Afghanistan: The "Good War" or Vietnam 2.0?

[Gewehr98]

I believe there's a difference, MB.

Israel gets constant reminders about terrorist threats on an almost regular basis.  It sucks for you, but that's how it goes.

We haven't had a really good one for just over 8 years, now.  Our awareness here is somewhat cyclical, and will swing only when another event gives it a push.

Few remember Pearl Harbor, and the memory of 9/11 has already begun to fade in some circles.

Internet Keyboard Kommandos though we are, it really isn't healthy to live every day in Jeff Cooper's Condition Orange. (Although if I lived in certain parts of Israel, I'd probably be in that preparedness state more often than Condition Yellow.)   

[MicroBalrog]

I hope you didn't somehow understand my post as an implication that America should somehow imitate Israel. On the contrary, I find the "permanent emergency, forever" approach to the problem very counterproductive.

[Iain]

I hope you didn't somehow understand my post as an implication that America should somehow imitate Israel. On the contrary, I find the "permanent emergency, forever" approach to the problem very counterproductive.

What I also find interesting is that "permanent emergency" describes a good deal of the anti-terrorist legislation and efforts in the UK (ID cards, liquid on planes, IT databases tracking all movements in and out of country etc) since 2001.

Outside of parts of Northern Ireland, and certain dubious legal practices engaged in, I don't remember the portion of my life leading to the IRA ceasefire as being like this. Still no bins in most railway stations though.

[grampster]

Alexander the Great had 4 years of the "fiercest battles and grave losses to his army, physically, mentally and financially."  He didn't really succeed, imho, except that he married the daughter of a local chieftain after he went on to central Asia and then come back to Afghanistan with 100,000 conscripts and only conquered 4 areas, then goes back to India and not long after dies.  4 satraps rule the 4 areas of A'stan after his death, but basically they become absorbed back into the local tribal culture after a time.

In otherwords, it might be better to withdraw, maintain a covert presence if possible and contain any exportation of "terrah" using stealthy methods of selective "removal" of troublesome folks.

[Perd Hapley]

Yes. But is that what we have been doing as a society? As in, obviously some people have been, but I think it's not all that much of a stretch to say that people in the West (Americans to a lesser extent than Europeans) had lost some of their freedom.

Furthermore, it is not possible to eradicate terrorism, just like it isn't possible to eradicate murder. Of course, this does not mean the police should not prosecute murderers, but imagine we declared an 'emergency' until all murder is eradicated. Wouldn't this emergency last forever?

I'm not sure where we disagree here, if at all.  It seems we both deplore the notion of sacrificing liberty for security.  And I think we both agree that murder, terror, and other evils can never be "eradicated," but should still be fought at some level. 

One area where I would disagree is your apparent belief that thinking of anti-terror efforts as a "War on Terror" or thinking that "the world has changed" is necessarily the sort of fear-mongering that leads to infringement of liberties.  I just don't think that's the case.  And I certainly don't see a problem with my local police being "at war with murder" or any other crime, on a permanent basis.  I rather hope they are.  I think the Libertarian Party could safely refer to their free-market platform as a "War on Poverty," without turning to "Great Society" programs. 

But within the movement itself, less 'tough-on-terror' people such as paleoconservatives and libertarians, had been marginalized on this basis. As far as I understand its, guys like Pat Buchanan have been driven entirely out because they could not provide a 'solution' to terrorism.

I have read in several sources – and now, I cannot back this up, and I will happily admit being wrong – that before 9/11, Bush and his team were planning to focus on spending cuts throughout the Presidency, and that after 9/11 they had been forced to change this policy, in part to preserve their political capital for the task of backing up the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know if it is true, but it seems tragic to me that a giant opportunity to continue what Reagan had started had been wasted. And at least in part (with Iraq) it's still not clear whether that was a good idea to even do that.

People like Pat Buchanan were already marginalized. 

I get tired of the logical fallacy of "we could have done that, but now we can't do that, because we're doing something else."  Spending billions more on national defense just gives more urgency to the idea of cutting spending in other areas.  The problem is not with the post-9/11 policy, but with the pre and post-9/11 leftist fallacy that we must spend trillions of dollars on unconstitutional, counter-productive and/or just-plain-wasteful government programs. 

And, really, how could one defend a Bush administration that decided to ignore terrorism in favor of cutting the budget? 

[MicroBalrog]

And I certainly don't see a problem with my local police being "at war with murder" or any other crime, on a permanent basis.  I rather hope they are.

Actually, this is the perfect analogy.

Murder is evil, as I am sure everybody agrees.

Yet police forces throughout the world manage to struggle against it, arrest murderers, put them in prison, and reduce crime rates, without declaring an emergency. Normally, that is.

Now imagine there was a particularly grisly one in your town, maybe nvolving an ax and a troop of Girl Scouts. Would it be advisable to declare a 'war on murder' then, to (say) suspend trial by jury, and quadruple the amount of police until murder was eradicated entirely, and state 'we either crush murder entirely or we don't)? No, the way to handle this would be through the existing mechanisms of police officers and district attorneys and fair trial. There's no need to change the rules each time a grisly horrible thing happens.

I get tired of the logical fallacy of "we could have done that, but now we can't do that, because we're doing something else."

Political capital is limited. The attention span of the public is limited. If you spend your political capital on promoting one thing, you can't spend it on another.

And, really, how could one defend a Bush administration that decided to ignore terrorism in favor of cutting the budget? 

This is a logical fallacy. I've never advocated 'ignoring terrorism'. I'm not sure why you think I did.

[Perd Hapley]

Yet police forces throughout the world manage to struggle against it, arrest murderers, put them in prison, and reduce crime rates, without declaring an emergency. Normally, that is.

There's no need to change the rules each time a grisly horrible thing happens.

I don't know that any Western nation has declared a permanent "state of emergency" over terrorism.  Perhaps in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack, but I don't think either of us would have a problem with that.  Of course, I may be ill-informed. 

There's nothing inherently wrong with changing the rules after something happens that exposes a weakness or insufficiency in the status quo, but I think I see what you're saying. 

But again, I think we're just having a semantic argument, even while we basically agree.  I just wish people wouldn't get hung up over phrases like "War on Terror." 

Political capital is limited. The attention span of the public is limited. If you spend your political capital on promoting one thing, you can't spend it on another.

Wow, for once you're speaking like a political realist.     But what I proposed was that the two issues needed to be promoted at once.  As in, "we must de-fund x, y and z, to fund the G,W,O and T." 

This is a logical fallacy. I've never advocated 'ignoring terrorism'. I'm not sure why you think I did.

Maybe "ignoring terrorism" were the wrong words to use, but you did suggest that Bush should have put more emphasis on cutting spending than national defense.  Let me quote you:

...Bush and his team were planning to focus on spending cuts throughout the Presidency, and that after 9/11 they had been forced to change this policy, in part to preserve their political capital for the task of backing up the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know if it is true, but it seems tragic to me that a giant opportunity to continue what Reagan had started had been wasted. And at least in part (with Iraq) it's still not clear whether that was a good idea to even do that.

[MicroBalrog]

But again, I think we're just having a semantic argument, even while we basically agree.  I just wish people wouldn't get hung up over phrases like "War on Terror." 

I don't think it has anything to do with GWOT. I can easily part with the term. I think it's a general intellectual failure of modern society and how we debate issues in the public square.

The mass-media love scaring us and being morally outraged and so forth. Each time some smacktard shoots people in a school or college we hear of a gun violence emergency which leads to the idea that we must reconsider our gun laws. This is not unique to the United States – this has happened in Britain and Canada and Germany. Every time something horrible happens the media use the opportunity to hammer us about how scared we should be and how everything is different now. When we find some gruesome case of child abuse, we stampede to reform the CPS system so it's easier to 'protect' children by taking them from their parents, and so forth.

I have nothing against the military aspects of the anti-terrorist operations that America is engaged in around the world. What

Maybe "ignoring terrorism" were the wrong words to use, but you did suggest that Bush should have put more emphasis on cutting spending than national defense

My argument in a nutshell is two-fold on this:

1.As a reasonable human being, I believe it is reasonable to temporarily have agendas other than individual liberty when your nation is facing destruction at the face of an existential threat. When the Nazis and the Japanese are coming to rape your houses, burn the horses, and ride away on the women, it's justifiable that, in the face of real emergencies and a real existential threat, you introduce a military draft, and military censorship, and emergency taxes. When Soviets are menacing America, it is reasonable to have US involvement all over the world trying to deter Communist expansion.

But the difference between then and now was, first of all, that these hostilities had a defined end. When Germany and Japan were defeated, most of the emergency provisions slowly went away. When Vietnam ended, the draft ended too. America has historically been very good at this. But now we have an undefined period of emergency (what is 'Terrorism'? Are we going to fight until every last terrorist is dead'). How on Earth can it be over?

Furthermore, the terrorists do not pose an existential threat to the United States. At worst, they can carry out a few more murders – they have been so far less dangerous than ordinary criminals. Just as ordinary criminals can be dealt with through the ordinary legal system, the terrorists can be deal with by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and other government agencies. The threat of 20,000 illiterate idiots is not commensurate at all with the threat once posed by the USSR, Germany, or Japan. There are more Crip gang members than Al-Quaeda members. Where the Nazi threat justified an emergency response, those guys do not. Even in Israel, I believe we overreact to the threat of Hezbullah and such organization. To react like this in America is ridiculous.

2.Consider the following experiment. Suppose you had a choice to either retain the status quo, or set America – and by extension, Western Civilization – free. Suppose you could do it overnight. Imagine being able to press a button, and the Welfare State crumbles and goes away, overnight. Thousands of people who are in prison for having guns too short or too long are immediately freed. The graduated income tax is instantly repealed. The leftists are vanquished on every possible front of human endeavour. Government shrinks 70% or more.

The downside, of course, is that America quits on Iraq and Afghanistan. I would argue that this would be worth it – if such a thing were ever on the table.

Which it isn't. I suggest however that if, instead of creating the DHS and waging the war in Iraq, we could be made freer, then we would be better off as a civilization, in the long run. This does not mean that I want to 'surrender to the terrorists'.

I mean to say that greater individual liberty is a far more important civilizational goal at the moment than defeating a group of evil, and yet completely inept, illiterate people.

[Perd Hapley]

Internet Keyboard Kommandos though we are...

Hey, noob, I'll have you know I'm a Tactical Operator - Internet Loquacity Expert Technician (T.O.-I.L.E.T.)  Show some respect.


Micro, I think we agree on that first part.  As for part two, I don't know why you pose that experiment.  Bush wasn't presented with that choice.  He did some things he thought he had to do, to deal with a situation that changed.  And it's not as if the administration didn't deal with other things.  Remember the tax cuts, or the attempt to save Social Security, or the infamous Immigration "Reform"?

[seeker_two]

Hey, noob, I'll have you know I'm a Tactical Operator - Internet Loquacity Expert Technician (T.O.-I.L.E.T.)  Show some respect.

Sgt. Flush....is that you?....everyone thought you died from the chlorine attack at the battle of Charmin....

[MicroBalrog]

Micro, I think we agree on that first part.  As for part two, I don't know why you pose that experiment.  Bush wasn't presented with that choice.

Which I never said he was:

if such a thing were ever on the table. Which it isn't.

I am using an extreme exaggeration of the issue to point out where my priorities lie.

I do however believe that Bush's tax cuts – and I love tax cuts! - were only beginning to scratch the surface of the problem The Administration had essentially ignored spending and regulation as issues (as compared to what Reagan had done in these areas), not so much because Bush was a great fan of spending, but because, I think, they had only this much political capital to spend.

[Perd Hapley]

I understand all that, but you're still over-estimating how much the GWOT got in the way of the domestic agenda.  Just as an example, Bush spent a lot of "capital" on the immigration issue, that he could have used to cut spending, etc.  I fear you may be making the same mistake (about the Bush administration) that some made about the Iraq War vis-a-vis the Afghanistan War.  A lot of people seemed to assume that, because the media, punditry and politicians were fascinated with the Iraq War, that the military or the Administration had forgotten about A-stan.  Just because Bush is remembered as the GWOT president doesn't mean he wasn't doing other things. 

One might also ask how much "Reagan Reform" Bush really wanted to do, or how much he could have gotten through.  We have seen how spend-thrifty was his Congress. 

[Jim147]

Sgt. Flush....is that you?....everyone thought you died from the chlorine attack at the battle of Charmin....

If Fistful ever disappears I'll check mt M1 septic Tank to see if he is trying to drive it around.

MicroBalrog, I haven't talked to my old friend from Israel in about five years. Your post's remind me of our talks. Thanks.

jim

[roo_ster]

I've come to believe that the political aim with both war theaters is to attrit our military capability while beefing up resumes for future bureaucratic advancement within the ranks.  I don't see how anyone can seriously think that our strategy in either Iraq or Afghanistan, after all this time, is addressing the real and deeper issue of how we secure our own national interests for the long-term.

We now have the most veteran-heavy modern military on the face of the Earth.  Yes, their opponents have been irregulars, but they have still BTDT.  IOW, any other regional/great power would be insane to challenge our veteran military, as such veteran organizations are much more effective than green formations.

Careerists will take care of each other, sure enough.

Personally, trying to make a decent country of Afghanistan to be a fool's errand.  I figure we'll have to bomb them out  or drain the swamp periodically in perpetuity.

[Ron]

Personally, trying to make a decent country of Afghanistan to be a fool's errand.  I figure we'll have to bomb them out or drain the swamp periodically in perpetuity.

QFT

[MicroBalrog]

Just as an example, Bush spent a lot of "capital" on the immigration issue, that he could have used to cut spending, etc.

This is also true. But I would argue that Bush doesn't exclusively own the problem. I would argue conservative leadership in general dropped the ball.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

This is also true. But I would argue that Bush doesn't exclusively own the problem. I would argue conservative leadership in general dropped the ball.

When was the last time there was conservative leadership in Washington?

[MicroBalrog]

When was the last time there was conservative leadership in Washington?

A valid point. Perhaps the use of some other term is in order?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I believe 'Republican' is the correct term for what you have in mind.

[MicroBalrog]

I believe 'Republican' is the correct term for what you have in mind.

Yes, but I would argue that the problem extends beyond people who are formally members of the party.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Yes, but I would argue that the problem extends beyond people who are formally members of the party.

Who do you mean?  Extends to who?

[longeyes]

Who says the terrorists--and their financial backers--do not pose an existential threat to America?  I think that's a bit naive, even though I am not suggesting by any means that we turn this nation into a police state to combat the danger posed.  The answer need not come from a top-down collective policy; rather it should come from tens of millions of strong-willed, strong-minded, and strong-bodied citizens who take care of business at arm's length.

As for the "war on terror," this was always a euphemism.  The real war, since the Enlightenment, has always been against autocracy, authoritarianism, and absolutism.  In different times it takes different forms, but it is always about mesmeric mind-control and the suppression of the individual.  Whether it's Nazism, Communism, or Islamism makes little difference.

[De Selby]

Who says the terrorists--and their financial backers--do not pose an existential threat to America?  I think that's a bit naive, even though I am not suggesting by any means that we turn this nation into a police state to combat the danger posed.  The answer need not come from a top-down collective policy; rather it should come from tens of millions of strong-willed, strong-minded, and strong-bodied citizens who take care of business at arm's length.

As for the "war on terror," this was always a euphemism.  The real war, since the Enlightenment, has always been against autocracy, authoritarianism, and absolutism.  In different times it takes different forms, but it is always about mesmeric mind-control and the suppression of the individual.  Whether it's Nazism, Communism, or Islamism makes little difference.

It's beyond fantasy to think that a terrorist group poses an "existential threat" to America.  There is no such group with the numbers or weapons, of any kind, to destroy it.

America is perfectly capable of destroying itself through constant "emergency laws" and decades long wars that drain money which otherwise would've been used to grow the economy and keep things in order during hard times.

The Afghanistan war is now a colossal waste of time and money, and the media reports on it are farcical - I'm thinking of Fareed Zakaria's piece where he claims that Afghans aren't really opposed to our presence and that the Taliban can be successfully paid to play ball.

If we'd spent the same money we spent on that war rooting out the terrorist networks in Europe and America (where the 9/11 plot actually came together operationally and found funding), we'd be many times safer. 

Running around the mountains amongst a people that do not want us there trying to find figureheads is a waste.  Bin Laden can make all the videos he wants as long as all the henchmen are caught as they plan attacks in Florida. 

[longeyes]

Perhaps you know more about the network than I.  What I know is what most here know: it is not beyond the realm of possibility for terrorist groups to acquire small nuclear devices and/or bioterror weapons.  I don't know about you but I'd call the probable impact of that definitely "existential."  Add an EMP strike to that list.  Unlikely?  Perhaps, but, we once thought, were airliners crashing into skyscrapers.

Frankly, though, I think the greatest existential threat is likely to come from within, from the machinations of political and para-political groups infiltrating the marrow of our social and political system.  As far as I am concerned that process is already well underway.

Sometimes an endowed chair can be more explosive than a truckload of plastique.

[Perd Hapley]

Why debate whether a threat is "existential"?  Sure, we survived the death toll of 11 Sept., and we could survive future attacks of that sort.  But such things cannot be tolerated.  Does that mean we need a massive police state?  No.  Does that mean we shouldn't be invading Blow-you-up-a-stan?  No. 

So when we answer the question of "existentialism," what have we decided?