Afghanistan: The "Good War" or Vietnam 2.0?

[Jocassee]

I can feel it brewing, folks. I can't point to anything in particular that I have seen or heard, but in the dozens of news snippets and article fragments my eyes brush across each day I can sense an oncoming campaign against the Afghanistan war.

Afghanistan has been the sacred cow in American politics ever since 2001. Even when the liberals were demanding that we leave Iraq immediately, no one really seriously thought about leaving the Stan.

But now it's been 8 years. The sting of 9/11 has diminished to a dull pang felt once a year--if then. The threat of terror at home has been diverted, if not diminished, by two wars abroad and an aggressive campaign for homeland security. The most visible reminder of Afghanistan now is the recently intensified frequency of casualty reports and a sense that the Taliban are making an awful lot of racket for a "defeated" foe.

These facts will inevitably raise questions in the mind of America. People will ask, why are we still there? And the media will be happy to respond with helpful factoids about non-democratic society and failed occupations by the British and Soviets.

Which leads us to the following questions:

1. Will the Afghanistan become self-supporting from a security perspective?
2. If so, how long will that take?
3. Will the American people support such an effort until completion? Perhaps with the incentive of increased troop withdrawals over time?
4. Can the U.S. afford failure / premature withdrawal in either Iraq and Afghanistan, from both the "strength abroad" and national security perspectives?

IMHO, Both Iraq and Afghanistan are a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" proposition. If we stay, the world hates us, but if we succeed we feel good about ourselves (the rest of the world will never admit our success). If we leave now and people die because of it (and they will), the world hates us anyways.

Discuss.

[AZRedhawk44]

I remember the libs saying that 'Stan was an OK war, but that Iraq was bad.

Funny how I don't hear anything at all about Iraq now.

[Jim147]

"I don't think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan, in the country or in the Congress," Pelosi said at a news conference.

She said this yesterday.

I'm not seeing much backlash from the country about either war. So I wonder what makes her say this?

jim

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

She said this yesterday.

I'm not seeing much backlash from the country about either war. So I wonder what makes her say this?

jim

She says it's true because she wants it to be true.

[Jamisjockey]

Because war against little brown people is against the liberal mind set.  We should be appeasing them, removing all forces from the Middle East, and not bother hunting for Bin Laden, or actually filling the power void in Afghanistan. 

[AZRedhawk44]

Because war against little brown people is against the liberal mind set. 

But... that's why the Army uses the 9mm instead of the .45 now...  We're out to subjugate the little people that a .45 is overkill for.  Don't you see the conspiracy inherent in the military industrial complex?

 

[Waitone]

The odor emanating from A'stan brings back memories of Vietnam.  Not a strong odor, mind you, just an odor.  Over the years I've read 3+ books by the participants in the take down of the Talaban and AQ in 2001.  A few points have stuck in my mind. 

--First, you'd better be fighting unconventional style in A'stan or you will get your butt kicked.  Historical reality.
--Second, historically no one has successfully bought an A'stani.  The best you can do is rent one for an indeterminate period of time.
--Third, you'd better be willing to go belly to belly with some really unpleasant, unsavory characters and be willing to work with them on common goals.

All three elements were in place during the first takedown in 2001.  IIRC the maximum number of American boots (consisting of specops, CIA, DIA, NSA, et al) on the ground at any given time during the takedown was much less than 300.  Much, much less.  That being the case, what are we doing different now?

The aroma I smell has elements of the Church commission which for all you whipper-snappers decreed, among other things, thou (those on the pointy end of the spear) had better not associate with unsavory characters.  Intel you gather had better not have a goon's prints on it.  To be really safe rely mostly in technical intel and shift out of human intel as it is a threat to your personal well-being. 

Thou shalt also not violate US legal norms.  Specifically, bribery is a cardinal no-no in the US and therefore it will be a cardinal no-no in A'stan.  Never mind for a minute the payment of cash is the way things get done.  Matter of fact, the only reason opposition war lord's armies were equipped was because the CIA liberally spread cash around the battlefield which enable the opposition to AQ and the Taliban to arm themselves with local arms.

All during the first takedown heavy metal army wanted control over spec ops.  Bush refused to allow it for the simple reason spec ops had people on active duty who had spent and entire lifetime working in and around the theater of operation.  Another reason was the heavy metal army would take too long to engage the enemy and start killing.  Bush wanted the killing to start ASAP and spec ops was able to oblige.  There was no concern with an outside footprint.  Bush wanted combat operations fast and he trusted spec ops to do as they said they could do. 

The heavy metal army in the form of Tommy Franks never gave up wanting to wade in.  He controlled a lot of the resources which spec ops at the time would eventually need.  Spec ops in a methodical manner proceeded to roll up AQ and the Taliban and push them into a mountainous area in the NE of the country.  They had the bad guys on the ropes but were concerned that they would escape into Pakistan.  CIA/spec ops repeatedly asked for a blocking force of Rangers and/or 10th Mountain to block the avenues of retreat.  Franks refused for a number of reasons, both valid and invalid.  The rest is history.  AQ and the Taliban escaped to lick the wounds only to reappear.  The inability of the heavy metal army to adapt fast led to the escape of AQ and Taliban.

So back to the odor of Vietnam:
--looks like we've gone conventional
--No direct evidence but I suspect we are relying more on technical intel than human intel.  We may have gone back to using Yale graduates sipping tea with similarly educated A' stanis as opposed to dealing with proper scumbags.
--Cash talks in A'stan and it talks best to tribal leaders, not national leaders.  We want to create a national government, something at odds with A'stan's history and current makeup.
--Gen. McChrystal may be a spec ops whiz, no doubt.  He was responsible for a lot of the killing of the bad guys leadership in Iraq.  Petraus had the sense to let McChrystal and his band of merry marauders have their way.  I suspect what is going on now is the politicization of A'stan.  I strongly suspect DoJ lawyers and White House aides are setting the rules of engagement.  I suspect McChrystal is being the good soldier and following his chain of command's orders so he is constrained in what he can do.  The rules of engagement make sense to someone whose objective is national building.  To someone whose job is to kill the bad guys the rules don't make a lot of sense.  Now we hear the Taliban knows how to use our rules of engagement against us. . . . . .just like what was happening in Vietnam.

In short, I think we are Vietnamizing the Afghanistan war.  My fear it will lead to the same end including genocide of the population.

 

 

[longeyes]

I was just listening to a report from an embedded reporter in Afghanistan.  What struck me was that there is no way we are going to win that war--or any war--with the current rules of engagement.  The rules are one more symptom of the complicated moral confusion that has permeated this nation's psyche in the last forty years. 

[Standing Wolf]

We should have fought and won the war against Islamic terrorist savagry on September 12, 2001. An Air Force mission would have solved the problem.

[taurusowner]

After all the #### the left spoke about the war in Iraq for the past 6 or so years; it's pretty much going great now.  The Iraqis are policing more and more of their own country every day, combat casualties are down, Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army professionalism are at an all time high.  Basically, we won, or are very close to it. 

Let the soldiers do their jobs in Afghanistan.  Let the NCO, junior enlisted, and even junior officers decide what they need, and get out of their way.  Let them(us) win this one too.

[Gewehr98]

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
         An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

 - Rudyard Kipling, 1890

[wquay]

Always did like that poem.

[seeker_two]

Short of exterminating the entire population and giving the nation to Russia or China (which I do NOT support), I don't see any chance for a lasting victory in Afghanistan. The best bet we have is to find a warlord or two that we like and arm them to the gills as we pull out. Then, every so often, detonate a few EMP's over the nation to disrupt communications to the outside world.

Nation-building in a nation that doesn't want to be built is never a good strategy...

[longeyes]

Never let good poppy fields go to waste; there's serious potential there for corrupting the enemy's moral and spiritual lifeline.

We are as usual shackled by a confused welter of legal noodling and moral unction that prevents us from seeing the goal and the means to that goal clearly, with hard eyes.  We continue, centuries into our American experiment, to think that the rest of the world is just like us, only "unenlightened."  We have too many utopians and too many missionaries.  And at home we have created a society that believes that one per cent of the nation is responsible for keeping our malls open and our harbors nuke-free.

Is General Jasmine still designing the rules of engagement over herbal tea with the "Yale graduates" who graduated with PhDs in Nation-Building?

[longeyes]

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.

[Monkeyleg]

With Iraq, if we succeed in leaving a friendly government in place, we have a staging area to use to pressure Iran and other problem governments. Even the presence of a freely elected government in Iraq is a threat to the current regime in Iran.

With Afghanistan, it may be that all we can to is try to keep terrorist groups from using the country as training grounds. We may have to accept a Taliban-style government.

[longeyes]

I justified the Iraq war on the theory that we were creating "forts" to keep the enemy honest. 

But what good are forts if you really have no intention of taking the fight to the real enemy?  We have a staging area, okay?  To stage what exactly?

[MicroBalrog]

So wait.

What, precisely, are the military goals of the larger war on terror?

What are the conditions upon which we can say 'The War on Terror is over, we won' and fold up the effort?

[Perd Hapley]

Why do you ask?  Every policy has a goal, and conditions of success or failure.  We either suppress terrorism or we don't.  What are you getting at?

[MicroBalrog]

Why do you ask?  Every policy has a goal, and conditions of success or failure.  We either suppress terrorism or we don't.  What are you getting at?

The original poster asked if Afghanistan was a "Good War". That question relies very much on what the goals of the War on Terror are.  How am I to know if the policy is a good policy if I don't know what goals it pursues?

Furthermore: Since 9/11, many have believed and claimed that the West now exists in a 'state of emergency', that the world is 'different now' and we need to accept a variety of new infringements on our liberty, or to support candidates who are otherwise hostile to our interests, because they will get 'tough' on terrorism, or at least 'tougher' than their competitors. In various Western countries these concessions had taken various forms.

Had a clear set of goals been defined ("Destroy terrorist organizations X, Y, and Z", "Kill Bin Laden", "Capture Mecca", "reduce the amount of terrorist acts per year b N"), we would be able to:

1. Decide if it's worth it.

2. Have some form of assurance that the temporary emergency measures would be rolled back later.

Western countries - America, the UK, and others - had often enacted emergency measures during wartime. It happened in WW2, and WW1, and the US Civil War, and to some extent during Vietnam. But these emergency measures later went away at least to some degree. The draft, rationing, censorship of the media are now gone. These were far worse than anything we have today, but they went away.

If we have an open-ended emergency, then I fear this idea that 'we must sacrifice some of our liberties for the common good' and the idea that 'we must vote for this politician even though he doesn't like freedom because he is tough on terrorism' will not go away in the foreseeable future.

[Perd Hapley]

First of all, understand that "War on Terror" is not an actual war.  It is a phrase that describes a mind-set.  It communicates that terrorism is being taken seriously, and that (obstensibly) we are pro-actively taking steps to eradicate it, rather than merely avoid it or defend against it. 

If we have an open-ended emergency, then I fear this idea that 'we must sacrifice some of our liberties for the common good' and the idea that 'we must vote for this politician even though he doesn't like freedom because he is tough on terrorism' will not go away in the foreseeable future.

We should never sacrifice liberty for "the common good," so isn't the current "emergency" a perfect time for us to teach that lesson? 

'we must vote for this politician even though he doesn't like freedom because he is tough on terrorism'

I don't know who's been telling you that.  At least in America, the tough-on-terror politicians tend to be more liberty-minded. 

[MicroBalrog]

We should never sacrifice liberty for "the common good," so isn't the current "emergency" a perfect time for us to teach that lesson? 

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 don't know who's been telling you that.  At least in America, the tough-on-terror politicians tend to be more liberty-minded. 

As compared to whom? To Hillary Clinton? Of course.

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.

Now, I am not a great fan of the Islamo-idiot faction – I can't really be a fan of people who shelled my town and murdered a woman four blocks away from me, can I? - but I just don't think they're such a huge global existential threat they're made out to be.

I have an aversion to the way that news media take a ghastly and terrible event – Columbine, 9/11, a child-kidnapping or some other ghastly atrocity – and make it out as if 'the world has now changed' and 'the old concepts' no longer apply.  Obviously, I am not a friend of the violent butt-head du jour, but it does not mean every time something bad happens we must stand on our heads and rewrite society all over.

We already have ways to deal with people like this. We have police and the military and the courts, ad of course we have armed citizens. This doesn't mean we should pile on more paramilitary cops with heavier and heavier gear, or start wand-probing more citizens, or putting cameras on every street corner – as people had already done in a variety of countries (bear in mind I'm not just talking about America here).

[Gewehr98]

MB, you must understand that the U.S. of A. hasn't had to deal with the same things Israel is long accustomed to until the events of 11 Sep 2001.

Even the WTC parking garage bombings and Timothy McVeigh were but minor annoyances, and Hezbollah or Tel Aviv is something you normally read about, but don't give much thought to.

So, to the average American, the world actually did change on 11 Sep 01.  I refer to their immediate, tangible world, where they're reminded every time they step on an airliner, or send their children off to Iraq or Afghanistan.  The War on Terrorism is the mindset that resulted - no different, really, than slogans during WWII to recycle materials or buy War Bonds.  It struck home, and even a 17 year old girl named Eliza Gauger got involved with her artwork:

[longeyes]

Frankly, I don't see most of the people I know being much affected by 9/11.  They should be, but they aren't.

[MicroBalrog]

MB, you must understand that the U.S. of A. hasn't had to deal with the same things Israel is long accustomed to until the events of 11 Sep 2001.

This is true. But as I've said, Americans are now reacting – politically – the same way Israelis have been reacting for years. Many people here in fact (not in the media, but I've seen people saying this in conversations) had basically said that  'now the Americans will understand what life is for us'. Israel has long lived the permanent emergency, and it hasn't been good for Israel. I don't think that living the permanent emergency will be good for America, either.