Putting Our Troops In Harm's Way For An Unattainable Goal

In an OpEd in yesterday's Washington Post, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) there is an attempt to go beyond analysis of Obama's revised Afghanistan strategy and get some kind of clarification of the conditions necessary for a successful drawdown of American forces.

We are ramping up deployment to about 100,000 troops, along with tens of thousands of American contractors and civilians, to implement a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. This greatly enlarged presence runs the risk, well rooted in Afghanistan's history of resisting foreign influence, that the United States will be perceived as an occupying force instead of a presence seeking to assist Afghans in improving their stability and development.

Another key question that remains to be answered is: How do we define our enemy in Afghanistan? When we talk about the Taliban, we interchange terms that aren't particularly interchangeable. Three different types of actors are associated with the Taliban. First came those in a vicious government that the United States assisted in removing. Second, there is an ideologically charged group that operates principally in Pakistan, associated with the forces of international terrorism. Third, we have a separate group, presumably growing with the greatest speed, that is viewed by many Afghans as something of a regional militia defending local interests and that doesn't particularly want to threaten U.S. interests outside Afghanistan.

I have said consistently that countering international terrorism requires highly maneuverable forces able to strike an intrinsically mobile enemy. The departure of al-Qaeda from Iraq and, in large measure, from Afghanistan demonstrates why more maneuverable U.S. forces are to be favored against mobile international terrorist movements. In each instance, al-Qaeda relocated to other areas, including Pakistan and the Horn of Africa. Our military must retain the same maneuverability.

James Jones, who is, when all is said and done, Obama's #1 national security advisor and certainly played a major role in designing the new Af-Pak strategy, says in no uncertain terms that there will be no withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011-- "in no manner, shape or form," a somewhat different emphasis than what Obama said on national TV a few nights ago. I found an account of a trip that a staffer, Michael Shank, for Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) made to Afghanistan a lot more credible than either what Obama or Jones had to say. He wrote it up at Roll Call and one needs a subscription to link to it. Let me quote a few interesting lines though:

“To leave or not to leave” was not the question. The majority of Afghans with whom I met wanted the international community to stay. Do not leave, they said, but do things differently-- the American approach is not working. A quick look around Kabul and I saw what they meant. The lawless streets remain flooded, muddied, potholed and even sewage-filled; power outages are common; and newborns face the second most unhealthy and unstable environment in the world next to Somalia, according to a recent UN report. Eight years in, Afghans are wondering whether Americans are there to truly help the country. If we are trying to immunize the country from insurgencies, Afghans question our approach.

But forget about poverty for a second and consider corruption, a concern among many Congressional minds. With Transparency International’s November report ranking Afghanistan the second most corrupt country in the world, there was an implicit understanding of America’s role in this ranking. In an attempt to mollify the country after tackling the Taliban in 2001, the U.S. supported warlords and corrupt officials, who remain in both parliament and provincial offices. These allies provide intelligence to the military and security to the provincial reconstruction teams, albeit it at a high price morally and financially.

Afghans quickly cry foul on this corruption and are keen to support President Hamid Karzai’s house cleaning, but they note that Karzai cannot do it alone. As long as the U.S. points fingers at Karzai and as long as the U.S. continues to aid and abet the savviest of warlords, locals say, Karzai remains unable to bring to justice warlords and corrupt officials. Additionally, the government is still working out the bureaucratic kinks that exacerbate corruption trends. Getting a driver’s license, for example, requires 51 office visits, which is 50 extra opportunities for skimming funds. This, along with a fledgling judicial system, makes it tough to crack down on crime.

Beyond corruption, consider the inefficacy of foreign aid flowing into the country. Local Afghans see that the provincial reconstruction teams, managed by the State and Defense departments, are operating with little to no community preparation, trust or legitimacy, establishing a highly secure shop reliant on foreign imports for survival (apples from New Zealand, bottled water from Dubai), and depending on security contractors-- at a rate of $14,000 per person per day-- to maneuver. Local Afghans compare this development approach, which leaves 10 cents of every foreign aid dollar in Afghanistan, to their government’s National Solidarity Program, a much more cost-efficient development initiative that works with locally elected community development councils to design and implement village projects.

Yet despite foreign aid’s billions spent, with little Afghan infrastructure, institutions and individual capacity to show, the inefficiency of the military presence is perhaps most striking. For the cost of one U.S. soldier, at $1 million a year, you could train and pay several hundred Afghan soldiers. Only 30 cents of every foreign military dollar stays in Afghanistan, and a 50 percent attrition rate plagues the Afghan forces. After serving three years, most Afghan forces go to private security contractors or the Taliban because the pay is better. Training and capacity is equally insufficient. More than 2,000 U.S. troop trainer positions remained unfilled in 2009, taking its toll on the Afghan National Police especially-- a body that one minister noted exists in name only. As an ANP-coated cop bicycled by me one day on his rickety bike, I got a sense of what the minister meant.

[UPDATE: The Nation has published a linkable post from Shank, which allows one and all to read the whole thing.]

I want to share one more OpEd with you, one written a couple days ago for the L.A. Times by Andrew Bacevich, Obama's Folly, one in which he argues that "rather than trying to salvage Bush's policy in Afghanistan, the president should show real courage and just pull the plug." But before you do, let me bring you back to the bad old days when Bush and Cheney were running the show and Bacevich was one of the few people speaking up. Please join Charles Pierce looking at Bacevich's run in with Idiot America:

"There was no plan except 'Defer to us," explained Andrew Bacevich, Sr., a retired Army Colonel who teaches history and international relations at Boston University... "They said, 'We will cut your taxes and we will not have a draft. Don't worry. The U.S. military is unbeatable, so go to Disney World,'" Bacevich said. "And I think that's the inclination of the American people anyway, and we were all encouraged to do that. Had the president said at the time, 'This requires an all-out national effort. I'm going to increase your taxes. We're going to pay for this... expand the Army'-- in that moment, I think the Congress would have said, 'You got it, Mr. President.' As Americans, we would have said, 'Okay, if that's what it takes.' He said, 'Go to Disney World,' and the moment passed."

You may have read on Thursday, the same day Bacevich's OpEd appeared, that Speaker Pelosi quashed Dave Obey's call for a war tax, probably at the urging of the White House.

Bacevich asks a question that must be plaguing all progressives now, something along the lines of what's worse, a delusional blunderer or... someone who knows better and follows the same path? Like many of us, he seems to be reluctantly coming to the conclusion that for someone who sold us on changing the way Washington works, he sure seems to be a denizen of the bad old status quo there. "What Afghanistan tells us is that rather than changing Washington, Obama has become its captive. The president has succumbed to the twin illusions that have taken the political class by storm in recent months. The first illusion, reflecting a self-serving interpretation of the origins of 9/11, is that events in Afghanistan are crucial to the safety and well-being of the American people. The second illusion, the product of a self-serving interpretation of the Iraq War, is that the U.S. possesses the wisdom and wherewithal to guide Afghanistan out of darkness and into the light."

Through war, Bush set out to transform the greater Middle East. Despite immense expenditures of blood and treasure, that effort failed. In choosing Obama rather than John McCain to succeed Bush, the American people acknowledged that failure as definitive. Obama's election was to mark a new beginning, an opportunity to "reset" America's approach to the world.

The president's chosen course of action for Afghanistan suggests he may well squander that opportunity. Rather than renouncing Bush's legacy, Obama apparently aims to salvage something of value. In Afghanistan, he will expend yet more blood and more treasure hoping to attenuate or at least paper over the wreckage left over from the Bush era.

However improbable, Obama thereby finds himself following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon. Running for president in 1968, Nixon promised to end the Vietnam War. Once elected, he balked at doing so. Obsessed with projecting an image of toughness and resolve-- U.S. credibility was supposedly on the line-- Nixon chose to extend and even to expand that war. Apart from driving up the costs that Americans were called on to pay, this accomplished nothing.

If knowing when to cut your losses qualifies as a hallmark of statesmanship, Nixon flunked. Vietnam proved irredeemable.

Obama's prospects of redeeming Afghanistan appear hardly more promising. Achieving even a semblance of success, however modestly defined, will require an Afghan government that gets its act together, larger and more competent Afghan security forces, thousands of additional reinforcements from allies already heading toward the exits, patience from economically distressed Americans as the administration shovels hundreds of billions of dollars toward Central Asia, and even greater patience from U.S. troops shouldering the burdens of seemingly perpetual war. Above all, success will require convincing Afghans that the tens of thousands of heavily armed strangers in their midst represent Western beneficence rather than foreign occupation.

...Under the guise of cleaning up Bush's mess, Obama has chosen to continue Bush's policies. No doubt pulling the plug on an ill-advised enterprise involves risk and uncertainty. It also entails acknowledging mistakes. It requires courage. Yet without these things, talk of change will remain so much hot air.