After months of deliberation, President Obama arrived at his decision on how to proceed with the war in Afghanistan: send 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers to this God-forsaken patch of high desert. It has been reported that General Stanley McChrystal offered the President three options, each with diminishing probabilities of success. The first option was 100,000 additional troops, which would guarantee control of the country, but at the risk of appearing too much like an occupier. The second was the much touted 40,000 with a "reasonable" degree of success. The third was 20,000 which offered a poor chance of success. In classic triangulation style, Obama chose what he perceived to be the Goldilocks option and will send 30,000. To his credit, he has put pressure on our NATO allies to step up their commitments, but that has an uncertain outcome.
OPPORTUNITIES LOST
In the three months it took Obama to make this decision, some opportunities have been lost. Pakistan has been pushing up into the tribal regions in their north, putting pressure on the Taliban and Al Queda factions finding safe harbor there. While a true hammer and anvil strategy would probably not be viable - the terrain makes it almost impossible - having more assets available might have cut off any escape and supply lines coming in and out of Afghanistan, further degrading the battle capacity of these fanatics.
So a slow decision making process cost us the chance at killing some bad guys, and it has also coincided with the worst few months of the war since its inception:
I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me that if I am a bad guy, and the leader of my opponent is indecisive and "agonizing" about his decision, I am going to step up my game in the hope of influencing him to just leave. Well, that's pretty much what they have done: Obama's pledge to begin leaving by July, 2011 ranks among the dumbest stunts in foreign or military policy history. As a retired Naval officer, I wince in pain for the young cadets that had to sit through that piece of punditry coming from their Commander in Chief. Many of those young men and women will be 2nd Lieutenants when the order to retreat is given, and as Americans, we are not big on losing. These are all bright young adults and I am confident that they picked up on the political timing of mid-2011 - just about when the political campaigns will begin heating up.
IT'S NOT IRAQ
While I have nothing but respect (and a great deal of sympathy for) the senior command staff and flag ranked officers of this war effort, I am deeply concerned about the overall strategy of the Afghanistan effort. The "Surge" strategy worked extremely well in Iraq, but it did so because Iraq's terrain is far more hospitable to the type of heavy equipment and fast strike ability of our forces and, more importantly, their culture and traditions are far different from the Afghan experience. Essentially, Iraq is three cultural groups crammed together in a resource rich area. Afghanistan is a collection of tribes and dialects...about the only thing that unifies them is Islam. Tribal loyalties supersede national pride and are extremely fluid. Further, Iraq has a regionally high literacy rate of 65%, compared to Afghanistan's 28%. An appreciation for literacy has a direct correlation with the ability to organize and sustain a functioning government. So, while the outcome is still not certain in Iraq, the notion that a democracy can be established there and flourish in this drain-pool of Islamic terrorism, is within the realm of possibility. Afghanistan, in contrast, needs a thug to hold them together...they are a long way from the nation-building goal of a constitutional democracy. Frankly, in the case of both countries, unless you go the route of Ataturk in Turkey and ban the madrassas where the craziness is taught, I don't think you can ever have a true democracy in an Islamic country. Sharia law is totally incompatible with the liberties necessary for a democratic republic to survive. Our military and political minds continue to want to believe in the politically correct notion, that given the right incentives, all peoples' hearts and minds can be won over. If you are dealing with rational people that share your fundamental values, this is a true statement. If you are dealing with people barely out of the Stone Age, only force works.
Because of these profound differences between the two countries, I would submit that a fundamental difference in strategy is necessary for success and that our goals should be very different. Look how the Taliban was overthrown in 2001; it was a light footprint with Special Forces teams and tremendous (and brilliant) use of local militias. Saddam was overthrown with tank columns slicing deep into his country.
The strategy I would propose is to draw down the force structure now. Why wait eighteen months for failure? We've already told them we are going to leave. Let's cut our losses and our expenses now. The U.S. Military has never been good at "nation building," let's get back to doing what we are extremely good at, killing people and breaking things. I would leave sufficient forces in theater to train and work with the local militias to protect the major population centers in Kabul, Kandahar and Mazar e Sharif along with an extremely lethal special forces group that would go to trouble spots and kill bad guys. Leave a strike presence in the Arabian Sea and bolster the missions of drones. Let the word go out, like the famous kill cards in Vietnam, that if you mess with us, the consequences will be severe. Keep this level of forces around for several years until the Afghans get mad enough at the Taliban that they solve it on their own. I would also keep the pressure (and aid if necessary) on the Pakistanis to continue to push into the Northern Territories and root out the Al Queda elements there. Our Predators have done a tremendous job assisting in that effort and with more of those around, there will be fewer places to hide.
RUMSFELD WAS RIGHT
Though he was hounded out of office, Rumsfeld had the right vision for the future of the American military. With Afghanistan, we may have reached the apogee of American involvement overseas in its current form. With our national debt at unsustainable levels and entitlement programs threatening to consume every penny of tax revenue, we simply won't be able to afford long, extended nation building projects. When Grandma's Medicare Part D gets cut because the government is broke, they are not going to give a damn whether some dirt-farmer in Chagcharan has running water and universal suffrage.
Rumsfeld foresaw where this was going and sought to change the very nature of the way we would conduct war. "You go to war with the Army you have, not the one you wish you had," he famously said and he was in the process of trying to figure out what that future war's army ought to look like. What we will need is an exceptionally light, mobile and lethal force that has the ability to deliver a crushing blow and get out. Frankly, it's what we should have done in Afghanistan and Iraq, but W got on the whole "change the Middle East" kick and this is where we are now. Democracies do not like long wars, and any war that is exposed to an election cycle puts the military strategy in the ballot box. Our Founding Fathers recognized this in the system they established and George Washington cautioned us against "foreign entanglements."
TOWARDS A NEO-NEO-CON
The neo-conservative vision of building thriving democracies from Kabul to Baghdad and how this would result in a new domino effect of democratization was noble, but flawed. It pre-supposed a bias towards equality, rule of law and comity that is simply not consistent with the characters of the peoples in this region. These are not the children of Athens and Rome, those noble traditions from which Western culture springs. These are the children of the Saffarids, the Mughals, and Islam. In time, Pepsi, Michael Jackson and re-runs of Dallas might bring them around, but it is not going to be imposed upon them regardless of the nobility of our intentions.
A neo-neo-con vision would have us living closer to the vision of our Founders. It is not isolationism that I am promoting, rather it is a careful consideration of all of our foreign involvements with the selfish metric of discerning whether it is for our interests or not. We can continue to act as the world's policeman under that format, but the world needs to understand that if we have to turn some place into a pile of rubble, there will be no Marshall Plan to fix it. It's tough love, but it will also breed self sufficiency in the long run.
Ultimately, what will drain the cesspool of hatred in that region will be economic opportunity. Mohammed is going to be far less inclined to strap on a bomb vest or go dig an IED hole, if he believes that if he stays alive, his children will be better off. That will require a respect for property rights and the rule of law. These will have to spring from internal sources - I am not advocating foreign aid gifts that end up in corrupt despots pockets. Let these states figure out if they want to be part of the productive world and make it clear what is necessary to join. There will be failures and there will be refugee emigration, but in the end, that's the only sane way out of this. Sickening political correctness that ignores the reality of where the problem stems from only exacerbate and extend the problem. Islam needs to be reformed from within so that this madness will stop; that reform process will only begin in earnest when the sheiks and the warlords and the fascists finally come to realize that they have been ostracized from the world and are left with no one else to kill but themselves.
Rumble on!
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