Tom Friedman's column today (New York Times, December 6, 2009) is surreal. He approvingly recounts an interview of JFK with Walter Cronkite on the need for reform in Vietnam as the key to success in Vietnam, making an analogy to Afghanistan. Cronkite asked Kennedy whether the war can be won. Eerily, Kennedy responded "With changes in policy and perhaps with personnel I think it can." Friedman, however, fails to tell the reader the punch line. The interview was given on September 2, 1963. On November 1, 1963, a CIA-backed coup removed the President of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, who was then assassinated by the Vietnamese coup leaders. Kennedy was sickened by the assassination, especially in light of the fact that Diem's death resulted directly from a coup that the US Government had actively supported.
President Barack Obama risks leading the US deeper into the same kind of nightmare as Vietnam, with the same profound misconceptions and arrogance of the US military and the CIA. It just requires a glance at the picture on p. A29 of Sunday's New York Times to see how absurd the US decision-making process really is. Among the people in the room briefing the president, there isn't a single person with deep non-military knowledge of either Afghanistan or Pakistan. We see plenty of generals and politicians but nobody who knows about the people, culture, economy, climate, agronomy, extreme poverty, and traditions of the people themselves.
The surge is poorly conceived. The idea that Afghanistan needs just one short 18-month push to achieve stability defies the basic circumstances and history of the country. The country is impoverished, drought-stricken, heroin-infested, arms-laden, and infrastructure-deficient. Even Defense Secretary Gates noted that the actual deployment of the extra US troops would take considerable time because of the lack of proper roads and other infrastructure. Well, yes indeed. Perhaps that helps to explain the rampant poverty, the relative success of high-value-per-unit-weight crops such as poppy and heroin, and the scale of the challenges facing a country that has been enmeshed in war for thirty straight years and that was poor long before that.
The framing of Afghanistan's governance problems with the simplistic gloss of "corruption" is yet another trivialization of reality, exceeded only by the idea that Afghan President Hamid Karzai can and will turn off corruption at will, and notably in response to US pressure. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was on the mark when he questioned the ability of Washington, itself in an era of rampant corruption, to clean up corruption elsewhere. A worthy role for Richard Holbrooke, now the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, would be to root out flagrant financial mismanagement at the staff of AIG, where Holbrooke had served on the Board during the buildup of the recent financial bubble. The war industry itself, replete with powerful corporations like Fluor and DynCorp that receive billions of dollars in no-bid Pentagon contracts, are also a likely part of the Washington political momentum.
The fact of the matter is that Afghanistan is in urgent need of the basics for survival in one of the poorest countries on Earth -- seeds, fertilizer, roads, power, schools, and clinics -- much more than it is in the need of another 30,000 troops or added military contractors. Development aid directed to Afghanistan's communities, through the UN, could stabilize Afghanistan far more effectively at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of the coming $100 billion or so per year that will be spent on this military debacle. Yet such support is not forthcoming. Obama has barely acknowledged that General McChrystal's report spoke of winning the support of the population through socio-economic development and "immediate economic and quality of life improvements in accordance with Afghan priorities." As Friedman reports, Obama has disdained "nation-building" as "mission creep," thereby disappointingly echoing the Bush administration.
In fact, the US Government's long-standing disdain is for the Afghan people themselves, since there has been not the slightest effort for decades to think through their real needs and wants. As in Vietnam, this mission is all about us. And as in Vietnam, the US escalation has the possibility of causing much broader destabilization in Central and South Asia and the Middle East. Perhaps, as Bill Moyers powerfully demonstrated about Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War buildup, the current momentum for escalation may reside in the president's fear of right-wing attacks if he shows "weakness" by denying the generals' request for more troops. Tellingly, and disastrously, Johnson knew that escalation in Vietnam would not succeed yet he saw no alternative to escalation because he feared a perception that he was weak vis-Ã -vis the communist threat.
If we are to countenance this failed policy, at least let's put the surge to a vote. Rather than adding the costs of the surge to our soaring national debt, Congress should be pressed to raise taxes or cut other spending (health care? education? unemployment compensation?) to pay for it. Would the American people really want to pay an added $30-$40 billion for an expanded war, with identified tax increases or budget cuts? I doubt it. Congress, it's time to take a vote.
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Today a bomb killed 120....in Iraq, and this has been going on all year...
when we leave, I predict there will be chaos again, as these people will not be able to hold their gov together.
I'm not sure what we can do in Afgha. It may just be another depleting way of getting stuck there. that we can ill afford.I hope its worth it but have my doubts.
Can't be reelected with those numbers. I know it's early but a bad, drawn-out war and an economy that will never be what it was even three years ago (albeit under a false bubble of real estate)...let's say it doesn't look good.
Maybe real Health Care reform will save him. Afghanistan won't. Economy won't. Peace prize won't. Even a weak GOP field may not be enough.
Does that mean his presidency lies in the hands of Olympia Snowe?
That is a rather chilling prospect, don't you think?
Out of the other sides of their mouths, they were bemoaning that fact that anyone would put people's health and survival over their profits.
Yes, we should chase bin Laden and his crew, but they are not there. They may be in Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. Authorize a few CIA, Rangers, Seals (maybe even Blackwater) death squads to track him down. I may want to know if he is dead, but not too many details, and of course Mr. Phelps rules would apply.
Now we have Afghanistan with not a single jet, helicopter, submarine, warship. The 2nd poorest country in the world. They had an annual military budget of $ 122 million. And they are some how a grave threat? So we will have 100,000 troops guarding a waste land and mud huts for decades. While the war-profiteers loot whatever crumbs fall into the treasuring.
No wonder Obama made the worst speech in his career. Even he couldn't imagine Americans or West Point Cadets would buy the BS on the teleprompters. Perhaps he was awaiting a cream pie being thrown in his face.
I stress regression because [following WWII] it has become easier and easier to talk the U.S. populace into going to war. War industries were really cooking during WWII, and afterward the CEOs didn't want to give up the income. The U.S. had a strong international good guy image. The MIC capitalized on that. Propaganda became more sophisticated, and television was tossed into the mix--a powerful and persistent audio/visual message could be pounded into the people. (Orwell was a genius.) And, the tough guy image won elections. We used to hear the term "quagmire of Vietnam," but a more accurate description of the past 60 years of U.S. foreign policy is the "quagmire of war." Whether it's called war or conflict or police action, the focus and modus operandi are the same.
But you're right--we went right into the trap. And this one may be our last.
They know a whole lot more about the serious security threat to not only the U.S. but to all the West and Europe with The Taliban and their cohorts Al Qaeda, and every American hating and modernity hating Jihadist moving back and forth between Afghan and Pakistan with a mutual goal of getting their hands on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
There is no comparison with the real security threat AFPak is and the fake threat of the "domino theory" used to build up in Vietnam.
Obama inheirited a no win situation in AfPak caused by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld incompetence and neglect. Radical Islam be it the Taliban or Al Qaeda is a real domino theory and there is plenty of evidence of it around the world......But it's trigger is in AfPak and the border between Afghan and Pakistan. And we must disrupt it, and weaken it there or the consequences will be unthinkable.
Besides the President:
Gen James L Jones
Hillary
Susan Rice (UN Ambassador)
Dennis Blair (director of National Intelligence)
Leon Panetta (director of the CIA)
Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to AFPAK
Gen David Patraeus
Thomas Donilon, (deputy national security advisor)
Rahm Emanual
Adm Mike Mullen
Joe Biden
Robert Gates
David Axelrod
Lt Gen Karl W Eikenberry, ambassador to Afghanistan opposed to sending more troops
Gen Stanley A McChrystal
This was not your Bush round table of "Chicken Hawk" neocon yes men! This was the best and brightest this country has to offer covering all aspects of the debate on all the bad choices Obama inheirited regarding what to do about AFPAK. Please get your facts straight when you comment!
Jeff Sachs makes good points but should realize that we can't succeed in Afghanistan and should just pull out. If the Taliban ever again take power, we can do what took us just a few weeks to do more than 8 years ago--ally with the opposition and hit them with a short, violent military strike so they cannot govern centrally and further push the Afghan people (and especially women) backwards. No one who has seriously studied Afghanistan or worked (or served) there can believe that the Obama formula will work. Lost cause at this point.
Yep. This Plan has no chance whatsoever. Zero. Nada. Zippo. Anyone who has ever worked there on the ground for years amid the real Afghans will tell you this. In 18 months or 180 months the Afghan Army is just not going to happen and anyone who things other wise is completely deluded..
Maybe a "Withdraw from Afghanistan" movement/organization could be centered around Matthew Hoh. He's visible and has the current credentials.
The eternal optimist portion of me just won't die.
Consider this. Some of us were taught to think in a way which was called "liberal". Once upon a time that had an honorable meaning which included openness to improved means and methods. Today significant parts of our people adopt "positions" and cling to them strongly, not because they understand them, but because they "seem loyal to our kind" and do not require laborious thinking. People who are are intelligent become "elite" and not trustworthy. Observe the way that many less wealthy, who stand to gain from government programs, lead the protests against those programs. Observe that popular opinion does not connect to the real causes of the national debt. People resiliently opposed learning real facts. Lyndon Johnson was frightened enough by this that he sent tens of thousands of men to their deaths rather than confront it. I can only imagine that President Obama has similar sensations.
We must invent a new name for liberal thinking because it has taken such a bad name.
We must stop pretending as though lazy and mendacious thinking is valid thinking.
We must have the courage to confront this demon in our midst.
How refreshing to see you don't want to impose some structural adjustment on Afghanistan, as you did on Polan and Bolivia.
There all government spending was eliminated, much to the dismay of students, retirees, the sick etc.
Mr. Sachs, it is so nice to hear you preach social services to the people od Afghanistan. They say that the sign of intelligence is the ability to change one's mind.