It will cost 20,000 American lives, another 10-15 years, and several trillion dollars. And even then, success would be unsure. If that is what you want to do, fine. Just don't complain about the cost of health care reform or government bailouts which are fractional by comparison. Personally, I prefer letting the Taliban do what they want to do (which is tell Pashtuns how they should practice Islam), and leaving behind a token force of SF and Predators to disrupt al Qaeda. In Vietnam, we were so obsessed with preventing the NVA from becoming a pawn of the USSR, and Vietnam becomming a bridgehead for Soviet attacks on the USA. In fact, when we left the reverse happened. No longer needing Russian support against the Americans, and realizing what happens when you venture into deeper waters, the Vietnamese turned inward.
This is where you are wrong. The Taliban established training camps. Left unchecked, they will do so again. As for your token force, I really don't want to launch "Operation Sitting Duck." Obama understands all of this, which is why he is not going to pull out of Afghanistan.
You don't have any idea what it will cost in lives or dollars or how Afghanistan is going to play out. You are just being a doomsayer and predicting the worst. Now that the Iraq mistake is less of a distraction, the U.S. can truly assess Afghanistan. To do otherwise would be completely irresponsible. We've seen what can happen when that country is left unchecked. I, for one, don't want another 9/11 here in America or anywhere else. Afghanistan and Pakistan is the true front line in the battle against Islamic terrorists. Too bad our pathetic president from 2000-2008 didn't realize that.
These are the numbers I'm getting from a former Special Forces Intelligence Colonel, and professor of Arabic at West Point. The individual in question also served as the Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was also consulted by the Obama administration after the election concerning Afghanistan policy. So I think the numbers have a bit of credibility.
The words "margin of error" should also come into play. You state them as absolutes rather than estimates of former military personnel.
No, the Taliban established exactly 0 training camps. Al Qaeda established training camps as a guest of the Taliban. If you make it clear that allowing al Qaeda in as guests will result in reprisals from the US, they will not invite them in. This worked in Sudan, which was at least as brutal and rigid as the Taliban. The problem is conflating the entire group of “bad guy” Muslims in as being the same thing as al Qaeda. This is a failure to properly understand the differentiations of motivations of the opposition. This failure also led to the ideas like Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. Such ideas are absurd, but many people believe the propaganda (presumably because they are all bad guys from the Middle East so they must be on the same team!). The Taliban from the beginning has been about takfir. It isn't particularly concerned with non-Muslims.
Fine. Those would be mean figures with plus or minus 10%-20%. How's that? And if you want to know exactly what great regional experts are running US policy there, how 'bout this: [rquoter] Holbrooke to Pashtun father: “I would like to dishonor your daughter” Nice work Holbrooke. Via WaPo, h/t BruceR: <blockquote> U.S. envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, red-faced and sweaty, sat on the dirt floor of a stifling tent as Aslam Khan, a 38-year-old laborer, spoke haltingly of his family’s panicked flight from a Pakistani army offensive against Taliban forces in their mountain village, three hours north of here. Holbrooke asked some questions about the Taliban but got few answers. “Are these all your children?” he asked with a smile. Yes, Khan said, he had nine. “Your daughter is beautiful,” Holbrooke continued, nodding toward a young woman who sat quietly at the edge of the family. Her head was covered in a royal-blue scarf that revealed only her stunningly dark eyes. “That’s not my daughter,” Khan said abruptly. </blockquote> Yeah that’s what you should do, tell rural Pashtun men that you’d like to take their daughter for a test drive, which is basically what Holbrooke did. Turns out she wasn’t his daughter, but the effect was to tell the man if that was his daughter he would have enthusiastically disrespected the man and dishonored his family. I agree with BruceR, who has definitely spent some time with rural Pashtuns: <blockquote> You know, if there is somewhere a list of things you don’t use as conversational openers with Pashtun and other conservative Muslim males, I’m pretty sure “how fetching their daughter is” would be pretty high up there. </blockquote> You can find more great insights from BruceR, a recently returned Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team member (I’m told the acronym is pronounced “omelette”) who served in Kandahar province with the Canadians, on his blog “flit.” [/rquoter] The problem in the Bush White House was it was full of people who couldn't tell Sunni from Shia, but were all thinking they understood exactly what these Sunni and Shia wanted from life(Democracy!!! McDonalds!!! Yay!!!). The problem isn't quite as glaring here, but it still lurks beneath the surface.
The reasons to stay in Afghanistan have been articulated by liberals and conservatives in this thread and by Obama in during the campaign.
And these people are like Holbrooke in the story above, but more extreme. These supporters think that the Taliban is building training camps to attack the USA, for instance. And there was a very compelling case to be made about why the US should stay in Vietnam, in the early 1960's. At least in that case, the Soviet Union was a genuine existential threat to the continued existance of the USA. We don't even have that at work, here. There was a quote from Jurassic Park, to the effect of, "Scientists were so concerned with whether it could be done, that they didn't bother to as whether it should." The inverse is at play here. Everybody agrees that it should be done. Nobody bothers to ask whether it can, in any reasonable and cost effective way.
I disagree that they will not invite them in. Afghanistan is simply different. Maybe it stems from fighting the Soviets for those many years. If you leave the Taliban alone, it will become a problem.
If you never pay attention to history you are bound to repeat it. Why did Hitler lose ww2? The same reason napoleon did and others before him. If you learned nothing from the vietnam and iraq war, then you are dumb. There is no chance in hell the US will ever be able to control a country like Afghanistan unless you want to do what the mongols did and do an extermination. It is too large and the terrain is tough. Too many people support the taliban. Terrorism affects very few people, it is much better to allocate resources that affect more people. The minute America pulls out of IRAQ I doubt that country lasts.
Ottomaton is doing an excellent job of stating why we should get out of Afghanistan while still keeping an eye on Al Qaeda. Deckard along with conservatives of variious types is basically trying to equate conquering the the Taliban, a major political movement within the Pathuns, with Al Qaeda. When you do this you the Taliban will be defended by the whole Pathun tribe of 40 million against the foreign aggressors, i.e. the US even though all Pathuns are not necesarily in favor of these fundamentalists. This will be difficult and costly and it is not necessary to reasonably defend against Al Qaeda. As with our misguided efforts in Iraq, despite great cost we create more terrorists than we destroy. The Vietnman analogy is a good one. I am still hopeful that Obama will be able to free himself from his "war party" advisors.
Deckard, do you feel strongy enough about the Afghan threat you posit to encourage your kids who will be old enough to go as nobody expects the current US objectives to suceed any time soon? As in the continual escalaation in Vietnam US generals want an additional 20,000 for Afghanistan in addition to the recent escalation by Obama. http://news.antiwar.com/2009/08/28/gen-mcchrystal-seeks-20000-more-troops-for-afghanistan/
Here's an interesting article that goes beyond the Al Qaeda equals the Taliban equals a threat for another 9/11 meme. ******** How to Bring Peace to Afghanistan by Eric Margolis Recently by Eric Margolis: Fake Elections Won’t Bring Peace to Afghanistan An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic. That’s a basic tenet of international law. Nevertheless, the US and its NATO allies have been lauding last week’s faux presidential elections in Afghanistan as both a sign of growing support for Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government and the birth of democracy in Afghanistan. In reality, the carefully stage-managed vote in Afghanistan for candidates chosen by Western powers is unlikely to bring either peace or democracy to this wretched nation that has suffered thirty years of nonstop war. On the contrary, American generals have intensified warnings that the military situation in Afghanistan is rapidly "deteriorating" and are calling for yet more troops in addition to the recent major manpower increase authorized by President Barack Obama. Sixty-eight thousand US combat troops, 40,000 NATO soldiers, and 75,000 mercenaries are apparently not enough. Welcome to Vietnam Mission Creep, Part II. Taliban and its nationalist allies rejected last week’s vote as a fraud designed to validate continued foreign occupation and open the way for Western oil and gas pipelines. Taliban, which speaks for many of Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun, said it would only join a national election when US and NATO troops withdraw. Charges of a rigged election are unfortunately correct. All parties were banned from the supposedly "free election." Only candidates who favored continued US and NATO occupation ran. The US paid for the elections and advertising, funded the Election Commission, and spread around large amounts of largesse to tribal warlords. Foreign observers reported extensive fraud and vote rigging. Compared to this predetermined vote, Iran’s recent elections look almost Swiss by comparison. Afghan elections run by the Soviets in 1986 and 1987 were fairer and more open: opposition parties were allowed to run. After all the pre-election hoopla in Afghanistan, to paraphrase Omar Khayyam, we come out the same door we went in. Election results won’t be in for two weeks. But the winner will be whomever Washington decides is to be its man in Kabul. That will likely be Hamid Karzai or Northern Alliance front-man, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. The Obama administration is fed up with Hamid Karzai and mutters about dumping him, but can’t find an acceptable alternative. Abdullah, with his close links to Iran and Russia, makes Washington nervous. What the US would really like is a new version of the late Najibullah, the iron-fisted strongman who ran Afghanistan for the Soviets. The Western powers have marketed the Afghan War to their voters by claiming it is all about democracy, women’s rights, education and nation building. President Barack Obama claims the US is in Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaida. But Al-Qaida barely exists. Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan. This war is really about oil pipeline routes and Western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin. And of course pressure on Obama from the right that the US cannot afford to lose a second war under his command. Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes, who make up 55% of the population, remain excluded from power. Afghanistan is a three-legged ethnic stool. Take away the Pashtun leg and stability is impossible. There will be neither peace nor stability in Afghanistan until the Pashtun majority is enfranchised. This means dealing directly with Taliban, which is part of the Pashtun people. The Western powers cannot run Afghanistan by using the minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and smaller number of Shia Hazara. The solution to this unnecessary war is not more phony elections but a comprehensive peace agreement between ethnic factions that largely restores status quo before the 1979 Soviet invasion. That means a weak central government in Kabul (Karzai is ideal for this job), and a high degree of autonomy for self-governing Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara regions. Government should revert to the old "loya jirga" system of tribal sit-downs, where decision are made by consensus, often after lengthy haggling. That is the way of the Afghans and of traditional Islamic society. Afghanistan worked pretty well under this old easygoing system. In fact, Afghanistan never really had a government in the Western sense. All foreign soldiers must withdraw. A diplomatic "cordon sanitaire" should be drawn around Afghanistan’s borders, returning it to its traditional role as a neutral buffer state. The powers now stirring the Afghan pot – the US, NATO, India, Iran, Russia, the Communist Central Asian states – must cease meddling. They have become part of the Afghan problem. Afghans must be allowed to slowly resolve their differences the traditional Afghan way even if it initially means blood and revenge attacks. That’s unavoidable in a land where the code of revenge – "badal" – is sacred. All Afghans must share future pipeline royalties. The only way to end the epidemic of drug trading is to shut border crossings to Pakistan and the Central Asian states. But those nation’s high officials, corrupted by drug money, will resist. The US and NATO can’t solve Afghanistan’s social or political problems by continuing to wage a cruel and apparently endless war. American and NATO soldiers will never be able to change Afghanistan’s social behavior or end tribal customs that go back thousands of years. They are too busy defending their own bases from angry Afghans. A senior British general just warned his troops might have to stay for another 40 years. He quickly was forced by the government to retract, but the cat was out of the bag. President Barack Obama is charging full tilt over a cliff in Afghanistan. Unless he ends this daft misadventure, his grown-up children may see American soldiers still fighting in the badlands of Afghanistan. The Western powers have added to the bloody mess in Afghanistan. Time for them to go home. http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis161.html
Sounds easy enough - I wonder why no one thought of this before?! When exactly did Afghanistan work well? And how does he propose that we stop Iran and Russia and the CCA states from meddling?
glynch, I'm encouraging my kids to get the best education they can get (and paying for it), so they can be productive and pay the taxes we need to pay in order to afford our excellent volunteer military. If one of them wants to enlist, I won't stand in their way, not that I could prevent it in any case. Afghanistan isn't Vietnam and it isn't Iraq. It's a collection of tribes, ethnic groups, religious sects, warlords, and the unknowable, unknowable because they are so out of touch with the world beyond their immediate neighborhood, and we are so out of touch with them. I read an article in Smithsonian once that said there was a strong belief among some in the scientific community that in remote parts of Afghanistan there may be people more purely Greek than anyone living today in Greece itself. Remnants of Alexander's trek across the region. Yes, that's the kind of place we are dealing with and as a history fan, I'm very aware of what a sinkhole for foreign armies the place has been for literally thousands of years. Yet we have to keep fighting there. I hope we can ramp things down to some special forces and some high tech at some point in the future, but not now. Why? Because we still haven't finished those responsible for 9/11. The Taliban are as guilty as a man who, knowing what another man is about to do, hands him his loaded gun and watches as the guy commits murder. Still running around Afghanistan and its border regions are the murderer and the guy that gave him the gun.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/20/saigon_2009 [rquoter] Saigon 2009 Afghanistan is today's Vietnam. No question mark needed. BY THOMAS H. JOHNSON, M. CHRIS MASON | AUGUST 20, 2009 For those who say that comparing the current war in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War is taking things too far, here's a reality check: It's not taking things far enough. From the origins of these North-South conflicts to the role of insurgents and the pointlessness of this week's Afghan presidential elections, it's impossible to ignore the similarities between these wars. The places and faces may have changed but the enemy is old and familiar. The sooner the United States recognizes this, the sooner it can stop making the same mistakes in Afghanistan. Even at first glance the structural parallels alone are sobering. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan (prior to the U.S. engagement there) had surprisingly defeated a European power in a guerrilla war that lasted a decade, followed by a largely north-south civil war which lasted another decade. Insurgents in both countries enjoyed the advantage of a long, trackless, and uncloseable border and sanctuary beyond it, where they maintained absolute political control. Both were land wars in Asia with logistics lines more than 9,000 miles long and extremely harsh terrain with few roads, which nullified U.S. advantages in ground mobility and artillery. Other key contributing factors bear a striking resemblance: Almost exactly 80 percent of the population of both countries was rural, and literacy hovered around 10 percent. In both countries, the United States sought to create an indigenous army modeled in its own image, based on U.S. army organization charts. With the ARVN in South Vietnam and the ANA in today's Afghanistan, assignment of personnel as combat advisors and mentors was the absolute lowest priority. And in both wars, the U.S. military grossly misled the American people about the size of the indigenous force over a protracted period. In Afghanistan, for example, the U.S. military touts 91,000 ANA soldiers as "trained and equipped," knowing full well that barely 39,000 are still in the ranks and present for duty. The United States consistently and profoundly misunderstood the nature of the enemy it was fighting in each circumstance. In Vietnam, the United States insisted on fighting a war against communism, while the enemy was fighting a war of national reunification. In Afghanistan, the United States still insists on fighting a secular counterinsurgency, while the enemy is fighting a jihad. The intersection of how insurgencies end and how jihads end is nil. It's hard to defeat an enemy you don't understand, and in Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this fight is being played out in a different war. This is but the tip of the iceberg of a long list of remarkable parallels. What's really startling are the deeper strategic connections. The United States lost the war in Vietnam, historical revisionism notwithstanding, because of a fatal nexus of political and military failure, and the exact same thing is happening in Afghanistan. As Andrew Krepinevich noted many years ago, the army failed in Vietnam because it insisted on fighting a war of maneuver to "find, fix, and destroy" the enemy (with what became known as "search and destroy missions") instead of protecting the people in the villages. Today these tactics are called "sweep and clear missions," but they are in essence the same thing -- clearing tiny patches of ground for short periods in a big country in hopes of killing enough enemy to make him quit. But its manpower pool was not North Vietnam's Achilles heel and neither is it the Taliban's. Almost exactly the same percentage of personnel in Afghanistan has rural reconstruction as its primary mission (the Provincial Reconstruction Teams) as had "pacification" (today's "nation-building") as their primary mission in Vietnam, about 4 percent. The other 96 percent is engaged in chasing illiterate teenage boys with guns around the countryside, exactly what the enemy wants us to do. Meanwhile the political failure in Kabul is Saigon déjà vu. A government that is seen as legitimate by 85 or 90 percent of the population is considered the sine qua non of success by counterinsurgency experts. After the Diem coup, this was never possible in Vietnam, as one incompetent and utterly corrupt government succeeded another. None was legitimate in the eyes of the people. Contemporary descriptions of the various Saigon governments read almost exactly like descriptions of the Karzai government today. Notwithstanding all the fanfare over this week's presidential voting in Afghanistan, the Kabul government will never be legitimate either, because democracy is not a source of legitimacy of governance in Afghanistan and it never has been. Legitimacy in Afghanistan over the last thousand years has come exclusively from dynastic and religious sources. The fatal blunder of the United States in eliminating a ceremonial Afghan monarchy was Afghanistan's Diem Coup: afterwards, there was little possibility of establishing a legitimate, secular national government. It doesn't matter who wins the August elections for president in Afghanistan: he will be illegitimate because he is elected. We have apparently learned nothing from Vietnam. [/rquoter]
Extremely well said. If you do enable another to commit horrible acts, you are culpable. Doing nothing has worked so well. We should do that again. What could possibly go wrong?
