On My Way To Afghanistan

For seven-and-a-half years, the US military had a mission without adequate resources and without a sensible plan to kill Osama bin Laden and to annihilate the Taliban, and to deliver peace and prosperity to Afghanistan. We're batting 100 percent.

To highlight our stellar national failure, in each successive year for seven years the Taliban has grown stronger and more deadly. With the snow in the mountain passes now melting, the Taliban is about to kick off its annual ritual--the Spring Offensive. This should be the most violent annual ritual since the Soviets occupied Afghanistan several decades ago.

Lying on a padded chaise lounge in the Indira Gandhi International Airport outside New Delhi, it's three in the morning and I'm wide awake. In a few hours, I'll board Indian Airlines for Kabul and embed with various US military units and hopefully decipher what is going on in that country. As we know, what is going on is not good.

President Obama announced 17,000 US troops would join the fight, and Mullah Omar, head honcho of the Taliban, announced his own surge of troops. The former head of the British commando forces, the SAS, claimed our tactics in Afghanistan were "worthless," and the war nearly hopeless. The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper managed to remain only a little less pessimistic. Vice President Biden went to Europe to request more troops for Afghanistan and returned with a firm rejection. Ditto for Australia. It's not sounding good.

What, then, is the Obama Administration's plan to roll back this disaster moving full steam ahead? Without a plan, nothing good can happen, right?. What is true for the economy is true for foreign policy. Tomorrow the President will make his pitch for a new strategy, but today I'm flying to Afghanistan. So what will he say? Or more accurately, what has he already said?

First, President Obama will downsize US goals in Afghanistan. Forget about developing a full-fledged democracy; the country is not ready for prime-time. In fact, Afghanistan is not a country. It is a volatile collection of allegiance-shifting tribes and ethnic groups and warlords. Obama will focus on national security so Afghanistan does not return to being a platform to attack America. That seems realistic. The president has already floated the idea of talking to the Taliban, which was quickly rejected by Mullah Omar. No problem, Obama staked out the moral high ground. Now comes the crux of nearly every failed US military mission: strategy -- a word George Bush confused with that other big word, fantasy.

Obama's new strategy could be called the Afghanization of the Afghanistan War, although he certainly will not call it that. That sounds too much like the colossal failure, crafted by the duel geniuses of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, called the Vietmanization of the Vietnam War.

It does seem that when the United States screws up royally in Asia, it suddenly gets the brilliant idea to dump the entire screwed up mess on the home country military. Instead of our troops doing the killing, and the dying, have the home boys do the killing and dying. Obama will announce a large increase in US trainers for Afghanistan to double the size of the Afghan army and national police.

Yet, like in Vietnam, it may be too late in Afghanistan. Will US training and mentoring of Afghan troops be a stack of cards that collapses as soon as we blow out of the country?

I don't know -- but not knowing is not new to me. Three years ago, the night before the first time I arrived in Afghanistan, I wrote:

In my Paradise Inn room in neighboring Pakistan, I have been looking out the window at a dismal-looking building that is either half constructed or half demolished, I really can't tell which. There are piles of either construction material or removed debris, rods stick out of where the roof is going or where it once was. Two workers hammer on the rough brick wall, others sort through broken bricks of various sizes, one tiptoes on a wobbly scaffolding. I have been watching these workers for nearly a half hour and I honestly have no idea which way this building is going.

Societies are sometimes like that, it's hard to know which way they are going. Change is complicated, a drawn-out process with numerous detours and dead ends with lots of twists and turns making for a complex mix that easily obscures where you are headed. Amalendu Misra writes in Afghanistan: The Labyrinth of Violence, 'Most civil war-affected societies exhibit some forms of violence, instability and chaos in their transition to peace.' That is true. It is also true that most societies exhibit some forms of peace, stability, and order in their transition to war. Which is it for Afghanistan? Is it going up or down? Like the building next door, I don't know.

Three years later, we know which way Afghanistan was headed -- down! And in three more years, as the 2012 election heats up and an exit strategy becomes a hot campaign issue, will the United States have failed or succeeded in this Central Asian country? Will we leave Afghanistan after contributing to national stability or will the whole house of cards collapse? Will there be a desperate last helicopter off the roof of our Kabul embassy?

Unless we quickly adopt a strategy based on realism and one harnesses the Afghan people's desire for something better than perpetual war....

I glance at my watch, a few minutes past 6 AM. Pulling myself out of the soft chaise lounge, I walk toward the boarding gate. The long hallway is empty except for a few airport workers. Outside large windows a pink morning light is enveloped in a thick fog. It is quiet and eerie, which is how it always feels when going to a war zone.

At the boarding gate for Kabul, like for Baghdad a few years ago, like for Tirana in the '90s, San Salvador in the '80s, Beirut in the '70s, Saigon in the '60s, are rows of males (today a few females) sitting and glancing at each other and wondering who is that person across from them. Is he a US soldier or Marine in civilian clothes? Maybe a CIA agent? Possibly a humanitarian worker? How about a Journalist? But no one ever asks. There are only fleeting glances and quick guesses. Like the last seven years in America, when Americans never really asked what the game plan was in Afghanistan.

Now a new plan is coming, but will it be the right one? Is it too late, after seven long years, for any plan? Was there ever a time for a plan to succeed in Afghanistan? In three years we will know. Maybe in one year. Maybe this Spring Offensive.

Comments

[hrholmes]

Gee Stewart, look at the upside! While you are there you can get all the heroine you want while embedded with our troops guarding poppy crops for the warlords. There are also lots of burned up tanks and stuff lying around from previous invasions by other countries to hide behind too! It's been going on there for at least 1,000 years so you'll have job security as long as you can like avoid getting killed and shipped back to the USA, in a box, unseen, in the middle of the night, like garbage, like our friggin troops. Be sure to send lots of pictures of the disaster too OK?

[PHartman81]

Now that Obama has made it clear, sort of, of what he wants to do in Afghanistan, I think it can be called laying the foundations for the Afghanization of the war. That is, the 17 thusand US troops are to hold off the Taliban in the South, the additional 4 thousands from the 82nd Airborne are to quicken the transformation of the Afghan National Army, Europeans will jump in with increased trainers for the National Police, the economic and government specialists from the US are to make it possible for society to improve in the relatively peaceful Northern and Western part of the country, and later in the South and West. The guns and bombs are to hold off the Taliban until the other missions can improve Afghanistan society. Then it's in the hands of the Afghans. When? Who knows!

[indyleftist]

When you say that we need to shift our policy towards "realism", can I assume that you support everything about the Afghanistan except for the part where we promised them democracy?

[Stewart Nusbaumer - Huffpost Blogger]

RESPONDING FROM KUNAR PROVINCE, ON THE AFGHANISTA­N-PAKISTAN BORDER:

Good question. No, I do not support everything other than that whacky idea to build a democracy here. Eventually, Afghanistan may get an operating democracy, but that's up to Afghans. What I support is stopping groups from acquiring the ability to strike my home town, New York City, and any town in America.

Now, I’m not sure how that goal can be achieved, which is a major reason I’m now in Afghanistan.

Training the local military, when serious human rights instructions are included – after all, a military that respects the citizens will be stronger because citizens will assist the military – might work. I’m leery of trying to kill all the Taliban, except when really necessary, since those we kill become recruitment posters for more Taliban recruits. Breaking doors down in the middle of the night is a lousy way to win hearts and minds -- actually, it kills hearts and minds.

.Ultimately, it’s up to the people here. We can help them, when it’s in our national interests of course, but ultimately they will decide. Regardless of all the Vietnamese we killed, we did not win that war. It was their decision. The Soviets learned that in Afghanistan. Now I want to see how we can help, but not cross the line where it really becomes our war.

[jlevi]

But it can be very difficult to know when it was someone else's war and has become your war. That is, when the line is crossed. For the United States, it seems as soon as we get involved, it becomes our war. I guess because of national psychology and because we have so much military power.

In Vietnam, which I have studied, it's clear that we took over the war, and then when we wanted to hand it back to the South Vietnamese, they were not capable of standing on their own two feet.. And South Vietnam crumbled.

And I agree, that could also happen in Afghanistan.

[SOLERSO68]

you know, it may just be that you dont know enough about building, to know what the workers were up to.

[PHartman81]

Too often overlooked is what the increased number of troops will be doing. The media focuses on numbers, and igores the mission. If Obama sends more troops to just kill more Taliban then that won’t improve the situation but make it worse.

[Alethia]

May God be with you, Stewart.

[writerjohnny]

A "war" against poor people who have almost nothing to lose anywhere in the world can never be won.
If we had spent the 173 BILLION dollars spent since 9/11 on the war in Afghanistan on hospitals, manufacturing, agriculture and schools instead there wouldn't be any need for embedded journalists with US troops there. Good luck and stay safe!

[Konnie]

oh writerjohnny you are so silly. why would we spend money feeding, educating, creating jobs, educating
and keeping the people of afghanistan healthy when we can barely do it in our own country! The only way America can make its economy work is WAR . Got to keep those folks in the military industrial complex happy. All those lobbiests feeding the ever on-going campaigns of our so-called leaders,
who are doncha know making the very best decisions based on what's the best thing to do. who
would ever think they were be-holden to those military suppliers.­..........­.....after all no one really cares
how many muslims die.......­.......the­y are so crazy they blow each other up.............the whole middle
east is crazy - must be something in the sand......­..........