Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
For more on the project, click here. There have already been some great submissions. Many thanks to reader "Scott Wedman" for this initial conversation-starter:
The war in Afghanistan is in the interests of the United States for four reasons. First, increasing stability in Afghanistan and preventing Taliban control of the country deprives Al Qaeda of an important training ground, making an attack on the American homeland, American forces deployed abroad, and other Americans abroad less likely. Second, fighting the Taliban undermines their efforts to make further gains in Pakistan, which matters given that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and, if the Taliban gets nuclear weapons it would not be good for American national interests. Even given deterrence and all those good things, it still massively increases the risks to the American homeland for the Taliban -- and probably Al Qaeda -- to have access to nuclear weapons. Third, while it is unpopular with progressives to say it like this for a variety of reasons, the Taliban stand firmly against nearly everything we stand for as Americans: rights for women, rights for GLBT, other constitutional rights that are protected in the United States, etc. Abandoning the Afghan people to that fate would be awful. Reasonable people might argue that that is not the responsibility of the United States – and at some level of cost, the argument swings. However, it is always important to keep in mind, even if we decide as a country to pull out of Afghanistan before the job is done, the fundamentally loathsome character of the Taliban and their beliefs about governance. Progressives should be just as angry about this, if not more so, than others in the United States. Fourth, whether or not one agreed with the war in the first place, the United States has a lot of credibility now invested in Afghanistan. This administration in particular has singled it out as important even as it begins drawing down American forces in Iraq at a faster rate. To cut and run now would terribly damage American credibility around the world. Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda affiliates have explicitly cited the American withdrawal from Lebanon in the ‘80s and Somalia in the ‘90s as demonstrating the weak character of the United States, showing that Al Qaeda and its allies can succeed if they attack America and its interests enough. To withdraw from Afghanistan in a way that ceded control to the Taliban would be the single biggest propaganda victory for Al Qaeda possible, guaranteeing them new recruits, new energy, and thus arguably increasing the risk of attacks against the United States.
These are all big picture arguments. One might argue that continuing to fight in Afghanistan will make all of these things worse and thus the United States should leave. But I do not think it is fair to say that the United States has no interests in Afghanistan in particular or Central Asia in general. I’m not saying these interests necessarily mandate a particular strategy in the war or the use of particular tactics. But they do suggest that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be dangerous for American interests.
Alternative opinion using Scott's leads:
1. Increasing stability in Afghanistan ... preventing Taliban control ... deprives Al Qaeda ... making attacks on us less likely.
A continuing US presence in Afghanistan could, just as easily, cause for a greater destabilization of Afghanistan and simply delay Taliban re-taking control. Al Qaeda, in the meantime, uses this "open-ended US boots on the ground in an Islamic country" moment to gain new recruits and, thereby, attacks on the US become more likely. In the meantime, we continue to bleed blood and treasure -- indefinitely -- until we catch on.
2. Fighting the Taliban undermines their efforts in Pakistan and their ability to gain access to nuclear weapons.
Should our presence in Afghanistan now not be seen as (a) the cause for our recent concern re: Taliban's efforts in Pakistan and (b) the cause for our new concerns re: the Taliban and Pakistan's nukes?
3. Cultural stuff. The clearest way to delay or destroy a country's chances for modernization -- and to cause a culture, people and nation(s) to go to war with you big time -- is for a foreign power to try to impose modernization with boots on the ground. This has to happen as an initiative within the country itself and absent any attempt by us to pound them about the head and shoulders. Such is counter-productive big time.
4. Credibility: Same argument was made re: Vietnam.
In fact, all the arguments above -- with the appropriate communist changes -- would seem to have been made re: Vietnam.
Which brings us back to square one. Just like Vietnam, we need to begin -- not end with:
What are the United States and its allies interests in Central Asia and how might we secure these interests.
Everything else is ass-backwards.
It should not go un-noticed that my characterization above -- regarding Afghanistan -- looks almost exactly like what actually did happen in Vietnam.
1. The continued presence of the United States in Vietnam simply delayed the Communists taking control.
2. The continuing presence of the United States in Vietnam may have detracted from and damaged -- rather than enhanced -- our strategic interests and initiatives in the area and world-wide during this time.
3. The continued presence of the United States in Vietnam delayed -- rather than expedited -- the country's modernization process. Once the US left, Vietnam became "more modern" almost overnight.
4. After the United States left Vietnam, its credibility was not severely damaged and, with no "boots on the ground" to ravenously feed and stoke the anti-American fire, communism began to wane almost immediately.
AM,
When will you be posting yours?
Mr. Wedman argues that preventing Taliban control of the country prevents al-Qaeda from launching attacks on the US. Al-Qaeda is not a country, it is a gang of outlaws that represents an existential threat to a great number of people, and even nations. The key to denying them anything is to dismantle them as an effective entity. Remove them, and then their arguments, in either order that works at the moment, because while they may be attempting to cripple Afghanistan as a functioning state, forcing them out simply moves the problem elsewhere. Al-Qaeda is a worldwide intelligence mission. Dismantling them is a police/SOC mission.
We now have roughly 63 thousand troops in country with an untold number of additional security, diplomatic, USAID, etc., all of whom have to be protected in order to do their work. Targets, in other words. Iran is buying arms for the Taliban, Pakistan’s ISI created the Taliban and still expects them to serve as a foil to Indian interests in Afghanistan. The Pashtun tribes, who seem to primarily constitute the Taliban, are engaged in a political and armed insurgency in the hope of carving out, at the least, their own autonomous region of the country, yet for a strategic reason still to be announced, we should stay there until the country is fixed? An American/European Christian occupation of a Muslim country? This is a part of the world where our presence is widely thought to be an attempt to project ourselves and our values onto a people whose culture and beliefs share very little with ours. The movement to eject us will become regional because our presence is politically and religiously untenable.
As for Mr. Wedman’s remarks about the fact that the Taliban represent values odious to us , so do Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe. Shall we head over there next?
This is a geo-political problem, not a small detail in a larger picture. We can continue to drain our resources in an area that is pretty well content to play the long game for years into the future, or we can make it clear that our mission is to smash aQ and go home.
Here's my contibution:
Go kiss Hitler's backside, Jew-hater Exum.
So, the "conversation starter" is exactly how you would start the conversation?
That's usually not the way it's done, Andrew...
On second thought, Q&A!
1. The same could be (and sometimes is) said about Somalia, but no one serious is clamoring to invade that (non) country. Furthermore, it seems just as likely that the suburbs of Paris, Madrid, London or, say, Hamburg could be used to plot terror attacks against the US.
2. This might be a compelling reason for being involved in Pakistan, but not so much for being in Afghanistan. If anything, we have seen that a defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan results in sweeping them over the Durand line into parts of Pakistan where neither Washington nor Islamabad carries much water. If anything, Pakistan was more stable when the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan than it is now.
3. Any number of regimes submit their peoples to value systems that are disgusting to western secular values. Saudi Arabia is a good example. In Rwanda, one can be stripped of Rwandan citizenship for being homosexual. In Uzbekistan, people are routinely boiled alive. The Taliban is a pretty horrible bunch, but they've got some serious rivals even among US-allied regimes.
4. This argument isn't terribly convincing to me for any number of reasons. No one is doubting the US's ability to destroy a country/regime in the space of a few weeks. What is in doubt is the US's ability to successfully occupy and rebuild a country with a hostile population. And this is only a problem if we're in the business of occupying and rebuilding hostile countries.
Finally, it's unclear why pulling out of Afghanistan would be any more dangerous for US security than pulling out of Iraq is or pulling out of Vietnam was. Al-Qaeda has indeed cited Somalia and Lebanon, but as reasons why they might be successful, not reasons why the US should be attacked in the first place. If the US is going to change its behavior based on Al-Qaeda's rhetoric, it seems like making progress on Israel/Palestine and ceasing support for regimes in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman might be a better place to start if we're worried about more terrorist attacks.
http://humanprovince.wordpress.com
I know they saved his brain and he was a wonderful dancer but is Hitler is still alive?
@ Wedman
You base a lot of your argument on credibility. But being there is a credibility trap just as much as leaving. Actually, I would argue it's much worse for our credibility as a nation. Instead of the country that is supposed to represent freedom and liberty. The US is being seen as an imperial country that wants to impose it's own ideas of order onto another. This is done forcefully with boots on the ground. If we really wanted to preserve our credibility then it would seem to me that we should promote freedom and liberty without an imperial presence.
And your argument that we should prevent Afghanistan from coming under power of the despicable Taliban. Would you use the same argument to have the US occupy and impose order on the following countries with the following leaders:
Zimbabwe - Mugabe
Somalia - and the various warlords there
North Korea - and shorty
Uzbekistan - Islam Karimov
Burma - Than Shwe
Sudan - Omar Bashir
Saudi Arabia - and the ruling family there
etc. etc.
Any thoughts on Seth Jones' WSJ op-ed?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020490860457433640239052421...
Two key points: 1) Jones looks at the stable period of recent Afghan history and recognizes how any why Afghanistan was stable for approximately 50 years and why a "bottom-up" strategy could work for the US effort. 2) As far as American security interests are concerned, he notes that the latest string of terror plots targeting the West were originally planned for and developed in the Afghan-Pakistan border region.
Interesting, too, that he points the literature the US military is reading before deploying to Afghanistan. Why are we reading about how the Brits and Soviets lost Afghanistan, rather than reading about what worked?
I agree with Visitor's assessment. Scott makes a status quo argument, when the status quo no longer exists. Things have changed; it truly no longer is the American century, like it or not.
It all comes down to the question, is the pursuit of what we think are our interests in Af'stan/central Asia actually undermining the security and stability of our country? If the answer is yes, and I believe it is, then maybe we need to rethink in a fundamental way what our interests really are. Right now, our interests are defined in imperialistic ways, ways that hurt the American people, beginning with economics. I say, abandon empire, which means in this specific case, pull our troops out of Afghanistan ASAP. We want to do nation building? Let's do it here.
Regarding Scott's comments:
1) There is no evidence that our involvement in Af'stan has stabilized anything to our advantage, particularly the so-called Afghan nation and its avatar, the government in Kabul, which at best is a corrupt, non-functioning city-state that would give Machiavelli and the Medicis horrors. Indeed, an argument can be made that our involvement has been is to the distinct advantage of the Taliban; the greater our involvement, the better off the Taliban becomes. Further, it's not clear to me that the Taliban, in and of itself, is a valid "enemy," or that the formalization of Pashtunistan would be a greater insult to world peace than its current informal existence, even under the control of the Taliban. In other words, we might have to acknowledge (a bitter drink, to be sure) that the Taliban has some degree of legitimacy in its own sphere; at best, to the degree that the Taliban is legitimate, we are not. If our presence is not legitimate, all other arguments for occupying Af'stan fail, unless you're simply going to argue some right of empire (the white man's burden, extending the new world order under global capitalism, etc), and that itself has all kinds of moral, legal, and practical problems. In other words, I fail to see how occupation of Af'stan is necessary to countering Al-Qaeda. (See below). Finally, it is not clear that denying Al-Qaeda refuge in south Asia accomplishes much; Africa must be looking pretty good right now. Would it be harder for Al-Qaeda to export international terrorism from Somalia than central Asia, for example? I wonder. I see that Hillary has sworn support to the latest version of the interim government of Somalia. Hmmm, it sounds like the 80s and early 90s--been there, done that, didn't work in the worst way. What's different this time? Do we militarily occupy Somalia and start nation building to prevent Al-Qaeda from gaining a foothold there? Better do it soon; Ash-Shabaab pretty much already has both feet firmly planted in the South. However, upon what cultural, social, political, economic foundations we'd build a Somali nation, I haven't a clue. It's a worse example than Af'stan. Piracy, perhaps?
2) Surely, there are more efficient and less expensive ways to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons than an illegitimate (from the perspective of those who live there) and undeniably costly military occupation of Afghanistan. (Presumably, we don't plan to occupy Pakistan any time soon, I hope). By extension, surely there are more efficient and less expensive ways to counter "global jihad." I've not seen a good argument why a precisely targeted finance/logistics/CT strategy would be less effective than deploying thousands of troops in a country in which the vast majority of people don't want us there.
3) This is an invalid argument based on national honor, something that readers of George MacDonald Fraser or historians might understand is a questionable concept, a la LBJ and Nixon, not to mention Flashman. "National honor" is little more than an ideological cover for baser objectives. Was national honor worth 58,000 + dead soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors in Vietnam? I don't think so. Nor is it worth the lives of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last 8 years. Further, if we're going to worry about the rights of women, etc. pray, let us put Saudia Arabia on the invasion list. Hell, constitutional rights aren't too secure here in the US either, thanks to that cacaphony of criminals known as the Bush administration. Maybe we should invade Washington and Wall Street to restore constitutional rights here at home before trying to extend them to places where constitutions are just pieces of paper.
4) Credibility? The US has pretty much bailed on every client state or body with which it's ever had any military relationship. The one state we should bail on, Israel, is the exception, and failing to do so has gotten us into considerable hot water in the Islamic world. If I recall from history, the State Department recommended to Truman in 1948 that he not recognize Israel for that very reason. Truman decided otherwise and here we are 60 years later--nicely boiling in our own pot. The simple fact is that the American people have little stomach for expensive foreign adventures or protracted wars; it's no secret that America's enemies have noticed this fact and have taken advantage of it. The only thing credible about the USG is that its promises aren't credible.
This brings us back to the question Visitor asks: do we have valid interests in Af'stan/central Asia, and if so ,what are they and what are the best ways to accomplish them? From a conventional, imperialistic standpoint we do, such as undermining Al-Qaeda's ability to wage violent jihad, but massive military occupation and expensive nation building are certainly not the ways to achieve that interest. If we do have a legitimate interest in undermining Al-Qaeda, let's adopt the indirect approach of Sun Tzu--undermine Al-Qaeda through more subtle, precise means. Targeting Al Qaeda finances, logistics, and communications is the key, not building and safeguarding Afghan "institutions" that we want to be impervious to Hobbesian chaos. If the Afghans want new institutions, let them build and maintain them themselves, for their own reasons.
The larger question, however, is--does our logistic capability match what we have hitherto decided are our legitimate interests and how we've decided to pursue them? My point elsewhere has been that the answer to this question, when the pursuit involves military occupation and nation building, is no. For a lot of reasons, this country is bankrupt in a fundamental way, with poor capacity for recovery at home and certainly less capacity to support expensive imperial designs. We simply can't afford what we're doing now in Af'stan/central Asia, especially when things are so bad here at home. It's not even clear to me that we can afford the subtle Sun Tzu approach for long, since it too relies upon the long reach of empire, which itself is unsustainable. It's clear that our determination to maintain ourselves as a 21st century Empire is the central problem. This is what we need to discuss before anything else. (Not that I believe the political, bureaucratic, and financial elites of this country will actually do so. The best and brightest, unfortunately, are not).
In case the well-paid folks ensconced in government, think-tanks, and academia who can afford to live in Georgetown, Cambridge, or Manhattan haven't noticed, the United States is rapidly becoming a third world country, where wealth hides from poverty behind guards, gates, and fences. Parts of this country, such as Indian reservations or Appalachia, have been third world for a long time. What's new is that the rest of the country is catching up to Indians and hillbillies. Further, we are slowly but surely depleting and/or destroying our natural resource base, across all resource sectors. Also, the massively engineered infrastructures we built to exploit our natural resources over the last century are crumbling, and we cannot now afford to repair and rebuild these massive infrastructures--especially when we're pouring billions into overseas black holes. Perfect example, the big hydro/irrigation projects of the American West. The big reservoirs are filling up with sediment even as water supplies dwindle. The large, unsustainable cities of the West--Denver, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles--are desperately scrambling for water. It's flooding in New Hampshire? Great. How much will it cost to build water pipelines from the East Coast to the Rockies and beyond?
We are trying to cheat our way through this problem of increasing resource scarcity with advanced technology, because that's where the (short-term) profits are, but there is an argument that technological advance in resource extraction, production, and use merely reflects the approach to absolute resource scarcity. At what point does technical and operational efficiency fail? At the point where resources are no longer sufficient in quantity and quality to profitably extract and turn into goods and services. We are surely approaching this point in this country; I certainly see it here in the American West.
We can't afford Af'stan. We can't afford empire. We can't afford to be the world's only "superpower."
Our most vital interest is our survival as a people. I would argue that imperial adventures such as we are pursuing in the middle East and central Asia are directly harmful to that vital interest. We are bankrupting ourselves to control the uncontrollable and the infinite. Our imperialistic, oligarchic policies invite attack from abroad and create chaos at home. Let's abandon Empire before it's too late.
.
EMN
What EMN said.
As others have asked on this thread, Andrew, what are your answers to your questions that might help us understand your position on strategy in Astan?
It seems to me that you want things the way they were two years ago when AM was the feisty young turk, pushing back and prodding the stodgy establishment to change, learn, and adapt toward better counterinsurgency practices and thinking. In this project you want to get the submissions on strategy for Afghanistan so that you can act as the objective judge, passing comments on the ones that come in.
But times have changed, Andrew, you are now, whether you like it or not, the establishment. And I for one would like to know how an establishment figure, especially one who has had the recent important experience of advising General McChrystal, sees our strategy in Astan. As SNLII pointed out, YOU should be the conversation starter.
Beyond a catechism of Coin tactical dictums, principles, and rules what is our strategy for Astan today?
gian
I won't go that far, Gian.
I think that Andrew is making a sincere effort to explain why the types of operations being designed and implemented for OEF are tied to the political outcomes that we hope to reach, given the inevitablity of Clausewitz's "chance" and "friction" fouling it up.
I don't believe that we can condemn the format until we see it play out. Personally, I think the way this is usually done on blogs and magazines, Q&A, plays more into the notion that he and his detractors are equals. Sometimes this is so, but often it's not.
We have to judge only by the quality of his arguments.
On another point -- and this is just conjecture -- I imagine that Andrew is using this sort of forum to question his own assumptions. That is good! He wants us to be the red team and throw at him our questions and qualifications to the points that he makes.
That actually takes some intellectual courage. I don't know many on the latest strategic team -- say, for example, the tag teaming Kagans -- who would agree to answer questions from the audience.
Indeed, I would say that he's going to unusual lengths to open himself up to criticism (not that it hasn't been arriving lately, http://www.americansecurityproject.org/theflashpointblog/bernard-finel/2... ).
I also don't believe that it's fair, yet, to put him into the "establishment." Beyond the hastily written "Triage" and a few TV spots, we really don't know what his private reservations are about this war. Nor do we fully understand the assumptions he's making about the utility of force to achieve certain political outcomes.
Most candidly, I don't believe he will make those cases. But I'm the eternal contrarian, and remain agnostic on Afghanistan, so I'm willing to hear him out.
I'm not hearing much with this particular thread, but that doesn't mean that he's struck me completely deaf.
Jesus.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?ref=globa...
I've got little to add to EMN's excellent post, so I'll limit myself to observing that he and I are peers, with too much experience in trying to make silk purses out of sow's ears. I agree with him wholeheartedly. I'm a retired Army officer, but I'm really a spook, having spent most of my career as an operator. I was last in the infantry as a sergeant and I'm not an analyst, but I sure know how to do the old wheat from chaff routine. Several old friends are still with the government, all now in senior positions, both military and civilian, and I'm astounded at how many still think there's a chance. Frankly, and I've told some of them this, I think 9/11 pushed some over the edge, to the point where the eagerness to do something, anything, overwhelmed common sense. And I also think this is prevalent Government-wide. To me, this is Vietnam redux, but even though the casualty count is far lower, I also believe continuation of current policies poses a far greater threat to the nation. Times have changed, and our nation—due to many factors outlined by LMN—is far more fragile than it was. This is why I've always thrown in a dissenting voice whenever AM (Exum) or his COIN coterie sing the praises of what we're doing in this part of world. I think they're amateurs, amateurs who must have snoozed through their history, political science, economics, psychology and sociology classes. Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. And the fact is, we can't afford to continue this, economically, politically or morally.
One of my fellow morning workout dudes is a retired CIA ecomonist, who's also been a college professor. We had a very interesting discussion this morning about how the intelligence community blew it during those critical years in the 80s when, first Andropov, and then Gorbachev, ascended to power. Very instructive discussion between a couple of sweathogs, as it focused on the role that biases and preconceived notions play in the formulation of national policy.
Gian Gentile has taken AM to task, with what I believe to be a particularly cogent notation: Deny it as he may, Exum is the establishment now. He and his fellow believers are now ascendant, and what they do and say has real-world effects on the nation. Gentile, my favorite Army guy, thinks Exum and his crowd should have been thinking more about the ramifications to the nation of what they were proposing; instead, they've always caviled by saying, "hey, we're just talking tactics; we leave the other issues to somebody else." I've long said that this, "it's my not job, man," is the rankest of copouts. I don't care if you're a sergeant, a captain or a general. If you're not thinking about the greater good of the nation, you're not thinking. Sure, orders must be followed by active duty personnel, but former and retired officers don't have such restrictions. It's always been interesting to me how Gentile, an active duty officer, is far more willing to contest conventional wisdom than are former junior officers.
SNLII makes a good case for Exum, noting that he's trying to expand his horizons. I agree, and I give Exum high marks for doing so. I'm not troubled by his failure to frontload this discussion with his own thoughts; I think he's genuinely trying to make sense of this mess by soliciting other views. I've used the Socratic method in teaching, and have found it to be effective. But it's only good if Socrates actually listens to and learns from the responses, rather than arbitrarily rejecting anything that doesn't fit preconceived notions. If you have that, you've got the US military and the US Government, two entities that don't like challenges. I'd hate to think of Exum like that. The problem Exum and the COIN community have is that they were once out of the box; now they're squarely in the box. Exum has given us a good opportunity to see if they can think outside of their box. Personally, I think their box is fatally flawed, but I'm willing to listen.
(1) Weman starts with the most widely cited and most questionable justification for the Afghanistan War. Al Qaeda’s bases in Afghanistan had no significant role in 9-11 (per the available evidence), and could be destroyed if re-established.
(2) There is little evidence — other than fevered speculation — that the Taliban poses a serious threat to the Pakistan army and government. The fifties had the ”bomber gap”. The sixties had the “missile gap.” We have “tottering Pakistan.” Can he cite any experts -- area experts, familiar with the region and its people -- that share his fears?
(3) His third reason sounds like a call for crusades. How many Americans would support such an effort? I suspect few. Also, as noted above, how many societies “stand against nearly everything we stand for as Americans”? Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Somalia, and many others. We have “abandoned” (an odd choice of words) many people to their fate. A call to reform the world is bizarre on many levels, and hardly a serious justification for the war.
(4) We cannot risk losing face! As noted above, that is another echo from the Vietnam, an argument for continuing the war used by “realists” like McGeorge Bundy. The reply — proven correct by events — was that America’s reputation has deeper foundations than any ephemeral prestige, and the real danger was committing our power to propping up a weak State like Vietnam (or Afghanistan). Note that, as with Vietnam, nobody cites actual allies worrying about this (it’s a quirk of our minds, not theirs).
(5) His conclusion is the weakest part. Does anyone say that “the US has no interests in Afghanistan in particular or Central Asia in general”? But he’s cited no substantial interests. Certainly nothing worth waging war over. We have interests across the globe. We rely on diplomacy and aid (military and development) elsewhere, and should in Central Asia as well.
Also this exhibits the broken window fallacy. Our resources are finite — including the attention of senior policy makers. Hence the need for relative rankings of strategic interests, for resources devoted to one could produce benefits elsewhere. This is almost always ignored by US geopoliticans, who typically seem to believe that America has unlimited wealth.
Assuming Publius, EMN, and Gentile are correct that the American presence in Afghanistan is so prohibitively expensive that it would do irreparable harm to the US in the long term to continue there as we are, how do we deal with the twin problems of al-Qaeda Central, and Pakistani Taliban elements looking to bring down the Pak government.
We can debate all day whether or not the US presence caused the rise of the TTP and other militant groups (see the heated exchange in the comments to the last post on this topic) but it doesn't change the fact that al-Qaeda still wants to attack the US, and there are plenty of extremists looking to bring about a nuclear armed, Islamist Pakistan.
Those who advocate ending the US presence in Afghanistan, what exactly can we do about this that doesn't involve such a heavy, kinetics-only focus that we just make everything worse?
I'm not sure how fair or correct it is to label the mr ex as the establishment.
I have been reading a variety of 'war blogs' (for want of a better phrase) for a long time now. Until about the middle of last year, most of these bloggers "faced the government" and dissented to varying degrees about the soundness of the strategy and/or execution of the wars in iraq and afpak.
now that a new administration is in power, the 'voice' of many of these bloggers has changed. they are no longer facing the establishment, with 'us' at their backs, they are facing 'us', with the establishment at their backs.
some have been absorbed into the establishment, and gone off air (phil carter being but one example).
but i don't think its fair to say that ex has become part of the establishment. my perception (based soley on consumption of this blog) is that if ex disagrees with the establishment he will say so. i expect it might look the same as the slow disillusionment we witnessed in blogs over the last decade with the bush administration's prosection of the war.
however some of ex's statements (especially in the various videos recently) jar, and stick out, and i feel they are trial policy balloons - "ex - run these positions past your audience and see if they hold together' . so he may be doing the establishment's work, i don't think he is part of it quite yet.
so i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, continue to throw in my 2 cents worth and watch for the day he shaves his beard...
Just to be clear, i don't think that what is being said has changed, just the perspective from, and voice in which it is being said.
"Those who advocate ending the US presence in Afghanistan, what exactly can we do about this that doesn't involve such a heavy, kinetics-only focus that we just make everything worse?"
During my counter-Abu M strategic review, I did the unfathomable. I talked to Pakistani generals!
Their candid advice: If you want to help Islamabad, leave Afghanistan. Why would they ever think this? Perhaps because on Sept 10, 2001 the twin Taliban forces weren't occupying much of NW Pakistan and threatening the government; bloodshed wasn't endemic along the fault lines of Pakistani culture and politics; and the government in Islamabad wasn't caricactured as a puppet dangling on the strings in Uncle Sam's mitts.
The real crisis in South Asia is NOT the US vs Taliban flux in Afghanistan. It's the security deficit caused by regional rivalries, the same contests that turned Afghanistan into a proxy war in the first place.
It sounds paradoxical to some, but peace in Kabul likely goes through Kashmir, and I suspect that the prospects of mending the divorce between India and Pakistan are about as likely as Exum eating McChrystal's latest oplans and pooping out some strategy.
You know, Carl, I'm tired of the erudite drivel that you're smearing across the blogosphere. Sure, it was informative and interesting a few months ago but frankly it's easy to shoot stuff down from the cheap seats. You're not providing a voice of dissent or a decent counter-argument, you're being a pain in the butt of the precocious teenage variety. We get it, you're smart (the, aw shucks bit where you downplay what you know is also getting really old). So could you please do something useful for a change? You have more to contribute than pointing out that everyone else is either wrong, dumb or both but, under your fancy verbiage, that's all you're really doing and you're on a downward trajectory.
Hahaha...PMSL!
Visitory at 10:13,
I really enjoyed your criticism of Carl's arguments from the "cheap seats" while you are engaged in the exact same act. Criticism in an anonymous format, no less.
Thanks for all of the comments/thoughts (I'll post some more in the comments over the next few days but I was gone all weekend). Lots of smart things by people with way more on the ground knowledge than I could ever hope to have. Just for the record, I wasn't advocating a global democracy crusade. Just pointing out something about the Taliban that is frequently forgotten.
You know, Carl, I'm tired of the erudite drivel that you're smearing across the blogosphere
Yeah. We sure don't need erudite, informed opinion expressed across the blogosphere. It's full of that.
I have never seen anyone diss another for being too smart or too funny.
Damn you SNLII, you smart, funny, erudite and humble asshole! Too bad that is all you have to offer.
Comment by Visitor on August 8, 2009 - 2:22pm
Here's my contibution:
Go kiss Hitler's backside, Jew-hater Exum.
Do you, by chance, define Jews as those who support Israel? With everyone else being, what? Dust? Met you before, I think. Thank all that is good it wasn't in a dark alley.
"First, increasing stability in Afghanistan and preventing Taliban control of the country deprives Al Qaeda of an important training ground, making an attack on the American homeland, American forces deployed abroad, and other Americans abroad less likely. Second, fighting the Taliban undermines their efforts to make further gains in Pakistan, which matters given that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and, if the Taliban gets nuclear weapons it would not be good for American national interests." - Scott Wedman
Apologies if the following points have been covered in the above comments, I haven't the time to read all of them.
What is to prevent a future Afghan government from 'cutting deals' with one of the Talibans (as they attempt to reconstitute) in the way Pakistani governments have, from time to time, in order to remain in power? The assumption seems to be that once the US leaves a security force and a relatively stable government that can control Afghanistan geographically, the country will be in an 'inert' end state. Won't the situation remain dynamic, with all the same players involved, and the temptation to use Afghanistan as a proxy still present? Our interests are NOT necessarily the same interests as the Pakistanis or the Indians or anyone else in the region. Even the regional hegemon in South Asia, India, with a much stronger and democratic central government, is dealing with a Maoist insurgency. Why the certainty that a strong central Afghan government or security forces will be able to prevent future disorder that may represent a portal by which Al Qaeda may return? How much physical space does Al Qaeda need for training? And this is all assuming that such a nation-building can be done in a time frame agreeable to the American people (who seem pretty confused by the strategy if judged by the flurry of articles and letters in both right and left leaning media).
The next point has been made by many others: that our current battle against the Taliban is actually destabilizing to Pakistan. It is asking for delicate internal rearrangements to be rebalanced which is difficult, and, well, destabilizing. Although, why is everything binary? It's possible more than one course can be destabilizing, which is not comforting.
(Thanks for doing this, btw, Abu M. This is very interesting and educational).
I was of the opinion....eight years ago that is, that the tolerance of the Taliban government to the presence of AQ camps in their territory was a de facto statement of support.
Benign support comes in all forms, and tolerance for a terr. org. is one of them.
So, when AQ drops our towers, regardless of the intentions of the Taliban's government, they, in cooperation with their tenets, own the results.
Then I discovered the truth.
Ouch.
Truth is one of those things that pops up out of the swamp of ambiguity, bites me in the ass, and makes me weep for a few days because the world view I held is completely and totally false.
The Taliban offered up Bin Laden to the United States.
Yes, the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to the United States and George "Where's my balls?" Bush said, "no." Probably Dick and Rummy said no, but still, their Mouth of Sauron echoed their wishes.
So....
That, and that alone disabuses our casus belli for Afghanistan.
We are the aggressors, we are the ones who wanted to go to war, and we are the ones in the wrong.
We are involved in an illegal war there, and there is no reason for us to be there...legal, or moral.
So, to conclude, the old saying, "the truth shall set you free" only works when your willing to listen to the truth, obey the conclusions of the truth, and act according to the truth...so, yeah, perhaps we should cut our losses, unwrap our arms from the tar baby, and GTFO of the swamp before truth breaches the surface to take another chunk out of our backsides because I'm telling you all...this Afghanistan fiasco is going to get very, very costly...we just won't see it day to day, but another four years when we look back we'll see we got nickled and dimed downed to a broke ass country.
And that...ladies and gents...is where we are at...right...now.
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