HOTSPOT: Afghanistan
It's a mess. It has a newly-reelected president, who may or may not have won by stuffing ballot boxes, and a hornet's nest of insurgents, intent on imposing a Flintstone society of beards, burqas and banishment of all outsiders. In the midst of all this are thousands of western troops, most of them American, intent on defeating the Stone Agers and helping the country move into free, modern times. It seems an impossible task, and it sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?
By James Dobbins
In February, just a month after he took office, President Obama ordered an additional 17,000 soldiers and marines to Afghanistan. Weeks later, he dispatched 4,000 more.
In his own review of strategy for victory, the new American commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, reportedly concluded that he needs as many as 40,000 American troops above current levels. Anticipating this request, many Democrats and a few Republicans are questioning the wisdom of sending any reinforcements, and some have instead begun to argue for a substantial drawdown.
Beyond that, polls are showing that Americans are increasingly skeptical about this conflict, and citizens of other nations contributing troops, such as Britain, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, are even more negative.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Now that U.S. involvement in Iraq has finally begun to require fewer resources, Afghanistan is the new focus of American and European anti-war sentiment, and increasingly Obama's critics are drawing on the analogy of Vietnam. They assert that the United States and its allies are bogged down in a long, inconclusive conflict in support of a corrupt and incompetent government against an elusive, popularly based enemy operating out of an untouchable cross-border sanctuary.
In fact, the two societies, Vietnamese and Afghan, and the two insurgencies, Viet Cong and Taliban, could hardly be more different. Yet the conflicts may, in the end, have a similar impact on American public opinion. And that could have a similar impact on their outcomes. The most decisive battles over Vietnam were fought for the heart and minds of the American people and the most decisive defeat was in the U.S. Congress. The contest for Afghanistan is now being conducted over this same terrain.
In 2008, President Obama campaigned on a promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq and reinforce those in Afghanistan. The first pledge generated the most comment at the time. Then, 10 days after Obama defeated Senator John McCain, President Bush effectively removed withdrawal from Iraq as a source of controversy by committing the United States to removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2011.
Debate over the second pledge - redoubling U.S. efforts in Afghanistan - has been growing ever since.
The military situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating when Obama took office and continues, with mounting violence and expanded insurgent influence over large parts of the country. Opinion polling shows waning Afghan public support for the U.S. and NATO military presence and for the Afghans' own government over the past several years.
Afghan opium production is down this year, but the drop may be due in part to depressed prices from bumper crops in previous years. Plausible allegations of widespread fraud in presidential elections two months ago portend an even more fractious political environment and diminished public support for the Afghan government in the future.
Obama and other supporters of the engagement in Afghanistan cite the attacks of 9/11 and argue that without U.S. and NATO forces, Afghanistan would likely again become a sanctuary for a global terrorist leadership intent on more attacks against the United States and its allies.
The president has moved away from his predecessor's emphasis on democratization as a rationale for that American presence. At the same time he has stressed that helping the Afghan government win the confidence and support of its people is key to American success and eventual withdrawal. Doing so, he has argued, requires that the population be protected from Taliban intimidation, and this in turn requires additional U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces until sufficient new Afghan military and police can be trained, equipped and deployed.
Critics of the growing troop commitment point out that al Qa'ida is largely absent from Afghanistan, having found refuge in neighboring Pakistan. Facing its own fundamentalist insurgency, Pakistan has largely lost control of its frontier regions bordering Afghanistan.
Obama's critics recall Afghanistan's long record of successful resistance to foreign incursions, from the British in the 19th century to the Soviets in the 20th. They argue that as long as both al Qa'ida and the Taliban can find sanctuary in Pakistan, the conflict in Afghanistan will remain an unwinnable side show.
Instead, they propose that the United States cut back its military commitment on the ground and keep al Qa'ida off balance and on defense by using air and missile strikes from afar, as it is already doing against terrorist networks in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
For years, the war in Iraq diverted resources from Afghanistan. Obama has characterized Afghanistan as a war of necessity, in contrast to Iraq, a war of choice -- and a bad one at that. Yet as controversy over Iraq fades, this comparison, perhaps accurate and certainly powerful in its time, has dwindling impact. In its place is a new controversy, Afghanistan as the new Vietnam.
There's no debate about how that war turned out, but little agreement on why. The insurgency in South Vietnam had been reduced to manageable proportions by the time American troops departed in 1973. Counterinsurgency thus largely succeeded, yet the war was still lost when North Vietnam launched a conventional invasion in 1975. Vietnam thus offers material for both sides in current debate over troop levels in Afghanistan. Those who argue for a better resourced counterinsurgency campaign can point to the tactical and operations successes in Vietnam. Opponents recall the strategic failure.
Unfortunately for General McCrystal's advocates, it's the latter image that lingers most strongly in our national psyche.
James Dobbins was special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo during the Clinton administration, and the first envoy for Afghanistan in the George W. Bush Administration. He is the author of After the Taliban: Nation Building in Afghanistan (Potomac Books, 2008), and directs the RAND Corporation's International Security and Defense Policy Center.
Professor Dr. Stanley Collymore.
pick a side
finance them & get out
There will always be those who push this away and cling to violence; they are criminals and should be treated as criminals, not elevated to the status of enemy combatants through war.
Following is a commentary on our need to adjust our strategy in Afghanistan:
http://www.examiner.com/x-11326-Liberal-Examiner~y2009m10d7-Difficult-decisions-abound-for-President-Obama-on-eighth-anniversary-of-Afghanistan-War
Afghanistan has its own cultural, strategic, political and moral challenges and they are NOT the same ones that drove Vietnam.
That having been said a few historians would like to have a word with our little warhawk President. Mainly because the last one was too stupid to listen to a fire alarm in a burning building and we hope this one can get it through his head that Afghanistan has never ever in history been a place where people went to win wars. It is a place where Western armies grind their forces until they finally have enough and leave. The only way to defeat Afghanistan is either Alexander the Greats method, marry into the local tribes (Note: she may or may not have poisoned him later) or go for Ghenghis Khan's method and build a few pyramids out of heads until the locals are either all dead or get the idea you are serious. Somehow I think we are not up for either of the successful historical models so lets get out now before we follow the British and Russian models and leave in pathetic retreat.
We should be threatening less involvement, not more, to potentially scare Kharzai into trying to govern more effectively. We, as outsiders, cannot solve the inherent internal governmental/cultural problems (and the two are hugely intertwined -- graft and oppression are traditional) without willing help from Kharzai. He may be content to suck at the teat and flee into exile upon the pullout (and at this point, collapse) at our expense, but I think we should set the bar higher for our so-called 'allies.'
If the political reform doesn't happen, there's no point. Even with the political reform, we should be drawing down, not stacking up. Coddled, they will continue in a fugue state until we leave, or until we throw them to the wolves. If they were never meant to be, it's cruel for us to keep them going.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/
As has been pointed out by more than one person, no invader has ever come close to succeeding in Afghanistan, including some that were a lot more willing to kill everyone in sight.
Since the US has the technology to randomly kill anyone, anywhere on earth with flying killer robots, there is no reason to be in Afghanistan. The US should just leave and let the political situation sort itself out and if the US needs to "nudge" the results, we can use the flying killer robots to change the dynamics.
To show how ridiculous the argument for staying in Afghanistan to prevent zillions of dire things from happening, I would like to note that the CBS show "The Amazing Race" has been in Vietnam for the last few weeks. That is, ALL of the dire predictions about Vietnam have proved to be completely and totally false. It is very likely that all the dire predictions about what will happen when the US leaves will be equally wrong.
As a result of very faulty thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, almost 60k Americans died and over 300k were wounded with almost 2000 still unaccounted for. On the Vietnamese side (north and south) over 1.5 MILLION people died and many more than that were wounded.
There is absolutely no reason to stay in Afghanistan.
Millions of South Vietnamese were NOT slaughtered when the US left.
Yes, A few people did die and some left, but now Vietnam is doing just fine. That is, there were no long term negative effects from a nationalist movement driving out the invader (actually the invader's surrogate since the US replaced the French who had invaded in the first place). Keep in mind that the Nationalist movement was fully supported by the US during WW2 when it was fighting to throw out the Japanese. The real problem started when the French tried to retake control and the US refused to help the Nationalist movement keep out the French.
Although there are major differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan, the reality throughout history is that invaders get driven out sooner or later. Since we are going to lose anyway, why not just get out now and save some money.
Afghanistan is not worth one more American casualty.