Thanks to those from whom I got cards. Once again, it’s well past the holiday, and here I am – finally – with a little Christmas missive; even now I’ve not gotten around to mailing it. Still, I hope it finds every one of you in good health and in the successful pursuit of happiness the founders intended.
Christmas Greetings,
It’s been a year of consolidation and completion. I’ve traveled less while continuing to cover North American sports car racing; for the first time since 1997, I wasn’t at Sebring for the 12 Hours. I was in Monterey in May; that race will return to the fall schedule next season. In August I again visited Kelly and Phyllis Wechsler the weekend of a race at Road America; this year we were joined by some of the guys – including son Ashley – who a few times made the annual winter trek to Daytona for the Sunbank – since renamed Rolex - 24.
In June - for the first time - I attended the annual reunion of the 1st Cavalry Division in Bloomington, Minnesota. Nearly forty-two years later I again saw a few I knew then, and many more with shared experiences. It was a treat to have daughter Heather attend the banquet with me. I'll try to get to the 2011 event at Killeen, Texas (Fort Hood).
Instead of the summer race at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, I spent time with Courtney, Dave and Olivia in New York, where Courtney is Assistant Professor of History at West Point, and Dave recently moved from the Center for Enhanced Performance to the Academy’s Dean’s Office. Both Majors, this the third of a three year assignment. In the new year, Courtney will be deployed – not certain where – while for Dave a military education assignment to the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas is likely. Olivia – she was one year old in August – will be with her Dad, who will be keeping a student’s schedule.
Ashley, lately managing a downtown Chicago book store, just recently took a new job as a research editor for a magazine publishing company in Chicago. Along with his sisters, he and GF Lindsey spent Thanksgiving with Nancy in Proctor.
Heather completed her coursework at William Mitchell College of Law this December; during her matriculation, she was on Law Review, National Moot Court competition, was research assistant for a Wm. Mitchell professor, worked for a housing advocacy legal organization, and for a federal judge in an “externship.”
Heather receives here Juris Doctor cum laude in January. Then it’s the bar exam, and in April she begins work for law firm Hanft Fride in Duluth, for whom she interned this past summer.
I’ve been kept busy with writing, including two on-going projects that I’m not ready to talk about. Mom is 96; all-in-all doing well.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Sunday, July 4, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, June 25, 2010
The Inconvenient Truths of History
The other day a television reporter, commenting on the President’s relief of General Stanley McChrystal, said, “Obama’s already done the unprecedented…relieved a commanding general in wartime…” referring to his relief of General David McKiernan a year ago.
Of course that’s stupid. Just off the top of my head, there were McDowell, McClellan, MacArthur, and McKiernan before McChrystal. But so what? Being stupid is routine enough not to require comment.
The real question: “Is such stupidity important?”
In the past two decades, education in the United States has been hell-bent on being “relevant,” as if immediate use is the sole measure of knowledge. Tell Plato. Or Einstein, for that matter. Neither one spent a great deal of time being relevant. As things turned out, what they thought about was important, however.
If you think something is “unprecedented,” you might be easily led to the conclusion it’s wrong. Years ago, in this very blog, I wrote disparagingly about George Bush’s un-nuanced pronouncement that he “trusted the generals.” He couldn’t know whether his general would turn out to be Washington or Burnside.
Lincoln would have been in a fine kettle of fish if he hadn’t finally decided to stop trusting “Little Mac” and fire him. McClellan was –and remained – very popular, winning the Democratic nomination and running for president against Lincoln in 1864. McClellan was also a very weak battle commander; so much for popular opinion.
Taking our theme further, our current president made “fighting the right war” a centerpiece of his successful election campaign. What made Afghanistan the right war? “Getting Bin Laden? Since when does revenge – ok, law enforcement, then – justify a nation at war? Killing or capturing Bin Laden will not likely materially reduce the potential of radical Islamists around the globe to do us harm. Disruption of Al Kaida's base of operations at the time they planned and launched the 9/11 attacks? We accomplished that in just weeks after our October 7, 2001 attack. The first U.S. soldier killed by hostile fire was on January 4, 2002. Perhaps that would have been a good time to declare victory and leave; Al Kaida had already done so, decamping for Pakistan. Instead, we stayed in Afghanistan to "nation build," incidentally - and inexplicably - giving Al Kaida the same kind of sanctuary we once gave the NVA and Viet Cong.
Alexander the Great, having subdued the Persian Empire, the world’s great power of that day, took his army into Afghanistan in 330 BC. Four years of bitter battles later, he prevailed, but his army was so exhausted and depleted it never really recovered, and Alexander was soon dead. His dream of Empire had truly died in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan.
Britain fought three Afghan Wars, tactical successes, but strategically no benefit to the Raj and the larger Empire. In the last gasp of its own Empire, the Soviet Union lost 15,000 killed and 35,000 wounded in Afghanistan. From the Sistan Basin to the Hindu Kush this has been graveyard of three Empires. This is really the right war?
Fighting irregulars who have some popular support with a regular army while allowing the enemy a geographic sanctuary is folly. That was true in the British colonies in North America at the end of the eighteenth century. In the Peninsular War of 1807-1812. In Vietnam. It’s unlikely to be different in Afghanistan.
Am I a "pacifist," or "anti-war" in this one? Not really. I'd support a large-scale (Colin Powell's dictum on overwhelming force) attack into Pakistan's tribal areas where the threat might still exist, rip those bastards up - and let Afghanistan go back to hearding goats, growing poppies, beating women, whatever else they do.
History: a compendium of truly inconvenient truths.
Note: A few days after I wrote the above, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was excoriated for saying much the same thing. Is he crazy, as they - even Fox - assert? Am I?
Of course that’s stupid. Just off the top of my head, there were McDowell, McClellan, MacArthur, and McKiernan before McChrystal. But so what? Being stupid is routine enough not to require comment.
The real question: “Is such stupidity important?”
In the past two decades, education in the United States has been hell-bent on being “relevant,” as if immediate use is the sole measure of knowledge. Tell Plato. Or Einstein, for that matter. Neither one spent a great deal of time being relevant. As things turned out, what they thought about was important, however.
If you think something is “unprecedented,” you might be easily led to the conclusion it’s wrong. Years ago, in this very blog, I wrote disparagingly about George Bush’s un-nuanced pronouncement that he “trusted the generals.” He couldn’t know whether his general would turn out to be Washington or Burnside.
Lincoln would have been in a fine kettle of fish if he hadn’t finally decided to stop trusting “Little Mac” and fire him. McClellan was –and remained – very popular, winning the Democratic nomination and running for president against Lincoln in 1864. McClellan was also a very weak battle commander; so much for popular opinion.
Taking our theme further, our current president made “fighting the right war” a centerpiece of his successful election campaign. What made Afghanistan the right war? “Getting Bin Laden? Since when does revenge – ok, law enforcement, then – justify a nation at war? Killing or capturing Bin Laden will not likely materially reduce the potential of radical Islamists around the globe to do us harm. Disruption of Al Kaida's base of operations at the time they planned and launched the 9/11 attacks? We accomplished that in just weeks after our October 7, 2001 attack. The first U.S. soldier killed by hostile fire was on January 4, 2002. Perhaps that would have been a good time to declare victory and leave; Al Kaida had already done so, decamping for Pakistan. Instead, we stayed in Afghanistan to "nation build," incidentally - and inexplicably - giving Al Kaida the same kind of sanctuary we once gave the NVA and Viet Cong.
Alexander the Great, having subdued the Persian Empire, the world’s great power of that day, took his army into Afghanistan in 330 BC. Four years of bitter battles later, he prevailed, but his army was so exhausted and depleted it never really recovered, and Alexander was soon dead. His dream of Empire had truly died in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan.
Britain fought three Afghan Wars, tactical successes, but strategically no benefit to the Raj and the larger Empire. In the last gasp of its own Empire, the Soviet Union lost 15,000 killed and 35,000 wounded in Afghanistan. From the Sistan Basin to the Hindu Kush this has been graveyard of three Empires. This is really the right war?
Fighting irregulars who have some popular support with a regular army while allowing the enemy a geographic sanctuary is folly. That was true in the British colonies in North America at the end of the eighteenth century. In the Peninsular War of 1807-1812. In Vietnam. It’s unlikely to be different in Afghanistan.
Am I a "pacifist," or "anti-war" in this one? Not really. I'd support a large-scale (Colin Powell's dictum on overwhelming force) attack into Pakistan's tribal areas where the threat might still exist, rip those bastards up - and let Afghanistan go back to hearding goats, growing poppies, beating women, whatever else they do.
History: a compendium of truly inconvenient truths.
Note: A few days after I wrote the above, RNC Chairman Michael Steele was excoriated for saying much the same thing. Is he crazy, as they - even Fox - assert? Am I?
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