The Afghanistan Mess

Recent events in Afghanistan do not inspire confidence that the Barack Obama administration knows what it is doing. The administration's current review of its Afghan strategy, though coming disturbingly quickly after its first review, is badly needed.

The clearly fraudulent Aug. 20 election in Afghanistan has been a serious blow to U.S. strategy and has helped generate consideration of a midcourse policy correction. What is perhaps more worrisome than the election fraud, however, is that the U.S. government actually seemed to believe that this election would work out relatively decently. Of course the election had long been scheduled, and it wouldn't have been politically easy to have it postponed. But life had also radically changed in Afghanistan since the election was scheduled, and that's something the United States should not have brushed over.

The election would, the U.S. government apparently thought, mark a decisive turning point in the effort to create a legitimate, reasonably functioning, national Afghan state, and the public would be reassured that the Afghan effort was on the right track. The United States, its allies, and the United Nations went to extraordinary lengths and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to ensure that the election would be, if not "free and fair," at least digestible.

Elections in highly unstable, war-torn areas are always an uncertain thing. The results can be a turning point in establishing political legitimacy -- or they can freeze a bad situation or produce bad rulers. Clearly, Afghanistan was not in a position to hold a legitimate nationwide election. The 2004 election was also flawed, but at least then the operating environment was better with the Taliban having been largely thrown out of the country.

Five years later the military situation has deteriorated badly and President Hamid Karzai's government has been in place long enough that the United States should have understood how it would act in such a scenario. Once again, the American penchant for elections and the impetuous need to demonstrate "success" to prove the legitimacy of Afghanistan's government, show a new American dynamism, and fulfill badly outmoded legal deadlines have produced unhappy results. The United States now has to scurry to live with or try to reverse these results, depending on what it thinks is better for Afghanistan at this point. One can uncharitably ask: If the administration's reading of the Afghan scene is so poor in this case, why should we trust its vastly enlarged nation-building efforts to have better results?

12NEXT

Save over 50% when you subscribe to FP.

KUNINO

9:08 PM ET

October 8, 2009

A great Amrerican tradition

If the Obama policy for Afghanistan is a great big mess, this fits in with American tradition going back to the 1980s. Nobody's got it right. al-Qaeda empowered and armed thewre by the US in the 1980s; when the Soviets left, the US did not see any value in offering civilian help to the devastated and literally starving nation -- which then was taken over in succession by the heavily armed mujahedin and the heavily armed Taliban; George Bush tipped off al-Qaeda to get out of Dodge witgh chest-beatig speeches in Washington; opponents of Hamid Karzai seem to have been bought out of their challenges before the first of the two elections; Bush permitted the stripping of forces in Afghanistan to empower the Iraqi invasion -- thus giving the Taliban the message that the US was not all that serious in their part of the world; the Pentagon was shifting land ommand there between a remarkably unsuccessful series of generals -- one of them a USAF leader;this year we've seen a recent commander dismissed in a matter that seemed to boil down to the Pentagon suggesting he was failing, and he replying that on the contrary, he was achieving everything required in his mission statement. Current events suggest that the McKiernan side of this issue was the correct one.

Now we have direct command in the hands of a general originally sent to Afghanistan, it's claimed, to work out what help could be sent to assist McKiernan to achieve whatever was that month's strategic need; McChrystal came back with a message that seems to have translated into "Fire McKiernan, give me his job"; and then has time to journey to Lonn to suggest US practice is not good, and fly onward to Copenhagen for a phto op that seemingly screams "Mr Tarzan, Obama Jane". Who's minding the store?

Hard to hang this sorry record around Obama's neck. Remarkable that so little odium attaches to Bush's sorry record there.

STARFAST

11:27 PM ET

What's really happening in Afghanistan?

Maybe “the United States has been approaching Afghanistan with a naive self-righteousness and a mechanistic perspective“ because that is how the press does it too. This article is no exception. It is a wholly inadequate. The drivers of the war today are not even mentioned: drugs (which fund the Taliban), ISI and Pakistan Military roles in the drug trade, the evolution of what drives the Taliban: from religious considerations to making money, any realistic assessment of Al Qaeda’s grievances against Arab governments and the Western governments that support them, etc. Other things such as the presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of politically unstable Pakistan are also part of the story.
Mr. Abramowitz’s point about the mismanagement of the war of the Bush Administration is well taken, but that argument could have been much more effective without the somewhat irrelevant comparisons with the past.

Why can’t the press stop treating this like a sports match and start analyzing the fundamentals of the mess we are in?

TARQUINIS

11:28 AM ET

October 10, 2009

the Afghanistan Mess

I see no valid reason to be there at all. And, I see that all we have truly accomplished in eight years of war is the progressive destabilization of Pakistan. But If for no better reason, we should get the hell out of Afghanistan because we CANNOT AFFORD IT!

The war in Afghanistan is like the movie Groundhog Day. Over and over we do the same thing, until we learn the lesson but it seems we never do. America is trapped by its own implicit and false assumptions. We cannot formulate a wise foreign policy by looking in a mirror; rather we need to see the world in a cold-eyed reality. I used to blog on the reasons why this war in Afghanistan is so stupid, but I have come to understand that reason has nothing to do with it. Imperial arrogance is closer to the mark.

General MacArthur had one thing right: avoid land wars in Asia. So is there ANYONE who doesn't know how this movie will end?

Consider: Afghanistan is both vast, and a battle at the end of the world (i.e. logistics problem), at the historic graveyard of empires. We fight for reasons that make sense only in some internal political context to us. Kill bin-Laden, as if he were not almost certainly dead on account of kidney dialysis being pretty hard to do in a cave, or alternatively if he is still alive and we did find and kill him, he would become a martyr more powerful dead than alive.

The larger mission beyond simple revenge is impossible, shifting, or unknown, with everything we are doing making the situation worse, all entirely counterproductive to our own best security interests. The more Pashtun we kill, the more villages we blast and wedding parties we bomb, the more they are radicalized, and thirst for revenge. And of course, the Pashtun do not regard the Durand Line.

Just how many Americans know or care to know what the Durand Line may mean? And what it does NOT mean to the Pashtun? And what it DOES mean to the larger issue of the destabilization of Pakistan, where most Pashtun live? Or for that matter, who the hell the Pashtun may be at all?

My point being, the Pashtun have a strategic sanctuary in western and southern Pakistan where they are largely if not entirely untouchable (i.e. Vietnam redux) and where we have almost no intelligence at all.

Nominally, we fight in support of a puppet government (i.e. entirely dependent upon our financial, military, and logistics support) that is both totally corrupt and totally inept, and which the common people despise. We seek to build an Afghan army and police structure that they can in no way finance or maintain on their own, so that too is a road to nowhere.

Our own army is exhausted with repeated employments, and the PTSD damage to them will be immense. This it will end in defeat and withdrawal amid immense internal political turmoil, to no good end whatsoever. How the jingoes will shout; Who lost Afghanistan?

All the careerists know it. I use this harsh appellation because rather than resign and tell the truth, they will ask for more troops just like General Westmoreland did in Vietnam. Look at the faces of General McChrystal and Admiral Mullen. They both know how this will turn out, as per the reasons stated above. I am a mere student of history and an ex-soldier. They know it far better than me. The only thing they are really loyal to is their careers. Hey, money for my retirement is at stake! My reputation! Fight all the way to Stalingrad! Counter-terrorism instead of counter-insurgency! Victory is at hand, just a few more brigades!

And all this is ongoing at the same time the Iraq misadventure is going south, and the AIPAC lobbies who predominantly control our foreign policy thump every day to start a third war against Iran, for reasons of nuclear WMD which they do NOT have and may never develop, unless of course they are attacked.

Endless optional wars that have no existential bearing on our security will be our ruin.

America's new strategy review is vitally necessary. The Obama administration has gone from misstep to misstep over the last year.

BY MORTON ABRAMOWITZ | OCTOBER 8, 2009

(3)