The Making of a Quagmire

Eight years ago, I wrote an essay titled "Confessions of a Quasi-Pacifist." I wrote the piece during a time when I, like many Americans, were trying to understand my feelings immediately following the 9/11 tragedy.

I concluded at the time, I was not the absolute pacifist I originally thought. There was indeed a threshold of evil that I was willing to cross with the use of force knowing, as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr cautioned, that made me susceptible to evil as well.

Ignoring Niebuhr's caution, I supported the effort to invade Afghanistan. If a sovereign nation knowingly provided a safe haven for those who caused the 9/11 tragedies, the U.S. had no other recourse.

But it wasn't merely supporting the invasion of Afghanistan. It was also providing tacit approval for the Patriot Act and fueling momentum to invade Iraq, which begat Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

Eight years removed things look different. America is now faced with the possibility of an inimitable paradox. President Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize while he simultaneously plans to unequivocally make Afghanistan his war.

What role will the previous eight years play in U.S. policy going forward? Hindsight informs us that the support for invading Afghanistan that was fueled initially in part by emotion and revenge is no more.

It has been reported that Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal wants a 40,000-troop increase in addition to the 65,000 soldiers already serving in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton supports this proposal, along with the Republican leadership in Congress. It's been also reported that Vice President Joe Biden opposes this policy.

I find the "follow the advice of the generals" philosophy problematic. It sounds simple enough, but that's its inherent flaw -- it's too simple. Generals don't make war policy; they implement it -- though history has proven that is not always the case.

It seems to me the first question that needs to be answered is: Why? Why is the U.S. still in Afghanistan? If this question cannot be answered succinctly it suggests the policy is not clearly defined.

Are we there to keep al Qaida in check or to limit the Taliban's influence? Is victory determined in the same manner the Supreme Court defined pornography: "You know it when you see it?" How much longer can the U.S. realistically sustain an indefinite war that has at best an ill-defined conclusion?

The White House has already suggested the policy will be somewhere between the two extremes of 40,000 additional troops and a phased withdrawal.

Doesn't it feel like we're headed for "stay-the-course lite"? More to the point, it feels like we're headed for the precursor of David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, which was The Making of a Quagmire.

One of the great tragedies of Vietnam, and there were many, was that it was known by 1965 that the war was not winnable. It is difficult to see who thinks Afghanistan is winnable when it remains a mission that is not clearly defined. We are 24 months from being there as long as the Soviets, whose 10-year war in Afghanistan ended in a disastrous stalemate.

It seems to me without the president clearly answering the following questions, his Afghan policy is a non-starter: Do we have a clear attainable objective? Is there a plausible exit strategy? Do we have genuine broad international and domestic support?

Assuming the Obama administration could answer these fundamental questions in the affirmative, which is doubtful, none of this factors into the U.S. ability to work with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government. Based on the most recent Afghan elections, they make Chicago politics circa 1930 look like a case study in integrity.

I'm assuming the list of Nobel Peace Prize recipients who were planning to sustain war is a short one. Perhaps the Nobel committee in Oslo was hoping to discourage the president's impending war policy with this award.

But it does appear the decision to drive off the cliff in Afghanistan in some form has already been made. The real question lies in whether the seat belts are secure and the front seat air bags are operational.

A word of caution to the president: The distance between being a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and perilously stuck in a quagmire is a nebulous one. There are no signs posted to inform you when you've arrived at the quagmire. It's a lot like the pornography definition: you just know it when you're in it.

Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist and blog-talk radio host. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him [e-mail] or visit his Web site:byronspeaks.com

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Comments

[hrholmes]

Afghanistan Quagmire accomplished years ago Byron. It's always been a 3rd world tribal area and probably always will be too. But hey, they do grow lots of drugs huh?

[vinny]

obama was very clear during his campaign that he would ramp up to the afghan war to "finish the fight against the taliban and al qaeda"... so this is not a question of what is our mission statement, this is a question of what's the best strategy...

obama and mcchrystal seem to think that we should be putting our kids out in the communities to mingle with the populace and cull out the taliban... i disagree...

check out the clip for the upcoming frontline documentary on obama's war... our kids are unprepared and the commanders are ineffective in carrying out these type of objectives... we don't even have good translators... like bush, obama is simply putting our kids in dangerous situations... and getting them KILLED...

obama's idea that he can win the hearts and minds of civilians after promising not to bomb them, but then going ahead and bombing them anyway is doomed to failure... afghans have lost faith in obama's promises...

a safer strategy against the taliban is to use US troops to protect the power centers, set up public institutions, and get the afghan army mobilized and out in the field doing this community work...

[Kaviraj]

A mission statement is not a plan.
Strategy? LOL.
There is no strategy applicable to Afghanistan, because it is not a normal war.
The population may one day be your friend and the next, it turns out to be the enemy and vice versa.
You cannot strategise against soemthing that is not an army. Strategies are applicable to armies and not insurgencies. The Generals want more troops - of course - and we should not reward that. Troops of a regular army are not capable to fight this "war". Terrorism is a police function and not one of the army.
That said, under the Taliban no poppies were grown and as soon as they were "ousted" - meaning dissolved into the population as indistinguishable from them - the poppies came back with a vebngeance to function as the means to finance the "insurgency". All these euphemisms for the fight for Afghan freedom do not make this war any more morally defensive. There is but one solution.

GET THE HELL OUT!

[Flavor]

If, we pull out we are damned if we stay we are damned, I frankly don't have a clue what actually this president is going thru for as his decision making on this horrible war in afghanistan, the innocent people there truely need help but on one hand those people there know their country well and they have all sorts of traps that our troops aren't aware of because they have a mind set of killing & destroying. I don't think none of us have the solution to the problems in that country. Right about now it appears they do not want peace but there are innocent people who live in turmoil daily over there and the poor children who are in dire need of love, doctor's care, ect.... the women who are treated less than a cockroach and constantly being left to feel unimportant. Something, has to be done but what.

[godlessdem]

Why are we damned if we pull out?

There are innocent people all over the planet who need help. Yet we chose this godforsaken "graveyard of empires" because a band of international murderers had training camps there and claimed that they had pulled off 9-11 without anybody's help. (If you believe that you are beyond help).

Will we be invading sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate female genital mutilation? Will we be invading the Soviet Union because the mob has taken over its oil and natural gas production facilities, thus depriving the people of their rightful wealth? Will we be invading India to put a stop to honor killings?

When you INVADE a country you become an INVADER and an OCCUPIER. That means you are the enemy. Why is it so hard for us Americans to understand that simple fact?

Send them help in other peaceful forms if they ask for it. Otherwise, let them work it out for themselves. We have problems enough to solve at home.

[Flavor]

Your right there are innocent people all over the world but we aren't all over the world we are in afghanastan, and basically there has to be a solution and I still say none of have it.

[vinny]

i think the majority of us recognize that the taliban allowed al qaeda to train up terrorists, and that if we left, the taliban would overrun the afghan government...

that is our unfortunate situation...

[FloresdelaHoz]

Afghanistan is another Vietnam. No more poor and middle class boys dying for a lie. Get out now and reserve the right to use our Air Force and long range missiles to rain hell in Al-Queda should they continue to cause trouble.

[Austintatious]

Afghanistan is already the proverbial quagmire, and the U. S. is already "perilously stuck " in it, up to our moral and fiscal axles and still sinking fast.

President Obama is on the verge of making this fiasco, now his fiasco, far worse. Indeed, this conflict is about to surge (yep, there's that word again) right past being "Obama's fiasco" to becoming "Obama's abomination".

It could not be more evident that America's large scale occupation of Afghanistan was, and is, terribly ill advised, and that it will never be less difficult to extricate than right now. Each new commitment or increase in troop strength will only make it harder to reverse course and leave, which we will ultimately do. When we do, things there will be just as bad or, more likely, worse than now.

It is a terrible situation for this President, although certainly not a surprise that he faces it. It would require remarkable political courage of President Obama to opt for withdrawal. We have heard many promises from this man regarding the issues most important to America. What we have NOT seen is the hard fight for, or the unwavering commitment and the political courage necessary to fulfillment of those promises. Will we see it now, or will this best opportunity this President will ever have to change course in Afghanistan go to waste?

[floridafun]

i dont recall the exact dates but i think these were what obama was doing in his first couple weeks..
1. decreed that interrogators must follow techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual when questioning terrorism suspects.
2. told top military officials to do whatever planning necessary to "execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq."
3. ordered the Guantanamo detention center shut within a year.
4. froze all white house staff salaries of $100.000.00 or more.
5. overturning the so-called Mexico City policy that forbids U.S. funding for family planning programs that offer abortion.
6. lifting Bush's limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
7. declared once again to restore science to its rightful place. "The days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over," he said
8. tells the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."
9. reversed a post-9/11 policy making it easier for government agencies to deny requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act.
10. repealed a Bush executive order that allowed former presidents or their heirs to claim executive privilege in an effort to keep records secret.
11. required closure of cia secret black site prisons abroad.

[Kaviraj]

Ah, yes, all the easy-peasy stuff. None of them very great accomplishments.

How about all the hard stuff?

1 Did not repeal the patriot act, but extended it
2 Maintained Bagram airbase as a worse place than Gitmo
3 Sold you out to Big Pharma on healthcare
4 Sold you out twice on that subject by pandering to Big Insurance
5 Gave all your money to the Big Banks
6 Left the homeowners in the frigging cold
7 Left the workers in the same cold
8 Did not prosecute warcrimes by the previous administration
9 Escalates the AfPak war
10 Remains in Iraq till you have forgotten it

Should i go on?

So the difficult things he shoves like sh*t before the broom to future dates or refuses to address them. I had great hopes for this man, but in the ensuing euphoria of his election forgot he is just another lying politician.
And no, I am not American so don't come on to me that these are repub talking points. That won't fly.
I am one of those Socialists from Europe.

[sawadee2000]

Alas, Mr. Obama will never listen to the voice of reason. The war cannot be "won"......never, no matter how many tens of thousands of troops we pour in. Mr. Obama doesn't not want to be labeled as the President who "lost" Afghanistan. Therefore, he will choose to allow the U.S. to sink deeper into what can only be described as The Mother of All Quagmires. Some day, we will leave there, but in the end the lives lost and the billions spent will not have change things one iota for the better.

[rickkkkk]

Many people supported the invasion of Afghanistan and now favor a pull-out. I feel the same. One thing that changed my mind is collateral damage to civilians. This goes along with any war but it seems to be a common occurrence over there. Killing people creates hatred which is expressed by the sniper in the hills who shoots and waits in a cave while American forces shoot back with thousands of dollars worth of ammo. We had a window of opportunity early on but it's gone. Before leaving we should arm all the women and give them combat training.

[Ergon]

It was a quagmire 8 years ago. It still is.

[mamalisa38]

Mr. Williams, I think we now see it. This is already a quagmire, as is Iraq. These wars are a nightmare started by incompetent, evil people. At what point do we stop sacrificing people, ours as well as innocents caught in the middle? It somehow seems wrong to destroy two countries and then wash our hands of them but what is the alternative? More death and destruction. It's time to end this insanity.