Let’s say you invaded a country whose government supported and shielded terrorists who had killed three thousand of your citizens in brazen attacks on its most visible symbols and cities. Let’s further say you invaded that country with only a few hundred special forces troops, threw millions of dollars at unaccountable warlords who had been chased out of that country’s capital for their horrendous crimes against humanity during a vicious civil war that utterly decimated the remaining infrastructure that wasn’t already destroyed by a decade of war with the Soviets, and then gave each America-protected positions of power near their traditional power bases. Now let’s say these horrific warlords were defended by high-ranking members of your government against local complaints of ethnic and tribal favoritism, drug trafficking, murder, rape, and torture, because they pledged fealty to your country. Let’s say, too, that you cut or froze all reconstruction aid and support so you could invade another country that had nothing to do with those original terrorists, and for years kept that first country desperately short of cash, development expertise, and troops and local trainers to provide security.
Now let’s say there is a growing chorus of people saying that adding more troops and increasing the effort to develop the country’s infrastructure won’t actually help it because that country is just sick and violent and what could we do in the first place anyway.
Would that make any sense to you?
Yet that is the message, most recently promulgated by Rory Stewart but now more and more people with short memories and no ideas, that is slowly gaining traction in American press. And unfortunately like Ted Rall’s insane ravings about the country, this message has tiny bit of truth but requires an enormous amount of deception and ignorance to believe.
Bartle Breese Bull joined the fray today in the New York Times, complaining the current number of NATO troops (about 50,000 rather than the 71,000 he claims) is far to heavy a presence to achieve American aims there, arguing that Afghanistan has never mattered in the global struggle for Islam, and that if we really wanted to punish terrorism we would occupy Hamburg instead of Kabul and rely on fortified bases and surgical strikes on “terrorist targets as they emerge.”
Of course, in doing so, Bull misses the point. I don’t know why he would advocate withdrawing into fortified bases and embassies and relying on SOF and air strikes, since this is the strategy universally credited with throwing Iraq into chaos and giving the insurgents there free reign to entrench control. I also don’t know why he thinks withdrawing to embassies and fortified bases would somehow discourage Taliban, Hezb-i Islami, and other militant group attacks on American forces. Further, was he alive in the 1990s, when the American strategy WAS to keep a hands-off attitude on Afghanistan, “engage” whomever happened to be winning the civil war, and lob cruise missiles at camps we thought were used by al-Qaeda? I seem to recall that not working very well.
My favorite is his claim that Afghanistan is insignificant to Islam because Mohammed never preached there and there aren’t any major Shia shrines. This must explain how Muslims from around the world were rallied to defend Afghanistan in the name of Islam during the 1980s, or how Mohammed Omar was able to claim the title Amir-ul-momineen when he wore that cloak, or how that insurgency remains a rallying point for radicalized foreign fighters claiming to fight in the name of Islam.
Ahh, but Bull claims Afghanistan is not, in fact, an insurgency, and that Iraq was easy because it was just an insurgency. Which, considering he brags about writing a history of Iraq and not, umm, Afghanistan, tells me he really doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about. “Do you know how hard this would be,” he petulantly asks, I imagine in the voice of a Scott Thompson character.
Well, yes it is difficult. And it takes a lot. Simply crossing your arms and saying “boo hoo this is difficult” isn’t an argument for whether or not it is worthwhile. Pretending Afghanistan can be thrown to the wolves and struck from afar is precisely the kind of thinking that got us into this mess. That Bartle Breese Bull ignores this is very telling—he knows and cares about Iraq. Why should writing about Afghanistan require any study beforehand?
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Ah, I was wondering when you’d write something on that idiotic Op-Ed.
I could barely finish it.
But hey, that’s what democracy is all about: Even idiots are allowed to waste paper and ink
Thomas Friedman wrote a column a few weeks ago warning that Afghanis were getting just as impatient as Iraqis with our occupation forces, and cautioned Democrats from now claiming Afghanistan as “the right war.”
My frustration with the war is this:
The enemies we seek to destroy have a base in Pakistan. It’s like having a bee hive in your back yard. You can just keep killing the bees that come into your house and hope someone else takes care of the beehive. Or, you can take out the beehive. Which will take longer?
We give billions$ to Pakistan, whose ISI tried to assassinate Karzai (according to the CIA, as reported by the NYTimes) and use the billions to upgrade their military to keep up with India. They’re not doing anything about the beehive.
Someone please explain the logic of our policy to me. Please.
Gosh, I’m so glad you’ve written something that exposes the idiocy of his article. Who is this guy?? Does he even know anything about Afghanistan?? Evidently not.
The worst is that this is becoming the neo-con party line: The fight isnt against AQ or any defined group of enemies, the fight is against “islamofascism” as a idea. What is needed is a western police-state and anti-muslim pogroms, not nationbuilding. Or to put it in another way, these guys dont want to fight terrorism, they want to fight Satan. Wich would be funny, like the UFO cults of the 90s were funny, if they didnt have the ear of the republican presidential candidate through Hagee and the lads. In this makebelieve land of theirs, Iraq is a sucess and stands as a shining beacon and monument to the strength of the US lifestyle. The new and revised reason for invading the relatively secular Baathist dictatorship was to set an example. Mission accomplished.
It seems to me that a disconcertingly large percentage of the US policy community are slipping into unreality. MC Cain wants to “take on” Russia, and to hell with Afghanistan, ecology and x other geopolitical factors. The presidential debate is about “character” and not about possible solutions and plans for the future. Its like the crazies have taken over the hospital. To them, this is all a Wagner-opera where nothing is real and everything is symbolic. Again, it would be funny if it wasnt so damn frightening.
fnord. We did win Iraq. Don’t you read Michael Yon and Bing West? That war is over, and we won, but we still need to keep several hundred thousand troops there for a few more years to make it stick.
As for the rest… yes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one of our puposes here is to highlight idiotic or illusory thinking from the foreign policy establishment. Frankly, it is beyond a full time job, even just looking at Central Asia and the Caucasus… and especially in times of crisis. A case in point is the recent Charles Krauthammer column blithely adding a parenthetical that Gori, Georgia was “apparently” the birthplace of Josef Stalin, as if he either didn’t even bother to find our, or he just read it in wikipedia and wasn’t sure it was true or not.
People listen to that crap, and they take it seriously, and people like him get on TV and repeat their ignorant ramblings about conflicts they don’t understand ALL THE TIME.
And yes, it is maddening.
Foust: In a sense the US *did* “win” Iraq, it just took 5 more years and x trillion dollars over budget to make it happen, and the necessity of a permanent garrison staying there forever in order to make sure that it doesnt fall apart again. The term “pyrrhic victory” leaps to mind, as does Mussolinis invasion of Greece. The cost is Afghan. I would love to see general Petraeus force-assessment plan for the next 4-8 years, thats quite a logistical challenge.
But: I do not understand the whole McCain trip: Wasnt he supposed to be the only rational republican, a straight shooter with foreign policy as his speciality? How come he has gone all russo-phobic when it is obvious that sucess in Afghanistan must at some point involve Russia? And is he (and his advisors) really buying into this more and more dominant anti-islam meme that is spreading on the far right?
I’m only going to do it this one time because it’s the only instance in recent history in which it is warranted, but to Krathammer’s credit, he wrote “appropriately,” not “apparently.” From there, he declared WWIII on Russia.
“Now let’s say there is a growing chorus of people saying that adding more troops and increasing the effort to develop the country’s infrastructure won’t actually help it because that country is just sick and violent and what could we do in the first place anyway.”
I think if you re-read Rory Stewart’s article (or either of his two books), you’ll find that that isn’t his argument.
“…now more and more people with short memories and no ideas, that is slowly gaining traction in American press.”
I would challenge you to watch Rory Stewart’s Authors@Google talk on YouTube. He has an incredibly nuanced understanding of the history of Afghanistan and plenty of ideas for the future.
In all honesty, I find your critique overblown. In other words, you’re ‘talking big’, without backing up your argument with substance. In academia, that is symptomatic of not understanding your subject. Sorry.
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