Afghanistan-A Way Forward
As the President prepares his Tuesday address to the nation and Congress prepares for hearings on the war, I sure hope everyone is reading the cogent analysis of Thomas Johnson (Naval Postgraduate School) and Chris Mason (Center for Advanced Defense Studies) entitled Refighting the Last War; Afghanistan and the Vietnam Template. Analysts have compared Afghanistan to Vietnam but often backed away from a detailed comparison. Johnson and Mason show the parallels to be absolutely spooky.
As Jeffrey Record further notes, "the fundamental political obstacle to an enduring American success in Vietnam [was] a politically illegitimate, militarily feckless, and thoroughly corrupted SouthVietnamese client regime." Substitute the word "Afghanistan" for the words "South Vietnam" in these quotations and the descriptions apply precisely to today's government in Kabul.
They also completely discredit the idea that the Afghan Army (the new "Vietnamization Strategy") is capable of defending the rural population.
The Pentagon continues to put out the (true but irrelevant) figure of 90,000 ANA soldiers "trained and equipped" since May 2002, not mentioning that perhaps 32,000 combat troops remain present for duty today. Like the ARVN, ANA recruit quality is poor, virtually all are illiterate, readiness is low even by the lenient standards imposed by pressure to show progress, and drug use is a large and growing problem. Behind the smoke and mirrors, the "official" annual desertion rate is down from a high in 2005 of 30 percent to "only" 10 percent, but the AWOL definition hides a lot of the desertion.
Ultimately they point us towards one ray of hope, the role of local tribal elders as the locus of political power.
A culturally adept policy would seek to reestablish stability in rural Afghanistan by putting it back the way it was before the Soviets invaded in 1979. This means re-empowering the village elders as contrasted with the current policy of trying to further marginalize them with local elections(and thus more local illegitimacy).
Johnson and Mason suggest that the Army deploy Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT's) made up of 80 American soldiers and 100 Afghan soldiers in each of the 200 local districts in the South and East (where the Taliban are strong) in support of the local tribal elders. They are also harshly critical of the paltry State Department efforts to aid local reconstruction.
Ultimately the "war of attrition" strategy embraced by Republican leaders and Pentagon Hawks will fail in Afghanistan, just as it failed in Vietnam. Here's hoping Obama will point us in a different direction and that Carl Levin's hearings with McCrystal can point us towards a strategy that allows the natural strength of local tribal culture to be our ally.
The best way forward would be a way out. Leave and contain. The tribal elders theory sounds good to outsiders but how do we know these aren't really tribal warlords? I'm somehow doubting that they're classical liberals who see their power as derived from the people they govern. I also don't think I'm letting the perfect get in the way of the good here. Supporting some sort of hereditary tribal system could well fall under the heading of "arm our future enemies" which is something we do all too frequently.
November 30, 2009 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
A way forward?
What most of us want is a way BACKWARD, all the way outta there!
Bring our brave soldiers home!
November 30, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fuck this hippy-dippy COIN shit.
Just. Get. Out.
November 30, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jon - Although Obama may not describe all the details on Tuesday evening, I expect that his Pakistan/Afghanistan strategy will encompass the kind of negotiated tribal arrangements you recommend. These will be vital, but not sufficient, and so a vigorous counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism military component, together with an infusion of civilian infrastructure resources will also be necessary.
Being a realist familiar with both our earlier success in Afghanistan as well as the failures of many other past endeavors, Obama will seek achievable objectives - to suppress the insurgency in selected regions of the country, thereby averting a Taliban takeover of the entire nation, and permitting indigenous forces (including tribal leaders) to maintain this degree of stabilization after we leave. Ideologues on the extremes of the debate may insist either that we pour in massive military resources in search of an elusive total victory, or conversely, that we begin the process of orderly withdrawal, leaving Afghanistan to resolve its own problems, and imagining that these will have no consequences for our own security. In my view, neither extreme reflects a realistic assessment of current circumstances, and neither will be taken seriously. Those responsible for the welfare of the nation, unlike some of their vociferous critics, can't afford the luxury of wishful thinking, and are compelled to act within the boundaries of what is possible. Within those boundaries, I believe Obama's plans are reasonably likely to succeed in their modest goals. Since those are the plans that will be implemented, we had best hope they succeed.
November 30, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't for a second think those of us advocating withdrawal will even get a fair hearing but it's not because we're, as you say, "unrealistic" in our assessment of the situation. Leaving Afghanistan mostly to its own devices will have consequences for our security. But so does keeping troops there. There's no security-neutral decision.
It's tempting to want to think that we can pick the right tribal leaders who will enforce some sort of order on our behalf. But experience tells us that these very leaders will likely turn on us (or the people will turn on them) and we'll find ourselves in an even bigger mess.
When one of these tribal warlords winds up on the U.S. most wanted lists you guys will stop calling me unrealistic, right?
November 30, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it important to distinguish between warlords and a dangerous insurgency. The Taliban would welcome Al Qaeda attempts to destabilize Pakistan and the security of its nuclear arsenal. They are an enormous potential threat to the U.S. Afghan warlords have no interest in exploding a nuclear device in the middle of New York City, and restoring a balance among competing warlords is not only achievable, given the history of the region, but a reasonable precaution for keeping New York safe.
No alternative is without disadvantages, but between warlords and the Taliban, I think the choice is clear.
November 30, 2009 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
As usual, Fred Moolten's shameless cheer-leading for a war WHERE HE WON'T HAVE TO RISK HIS SORRY ASS is based on nothing!
How would YOU know what the "Taliban would welcome," you sad old clown?
November 30, 2009 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just did something that I have never done in my many years here - and that's report this comment for abuse. You're out of control, GJ, and way out of bounds.
Fred writes many things people can disagree with, and many commenters have disagreed with him. But he expresses himself with courtesy and an even temper, and anyone who cares to put in even a modicum of intellectual effort can point out for others the precise areas of disagreement with him.
Childish, lazy temper tantrums are not going to produce better policies in Afghanistan. Grow up, man up, do some homework, drop the foot-stamping and the abusive tantrums, and start putting together some points that serious readers have to reckon with.
And drop the ageist crap, sonny.
By the way, Fred did serve in the US Army.
November 30, 2009 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
And then there's the reluctance of citizen Afghani to be seen with, let alone have any American military in their homes. If the Talaban hear of it, citizen(s) Afghani is never seen again.
Referring to our support of a corrupt South Vietnamese regime (and our support of the corrupt Afghan regime) my (drafted) husband used to write me letters from Korea questioning why he was being 'forced to eat Korean dirt' to keep the corrupt regime of Singman Rhee in power.
Given that it's our third time around - Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan - at this exercise in folly, we might consider the truism that there inevitably comes a time when repetitive behavior goes from being a habit to a medical diagnosis.
November 30, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely agree, colleague ...
The Afghans may have noticed that the foreigners are apostates, eat pork, kill civilians, do not speak the local language, have women soldiers, gamble, drink alcohol, bring prostitution ...
They aint from around here, you could say. The foreigners alarm the Afghans, I would bet.
I never see any of this mentioned by American experts, in neckties, at institutes.
November 30, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phelicity - You've described one of many reasons why a premature disengagement from Afghanistan would be a serious error. Our main reason for remaining engaged involves our own national security interests, which would be seriously threatened by the destabilization of the Pakistan/Afghanistan region if the Taliban took over the nation. However, the Afghan people themselves have frequently reported that they welcome our protection against Taliban oppression, but fear we will leave before that protetion can be sustained indigenously, leaving them vulnerable to Taliban retribution. The common sentiment among Afghans is - "We want you leave, but not yet." It's a sentiment shared by the Obama Administration, which on Tuesday will announce a plan to continue vigorous efforts in Afghanistan but not efforts that are endless. Timing is crucial, or as Shakespeare put it, "Ripeness is all."
November 30, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just give them time, what's the rush in leaving? It's only been 8 years!
November 30, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes and BTW let us note that we went there some reason that is now completely forgotten ... were we trying to catch the bad guy with the beard ?
Tall fellow, hiding out somewhere over there ?
Now we stay there to fight anyone who wants to fight us for being there.
November 30, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Santa?
November 30, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure; Santa, OBL : poh-TAY-toh, poh-TAH-toh
And now an official report is out about Tora Bora : oops, they let the man go ... it is official now.
WTF ? Was a deal made ? Sure smells like it.
November 30, 2009 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
And yes, BrianS, you've arrived at a tautology - we must stay in Afghanistan in order to defeat those who don't want us in Afghanistan. (The nonsensical, illogical characteristic of a tautology is well expressed in the statement, either it will rain tomorrow or it won't.)
The objective of the Taliban (and probably bin Laden) is to take the Muslim world back to the 15th century. The typical American conceit is that the Afghani people are incapable of thwarting the Taliban 'objective' and are too stupid to pull it off and are so inept that their efforts will always meet with failure. (And of course, perish the thought that perhaps the Afghani might be perfectly happy to return to the 15th century - to hell with the Americans?)
In the mean time, our presence in Afghanistan is and will continue to be merely a deterent to their objective, an added stumbling block, doing nothing but preventing them from defeating the Taliban movement.
(On the other hand, it might be a good idea if some foreign nation occupied and ran this country because at the rate we're going, we might could use the help?)
November 30, 2009 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Destor - It's been eight years of neglect and eight months of attention. It will take more than months to achieve our Afghanistan/Pakistan goals, but they are achievable, and failure to try is an invitation to disaster if the entire region is destabilized. That's "an inconvenient truth" that armchair commentators can ignore, but presidents can't.
(Actually, it has only been about six years of neglect. Our initial efforts in Afghanistan were extraordinarily successful, despite dire warnings of failure, but we then took our eyes off the ball).
November 30, 2009 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fred is right fellow TPM crybabies.
There are 42 nations with troops in Afghanistan and if Obama were to cut and run from this Bush/Cheney fiasco he would be forever labeled as a weakling and quitter.
The right would pronounce him as a conscious instrument of the international Jihadist conspiracy and half the nation would believe it.
This is not 1989 and as much as many Afghans leaders are lying SOB's the people of the region do not want to live in a 15th century Taliban world, they must know that the time is coming soon when they must be responsible to avoid that fate without NATO troops.
December 1, 2009 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a second Vietnam analogy -less direct but probably more applicable- namely that in which USA today is parallel to the USSR of a quarter century ago, whose Afghan disaster was, in turn, often seen as the "Soviet's Vietnam."
At any rate, however, analogies to Vietnam were no less obvious, pertinent, and pressing during the long slumber of Cheney-Bush incompetence than they are today. There is no excuse for that Hypocrite-Republican incompetence, there is no excuse for the spineless Democrats failing to do a damn thing about it for eight years, and it is an absolute outrage that Mr. Taplin (and, not to single him out, most other commentators as well) continue to steadfastly ignore this history of towering idiocy. The operating assumption has to be that the next time a bunch of foreign fanatics blow up something in America, the country will have learned nothing whatever from this monumental stupidity and will again act like a pack of raving fools massively injuring themselves for eight years afterwards.
Wake up slumbering sixpackers and aging hipsters! The feel-good '60s and '70s are long gone. Terrorists and neo-con tricksters are winning. The "Last Best Hope" is well on its way to being transformed into the Most Asinine Decadence and Decline.
November 30, 2009 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read and circulated the Johnson/Mason article last week. Jon is correct about the "spooky" part.
But, I think Fred Moolten writing here is correct about what are modest, achievable goals, part of a "necessary war" that has to be concluded to be just. A third withdrawal that fails, again, is not just. Various proxy war players attempting to "bleed" each other in Afghanistan is not just. Just war is the only kind we should attempt, and, even then, only when "necessary", as I think this is and that Barack Obama always insisted it was.
I would add that we should be prepared to lose, sometimes. Asserting invincibility is civilian vanity -- not a military virtue. Being of Southern heritage, I always gagged when Nixon claimed during Vietnam that "Americans never lost a war!". Huh, my folks lost big time from Second Manassas to Pea Ridge. We are from Texas, but we do not make idle threats about "secession".
Which brings me to what may be one of several non-trivial, non-Vietnam analogies:
First, that the GOP proposes a war of escalation as the alternative to a war of attrition is not surprising. They have done that since WWII, when they wanted Patton to invade the Soviet Union and us to start dropping atomic bombs.
But, Barack Obama is not leading a coalition of Southern Democrats and moderate Republicans. He has no post-Civil War coalition that, in effect, gave most of the War, Navy, Treasury, Interior, and Commerce portfolios to the GOP. I do not think that he as drunk the neo-con Kool Aid.
No, he is "inexperienced" but "confident" in the manner of Abraham Lincoln. That is nothing like those Democratic Presidents with a lot of experience or virtue -- like Buchanan and Davis. It is not like those as had to or wanted to govern -- like Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton -- in coalition with the other party.
The GOP wants this and all wars to be seen as a matter of ideology/religion. But, those are rare, probably just literary. This is not one, for sure.
I am not sure we begin to understand exactly what Fourth Generation Warfare is about today. And, as in most medicine, we may have to come up with a cure by trial-and-error without understanding the etiology of what we are dealing with.
Here is my main thought as to the difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan: Afghanistan is a country wracked by over 30 years of proxy wars that we are part of whether present or not from time to time on the ground.
Afghanistan is not a nation which will end a civil war and become united once the colonial, post-colonial, neo-colonial foreign troops are gone. On the contrary, the proxy wars will continue or expand, especially if and as various nuclear ambitions become involved.
The COINistas propose de-escalation as a tactic. They may or may not, yet, understand how to do that. I certainly do not know. My son, a Captain, is one of those figuring this out, but I am too old for that stuff.
However, I am sure anything involving nuclear ordnance is a strategy -- and not one we or should be forced to or let anybody else resort to, if we can prevent it.
November 30, 2009 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
The paper includes many points of comparison that are not fully developed. For instance the point made about how both the North Vietnamese and the Taliban received funding and material from outside sources could have gone further and pointed out how the Soviets were our enemies in the Cold War while the Pakistani ISI and Saudi Arabian backers are parts of governments that we consider to be our "strategic partners." That aspect alone makes turning the Vietnam War into a template a bit of a clover leaf to cover the activity of certain extremities.
In addition, no reference is made to the problem of "our" legitimacy after decades of only seeking our national interest in the region. The Vietnamese saw us as a bunch of guys who took up where the French left off. But the Afghans know exactly who we are and what we have been. In some ways, the call to restore tribal forms of legitimacy makes us players on the level of the ISI, setting up proxies to fight the other proxies. But how that makes our presence more legitimate is something that needs to explained.
Another point brought up by the paper calls for some reflection:
This remark is a two edged sword. It points to how the State Department's deeper involvement in the Vietnam War didn't overcome the defects of strategy used then while stating that anything like a better strategy in Afghanistan will require a huge build up of a lot more than military assets. Saying something like this goes well beyond the way the overt objectives of war permit the pursuit of covert objectives. It questions whether there is a capacity to fight in the way recommended at all.November 30, 2009 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Never a word from any Afghans ... the American debate goes on in the absence of any non-American facts or opinions ... goes around in the usual tiny circles ...
Some Afghans are making big money from the Americans - these are easily identified by their view that we should "leave, but not yet..." ... we see these guys on TV from time to time.
Do Mr and Mrs Average Afghan want foreign soldiers in their neighborhood, shooting up the place, drinking alcohol and doing all sorts of outrageous things ?
Americans love and should love their soldiers. Thus there is a big blind spot: we fail to imagine anyone that could not love our soldiers.
If it takes twice as long as WWII to reach a stalemate, it is clear no 'victory' is ever going to happen. But Americans are unable to give up WWII as their model for all wars. The American view is usually rounded out with a long harangue about Viet Nam. The American experience in Viet Nam is a conundrum for Americans - it contradicts the happy WWII model.
Total victory with Unconditional Surrender is the sweetest possible end of a war : there is no need to consider the world view of the enemy - he is completely crushed.
However when the enemy is not crushable, we have to study up on the views of, and listen to the ideas of, the enemy. The prospect of trying to understand Afghanistan is so daunting that the beard-pulling debaters keep trying to find a way to 'victory' ... in a debate that goes around and around ...
December 1, 2009 12:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
My Afghani friend, in constant direct contact with friends and relatives still in Afghanistan, says that the Afghans have reached the point of utter disgust (bordering on hatred) with America (and other nations) for supporting Karzai. One can hardly blame them given how he has been raping their country for years.
But I have a question. What about the private contractors in Afghanistan? As of last year, there were more of them than military personnel in country. Will we up their numbers also. The figure of $1 million/year/soldier has got to include contractor costs - a Blackwater security guard earns $1,222/day; a sergeant earns $71/day.
December 1, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks colleague - I want to hear what the Afghanis think. Not surprised to find they are grossed out.
What we hear back in the USA is so limited and lipsticked-up and lacking information that we end up having a meaningless debate.
I read on a soldier's blog that only 7% of personnel at the largest US base in Afghanistan ever go outside the perimeter. Of course there are reasons for this - but what are they ? If we send 10,000 more personnel does this mean only 700 of them will leave the gate ?
The money being raped out of our treasury is a disgrace. We never hear the details but there must be some extremely rich people buying up yachts and diamonds all over Washington. An enterprising reporter could learn the details with a little work.
December 1, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fuck this parça kontör hippy-dippy COIN shit.
November 18, 2010 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
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December 29, 2010 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink