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Obama and Afghanistan
OBAMA AND AFGHANISTAN....Michael Crowley talks to counterinsurgency guru John Nagl after a visit to Afghanistan:
Winning in Afghanistan, he realized, would take more than "a little tweak," as he put it to me from back in Washington a few weeks later, when he was still shaking off the gritty "Kabul crud" that afflicts traveler's lungs. It would take time, money, and blood. "It's a doubling of the U.S. commitment," Nagl said. "It's a doubling of the Afghan army, maybe a tripling. It's going to require a tax increase and a bigger army."
....Nagl's rule of thumb, the one found in the counterinsurgency manual, calls for at least a 1-to-50 ratio of security forces to civilians in contested areas....By Nagl's ratio, Afghanistan's population calls for more than 600,000 security forces. Even adjusting for the relative stability of large swaths of the country, the ideal number could still total around 300,000 — more than a quadrupling of current troop levels. Eventually, Afghanistan's national army could shoulder most of that burden. But, right now, those forces number a ragtag 60,000, a figure Nagl believes will need to at least double and maybe triple.
So how's that ragtag force coming? Joe Klein reports on his visit with British Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Armour in Helmand province last week:
Almost all the recruits were illiterate. "They've had no experience at learning," Armour said. "You sit them in a room and try to teach them about police procedures — they start gabbing and knocking about. You talk to them about the rights of women, and they just laugh."
....The war in Afghanistan — the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win — has become an aimless absurdity....The far more serious problem is Pakistan, a flimsy state with illogical borders, nuclear weapons and a mortal religious enmity toward India, its neighbor to the south. Pakistan is where bin Laden now lives, if he lives.
This has now become conventional wisdom: the real problem is Pakistan. So far, however, in the same way that plans for rescuing General Motors rely mostly on handwaving about "restructuring," plans for solving the Pakistan problem rely mostly on handwaving about "getting tough." Unfortunately, hardnosed details on how this is actually going to work are pretty thin on the ground. If Obama wants public support for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, his national security team better start providing those details pretty quickly.
i figgered youd regret the vietnam analogy.
Yeah, we fucked that up, but good.
A billion Muslims, fans, and no way can our righteous Christians kill them all...might as well learn to live with them.
As for Afghanistan, I talk of rapid troop decrease!
Why more troops (aka "re-invasion") is wrong:
The more troops the more they hate us. We have a bad habit of bombing wedding parties and causing havoc.
other empires have failed in their attempts to conquer Afghanistan. --see USSR, Britain.
We don't have the dough--the do-re-me, the dinero, the money. Face it, chaps, we're broke! Our charming Empire is over! No money to spend on even one more carrier battle group of F-22 jet, the petrol is petering out, the spirit is lacking and our leadership is sub-par,actually Roman (see Gibbons).
Time to bug out! No more invading countries and torturing their inhabitants, no more sleazy ponzi schemes that destroy economies around the world. Time to stay home, get out of the invasion business and chill out!
If this Nagl guru wants to waste his time, money and blood in Afghanistan, who can blame the Afghanis for taking him up on his offer. If this Nagl guru wants Americans to waste more time, money and blood in Afghanistan, blame the Americans for accepting his conventional wisdom.
Gurus have changed since the Sixties.
Does British Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Armour think Britain's borders around Las Malvinas are illogical?
Face it, chaps, we're broke! Our charming Empire is over!
I can't disagree with anything Dr. K says, other than to suggest (or probably more accurately, hope) that borrowing gobs of money & targeting it intelligently might at least save the country, and maybe/hopefully/please-god-please help stave off the annihilation of the planet as we know it. For a few decades, anyway. Fuck the Empire.
I'd just like to know: what is the intended endstate for Afghanistan?
If the gurus imagine an endstate with some political structure other than a decentralized semi-feudalism; if they suggest a democracy or some such... time to get a new guru.
It's time to draw down in Afghanistan. We won the war there. Osama has left Afghanistan, all of our objectives have been met.
Were I to have 10 minutes with Obama I would urge him to go very, very slow in Afganistan, Ask Russia. We have to learn that all the things we consider superior to the "enemy" don't necessarily count in this kind of confrontation. We gotta be much smarter and consider the real gains by any activity there. It may not be worth it. I smell another Vietnam coming on!
"Intended endstate" is right-- that's the real question there. Wasn't it the British commander who said bringing the Taliban back into a coalition was the only possible outcome?
It'll never be "stable" enough to run a functioning oil pipeline through-- Condi be damned, it won't be done-- and the only other thing anyone outside the area cares about in Afghanistan is to keep the opium crop down. Or up.
It broke the Brits and it broke the Soviets, and both had long contiguous land borders. How are we supposed to do better? It's a much harder place to hold than Iraq.
There seems to be no clearcut answer to Afghanistan.
An informal poll shows the public's evenly split about this too: http://pickfu.com/EHUOBM
It's gonna be Carmageddon on Wall Street tomorrow.
PC is another word for BS. The Afghans want our culture forced on them about as much as we want fundamentalist Islam and the submission of women forced on us. In the case of Afghanistan, PC is actually a form of racism: that our culture is so superior to theirs that it can't be possible that they don't want to embrace such superior institutions as feminism. It must be "bad guys" who are preventing the Afghans from switching to a culture so far superior to theirs since everybody craves democracy.
You can change the culture of a nation, but it probably take about a hundred years and a willingness to mow down a few thousand wogs demonstrating against colonialism every few years, as the British were fond of doing.
Afghanistan cannot be stabilized with foreign troops, so all this talk about how many of these and how many of those is just bullshit. The Afghanis need to establish their own regime(s), and we need to take a position with them that every time we see a training camp or any other form of support for terrorism, we will cross their boder and attack.
Iraq was always the easier of the two campaigns. Afghanistan poses a hostile and almost insurmountable physical environment, long, long supply lines, and no cultural ties to good government.
If we are to try anything in Afghanistan, we'd better lower our expectations about what constitutes success.
If we are to try anything in Afghanistan, we'd better lower our expectations about what constitutes success.
Point of information: we have been trying things in Afghanistan, for over 7 years.
I think we've(we=USA) already squandered all our(and their) opportunities for "good" outcomes. We've also pissed away most of the so-so outcomes and are facing a range of "not-good" or "bad" outcomes.
There was a window, in the first couple years, where we might have been able to prompt a viable state.
While the decision to focus on and invade Iraq may not deserve all the blame, it has certainly earned the lion's share.
This war is already Obama's first major foreign policy mistake. Get out.
"I think we've(we=USA) already squandered all our(and their) opportunities for "good" outcomes."
_______________
That's not necessarily so. It depends on what we define as a good outcome. Any kind of commitment to some form of modern governance would be a real plus. Any government that would not ally itself to Al Qaeda is the minimum requirement.
Nobody ever asks the Pashtuns what they want, not even democratic enthusiasts.
Dr. K can "chill out" if his family is killed, but I think most people want Al Qaeda eliminated. Afghanistan is really only relevant with regard to that.