The Inconvenient Truths of History, Part 2

Following Michael Steele’s remarks about Afghanistan, Republicans (and most Democrats) have coalesced to thump anyone questioning the prosecution of this war. Steele may have been artless - and certainly incomplete - in his criticism of our military commitment in Central Asia, but he does seem to assert that the present war is a different war than the one we launched in 2001. It's worth exploring whether that might be the case, and along the way there are other things we need to question that seem lately to have been accepted without challenge.

There seem to be four principal assumptions underlying this broad support for the policy of the United States in regard to Afghanistan.

1. The war is “winnable” if the United States provides adequate support (money, troops, political and moral will).

Here I get to define “winnable.” (No one else has.) I assume we’ve won when (a) the Taliban is permanently banished or housebroken (participates benignly in some future successful central government); and (b) Afghanistan has a central government that has enough control over its own territory to preclude that territory from serving as a base for international terrorism.

Neither of those objectives seems attainable. For the first, an armed insurgency based in part on religious belief has to be completely destroyed or reject its own core beliefs, something I can't remember having been accomplished anywhere, even with overwhelming military force. (The jury is still out on the Tamil Tigers.)

For the second, Afghanistan has to be converted from a loose confederation of tribal areas into a modern state with a strong central government. That’s not a description that has ever applied to Afghanistan, with only the possible short-lived exception of the Marxist government that the Soviet Union tried to rescue in a decade-long war that many believe contributed to the final break-up of the Soviet Empire. To my knowledge, we’ve engaged in no other mission in our history – even Vietnam – as formidable as “winning” the “war in Afghanistan.”

2. “The War in Afghanistan” is one war, continuously fought for a consistent set of objectives.

It simply is not. It’s at least two wars; I can account for four.

The first war commenced in October 2001, and ended some time in 2002. It was fought to disrupt Al-Queda by destroying their training bases and supporting infrastructure, the latter necessarily including the incumbent Taliban government.

That war was a “qualified” success; it denied al-Queda its Afghanistan base, and ended the Taliban’s loose control of Afghanistan in favor of reversion to the country’s traditional and historical loose confederation of tribal areas – “warlords” to some. The “qualifier” on that success? Both the Taliban and al-Queda set up shop in the tribal areas of nearby Pakistan.

The second war commenced immediately on the end of the second. It consisted of a kind of “benign neglect” in which an international force applied just enough force in the region to keep the Karzai government in place and the Taliban at bay (or at least in Pakistan).

The third war (some might call it Obama’s war) began more recently, when Afghanistan was defined as “the right war,” one in which “victory” would depend on “nation building,” an “on-again, off-again” and “in-favor, out-of-favor” “end state” for United States policy toward “failed states” in the twenty-first century. This war began when we stopped “drifting along,” and became committed (after a fashion) to ‘winning.” The question is whether we should have begun this third war, or accepted the ambiguous outcome of the second.

There may be a fourth war, and it may already have begun. This “Fourth War” would be fought in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan with the objective of further pursuing and weakening – if not actually destroying al-Queda and the Taliban leadership. Obama’s increase in missile strikes from remote-piloted aircraft in Pakistan certainly looks like a significant shift of focus to that theater. The pursuit-of-al-Queda rationale that no longer applies to Afghanistan would certainly apply here, with the added advantage that there could be no pretense of “nation-building” in Pakistan. This war would be fought in a lawless frontier, with no objective or pretense to leave it as anything but.

3. Leaving a “failed state” state in Afghanistan will result in a uniquely useful terrorist sanctuary, a “breeding ground” for terror, or somehow erode our ability to protest our interests elsewhere in the world.

The first of those is a “been there, done that,” sort of argument; they’ve been there, and moved on, we’ve been there and if we do the same they won’t then return; so could we, and with advantages – knowledge of the ground, local allies – we have few other places. No, our enemies will stay in the places they have gone – Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Algeria (the hapless AQLIM).

That list of countries strikes directly at the heart of the whole “failed state” theorem – the one that says we can’t “leave one.” Given there are thirty-seven (37) countries that made the Foreign Policy 2010 list of “failed states,” and Afghanistan is one of them, my question is “so what?” There are 36 others that can’t police their territory, that can’t provide security or other basic services for their citizens. Any one of them is a candidate for a sanctuary or a breeding ground. In fact many of them are. What makes Afghanistan unique? Nothing I can see.

Does abandoning Afghanistan compromise our “moral authority,” in foreign and military affairs, the degree to which others see our nation as “reliable?” Any reader able to make sense of any of this will recognize this argument as one of the underpinnings of our engagement in South Vietnam, a bedrock principle of “containment,” supported by the “domino” theory. I won’t take on here whether those assumptions were valid – or whether they were warranted in the circumstances of the day. (That's quite different than an analysis fifty years after the fact.) After the unfortunate boat people and the butchers in Cambodia, no communist horde has swept through South Asia. On the contrary, frozen swai and shirts “Made in Vietnam” are ubiquitous. Ho Chi Minh’s eternal rest must be more than a little uncomfortable; those of us who served in Vietnam could never doubt the population’s entrepreneurial spirit, with ice, (rice) French bread, and Ba Moui Ba (Biere 33) Export on country roadsides and every city street corner.

Afghanistan left to its own devices will, in two or three decades, end up in the same place it would with our “guidance” (to say nothing of our treasure).

4. Afghanistan is a state of strategic importance.

Perhaps if one is intent on holding a South Asia empire. As far as I know we are not, having watched Darius, Alexander, the Mongols, Russia, and Britain acquire – then lose – one, each in turn. (Four of those five were “local powers.” I have no idea what Britain’s excuse was…something about the sun never setting?)

In fact Afghanistan lacks the most rudimentary infrastructure, which, along with a formidable topography, makes it a lousy “base” for anything, excepting perhaps an attack on Iran. Given the difficulty of getting men and material into Afghanistan, getting them out in the direction of Iran is of limited utility. And if that’s our objective, we best get on with it, before a nuclear weapon makes the whole thing moot.

In regard to Iraq, at least George Bush’s strategic vision (practical or not - that's another discussion) of a secular democratic state in the midst of despotic theocracies in the oil-rich (and sea-lane-straddling) Middle East has a potential value that might be worth the expenditure of war. In modern times, no such vision is possible in regard to Afghanistan.

Is there another rationale for pursuing war in Afghanistan? Is there some other support for one of the above principals? I’m willing for a reader to make the case.