Soviet Empire collapsed (Condi Rice was part of this Gang Who Couldn’t See Straight).
My sophisticated wild ass guess is that Cheney has less clout than most people think, and that even if he somehow engineers an attack against Iran, it will not erupt into a regional war. The price of oil, on the other hand, might shoot up to $500 a barrel as a result of US misadventure.
The “pull” is Cheney and Bush to do something dramatic in the region. The “push” is a lot of countries and interested parties trying to see what a new administration (McCain or Obama) will bring to the table.
Sloegin
Any armchair historian would have made the right call on the eventual capture (not) of Bin Laden if they knew anything about Pancho Villa.
Success in Afganistan and Iraq was predicated on the Draft, which was also political suicide. Bush’s and Cheney’s epic adventure was pretty much doomed from the start, and no amount of mercenaries could pick up the slack. The real question now is just how many more deployments does it take before all of our soldiers come back with the batsh*t crazy.
Gary Farber
More on Afghanistan for you, Tim. Incidentally, does John have a working email address? The mail address on your sidebar is dead, and has been for a long time.
I’m back to regular posting again, btw, if you guys ever feel like taking a look at my blog again. Play Stump The Yoo!
Wolfdaughter
I agree with a lot of the points made above, but I disagree profoundly on one thing. This is that we would somehow have greater “success” if we had committed, say, 500,000 troops to Iraq, or a greater number of troops than we did in Afghanistan. We would still encounter resistance, because, dammit, we have INVADED them and they don’t like it! Just as we wouldn’t like it if China invaded us.
Also, the Arab countries and Iran have legitimate grievances with us and the Brits in particular, and to a lesser extent with other European countries. I don’t in any way excuse the barbarity of suicide bombing. But until we sit down with their leaders and really listen to them and try to come up with some solutions that at least minimally work for everyone, we will continue to have a quagmire. And no matter what we do, the resentment which fuels suicide bombers, “insurgents”, etc., will continue for at least another generation. What we are doing now is fuelling that resentment for far longer than a generation, BTW.
The “insurgents” would be called patriots here, if the U.S. were invaded by China.
Todd Dugdale
With the neocons, the best possible outcome is the only likely outcome. It’s the same with Iran; “don’t worry, everything will go perfectly. A few bombs and the whole government will collapse and they’ll welcome us with chocolates and flowers”.
Any doubts or criticism can always be dealt with by the use of that talismanic word “traitor”.
Truthfully, most Americans really did want to believe that all of our problems could be solved by kicking some foreign country’s ass and cheering loudly enough. They still wish it were so. But they now know that it isn’t, and the traditional neocon goad, “Don’t you want to win?” is likely to met with the extension of a middle digit by the 60% of the public that the Republicans term “traitors and defeatists”.