Soonergrunt posted this late last week, and I’m just sorry it didn’t get front-paged sooner:
I don’t have all the answers. I have said before that I have very little faith in anybody who speaks about Afghanistan as if they know exactly what to do, or they have a single, un-nuanced answer.
Again, I write now strictly from my own experiences in the eastern and northeastern parts of the country, as well as some stuff that I have picked up in open source news. I was there last in 2006-2007 when things were really starting to heat up.
When I arrived in Afghanistan, there hadn’t been any activity in the Kabul region for over a year. By the time I had left, every base in the Kabul area had been directly attacked at least once. I was a member of an Embedded Training Team. I, and one other ETT (we were supposed to be in teams of four, but there weren’t enough of us) were embedded directly into an Afghan National Army Infantry company in the 201st Corps in the eastern and northeastern part of the country. This was my third combat deployment, my first in Afghanistan.
In my experience, as well as recent reporting from sources such as NPR, there is no fundamental difference between the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and Al Quaeda.
As most of you know, the Taliban was financed and managed for years by ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. The ISI saw the Taliban as a way to control Afghanistan, keeping it out of the Indian orbit, as well as a place for Pakistani militias to train and get combat experience before going to fight in Kashmir. Al Quaeda was also deeply involved in this aspect of the taliban. I fought against all three groups, sometimes all at once. There were almost always Pakistanis mixed in with Afghan Talib and other AGM (Anti Government Militia).
When I first got there, it was routine for the Taliban to winter over in a place called the Korengal. Some of you may remember Richard Engle’s series on NBC last year following a US Army unit in the Korengal.
I helped build the road into the place and I helped build the Korengal Outpost, Camp Restreppo, and some of the other places you saw in that series. The Taliban would go there because the terrain was unpassable in the winter and they could hole up there and wait for spring. They did this until we built the Korengal Outpost, the KOP, or as the 10th Mountain guys called it, the Purple Heart Factory. I also worked in a place called the Tagab Valley, just east of Kabul and Bagram.
As an ETT, I spent a large amount of time going into villages and meeting with village elders and headmen. I did more and better counter-insurgency sitting on my ass drinking chai than I did actually shooting, and I shot an ass-load of ammunition. I went into villages on market day and bought stuff I didn’t need as an excuse to talk to the locals, and I had my trusted interpreter and a couple of ANA I trusted do the same. This is the way you win a counterinsurgency war. One village at a time. It’s fucking hard. The shortest, most glib way to describe it is to say that we want to show the people that we offer a better life than the other guys do.
What I know from that time, and this has only been reinforced by my study of the region and current events there since, is that we cannot simply leave these people to their fate. I’ve seen what the Taliban do to people who defy them. God knows that ISAF/US forces have made mistakes, and there have been western troops who have abused prisoners. We’re not perfect, and we’re not angels. But we don’t gut-shoot children to make a point, and we don’t burn teachers to death in front of their students. As I said earlier, I’ve been places in eastern Afghanistan where the capitol of Kabul was as foreign as Washington, D.C. Most of the Afghans I met couldn’t care less who was the president of Afghanistan. It has no bearing on their lives. The level of governance that actually affects people’s lives is at the district and provincial level. That’s where things get done. This is the main reason that the country was most successfully ran as a feudal state from the 1930s to the 1970s before the communist coup.
In the short term, we need to keep building up the Afghan National Army. When I was there, the unit to which I was attached was considered one of the better companies in the entire brigade, which was considered the best brigade in the corps. They and their parent Kandak (Battalion) could barely keep themselves supplied in the field. Logistics were at their bare minimum, and the we frequently used money from our petty cash fund to buy firewood good supplies for the ANA. When I left, they were a lot better, but still not what I would’ve considered reliable or capable. Their unit level tactics were vastly improved over the “everybody run towards the gunfire” level when I got there, but still left a lot to be desired.
The Afghan National Police also need to be completely rebuilt. The effort to build and train the ANP was just starting up when I left in the summer of 07. Unlike the ANA, where a village headman and an imam must vouch for a young man who wishes to join (thereby permanently joining the village’s collective honor to his) the ANP recruiting program basically consists of walking up to somebody and asking him if he wants a job. If the ANP were professionalized and paid a living wage, they would be much more useful. Right now, they frequently go months without pay, which is low in the first place. They must pay bribes to their superiors to keep their jobs, and they frequently have to pay out of their own money for fuel and equipment. Is it any wonder they’re corrupt? We never trusted the ANP. We never saw them or a local analog in the Korengal, and I’m convinced the ones in Tagab took money from the Taliban to report on our activities. In order to give these Afghan forces time to get their shit together, we’re going to have to keep fighting. When I left, there were two US Light Infantry brigades and a Marine battalion fighting in country, not including ISAF forces.FYI… ISAF=International Security Assistance Force, the field command of NATO forces in country. Most of them don’t do a damn thing except sit around and get drunk in their camps. ISAF also stands for I Saw Americans Fight. ISAF forces that actually fought the enemy when I was there were the British, the Australians, the French, and the Dutch. Everybody else in ISAFnot so much, except for some tactical air support. The British and Australians were down south near Kandahar area. The French were doing the ETT thing in small numbers not too far from us. I don’t know where the Dutch were. So we need more forces in country if we’re going to do any good. When I was there, we always had the feeling that we would win tactically, but were unable to exploit it because we didn’t have the resources. We won on the tactical level most of the time. A couple times we won decisively, but as I said, we didn’t have the forces, either US or ANA, to exploit that.
Now the bad guys are more powerful and we need more forces to turn the tide back AND exploit any tactical victories we make. The fact of the matter is that we aren’t going to solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan. They are part of a system. If Pakistan gets any worse, then Afghanistan will be a lot more screwed up, and if Afghanistan falls apart, then the problem we face now in Afghanistanthe problem of Taliban coming over the border from Pakistanwill be reversed. The other problem with leaving Afghanistan is that if the Taliban take over, and make no mistake, they want to do just that as soon as we leave, they will allow Al Quaeda free reign just like they did the first time around. They’ll also stir the shit in Pakistan. I really don’t think anyone here wants Pakistan, with her nukes to be unstable or worse, taken over by jihadis. I heard on NPR today (FWIW) that Pakistan has between 50 and 100 nuclear weapons. That’s just great. I don’t believe that we are the cause of the instability in the region. I believe that it is the local players trying their inexperienced hands at realpolitik. The Iranians, the Indians, and the Pakistanis all have their hands in the Afghan pie. The Pakistanis are in it up to their shoulders. The ironic thing is that Iranian strategic goals in Afghanistan mesh with our own more than with anyone elses. They want a stable Afghanistan as a buffer between them and Pakistan in their east. In this respect, the Indians are also better allies than the Pakistanis. They also want, above all else, a stable Afganistan. Friendly Afghanistan would be nice for them, but stable is more important.
So I think, if we’re going to be involved in that region, that we’re going to have to deal with AFPak as the administration calls the system. I don’t see how we can do that effectively without a ground presence in Afghanistan. I don’t see that we’ll have strategic success, which is to say a stable AFPAK system, without staying in Afghanistan. We’ll never get a base nearby from which to venture back into the country at will, as some fools (a lot of them neocons) are suggesting, and we WILL have to deal with these people again, so we might as well stay there and work to make a go of it. I don’t want this. This isn’t something I suggest lightly. It’s going to take a long time. It’s going to be really fucking hard. It’s going to be expensive, and it’s going to cost more American lives. But I don’t see that we have any realistic alternative.
Ecks
Thanks for such an excellent account.
This broadly jives with what I’ve been hearing from the few experts in my extended social networks.
Mike
Soonergrunt,
First, thank you for your service.
I’ve read some books about the region, and got the impression
that the “good guys” in Afghanistan (not the government) were just
as corrupt, cruel and barbaric as the Taliban, and left to their own
devices the tribes would simply continue to slaughter each other
and continue the religious fanaticism as they have for centuries.
As in the old saying “One is worse than the other…”
Is this view mistaken, or overly simplistic? I would be interested in
your take…
vg
Any thoughts about where to go if you started reading here to get away from dKos but content continues to be derived in large part from dKos?
MBSS
i have a realistic alternative. instead of + troops we – them. it’s a crazy idea, but it just might work.
MBSS
@vg:
truthdig?
glenn greenwald?
open left?
General Winfield Stuck
I have already thanked soonergrunt but want to do so again for his service and taking the time to write out this description of his experience in Afghanistan.
The can do attitude of our military is something to behold and I know that it is sincere, but history in this region, like Iraq, is a powerful force, and as an American on American soil, I cannot dismiss it lightly.
Maybe if we had started out better there with more resources and building of infrastructure to give the Afghans something to fight for, it would be different. But I kinda doubt it. They are a proud and very conservative peoples by all accounts, and I fear that whatever we do for them that they can do for themselves, that deep down they resent our interference, even if good intentioned.
They are a feudal society and have been pretty much unchanged for many centuries and nothing we can do in a few years can change that. So I think the best we can do for the Afghan people is let them decide their own fate, because I believe it is the only fate that they will own.
Doesn’t mean we still can’t help with weaponery and training, but they need to fight their own battles with their own asses on the line, and the prospect of victory theirs and theirs along to celebrate when it happens.
We should stay with a low profile imo, and leave alone the politics and warfighting. They know how to do both in their own historical ways. Sometimes winning means doing less, and this is one of those times, I think.
Meanwhile, we keep hunting that Obl motherfucker, and snatch the life right out of him when we find him.
tofucactus
An opinion based on experience and looking at what our true political goals in Afghanistan are. This isn’t what any of the pundits, neo-con, Bush-con or progressive want to hear.
One thing I’m not sure that Soonergrunt is paying enough attention to, is that, as he says, the most successful government in Afghanistan so far has been feudal mini-states. I have no Afghanistan experience and only a few years of peacetime Army infantry duty… but I suspect that Rory Stewart’s ‘The Places in Between’ is a must-read. Stewart walked across Afghanistan from the border with Iran to Kabul back in December 2001. It seemed like the ruling ethnic groups and the powerholders within those groups and the rules themselves changed every few valleys during his walk.
HyperIon
As usual Steve Hynd at Newshoggers is doing good work. It’s Iraq all over again.
He has another post up over there now about getting Chine more involved in Af/Pak.
geg6
Can I just say how thankful I am that our poor, abused armed services have amazingly thoughtful, intelligent, and insightful men and women like soonergrunt in them? This is a terrific analysis from the ground and buttressed with some obvious research into the region and its people off the clock. I don’t know what the solution (if there really is one) in Afghanistan might be, but I think soonergrunt is as close to correct as anyone can be. All I know is that our president is right now doing a similar analysis. And I have great faith he, too, is using his amazing intellectual and political skills to come up with a plan that will do the best possible to bring some stability to the Afghans and keep the Pakistani nukes safe. That we have people like Obama and soonergrunt working on the solution comforts me.
Cat G
Jeez, what a murky set of choices, and no matter what Obama chooses he’s going to be mercilessly attacked. Sooner – thanks for your report/analysis. I hope that you have written about your experience in more detail and that you keep it. It’s important history and some day your kids will really want to know what their dad did.
THANK YOU !!
Joel
@vg: quit whining. I for one never saw soonergrunt’s post before.
freelancer
@vg:
BJ derivative of GOS?
Bwaaaahahahaha!
Go back to lurking.
Corner Stone
Anne Laurie,
I read soonergrunt’s post in the previous thread but declined to comment on it for various reasons.
While I appreciate the time and thought that went into the post I think it’s pretty clear that soonergrunt is arguing from a sunk cost fallacy perspective. Just like I saw Phil Carter on the old Intel-Dump website make very similar conclusions based on his time in Iraq.
Two points here:
1. The fear that Pakistan’s nukes are some how going to be controlled by the boogeymen is just more scare and fear mongering. It’s on par with Saddam giving religious extremists WMD.
2. Local players failing at realpolitik? Hardly. The people in that region have been doing a little politiking for millenia. And purely based on where we are positioned and where they are positioned – moving forward I’d say you’d be hard pressed to conclude we are in the dominant position.
area man
Ain’t my blog, vg, but I would invite you to bugger off anywhere you care to. Soonergrunt makes a thoughtful, reasoned post based on his experience and research and the best you can do is a glib, drive-by whinepost? Weak sauce, man. Weak as water.
Soonergrunt, I echo the thanks for your service and for the post. I find myself torn between wanting to help the Afghan people and feeling the futility of trying hold some kind of control over the most notoriously unconquerable region in the history of the world. Eight years in now and there are no good choices before us, just hard and bloody ones. I wish there was some reliable means of finding out what the Afghan people want us to do. Clearly their recent election didn’t really work to that end. The Taliban are some sick, scary SOBs and I’d love to see them curb-stomped into oblivion but the DFH in me questions our ability to force control over that region. Like I said, torn and conflicted I am.
No matter what happens, I do appreciate the chance to learn from a first-hand perspective and thanks for taking the time to post it.
scarshapedstar
I knew this was coming and I say: horseshit.
What the fuck did Al Qaeda’s ‘free reign’ have to do with a bunch of scheming Saudis in Hamburg, Germany? I guess they needed the opium crop to fund them, because they could have never afforded 19 knives on their own; you know, the ones they used to hijack planes inside the United States. I guess I’m missing the supremely obvious part where Afghanistan enters into this chain of events.
This is no more and no less than ‘fightin ’em there so we don’t fight ’em here’. It drove me crazy when Bush said it and this, similarly, pisses me off.
If Obama ended both of these disastrous, failed wars based on lies, there would be a lot of complaining from the right but do you seriously think anyone would be marching in the streets chanting “SEND THE TROOPS BACK NOW”? Give me a break.
Al Qaeda is two guys with a large bank account. The Taliban are about half of Afghanistan and a significant portion of Pakistan as well. And yet the average ‘Murican thinks of both as being somewhat reminiscent of SPECTRE or COBRA or any other number of fictional criminal enterprises with secret volcano lairs and approximately ten thousand henchmen. The average ‘Murican also firmly believes that if and only if ‘they’ control Afghanistan, the most worthless patch of desert this side of Mars, ‘they’ will start building and launching nuclear missiles in our direction, as soon as the Dead Goat Polo playoffs are over.
I could go on and on but, in short, I still can’t figure out what the fuck people think we’re doing over there. ‘Winning’ or ‘defeating them’ doesn’t exactly cut it. We weren’t attacked by Afghans, and we never will be attacked by Afghans — after we end the occupation of their country, that is.
soonergrunt
I’ll say it again–I DON’T want to fight a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan. COIN is damned hard to do right. It’s very expensive and manpower intensive. It takes a long time, and progress isn’t readily measurable in the short term. Small mistakes can easily become very large problems very quickly.
Having said all of that, if a stable AFPAK is the desired endstate, I don’t see any other alternative.
Some suggested readings:
Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife by John Nagl, LTC, USA (Ret)
The Accidental Guerrilla by LtCol (Ret, AUS) David Kilcullen, PhD
CNAS Policy Brief – Afghanistan 2011: Three Scenarios Andrew Exum
Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Exum, Kilcullen, Fick, Humayun.
EFroh
1. The fear that Pakistan’s nukes are some how going to be controlled by the boogeymen is just more scare and fear mongering. It’s on par with Saddam giving religious extremists WMD.
I wish this was true, but after reading Hersh’s New Yorker article re the loosey-goosey nature of C&C over Pakistan’s nukes, I’d say those weapons are a good reason for keeping our forces in Afghanistan (if only because we need bases close to Pakistan in case any of their nukes do go missing.)
Annie
@General Winfield Stuck:
“I fear that whatever we do for them that they can do for themselves, that deep down they resent our interference, even if good intentioned.”
Yes, you are absolutely right. I have worked in Afghanistan and essentially Afghans have come to resent our interference. Our soldiers are put in a horrible situation.
Many Afghans do not know why we are there. They see the central government as corrupt, they see their villages under attack, and many do not know or support Al Quaeda or the Taliban.
Many are just trying to survive under also corrupt provincial leaders. The poppy crop brings huge revenues.
What are our stated goals? Nation-building? Ridding the country of corruption — good luck…? Searching for Al Quaeda, who no longer operate out of Afghanistan?
I have experienced the drinking of tea with village leaders trying to bring some type of community development — in my case education, as I am an education specialist — and know that village by village is a development, not military role.
We would be better positioned if we shifted from a military to a development goal. But, given the level of violence and corruption that is not so easy. In the post 9/11 are we now fighting the Taliban?
Obama is absolutely right to push for government accountability if they want US lives and support. The military should not function as nation-builders, even though that is the role they often have to take.
soonergrunt
@Mike: That’s a good point. As I said in my post, the most effective form of government in that country’s history was a feudal system. That includes, of course, local tribes and villages. Since the most active and important government in an Afghani’s life is the local and district governments, this is the place to spend development money as I thought I had argued.
scarshapedstar
Oh, right, I forgot about the Domino Effect: after the Taliban unify Afghanistan, they will conquer Pakistan as well, and then they will subjugate Iran and India and, poof, Second Caliphate.
Just like when the Communists used Vietnam as their launching point for the invasion of California.
mutt
soonergrunt represents a thoughtful soldier with his POV, one gathered incountry…..Im posting this link on my Viet Vets Aginst the War email list.
You can critique his positon w/o getting nasty, hes not some chickenhawk war pimp. With THEM, nasty suits.
But where, AFTER 8 years , is the Afghan National Army?
When the Marines rolled into Helmand not too long ago, they had a grad total of 400 Afghan Army troops with them….
and on the offchance SG reads this: three very pertinent questions, posed by a guy who traded bullets w/ local nationalists 40 years ago.
hope you have an opportunity to read them. They are pertinent to your desire to do good…..
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175116 Where IS the Afghan army?
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian … bound.html Our “allies”- the Taleban, but not as honest,
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney07142009.html the failure of counterinsurgency. Its origins & applications.
Max
Soonergrunt – Thank you for your post. AfPak is an issue far beyond my comprehension and I so appreciate posts like this that help me understand the scope and scale.
If anyone needs advice related to managing commercial real estate or running a mall, I’m here for you.
Reason60
@scarshapedstar:
I echo this; I applaud soonergrunt for believing that we should help build a better civilization in Afghanistan, but I first of all don’t think it is possible,and second, don’t believe it is necessary.
AQ used Afghanistan as a staging ground, but we need to remember that the entire 9-11 operation was accomplished with nothing more than boxcutters and guile.
Most of their planning was done in Europe, Florida and New Jersey, and even if Afghanistan turned into Sweden tomorrow, AQ can still plot and plan and put together a 9-11 operation anywhere.
The whole point of terrorism is that it is simple, low tech, and requires nothing special to pull off. This is why it is the tactic of forces that don’t have a safe harbor.
A couple guys with a Ryder truck filled with fuel oil and fertilizer did all of their plotting while in their safe harbor of…..Kansas.
Annie
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.” Is there something wrong with my comment?
Splitting Image
I’d also like to thank Soonergrunt for posting this. There is a lot in there to mull over.
soonergrunt
@General Winfield Stuck: Thanks for the comments and for the feedback. I just don’t think that we’re going to be able to do that. Operational realities being what they are, we need a base closer than Diego Garcia or Kuwait from which to operate in the AFPak area. Iran is out for obvious reasons. Pakistan will never allow permanent basing because that would further the narrative that their government is a US puppet. The Stans–the former soviet states in which we have logistics bases, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will never allow us to locate combat forces in their countries due to Russian pressure. That leaves Afghanistan. That means significant local security forces to protect those facilities. Like I said, we might as well try to do some good while we’re there.
Again, thanks for your perspective and your kind comments.
stickler
Well, if Pakistan is so damned close to imploding, then who is more threatened by them?
A) The USA
B) Iran
C) India
If your answer is “B and C,” then the logical next step is to (gulp) start talking to those local powers and getting them to help stabilize things. And by “talking,” I don’t mean “threatening to blow up Qom, Teheran, and Natanz.” A screwed up Afghanistan will suck for America, sort of, in a “damn, we blew another occupation on the other side of the Earth, now we’re 7 and 2.” But for Afghanistan’s immediate neighbors, a failed Afghanistan will be a flaming bag of dog poop on their front door step.
Tim F.
Hi, Annie, a moderator here. Our spam filter automatically holds all new commenters, any comment with three or more links and a long list of words that often come up in spam. For example “cialis” trips the filter even embedded in a word like ‘socialism’. Readers come up with work-arounds like ‘sociali$m’, but it is admittedly annoying.
IndyLib
@soonergrunt:
Thanks for the info and your service.
I fear it’s damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
Left Coast Tom
Thanks for the account that I obviously missed in comments, and thanks for reposting it on the front page.
General Winfield Stuck
@scarshapedstar:
You are aware that before 9-11 Afghanistan was laced with AQ training camps that trained thousands to do nothing more that blow up shit and people around the world. And have done just that?
So do you think that it was OK and that Mullah Omar did and does give his full support to such activities, and that if given the chance would do so again with OBL as schoolmaster? And that our leaving completely would not again have this repeated?
I agree that we cannot “defeat” the Taliban in any useful military sense, but saying that OBL and elements of The Taliban leadership and rank and file do not share goals is naive at best.
As is the quip of a couple of guys with a bank account.
Chuck Butcher
I’d like to thank BJ for front paging this and soonergrunt for taking the time to write it. I will leave entirely to the side what I agree or disagree with, this is the sort of POV that is sadly missing in most posts on this subject.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
But this is the same thinking that george friedman of StratFor posited about the reasons for invading Iraq.
Kick Saddam out, remove our people from Saudi, build long term bases in Iraq to effectively project power over the region.
And why exactly should we feel the people of Afghanistan *want* our long term bases there? It serves the average person there how exactly?
stickler
Or a failed Pakistan, too. Geez, and I’m not even +1 yet.
Soonergrunt, thanks for your viewpoint, it’s great to hear something about AfPak that doesn’t come from another inside-the-beltway gasbag.
But I have to say, after eight years, I’d be pessimistic about any nation-building project. But Afghanistan? The British tried to rearrange that place three times between 1839 and 1920. The Red Freaking Army tried, and failed. I just don’t see how Uncle Sam has the treasure, patience, and willingness to spill our soldiers’ blood indefinitely. Which means we ought to cut our losses and exit stage right.
General Winfield Stuck
@soonergrunt:
You are welcome soonergrunt. I hope you are right, though I agreed that we need to keep bases in Afghanistan, it’s the mission I worry about as really being winnable the way it is, or escalating it.
Jody
It pisses me off SO MUCH that Chimpy McStimpy threw away our mission in Afghanistan so he could play cowboy in Iraq.
We had, and still have, a real mission over there, that had global support. A tangible enemy, and easy to define goals in regards to the nation itself. And he literally threw it all away, visions of his beady-eyed mug on Mt. Rushmore as teh Bringer of Dimmocrizzy to the ragheads.
Not that I think he ever would have committed the proper numbers to actually REBUILD Afghanistan, but the route he took insured that his successor would be hogtied as well. Now we’re stuck with trying to figure out the least bad option. Thanks Dubya. You prick.
PeakVT
Since I haven’t seen a good analysis of the likelihood of Pakistan’s nuke shaking loose (which is the ultimate bottom line), I really don’t know how to quantify the risks of withdrawing US military forces from Afghanistan.
What I do know is that we can’t sustain the current levels of spending. Because the Republicans have been successful at making any and all considerations of tax increases verboten, that means cutting spending. Defense spending is a good target because we spend enough each year to build out a good high-speed rail system for the entire country. And deficit-spending for a non-vital war is a lousy way to create jobs, which are in short supply these days.
Unfortunately I think the (il-)logic of American politics has the president boxed in, and we will see a significant increase in troops.
General Winfield Stuck
@Annie:
Brave Lady, you are Annie!
Mike in NC
Excellent report from the sharp end…
Funkhauser
soonergrunt, thanks for your service and your perspective.
I have to say that the ultimate costs-benefits analysis is still missing. What are our reasonable probabilities of success in accomplishing whatever end goal it is? (Pakistani nuke stability? Afghan development? Reduction in the poppy crop?) And do we believe that this end goal, given a particular probability of success, is worth X amount of American lives and Y amount of American dollars.
I’m not entirely sure on these accounts, but the history of conflict and conquest in that region (heck, Alexander the Great couldn’t even hold it) makes me inclined to think that the probability of success is sufficiently low to begin pulling back supplies and troops.
soonergrunt
@scarshapedstar: @scarshapedstar:
Please tell me–where have I advocated anything like “winning?” Really. What I stated was pretty straight forward:
I’m also fairly certain that I never once said anything remotely like “fight them over there rather than here.” Where did I say this, or more cogently, what part of my post did you misconstrue to mean this?
Ditto the domino effect.
Now maybe you think that we shouldn’t want Afganistan or Pakistan to be stable, or maybe you think that instability in that region is just hunky-dory. Maybe you think that regional stability can be achieved without American force of arms. We just don’t know, because you’re busy constructing straw men to hack apart.
How about instead of attacking me you instead post what you think should be done?
Garrigus Carraig
Soonergrunt, I appreciate your service & your thoughtfulness with regard to it.
Between your original post & the more considered responses, this is already, at ~#40, one of my favorite Juice threads I’ve read thus far. Sugoy.
Corner Stone
@Jody:
There’s a difference between goals and capabilities.
MikeJ
Did you miss Hillary talking with SM Krishna about his talks with Qureshi when she was recently over there?
soonergrunt
@stickler:
I think that’s a great idea. I really do. I have no wish to fight a war against Iran. Leaving aside for a moment that, like Iraq, they didn’t do anything to us, unlike Iraq, they have a fairly substantial military. We’d beat their military if we fought them–eventually. But the average Iranian citizen is not somebody we need to be fighting. Ever. The hostage crisis ended when I was ten years old. It’s history.
Neutron Flux
@soonergrunt: So, does McChytral get what you are saying?
Do you think his plan accounts for all of the issues that you raise?
BTW, your account is very worrisome, man, very worrisome.
Annie
@General Winfield Stuck:
Thanks! I am not so brave. It’s my job…I just wish we would spend more time talking with the population, and less time figuring out policy removed from those we are supposedly trying to help. I think that is what soldiers realize….And, often for them, it is too late. We can’t remain willingly to listen to “war mongers” who would sacrifice our soldiers to their convoluted ambitions in absence of a deep understanding of what we are getting them into. Believe me, its easy to sit in DC and spout all kinds of war nonsense, and a completely other context to be in a war zone and recognize the realities.
I applaud Obama for taking the time to understand the context before sending more troops. For what purpose? For what enemy? What about Pakistan? What about the Afghan government? Why sacrifice more US soldiers if the Aghan government can’t get it’s act together?????
salacious crumb
The fact is that the US govt has no coherent strategy for dealing with Pakistan. Its seems like its the tail wagging the dog. For some reason, Obama cant seem to understand that Pakistan will never abandon the Taliban because the Taliban/Al Qaeda has been a far more effective foreign policy weapon against their archenemy India than even the 100 or so nukes they have. Also the use of Taliban has bought the US and rest of the world to its knees. Pakistan’s AQ Khan gave knowledge of nukes to all these rogue regimes and what was the US able to do about it? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. It just stood there with its dick in its hand. And why? because the US is terrified of Pakistan disintegration. And Pakistanis are having the last laugh. Pakistan hates India to the core and they will do anything, and I mean anything to see humiliated. India is doing well economically. India cant start a war with Pakistan because that will drive the investors out of the country. Pakistan knows that and that is why they use the Taliban and militants trained in Afghanistan to wage a low intensity proxy war against India.
Pakistan for decades treated Afghanistan as its whore to be used and abused. They never did anything constructive in that country. When I was living in Kuwait, I met many Afghans, and almost all of them blamed Pakistan for the instability in their country.
We need to deal with Pakistan first. If the US seriously cares about saving Afghanistan and protecting its troops there then Obama needs to deal with Pakistan first.
MBSS
does anyone really believe that peace can ultimately come from from a barrel of a gun? that we can win hearts and minds while predator drones hover for seemingly interminable amounts of time until they drop bombs on a daily basis.
feeding money, power, and legitimacy to a (reportedly) mentally unstable and corrupt karzai, and his drug lord brother? (thanks cia!)
paying people off for their support?
billions and billions while the right cries endlessly about the fiscal repercussions for medical treatment for the weakest and most marginalized among us as well as the oft overlooked middle class and their medical struggles.
i didn’t buy the argument under bush and don’t buy it under obama.
Bubblegum Tate
Soonergrunt:
Thanks for your thoughts and insights–they are appreciated.
Thanks even more for your service–it is extremely appreciated.
soonergrunt
I’d like to take a moment and thank Anne Laurie for putting this post of mine up. At the time I wrote it, I honestly thought that it would simply be one more in a stream of comments on one of the many subjects that make main posts on Balloon-Juice every day. To the extent that John, Tim F, and DougJ had any input or ceded any space, thank you all.
I’m humbled and honored to have been given front page space on such a well read, well regarded blog.
Thanks especially to all of the commenters here. I spend more time now on BJ than I spend on the GOS, primarily because of the quality of the comments and the just plain fun I have her. The fact that I can post here form work when I have a free moment is kind of nice, too.
As I said, I don’t have all of the answers with regard to Afghanistan. I know that military force isn’t the answer to everything, and isn’t the effective long-term answer to most problems.
I wish to God I knew with certainty what to do there. I do believe that stability in that region is the best we can hope for. Corruption is endemic there, just like it is in nearly every former colonial (particularly British colonial) region, and for this reason, I don’t forsee economic development or strong societal growth. Seeing stability as the most achievable goal, I do think that we end up with a COIN campaign–which relies more on agencies like USAID, the State Department, the Peace Corps and NGO aid organizations than it does infantry, artillery, and air support.
stickler
Soonergrunt:
I’m not surprised you’d say that about Iran. No sane person with any knowledge of the region would want to fight Iran.
But man, it seems like that obvious reality has trouble penetrating the stupidity bubble of the Beltway. If only more of those numbnuts had actually been there, like you have.
Really, though, I’d much prefer us not merely to TALK to the locals, but to say to Iran/India/Pakistan (hell, China and Russia too): “Hi! We’re gettin’ the hell out. Would you rather this smoking crater of a country descend into chaos, or would you like to spend real coin and contribute real blood to make it less awful!?”
Hard to say how it would turn out, but in the end it’s not really our problem when you get right down to it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Annie:
Exactly -and I still say brave, :-)
Mike
Soonergrunt
“Since the most active and important government in an Afghani’s life is the local and district governments, this is the place to spend development money as I thought I had argued.”
Yes, I understood your position on this, my question was more along
the lines of whether development money would help no matter
where it was spent, given the primitive culture there.
1Watt
Thanks for the insight. There’s so few places to get real information. Prof. Cole comes to a similar conclusion in this interview.
http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=14540
Thank you.
soonergrunt
@Neutron Flux: I think he does.
Both McChrystal and Petraeus have reputations in the Army as being scary-smart. The blog Abu Muquwama–a COIN-centric blog run by Andrew Exum once posited that one of the Army’s top men in CENTCOM/Afghanistan was a “raging liberal, at least as far as a general officer can be.”
I don’t know which one he was claiming and he never said, but I think it was McChrystal.
BTW, LTG (Ret) Karl Eikenberry, the ambassador to Afghanistan is supposed to be pretty sharp himself, and he doesn’t think we should put more troops in country right now.
JHF
We cannot simply leave the American people to their fate — bankrupt, jobless, and no health care — either.
ellaesther
Soonergrunt, thank you so much for this. Your starting point – I have very little faith in anybody who speaks about Afghanistan as if they know exactly what to do, or they have a single, un-nuanced answer – strikes me as the single best approach anyone could take. The boldness with which some have declared that this, that, or the other is the only way to deal with AfPak is more an indication of that person’s ignorance, than anything else, to my mind. Thank you for your efforts there, and your time and patience here.
For those looking for a great background to the woes of Afghanistan, and its crucial place in all the troubles we find ourselves in now, I would also recommend Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, journalists who have essentially been there since 1981.
soonergrunt
@Mike: ahhh.
OK. Well, it will help IF it is controlled and spent in a manner that supports overall district-wide economic development.
One of the best ways to do this is to give grants to local villages, not to simply build them the school or well or new mosq or micro-hydro plant or whatever.
When you simply give them the stuff, you make the dependent up on you for its maintenance, and you don’t get them invested in it. When you help them build it, they take ownership of it. When the Taliban or the HiG or other ACM burn down a school we built, the village head man asks us to build another one.
When they burn down a school the villagers built, it pisses off the villagers and Talibs and HiGs get killed.
On another note–you want to stop people from growing opium poppies? Buy them off. Pay them twice the value of a poppy crop for their corn and millet. It’s cheap, effective, and it won’t humiliate them. We have more money than the drug lords there do.
soonergrunt
@JHF: I think we can do both.
Raise taxes.
Gwangung
The essential paradox I see I’d that peace will never come WITHOUT some sort of military presence there. What’s most sorely needed us development and nation building efforts (I.e. State Department efforts) but without armed support those efforts will be flattened by local warlords. With that armed support, of course, those efforts are going to antagonize many local efforts. And without any effort at stabilization there is a sizable nonzero chance that something Very Bad for the US is going to happen.
We are fucked no matter what we do and I’m afraid this as the course ever since we invaded. Choosing the least bad course is not not NOT trivial and is best done with information (which soonergrunt is very helpful in supplying). I think my solution would be different than his, but I think he’s starting from a MUCH higher information base than 99 percent of us.
Jody
@Corner Stone
Totally. And part of my point is we had far more capability before Preznit Doofus invaded Iraq in the name of freedom and his daddy. Afghanistan was a truly international undertaking at the getgo, don’t forget. It wasn’t just our capabilities, but those of everyone that stood against what the Taliban stood for. Imagine what a better leader could have done under those circumstances.
Neutron Flux
@soonergrunt: I was thinking about what LTG (Ret) Karl Eikenberry said today.
I am thinking about what the folks on the ground have to say.
I will defer to your judgment, even though it is not mine.
Thank you.
Gwangung
@Gwangung: hm. Or maybe not so different after all. I should listen more.
soonergrunt
@Neutron Flux: Hell, don’t do that. I could very well be wrong!
It happened once before, at 2:47 PM CST, February 7th, 1983, if memory serves.
catclub
1. I agree with most of scarshapedstars comments. and will
add that our costs there per year are about twice the GDP
of the nation of Afghanistan. Something is not right with the cost effectiveness.
in re SG @41
I did understand his interpretation that much of your comments could be viewed as a rehash of “fight them there so we will not fight them here.”
The reason: If we leave, they will not come here.
Sep 11, 2001 was an extremely lucky oneshot.
Its success had nothing to do with any conditions in Afghanistan on that day, or the years before.
Now we know that 9/11 happened we are much more vigilant
against something like it. Going to Iraq didn’t reduce the chances of the London or madrid bombings, it increased them, likewise in Afghanistan.
Dominos: The fears of a caliphate are completely unreasonable, just like the fears of the communists invading California from Vietnam.
SG said: “The other problem with leaving Afghanistan is that if the Taliban take over, and make no mistake, they want to do just that as soon as we leave, they will allow Al Quaeda free reign just like they did the first time around. They’ll also stir the shit in Pakistan. I really don’t think anyone here wants Pakistan, with her nukes to be unstable or worse, taken over by jihadis.”
The actual shit stirring was the other way around, as SG said, ISI from Pakistan. No one wants pakistan unstable,
but the levels of troop we can put there make no difference to that, and the numbers ( not expertise or equipment, though) that would make a difference can only be found in the chinese army.
What would I do. 1.make the opium crop legal.
The mujahideen drove out the Russians because they had a huge backer, the US and Saudis. The opium crop is now a big resource.
2. leave with the military, keep attention focused – like nation building but without the guns, and unlike the early to mid 90’s,
when Afhanistan was ignored.
3. Put pressure on pakistan NOT to stir shit there.
SG also said: “What I know from that time, and this has only been reinforced by my study of the region and current events there since, is that we cannot simply leave these people to their fate.”
This sounds the like the Pier One – you break it you bought it theory. Well, that implies that we own them. We don’t.
It also implies that staying will make them better. That is not entirely clear.
Its their country, not ours. Just like Iraq in that regard.
Just Some Fuckhead
Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.
/bumpersticker
Corner Stone
@Jody: And I would continue to argue that it didn’t matter then and doesn’t matter now.
Several empires have had goals in that region. None so far have demonstrated the capability to conclude their goals.
Let’s speculate – U.S., Iran, Russia, China and Pak all get on board a consistent train.
Now what?
tofucactus
The Village zeitgeist, as it has been oh these so many years, is still, in the immortal words of Friedman Unit: Make the brown people realize that we’ve got the biggest BSD so “Suck. On. This.”
What Soonergrunt warned us about at the beginning of this thread needs to be repeated every time the usual idiots pretend to be experts on nashunull teevee: “have very little faith in anybody who speaks about Afghanistan as if they know exactly what to do, or they have a single, un-nuanced answer. “
Every time George Will, David Brooks, Max Boot, Friedman, etc, etc… speak on TV they need to be called on their past record of blown calls on war in the Middle East.
Our remaining in Afghanistan doesn’t really look to me like it’s bringing much for the ordinary people. At least not in the Pashtun-dominated parts of the country. Maybe the Afghan govt needs to write off that part of the country and “clear and hold” the parts where the non-Pashtun civilian population actually opposes the Taliban. I’d like to say, “where the civilian population supports the central government”, but given the corruption and bloodthirst of the local warlords who hold power in the central govt’s name… I don’t think that’s likely to happen.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
You guessed it was “live” when it was really “memorex”?
soonergrunt
I’d like to take a moment to revise one part of my original post. Somebody on here mentioned this, and I neglected to address it:
That comes off a LOT more condescending than I meant it. The countries in that region may not be overly experienced with realpolitik on the global scale (and they are ALL quick studies) but they all certainly know their own back yard and their own strategic goals.
catclub
The ONLY useful aspect of the Iraq invasion was diverting attention from inevitable failure in Afghanistan.
I do not mean that is a good enough reason to invade Iraq.
I would be pleased to be wrong about the failure part.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: It was either that or mistaking fried for flame-broiled.
Chuck Butcher
@MBSS:
This is an utterly simplistic statement of no particular use as framed. You certainly can break the will of a State to continue a war, have a “declared peace.” There are a lot of reasons the vast majority of the populace may go along with that surrender, but rest assured that being entirely sick and tired of the outcomes of being in a war play heavily.
That certainly does not mean that you can’t offer them alternatives that they cannot or will not go along with. Whether you ever get the entire population to go along is doubtful.
If your postulation held any water at all we’d still be waging war in Germany and Japan and a hell of a lot of other occasions where things were sorted out that way. It is a shitty way to sort things out, granted, but it is now entirely futile, either.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: I was going to say you wore Parachute Pants to school but I thought that was going a step too far.
MBSS
@Gwangung:
i don’t believe this is true. i think it increases the chances that very bad things are going to happen to us due to generating antagonism. it’s not hard for those “very bad people” to move to other places and begin plotting and training there (and recruit because of afpak). as many have pointed out much more articulately than myself, modern threats are quite mobile and not centrally organized. the hierarchy is not static and there are cells all over. physical training grounds are not imperative. roaming the rough mountainous terrain of afghanistan in order to protect ourselves makes no sense to me. we are just antagonizing other peoples again needlessly and creating more terrorists.
and i’m sure it is true that humanitarian aid and NGO’s are going to have a problem and have had problems helping people without troops for security. but i believe that it is in our best interest to withdraw and let regional interests sort out the situation over time. the notion that we have more altruistic motives is a thin patina. why don’t we worry about inequality for women here as opposed to trying to “help” over there with bombs, boots, and guns?
nation building is a lost cause in afghanistan, and the “humanitarian aid” angle that i’ve been hearing from many dems just doesn’t ring true.
Reks
@soonergrunt
Just wanted to thank you for your service and giving us a boots on the ground perspective.
I joined an MI unit recently and I’m trying to get familiar with COIN as much as possible. Exum’s site has been a great source of info as well links to other sites about the Af-Pak region.
I honestly think it would take ~500,000 soldiers to pacify the entirety of Afghanistan. Not going to happen. So we’ll end up picking 10 or so centers that we can control. However, the Aghan population is not concentrated in the urban centers as far as I know. There’s nothing to stop the Taliban from controlling the rural areas. They will continue to distrupt efforts to build infrastructure and win the hearts and minds of the Aghan people.
My fear is that after 9 years of war we have already lost the Afghans. Our inability to provide security prevents them from having any faith or trust in our efforts. Add to that our policy of drone and air strikes that have hit civilians too many times to count. These are self-inflicted errors that are killing us on the ground.
I think your moral argument is sound. However, I don’t think that we as a country are willing to commit the treasure in lives and wealth and the time it will take to win in Afghanistan. I’m not even sure we should. Maybe it would be best to withdraw now than having to do it later.
A question for you: Do you think the administration just wants to improve conditions to a point where they can say we are winning? No one wants the loss to be pinned on them during their time at the top.
David
Soonergrunt, thanks for this. The post is well written, and your service is appreciated, especially since I have not served in any similar way.
I think the underlying assumption of this post, that the AFPak region should be stabilized, is really the fundamental issue.
It seems to me that we should be talking about the potential consequences to the United States of having an unstable AFPak. If those consequences are sufficiently dire, then we can discuss what is necessary to stabilize AFPak. Otherwise, it is high time to let the unstable parts of the world come into their own equilibrium, and stop interfering.
However, your discussion and comment start with that assumption – and I haven’t seen the discussion of the consequences of that instability, by you (which I don’t expect) and by those “Serious People” and governmental officials in charge of this decision-making process.
The Afghanistan nation-building project should be tackled as a real budget should be: as a zero-based accounting project, except in terms of goals and costs associated with accomplishing those goals. In other words, the base line should be no involvement, and the goals and costs move upwards from there. Any other process assumes, as has been noted above, that sunk costs will somehow be recoverable – and they are simply gone, years gone.
At a minimum, I am glad to see Obama not succumb to institutional pressure and group-think on Afghanistan. Forcing an exit strategy on the empire-mongers and nation-builders will inject some reality into the equation that has heretofore been absent.
wilfred
Several things. The most important is the implicit notion that the minute we leave the Taliban will return to power, which assumes that no other Afghan has the means or will to resist. If that is the case, and after 8 years who can doubt it?, then we are backing the wrong Afghans. The Soviet trained Afghan Army put up a fight until its officer cadre realized they were killing their own people to further Soviet objectives – how long before the same thing happens with us?
As for the Edith Cavell sensationalism – we blew up a village and killed 90 children, not counting the hundreds and hundreds of others killed in these cowardly drone attacks.
Adam Silverman has lots of qualifications too, here’s his take:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/11/conceptualizations-of-insurgency-and-its-effects-on-the-counterinsurgency-policy-process.html#more
An ‘insurgent’ movement aimed at toppling a corrupt, illegitimate government backed by a foreign occupation sounds a lot like another war. We made a mistake there in ignoring the genuine aspirations of a people in favor of our own self-serving, feel good Americanism.
MBSS
don’t we learn from history?
isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
soonergrunt
Thanks to all for your input, especially those who disagreed with me and challenged me.
I wish I knew what the right way to go is. I don’t know that, but I try to learn.
Some more suggested readings:
The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, Lester W. Grau
The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War, Ali Ahmad Jalali and Lester W. Grau
I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan, Kathy Gannon
Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, David Galula
The US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, James F. Amos, John A. Nagl, David H. Petraeus, Sarah Sewell, editors
Anything referenced here.
Martin
Well, I don’t think Afghanistan necessarily needed to be characterized as a failure. It seems to me that the national government has little relationship to the citizenry, so the citizenry has no real investment in who is running the show. In that kind of situation, the best you can hope for is to go in, bust all the Taliban’s shit, and walk out as fast as you can.
But I don’t think any strategy in these places will work until the US gets its act together. We seem to think it’s 1941 all over again, but since then we’ve treated the world as our own private game of Civilization. When we didn’t send the CIA in to assassinate your political leaders, we’d fund ‘freedom fighters’, we’d wreck (or elevate) your country economically, arm your enemies – and sometimes you at the same time. We don’t have much geopolitical moral capital to spend occupying countries – unless we have the majority of the UN alongside of us.
That’s not to say that America is hated, but we sure as hell aren’t trusted, and that lack of trust really limits our options when we need to take action. I think Afghanistan is one of those no-win scenarios. We really had to do something, but whatever we did was going to come out with a bad result in some way. There’s simply no getting around the reality that Pakistan was a very bad scene for the US even before 9/11 and unless we were willing to chase Al Qaeda across every border in the region, there was no way we would have a terribly positive outcome.
Anyway, I see no benefit to continuing this mess. There is no soft landing here. I think it’s time to take our ball and go home.
El Cid
A good set of guidelines from Juan Cole while commenting on Obama’s reported decision to not accept any of the various ‘plans’ he’s so far been offered on Afghanistan:
I would add, however, that such clearly logical steps are avoided not because politicians and ‘foreign policy experts’ are unaware of their importance, but rather, because such rules might stand in the way of things that the politicians or FPE’s want to do.
I mean, even based on what policymakers said was the goal of “THE SURGE” in Iraq, it clearly did not meet its goals, but since then has been basically assumed to be the most successfullest counterinsurgency foreign policy innovations in the history of anything.
So, really, if some sensible set of goals and measurement standards of achievements were drawn up, would they really be adhered to in any coherent sense?
Maybe, if we were lucky.
As citizens of the nation, and not junior foreign policy advisers or Presidential spokespersons or Afghan functionaries, however, we must remain not only skeptical (in the literal sense) of planned goals, but of the people and institutions we claim are going to do it.
This is the real world. In the real world, our policies are led not by the fantasy figures and nearly perfect institutions we wish would lead them, but by actual, identifiable persons and quite fallible institutions.
There are some people, not just crazy neighborhood characters, but people in the political and advisory leadership of this nation, whose perspective might have had us continuing to fight in and occupy Vietnam to this day, and probably why it was such an example of success and victory that we were able to do so.
South America has achieved over the past 10 years a degree of independence it quite frankly has never really had, and it was able to do so specifically because of the lack of intense U.S. involvement and control.
I just watched the U.S. State Department blow up the agreement it had just bragged about achieving to restore the recognized government of Honduras because ultra-right wingers like Jim DeMint (Senator-SC) think the prior President was too leftist, and now the entire regional leadership looks at the US like we’re a bunch of horrid jackasses because they actually believed us when we told them we would help restore the legitimate government.
We’re not occupying Honduras. We’re not claiming to try and build a functional state out of nothing. We’re simply being called upon by the entire region, the entire hemisphere, to please not let a state which is almost entirely dependent upon the U.S., one whose continual coup-causing military we used as a death squad terror force throughout the 1980s in the Reaganite war against Nicaragua, one where our troops are still training even while the coup government is in place, start another regional precedent of overthrowing elected governments.
And I watch the State Departments shoot itself in the foot and dance happily around with the crazy ultra-right to make them happy, and go back and forth on their own stance, and have to be begged by the rest of the governments of Latin America to please not encourage these coup guys.
You watch this sort of cynical, cruel clown show, all the worse because you know very well the history of the US in funding and training the literal death squad military officials in this tiny little Republic, and there’s literally no acknowledgment of this responsibility whatsoever, and somehow it becomes harder once again to turn the page and listen to the day’s talking head discussions about how the US simply must possesses the drive or the capability to carry out a massive, unprecedented state building and democracy exercise in Afghanistan for which we really don’t have any good examples to give.
MBSS
@soonergrunt:
btw, thank you for your on the ground perspective. it is sincerely appreciated.
Mike
Soonergrunt:
Thanks for the answer, the nuance is important and helpful.
It’s hard to make sense of this mess via the MSM
and the pundits.
Ecks
I give this an ‘A’ for confident assertiveness and a ‘D’ for facts.
Saddam never had nukes. He was never close. Everyone not getting their news from Fox knew this at the time. And what’s more, Saddam was pretty hostile to religious extremists. The idea that he would therefore be giving them nukes is both absurd and impossible. It was a story dreamed up to scare people.
Pakistan, however, really is a somewhat unstable country, which really does have large almost completely lawless areas, that really does have nuclear weapons. We are 100% sure about all of these things.
Your equivalency between the two situations is therefore completely bogus.
BTW, we also knew that Saddam DID have chemical weapons… because we have the receipts. We sold them to him. But those aren’t really much of a strategic threat to anything. They’re frankly not very practical as far as weapons go.
MBSS
seymour hersh and pakistan’s nukes:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh
[snip]
Jody
@Corner Stone
We’ll never know. The point is, we had a much better chance back then than we do now.
Mike G
I went into villages on market day and bought stuff I didn’t need as an excuse to talk to the locals, and I had my trusted interpreter and a couple of ANA I trusted do the same. This is the way you win a counterinsurgency war. One village at a time.
You mean it’s not about mindlessly mowing down the locals, dumbfuck macho posturing and jut-jawed mumbling about ‘resolve’ and ‘will to win’? The Bush Assministration and Faux News lied to me.
soonergrunt
Well, it might have something to do with the fact that the British were using bicycle lock keys on their nuclear triggers and no countermand protocol for about forty years before they changed this?
soonergrunt
@Mike G: Like I said, I believe we did more damage to the bad guys sitting on our asses drinking chai tea than we did firing our weapons.
RareSanity
soonergrunt:
I got more insight from your post than any other single or combination of “expert” opinions on the matter. Thank you, Sir.
You’re right. All of the answers are bad, they will only differ in intensity of FAIL.
That being the case, we have to keep in mind that most of the answers involve one thing the US does terribly, and the another thing we do even worse. The former, protracted wars, the latter, guerrilla warfare/counter-insurgency. Americans, in general, just aren’t wired for either.
That being the case, the best bad answer would be to start pulling troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and try to heal some of the diplomatic wounds with the players in the region. Then, at that point, hope to high hell that they will trust us enough to ask for help if something goes wrong.
Unfortunately, that answer is so bad, that it would cost Obama a second term. Therefore, never gonna happen.
Ecks
@Catclub – lots of good points, but then you start coming up with plans, and run into the same difficulties everyone else do when they try to make plans there.
Which would be enforeced by whom exactly?
So you want to send the state department to help people develop, but leave them unprotected from the Taliban and other insurgents who regularly run around executing people in public, just to make a point? That sounds like a promising plan.
And where exactly will this decisive leverage come from?
See, easy to shoot down other people’s plans, hard to come up with your own that actually work. It is a brave person who proposes solutions in this part of the world, because every single thing you choose is wrong in some very important ways.
MBSS
@soonergrunt:
lol. i don’t buy zandari’s argument that the arsenal is totally secure.(the sweating in washington over this is palpable) but i wanted to offer another angle for the sake of debate. pakistan is critical.
Cain
@EFroh:
Have you listened to his Fresh Air interview? That was killer. He has some great thoughts about Afghanistan and the interpretations on the ambassador sending that coded message to Obama. It’s a pretty big deal apparently. THe other thing isthat the strategy he said seems to jell with this article, and that is the fact taht it’s better to buy off the warlords on not attacking you and then economically help them. A gave a specific example of marble. So if you economically help them out you can win. Pakistan again seems to be the root of the problem… crazy stuff.
Oh yeah, Reagan sucks.
cain
soonergrunt
@RareSanity: I think the art of COIN is something we can do very well. It’s another skillset that the competent Soldier will have to master. Having said that, I think the issue with long wars is structural to our governing system, and I don’t think that on balance, that’s a bad thing at all.
RareSanity
@soonergrunt:
While I think that US soldier could master this skill without breaking a sweat, as you spelled out in your initial post, it takes a loooooong time to work even when you have been trained.
Which leads to the second point:
This means that there will never be a looooong time dedicated to it. Also, why I say that America is not wired for those types of “missions”.
We are wired for go in, kick some ass, come home, and have a parade. But like you said, that cycle has to be completed within a 2-4 year election cycle.
Corner Stone
@Jody:
No. We never did.
Corner Stone
@Ecks: Well, it seems like you have reading comprehension FAIL.
Chuck Butcher
@Corner Stone:
kilo
Soonergrunt, your post is great. Thanks for that.
Since y’all seem to be missing a token Canuck for this thread, I’d just like to point out that
Canadian combat casualties in Afghanistan are the highest that we’ve experienced since the Korean War. If you compare per capita between the countries, our fatality rate has been twice that of the USA. Or put another way, Canadian troops are 10% of the US troop count, but they have taken 25% as many casualties as the US.
Also, our media has been covering every single “ramp ceremony” in Kandahar since the mission started in 2002, along with the arrival at CFB Trenton. We’ve felt every one of those deaths keenly: each fallen soldier is profiled in the national and local news, and the repatriation process dominates the headlines for three or four days from the time that the fatality is announced until they’re actually home.
So when you say that the ISAF partners aren’t pulling their weight, you might want to reconsider.
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher: You’re suffering block quote fail, which I understand is common among men of your advanced age group.
But if you’re referring to my comments on our invasion of Afghanistan – I would reasonably suggest the burden of proof is on the pro-occupier mindset.
I don’t have to cite anything. Life and history more than adequately bear my position out.
MBSS
john mccain does it too, if that is any consolation…
Chuck Butcher
@Corner Stone:
Actually, history has shit to do with it. There certainly are a lot of things to be learned from history and one of the first ones is to know what is applicable to your case.
Life? Whatever you say, might as well appeal to god as an authority.
Pro-occupiers is your first error, that need not have been the metric. But I have noticed with you that there is a tendency to start where you want to be and make things fit that. I’d say the US military and diplomatic corps really do need to make a serious study of what went wrong to know what not to do again. That doesn’t mean starting at a predetermined end as you did.
Interrobang
Must be nice to live in a country that is so privileged its citizens just blithely assume that their government has the absolute right to go around interfering militarily in other countries (such as “needing” to put military bases in foreign, sovereign nations!!) merely because it’s in their nation’s best interest to do so.
If the rest of the world said, for instance, that we thought it was in our best interest to blockade and garrison the US to stop its endless adventurism, Americans would howl so loudly they’d be banging on the ceiling with a broomstick on Alpha Centauri. Yet everyone else in the world is just supposed to put up with Americans running roughshod over their countries for American (and seldom local) benefit, and with having to listen to Americans sitting around smugly debating fine points of how to enact policies that shouldn’t be operative at all.
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher: Chuck –
Your response is shit. History all the way through current capibilities have everything to do with it.
You do us all a favor here and bring forth a circumstance where foreign invaders made progress in this specific region. Any example at all.
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher: Reading this again. WTF are you babbling about?
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher:
How about, “not invading Afghanistan”?
Chuck Butcher
@Corner Stone:
As long as you want to start with an assumption of imperial occupation of Afghanistan then history will quite clearly tell you that you’re out of your mind by geography and by culture at least through the Soviets. You state that if you do it the way you state it to be done it can’t be, and I’d agree with you. So fucking what?
srv
This really is a bizarre new meme. We must stay in Afghanistan so we have bases to deal with Pakistani nukes which may fall into the hands of unnamed bogeymen because our presence has demonstably been such a amazingly stabalizing effect on Pakistan in the first place.
Whoosh.
AQ is, and always was, a tiny foreign force with leaders who have bizarre, fantastical and egomanical expansionist aims fed by conflict with foreign states. Welcome to terrorism, it’s here to stay, and no number of troops painting schools in in Swat or Whereverstan is going to change, or “stabalize” that. The “Taliban” (Af or Pak) are collections of tribes (mostly Pashtun, but political machinations can make all sorts of things happen) that have been waring since, well, TIME F*ING BEGAN. They don’t need AQ to have a hair up their butt and AQ doesn’t need them.
Alliances of conveniences should not define $1T, generational strategeries.
Jody
@Corner Stone
I could sit here and get into some pointless back and forth over what could and could not have been done in Afghanistan back in the day, given the global mood, history of the region, and various factions at play here, but I think I can wrap things up much more to my satisfaction if I just tell you to get over your damn self, you pompous twit.
Chuck Butcher
@srv:
Bizarre? probably
New? um domino theory strike any bells?
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher:
What the fuck else is it? We’re an empire, we imposed our will on people across the globe, we invaded and occupied Afghanistan…wtf else can it be called?
U.S. Security? Draining the swamp? What?
You’re arguing something that bucks reality here. I’m not setting a predetermined wishlist or some shit like that. This is what we did. The U.S. rolled it’s might into Afghanistan. What do you call it?
Corner Stone
@Jody: Jody – you could pointlessly argue a set of reality that we will never experience and feel better about yourself. That’s fine.
I’m going to argue that me and Salma Hayek are now married. Mmmmm, Salma…
Not going to change the fact that you’re a fucking twit to argue that *IF* life had unfolded differently the Afghanistan question would’ve been resolved differently…when ALL facts in evidence do not and have never supported your contention…
If only…if only…if only we’d have put 500,000 troops into Afghanistan to begin with.
If only we’d have done things ***right*** to begin with.
Well, you get along with your bad self.
Chuck Butcher
@Corner Stone:
Dumbass.
Seriously.
AQ and 9/11 were not something that could be left alone and under NO fucking circumstances would they be left alone. They were in Afghanistan at the time and that meant that something was going to happen in Afghanistan.
Now, what did happen was not the only possible course of action. You assert that it was and it was impossible. You’re an ass, a tool kit contains a lot more than just a fucking sledgehammer and that is true of the national security apparatus and the military as well. The misuse of that kit doens’t mean it is empty, it means it was misused.
You don’t have a fucking thing other that this is what happened. If you think that such a thing is a one time deal in this world, you’re more optimistic than I am. What I propose is understanding what went wrong, why, and how to do it right. I’ve had to change courses and even understandings quite a few times in my own life and world relations is a hell of a lot more complex than running my own show. I have succeeded at things that went wrong because I made changes in my approach.
My hunch about today is that we’re past rescuing what we did wrong in Afghanistan, but I have a hell of a lot less facts than those wrestling with it. I also don’t have to deal with the political fallout as an office holeder of whatever decision is made.
Brachiator
@soonergrunt:
Thanks very much for the thoughtful comments and the suggested reading.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Salma and I are now going to bed.
The rest of you who feel compelled to imagine an existence that never was, and never could be, as proved out by thousands of years of history right up to the year 2000AD – Salma and I pity you your pathetic existence.
General Winfield Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Don”t you and Salomi take no wooden nickels dumbass.
Chuck Butcher
@Corner Stone:
You and your imaginary girlfriend are aware that the military refights battles all the time as an analytic tool, aren’t you? Because you are a twit doesn’t mean somebody is talking about time machines.
Really.
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher:
Corner Stone
Damn. Now I’ve got block quote fail. And I’m not even a senior citizen yet.
Damn you Word Press for aging me in advance of my time!!
General Winfield Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Maybe your just an idiot, and always have been.
Corner Stone
@General Winfield Stuck: Insightful, original, truly breathtaking in your ability to see through the bullshit of modern life.
You’re a groundbreaker for clueless hacks every where.
Salomi and I are off to search for wooden nickels. Whatever the hell that means.
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher: You’re aware that Dave & Busters will let you play video games for quarters, right?
Whatever the fuck you’re talking about, you’re making about as much sense as Stuck. Which is to say, not much damn sense at all.
History does come in useful once in a while. No time machine needed.
And may you burn for dissing Salma.
srv
@Chuck Butcher:
I don’t think even Soonergrunt is arguing that we keep troops in Afghanistan to prevent the spread of the Taliban to Cambodia.
Only that we keep troops there to take away Pakistan’s nukes once they start thinking about turning them over to the Weather Underground.
andy in nz
The biggest bear trap for the US is American Exceptionalism:
I ave just read ‘Blowback’ and should be a must read along with the 1% doctrine for all Americans. The US is most of the problem in these areas not the solution. The US started the Afghan/taliban/Al queda problem by formenting war by proxy with Russia. Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan all have been used as geopolitical toys by the US since WWII.
Jason Bylinowski
I’m not entirely sure why Af-fucking-ghanistan is worth this infighting from Corner Stone and Chuck Butcher. Corner Stone, you always fly off the handle, but your heart is usually in the right place. Chuck Butcher, you are cranky but there is wisdom. General Winfield, always with the shouting!, but you are funny even when I don’t get it. See there? I have proclaimed it, and it is so. All this and modesty too.
Compromise solution: let’s bomb Kabul, glass-parking-lot style, then install a Super Wal-Mart. That’ll really get them talking. Oh and that’s right before I forget let’s bomb Mecca and Jerusalem too because I am sorely tired of hearing about both of these sacred places. Seriously, can we have a conflict that doesn’t involve sand? Weren’t we about to have the Second US Civil War? Allegro, people!
+3……thousand.
Chuck Butcher
You and your hand … er, Salma have something in common with GWB which is stupid blanket statements of absolute certainty based on your measuring stick.
@Corner Stone:
What went wrong and where and how it could have been approached are the kinds of questions you ask in a quest to learn from your mistakes in order to not repeat them. But you should go to bed, apparently this is all beyond you.
BTW, I’m a ways short of the senior discount, just as an FYI.
Scott
@MBSS: Unless we develop a comprehensive South Asia strategy, the most we can hope for is a temporary peace in Afghanistan.
What would such a strategy look like? Well, at the very least it requires some moderation of the strategic competition between India and Pakistan. Without attention to this aspect of the problem, we really are only playing around at the edges of the conflict.
For more, see http://bit.ly/3vYHPk
Andy K
@Corner Stone:
I think that if you actually took the time to read the history rather than regurgitate a conventional wisdom formulated by the Brits after their 19th century failures (not to single you out, because I’ve read the argument from more internet commenters than I can count) , I think that you’ll find that the area was successfully invaded from the outside on many different occasions. Medes, Persians, Greeks, Indians and Mongols- amongst others- took control and held the region for decades-to-centuries at a time, only to be shown the door by one outsider power or another. In the case of the Greeks, it fell apart because the rulers fought amongst themselves, just as their cousins on the Aegean had done.
So what happens when a highly educated, early-industrial-age-power-at-its-pinnacle gets its ass handed to it by a loose amalgamation of relatively backwards tribes under the banner of a state? History gets rewritten to make it look as if this power simply tried and failed to do what each of its predecessors had tried and failed to do.
But, hey, since the modern Afghan state came into being in 1747, it’s been a tough egg to crack. But 162 years is a far cry from a single thousand years, let alone multiples of thousands.
Richard Stanczak
As a Canadian I should be used to having the contribution our soldiers and country are making in Afghanistan being completely ignored by Americans. However, our growing list of dead and wounded men and women while seeing the occupation/war continually deteriorate just pisses me off. Thanks for the education soonergrunt.
Second point, the occupation will be long and costly. WTF?
Long = ten more years? twenty more years? fifty more years?
Costly = what exactly per year? In lives and dollars.
But, soonergrunt, and every other serious commenter say there is no other choice. We cannot withdraw because……..why?
People will talk behind our backs and think we are wimps? We will admit that most of the previous eight years were a total waste?
The Taliban will take their country back and immediately restart their master plan for world domination?
This has turned into an occupation that is propping up an unpopular central government that soonergrunt admits will never “control” Afghanistan. Stability is a mirage, that cannot be forced on the Afghanis by foreign armies.
If we are ever to have a sane discussion of our path forward in Afghanistan, all options should be reviewed and the decision must be made as to what is in the best interests of the NATO countries.
In my opinion, the only reasons Canada has extended their mission is political; internal: fear of being portrayed as losers and raising questions of the viability of the entire mission. And external: fear of punishment by our “allies” when we withdraw. Specifically the US.
flukebucket
Thanks for front paging this Anne Laurie. So much easier to find now and a damn good comment to reference when discussing the Afghanistan issue.
soonergrunt
@kilo: @Richard Stanczak:
You are both right, of course. Since 2002, 133 Canadian soldiers have been killed serving in Afghanistan. One diplomat and two aid workers have also been killed.
Candian Forces are involved mostly down near Kandahar. I was in another part of the country, east and northeast of Kabul, but that doesn’t excuse what I said, or my ignorance. The fact that I have posted before on GOS about Canadian Forces in Afghanistan makes this even more embarassing. As far as the rest of ISAF, I stand by what I said. That is, in fact a pretty big issue with the Canadian government and people as I understand it.
And Mr. Stanczak–I didn’t say there was no other choice. I said that if you consider strategic success to be a stable Afghan/Pakistan region, then I don’t see how you achieve that success without a COIN campaign in Afghanistan.
Maybe you consider some other state of affairs to be a success. Maybe you think that’s the desired endstate but you have a different idea of what needs to be done, or maybe you don’t think that its worth the effort and cost.
I haven’t said anywhere that my opinion is the only one that matters or that I know that I’m right or even anything remotely approaching certainty about anything except the possiblity that I might be wrong.
I’d love to read your argument about the subject if you actually have one.
And for the last part, Canada’s reasons for fighting in (or withdrawing from) Afghanistan are Canada’s reasons. I really have no idea how the US would punish, to use your word, Canada if Canadian Forces were to withdraw from Afghanistan.
chrome agnomen
call me a cynic. you cannot take care of the world. all you can do is set an example. GET OUT. lives are going to be lost whether or not we stay. things will resolve or they will not, or if they do others things will arise to be resolved. we exacerbate the issues by our presence. GET OUT. none of our business. every resource we bring to bear feeds the machinery. and feeds the pockets of people who have nothing moral invested. GET OUT.
soonergrunt
I’ll say this: I’m uncomfortable with the concept that “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires and we’re all gonna die!!!!”
A vast majority of that came from British colonial era press, with the argument that if the British couldn’t do it, then it couldn’t be done. The massive arrogance of that argument is typical of colonial-era Britain.
We aren’t trying to bleed the region dry of natural resources or setting up an alternative route to India for trade purposes
soonergrunt
@chrome agnomen:
Thanks for your input. Needless to say, I disagree, but I respect your perspective, and the passion with which you deliver it.
RememberNovember
We never learned from the Russians, did we. Afghanistan is the Black Hole of the middle east. It is a no-win situation if we try to achieve by force of arms rather than diplomacy and diffusion.
soonergrunt
@RememberNovember: We are not, and have not been trying to force-modernize their society.
Please do not conflate the failures of other powers which are based primarily in extending their own cultures to us.
I don’t think we’re doing everything right, but I know that we’re doing more right and less wrong there than anybody who came before us.
Jimbo
Soonergrunt – I’m hoping you’ll see this, but can I repost on my very lightly read blog? It’s mostly friends and family members, but this is great insight that I’d like to share. You can ping me if you’ve got question – j.c.smith2 AT gmail.com
Tom
If our goals are to 1) stop the Taliban from taking control of large swaths of Afghanistan, and 2) continue the hunt for Bin Laden (and I think these are what our goals should be), I really don’t see why this cannot be accomplished by a force structure in line with what we used to get rid of the Taliban in the first place back in 2001: large doses of air power combined with special forces. (Non-exhaustive) Points in favor: 1) much, much lower “footprint”; 2) goodwill from withdrawal of huge numbers of troops 3) muchos dineros that we can now spend on paying the interest on all those chinese loans we’ve taken out. 4) chickenhawks like krauthammer shit their adult diapers on national television, 5) Americans don’t have to continue to ignore large numbers of American casualties and can watch so you think you can dance in peace. (Non-exhaustive) Points against: 1) future American soldiers will not learn how to make that bangin’ Afghan tea.
soonergrunt
@Jimbo:
You can if you want as far as I care. You might want to ask John. I don’t know what his policies are on such things, and it is his site.
You should also post a link to this thread so that your readers can get the full flavor of the comments which are pretty good for the most part.
Maude
We’re at the now what stage.
The problem is that there is no military solution.
The self superiority of some Murikans is scary.
The Afghan people can speak for themselves.
If we aren’t solving basic problems here at home, how does anyone think that we can solve problems in a country that most know near to nothing about.
How many NATO soldiers speak the language?
The State Department has (sigh) private contractor abuses on its plate. Don’t see that HRC has handled this at all, except to vent her anger.
What’s the number of private contractors in Afghanistan?
Corner Stone
@Chuck Butcher:
What seems clear, at least to me, is that we never had the capability to achieve our goals, and didn’t have clearly defined useful “goals” to begin with.
Get OBL. Check.
Kill Taliban. Check.
Topple government that allowed AQ respite. Check.
My contention has been, and continues to be, that a significant military footprint was not the solution to whatever the actual issue with Afghanistan was. It made no sense then, it makes less sense now. People got hopped up on nationalism, anger, revenge – and fell over each other to declare Afghanistan “The Good War”. But it wasn’t.
And I further contend that turning Afghanistan into a platform for US troops as a countermeasure to the fear that Pak’s nukes will become available is a fools notion.
(In the general sense, not at any particular person)
So please tell me what questions we have answered by our excursion into Afghanistan, and of what value they prove to us moving forward.
Cassidy
Sooner, how are you/ your team dealing with corruption at he local Battalion/ Brigade level? I’m with a MTT team in Iraq and that is simply the worst hole logistically.
Corner Stone
@Andy K: I disagree this was simply a ruse set out by the Brits. I see that has now emerged as a new talking point.
I’m simply arguing that our goals, however they have been defined or ill-defined, are not within our capabilities.
Cassidy
@Tom: Mainly because that “scenario” of SF and CAS was a largely conventional type war. Now we’ve entered into a COIN environment and we don’t get to just drop bombs anymore.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
And my argument is that if a stable region is our definition of strategic success then it is a goal beyond our capabilities.
I hope our new civilian leadership decides to redefine their vision of strategic success.
IndieTarheel
Great post. many thanks, SG.
Justin
Soonergrunt,
I have to disagree with some of the people here about your comment/post.
The first point that I’ll tangle with is your remark about gut shooting children and burning teachers. The nature of what how we fight (and this extends to Pak), i.e. dropping bombs from moving planes high in the sky, has led to a horrifying ratio of ‘terrorists’ killed vs. bystanders. Though we are not bombing innocent people to make a point in the sense that you refer to, I can’t imagine that is much consolation to those getting killed and survivors. This touches on teleo – deont discussion, and I come down on the side of what are the actual effects of what you are doing regardless of motivation. In effect, we are killing a lot of people to make a point.
Second, taking a step back, the prescription you give for the problems there is pretty bold, expensive, and a tremendous commitment, and could just as likely come to nothing than any meaningful ‘success’. The world has far greater problems than the U.S. has resources to address, so I still don’t get the need for this commitment. Terrorism? A problem, but in terms of body count and cost, there are far more pressing issues here in the U.S.A. and elsewhere closer to home (Mexico?).
The problem here is that the goals you are advocating, stability, better life, rebuilt country, and our means for achieving these, military action, are fundamentally at odds. The weight of that contradiction is going to ultimately crush whatever gains are made, as we have already seen. I see arguments like yours, and usually something like “we cannot afford to fail” at this attached, but whether we can afford to fail at something and whether we have the ability and power to succeed are separate issues. Necessity to accomplish something does not mean you have the capability to do so.
Tsulagi
Good read, soonergrunt.
Complex situation in that area that no one has the definitive answer for or the best course of action to take. Like you, don’t believe we should withdraw from Af-Pak anytime soon.
Would have been nice if seven years ago we didn’t suck our resources from AF and what could have been deployed to go off on a wingnut most excellent adventure in Iraq. Made the real job much harder and pretty much zeroed out what good will we had. But still that’s no reason to leave AF.
Cassidy
Whatever happenned to we broke, so now we gotta fix it.
Corner Stone
@Tsulagi:
I’m curious. If we had never invaded Iraq and made a single commitment to Afghanistan, where do you expect we would be right now in this situation? (And I grant we can’t know anything for certain, but I’m asking for a SWAG)
Let’s say we put 200,000 troops rotating through Afghanistan, and deployed them in a way that made sense and built COIN relationships with local force projectors. Would this have been the solution you feel would have worked? Or at least worked better?
Because I contend it would have brought us no different outcome. It certainly would’ve changed the dynamics of casualties suffered in Iraq, both the US and all others involved, but would it have furthered the defined goal of strategic success = stable region?
Richard Stanczak
To soonergrunt;
First, thanks for responding to my questions.
I did not think I implied that only your opinion mattered, but I did understand correctly that you presented the long term occupation of the region as the only potential solution to the problem as you defined it.
As I said, a stable Afghanistan/Iraq/Pakistan is not a viable option and certainly not achievable by military force.
But you are correct in that I do not believe the cost in lives, civilian and NATO soldiers, and wealth to be worthwhile. As difficult as it would be, NATO needs to move out and leave the people of Afghanistan to decide their fate. Is that a good outcome? No. But I think that our current course, occupation, is only delaying that outcome. I would use the end of the war in Vietnam as a likely model. Ugly at first, but now I don’t think many would disagree that they have a country that provides a reasonable life for its citizens.
Cassidy
Not intending to sound insulting, but I think you underestimate the tenacity of radical islam.
Tsulagi
@Corner Stone: Would like to give a long, thought out response like sooner’s post now, but have this annoyance called work. And today it’s calling me out with a vengeance.
Corner Stone
@Cassidy:
I for one do not know how to properly evaluate the tenacity of radical islam. But let’s say it’s fierce and longlived.
This leads to an inevitable outcome if followed logically.
Corner Stone
@Tsulagi: Damn you work! Damn you and your unquenchable vengeance!!
soonergrunt
@Cassidy:
That was a problem for us, to be sure. Professionalizing the Army was a huge push by our higher, and luckily, the ANA Corps Commander bought off on the idea (for the most part). Discipline in the ANA ranks was usually enforced by ass-kickings. Most of the time we tried to stop that if it was a case of a superior to troop incident within the company we supported. Some of the time–like cases of the Battalion Supply Officer stealing the company’s batteries, etc. we went for a short smoke break, if you get my meaning.
@Corner Stone:
Fair enough. That might be the case.
@Justin:
I like a lot of what you have to say here, especially “Necessity to accomplish something does not mean you have the capability to do so.”
The correlation to that of course is that if something is necessary, one must grow the capability. Else, it isn’t really necessary.
@Cassidy:
I submit it’s not a question of tenacity–we know that–it’s a question of intent.
The Taliban, whether Pakistani or Afghani, or any of their fellow travellers, really have NO interest in “hav(ing) a country that provides a reasonable life for its citizens.”
To do such would undermine their two most powerful premises-
1–this life sucks, but all of your suffering will be relieved in Paradise if you are only faithful (obedient) enough
2–infidels and unbelievers are responsible for your life sucking as much as it does.
Cassidy
@Corner Stone: I was only speaking in reference to the percieved similiarities of modern Vietnam and modern Afghanistan.
JohnR
Thanks for the most interesting post, soonerg.! This is a very entertaining read, and actually triggered a desire to post. There are a couple things that hit me:
That sense that “with just a little more effort, a little more clarity of purpose, a little more careful focus, we can reach our desired goals” has been, I think, a will-o’-the-wisp throughout history. It’s always an arms race, with every move setting off repercussions and counter-moves, and the goalposts keep moving. I don’t disagree with you that counter-insurgency operations can work, even in Afghanistan, and I certainly don’t disagree with anybody here that the situation today is not identical to the situation of any time in the past. Just because something hasn’t worked in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t work now. However, we operate within a number of constraints, not least of which is the American political system. Even impending disaster has proved to be ineffective in stirring American political leaders to effective action in the past, and there is little likelihood that this will change any time soon. We’re a nation of “not 1 stitch now, but 9 stitches later!” thinkers. I agree that the Pakistan situation is inextricably mixed in, and the Pakistan nuke farm makes it a key point in the Great Game. What I don’t see is any realistic chance of stabilizing the region on our own, and any good way to get the surrounding powers, let alone Europe, to participate. Is it possible that our COIN efforts can hold the fort until something sublethal happens to wake everybody up to the need for combined efforts? I don’t think history is particularly positive on that (and, yes, I think history offers us some useful lessons and insights, even if it involves pre-industrialized states – human nature remains much the same).
In the US, the Afghan hemorrhaging is unsatisfactory to many people – the DFHs want out for many reasons, not least because Bush put us in there. The Keyboard Kommandos are getting less enthusiastic as the emphasis shifts from vicarious Rambo action to dull stuff like sitting on your ass drinking chai. They’ll still support it to some degree, though, as long as it fulfills their other political goals – making the DFHs angry and supporting “the troops” (ie the ‘military-contractor complex’). Eventually, though, the continuing loss of life is going to hit home for everyone, 1 family at a time, and unless there’s some photogenic, ‘See Dick Run’ sort of result to look at, the urge to pull out will be too much for even the Village to ignore. At that point, nothing will matter, especially if there is a convenient conventional-wisdom scapegoat to pin any future disaster on. I don’t know that we’ve reached that point yet, but I bet it’s not far off.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about all this – luckily, I’ve been so wrong, so regularly that I’m pretty much immune to embarrasment (1 ‘s’ or 2? I can never remember).
Anyway, thanks again for getting the sludgy, constipated cylinders moving in my head again, even if only a little, and keep the information and insights coming!
Andy K
@Corner Stone:
I’m simply arguing that our goals, however they have been defined or ill-defined, are not within our capabilities.
Then you should stick to the last 30-64 years, the time frame in which the US has had anything like goals in Afghanistan.
Corner Stone
@Andy K:
Ok, I’ll stipulate. During the last 30-64 years, has there existed a set of conditions where a US military footprint in Afghanistan could’ve achieved the strategic success of a stable region? To be specific, before we invaded Afghanistan, if the US had an inspired leader and carte blanche (mas o menos) from other world leaders, was there an action plan to be implemented where a large US military footprint advanced any fuzzy US goal whatsoever?
Boney Baloney
“Necessity knows only of victory” is not a plan. The Germans really, really needed Berlin not to become the meat in a payback sandwich back in the 1940s, but it kind of happened anyway.
You can’t take the elevator to the tenth floor of a six-story building through willpower and determination. Even the Frunze Academy taught its post-war students better than that, being careful not to name names, of course.
It’s called “losing,” and one of the structural problems of the post-Reagan US military is that, like the Emperor’s Sardaukar in Dune, we literally have no concept of the process or symptoms associated with having our living asses kicked. The experience is dumbfounding and specifically not to be considered, like bad street theater, so the best and brightest put their heads together and keep deciding to feed the enemy as many living, breathing targets as our demographics can withstand.
We can’t secure half the world from half a world away. We can’t even give a bloated corpse like New Orleans a decent burial. If we want to try to save our honor and redeem ourselves, let’s have some war crimes trials and hang some sons of bitches in our High Command (no statute of limitations, please). We might even be able to respect ourselves again.
goatchowder
What you mean, “we”, Kemosabe?
Bush/Cheney certainly did. They wanted an oil pipeline, IIRC, and had been negotiating with the Taliban to get it before 9/11.
But, I’m quibbling. I agree with your main point. If– big if– we have a goal of a stable, independent Afghanistan that is NOT directly under our imperial control, then why couldn’t such a thing be successful? Neither the British nor the Russians (nor the Macedonians, etc.) ever tried, so it’s not like it’s been proven to fail.
Seems to me like that stable Afghanistan state would be basically a very loose federal system, with almost all the political action under local control. A frontier kind of state. Kind of… like the USA was in its early days. Certainly possible– our own Constitution might be a damn good model for it. And it seems like the way to acheive that will be, as you state in your post, “sitting on our asses drinking chai” and “showing them our way is a better way of life”. Sounds more to me like a political campaign than a combat operation. In other words: diplomacy and community organizing, not a primarily military solution.
That seems like that’s something our local-grassroots-community-organizer-in-chief could get behind. And I could get behind too, probably lots of other progressives as well.
How do you keep ’em out of the opium business though? And how do you keep those local areas from going Taliban? And keep the whole system from getting corrupted?
Andy K
@Corner Stone:
Now your talkin’.
The problem, as I see it, is that beyond its status as a buffer state between the Soviets and the warm water ports in Pakistan and India, we had little use for Afghanistan. We didn’t know what the hell to think about it in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, other than the fact that Pakistan was using it as a training base for irregulars to be sent across the border into India. IMO, we only engaged in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 with punitive goals (and, no, I think little of the pipeline scenario- the US corporate backers pulled out of that in ’98, with the realization that it would be far too expensive to protect) , and took no time whatsoever to think about the possible long term consequences in that country. If only it were so easy as to say that we just wanted to annex Afghanistan and we failed at it…
But we rashly go in to punish the Taliban, fail to complete that mission. Do we just let the Taliban back in just to see them repeat the bombing campaigns against us again? Do we just pull out and let them all kill each other? Would we be responsible for any civil strife that followed our departure? It sucks to have to be improvising there, but I think that it’s the only moral thing to do to stay there at this point.
Fuck George W. Bush…..
Richard Stanczak
“tenacity of radical islam”? What exactly does that mean? And why do you think that the leaders of Afghanistan, whoever they might be, do not want a reasonable/good life for their citizens?
Just because we in the West would not like to live in what the Afghan society was or might be does not mean it is not a life worth living.
Again, we keep coming back to what is stability and what kind of societies in this region meet our test for withdrawal.
Would we be happy leaving a corrupt dictatorship that allows our corporations free reign and keeps out the terrorists? Or do we want a democratic responsible government that stands up for its people’s best interests? Would we tolerate that? What about a government that is religious in nature? Do we demand a secular government?
And missing in all this is what the Afghan people want. A lot of commentators here and in the West seem to assume to know or flat out don’t care. Do we consider the widespread support of the Taliban among the population an indicator that they actually want some of what the Taliban is preaching? Or is that support just based on fear or hatred of the occupying forces. ie. us.
Andy K
@Richard Stanczak:
I’m not so sure that- in Afghanistan, anyway- the support for the Taliban was all that widespread, as much as they were the biggest bully on the block. Don’t forget that after they took control of Kabul, the Taliban was still fighting a civil war with the Northern Alliance.
And in Pakistan, the Taliban seems to have power only in the regions bordering with Afghanistan. Probably more of a Pashtun (Pashto?) nationalist movement there as much as anything else. The Pakistani military and the ISI still dominate politics in that country, and they’re highly overrepresented by Punjabis with their own goals for the country- goals that lay, mainly, on the eastern side of the Pakistan-India border.
Corner Stone
@Andy K:
Drug war. To determine control of the heroine market.