Robert Pape: To Beat The Taliban, Fight From Afar

nytimes.com:

AS President Obama and his national security team confer this week to consider strategies for Afghanistan, one point seems clear: our current military forces cannot win the war. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander there, has asked for 40,000 or more additional United States troops, which many are calling an ambitious new course. In truth, it is not new and it is not bold enough.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[buttonz]

06:12 PM on 10/19/2009

What many people don't know is that this exact strategy was used for almost 10 years before 9/11. Our lack of proximity resulted in our terrible intelligence and our lack of impact. This used to be what fly-boy generals used to advocate thinking that air power can solve any problem. Not to mention this strategy is similar to Rumsfeld's tactics. Remember, before we went to Iraq most Generals scoffed at the idea that we could get away using as few troops as we did to secure the country, but good ol' Rumy and like minded people who thought that ground troops were either minor and barely necessary got what they wanted. Why do you think we did so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Pape doesn't even realize he advocates the security policy of the first 6 years of the Bush administration.

[gde]

04:46 PM on 10/16/2009

Remotely controlled bombs are the ultimate terror weapon. I do not see how the "air power strategy" solves anything. It certainly does not solve the IFFN problem. Then again, the US military gave up on trying to do IFFN almost 20 years ago, probably due to the removal of the USSR as a threat to invade western Europe.

[S1m0n]

10:24 PM on 10/15/2009

The US will not find a local partner who is any less 'corrupt', because they don't see this system as corrupt. It's the way things work in Afghanistan, and when it works - which is often, but not always - coalitions can shift, reform, and power can change hands without (this is the good part) without a new civil WAR! It's always a good day when something like that happens.

This is what Afghan political culture gets them. It is far more functional than what the US is offering, because this 'democracy' you keep spouting about seems to come with a war. Or three. Theirs works better than yours, and they're getting right fed up with patronised about it, too.

You're not going to change two and a half millenia of political culture in half a decade. The Afghan power-brokers coalition-building negotiation process is a finely-tooled machine, and far more functional, in its context, than the half-baked process the UN was supposedly imposing.

[wadenelson1]

12:52 PM on 10/15/2009

Overall, a truly excellent editorial. 5 Stars.

[ibsteve2u]

12:33 PM on 10/15/2009

"Early this year the United States started what it calls the Afghanistan Social Outreach Program, offering monthly stipends to tribal and local leaders in exchange for their cooperation against the Taliban insurgency."

In short, afflict Afghanistan with precisely the illness that the U.S. now suffers from?

The belief that your behavior is dictated by how much money is in it for you?

Brilliant - if you want to lose your nation to those who are best at greed.