« Pass The Green Beans | Main | Race, Genes, IQ, and Yawns. »
November 22, 2007
The other war we're losing
(Posted by John.)
So Afghanistan is kind of going balls-up on us. Sad to say, but this is just the most recent in a series of reports that show the Taliban's influence is growing, and the solutions are basically impossible.
The full Senlis Council report is worth reading in full, if you can bear to read 100+ pages of PDF file. Main points below the fold:
- The Taliban have "a permanent presence" in more than half (54%) of the country, with a "substantial presence" in another 38%.
- The Taliban are well positioned to retake Kabul in 2008.
- Tactics invented in Iraq are being imported to kill NATO soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan. Thanks again, Mr. Bush!
So what's the answer, according to Senlis? Doubling NATO forces, removing all restrictions on the use of national forces in Afghanistan (many countries have large contingents, but are prevented from being used in combat), a shift from counter-terrorism to counterinsurgency, and -- wait for it -- a land invasion of Pakistan! In fairness, the Senlis report says we should get Pakistan's permission first, but it's difficult to see that happening.
One wonders why they didn't save their breaths and countless innocent pixels by simply saying "Afghanistan: time to go."
Because that's what the report really amounts to. There's no serious indication that NATO nations are inclined to double their commitment, much less remove the provisos they've put on the use of their soldiers. As for invading a nuclear power, do we really need to ask why this is a bad, bad idea?
The sad thing is that I don't think Senlis is wrong -- indeed, they're probably low-balling the costs of reversing the years of failure in Afghanistan. (80,000 troops to secure the south of Afghanistan?) But it's a mark of how dishonest the rhetoric is in our other "easy, cheap war" that the government of Canada summarily dismissed the report, calling it "not credible."
So we've got two wars with not enough troops to win either one of them individually, and certainly not enough to win both. Well, that's not quite true: NATO has literally millions of troops that could, in theory, be used. And if we actually thought Afghanistan was worth it, other countries could raise those numbers further. Which brings us to the last question here: after leaving Afghanistan, what will be left of NATO?
You've got to wonder what it means when an alliance of most the world's biggest military powers (after the US, the UK, France, and Germany are 2,3, and 4 in spending, and have a combined population of 200 million) can't win a war like this, even after having pretty well won the war already in 2001 -- the victory in Afghanistan actually seemed to hold for a year or two, unlike the victory in Iraq that never was.
So we're looking at two major strategic defeats not just for the US, but for the whole transatlantic alliance. And while it's tempting to blame Bush for most of this -- and indeed, others should feel free -- it's worth pointing out that, for example, the Canadian Prime Minister has followed Bush's lead by claiming simultaneously that the war in Afghanistan is an all-out fight for civilization, but not so important that we do something as radical as postpone tax cuts. In truth, not a single western leader has treated Afghanistan seriously, and we're paying the price for it now.
November 22, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
"Balls-up". Interesting. I've heard of belly-up, and tits-up, but until now I had only heard of "ball up" which I assumed meant as to ball up a piece of paper with errors on it, and toss it in the trash.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bal1.htm
World Wide Words: Balls-up
Suggests its a British corruption of an American phrase, "ball-up".
Oh, and yeah, you're right about Afghanistan.
(Sad that I'll never be able to watch the Hot Rock with quite the same joy as I once did.)
Posted by: jerry | Nov 23, 2007 12:24:36 AM
All this is an outcome of using the Northern Alliance as proxy fighters. The situation is actually worse than in Iraq because there's little sign that there are any significant Pashtun groupings who accept NATO as a legitimate force in the country.
So, in essence, the biggest ethnic grouping in the country sees us as the enemy. That's what's propelling the Taliban success. There is no long term military solution without a proper political solution. If any country in the world was geographically designed for guerillas, it's Afghanistan.
Posted by: Meh | Nov 23, 2007 6:31:33 AM
Meanwhile, the likes of Charlies Gibson just give us the surge happy talk on Iraq night after night.
Posted by: bob h | Nov 23, 2007 8:00:30 AM
So what's the answer, according to Senlis? Doubling NATO forces, removing all restrictions on the use of national forces in Afghanistan (many countries have large contingents, but are prevented from being used in combat), a shift from counter-terrorism to counterinsurgency, and -- wait for it -- a land invasion of Pakistan! In fairness, the Senlis report says we should get Pakistan's permission first, but it's difficult to see that happening.
One wonders why they didn't save their breaths and countless innocent pixels by simply saying "Afghanistan: time to go."
I don't wonder that at all. Increasing troops, removing restrictions and invading other countries are the three neocon shibboleths. Each of the three displays Will. Read any Kagan or sub-Kagan analysis, and you'll find some combination of these arguments. We need more force, we need to be more "forceful" with our force, and we need to extend our force into more arenas.
The Senlis report's proposal for Afghanistan is not merely impossible, as you note, it is impossible in a particular way - it echoes the worst, failed ideas of the neoconservative movement. It echoes what PNAC calls for in Iraq.
I think that the most likely reading of this is that Afghanistan is going so badly that we're starting to see Iraq-2006 play out. The neocons begin to acknowledge that there are problems, but call for More War to solve the problems with the war.
Posted by: DivGuy | Nov 23, 2007 8:22:27 AM
How about we just legalize opium, both here and there? That'd take the wind out of the Taliban's sails pretty quickly, I think. Granted, it wouldn't solve all of Afghanistan's problems, but it would make a hell of a lot more sense than having to redesign our flag to incorporate another two stars.
Posted by: George Tenet Fangirl | Nov 23, 2007 9:00:59 AM
Jerry,
The British use of "balls-up" is a synonym for "train wreck" or "clusterfuck". My impression is that John used it ("going balls-up") as a pc version of "tits up" (i.e. our mission in Afghanistan is dying).
Posted by: beowulf | Nov 23, 2007 11:35:50 AM
A nice lineup BushCo's got for us: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan (west to east on a map). If Bush was Alexander (but, however without a Hephaestion - unless Cheney plays that role [ewwww!]) he would probably take on India too. Big difference with Alexander: success for Alexander, failure for Bush.
Bush has shown the way though. Big talk, big ideas, a strategy of fantasies, almost no army, no allies of substance, paying for it with borrowed (printed) US dollars that is about to become an international joke. Lots of lies, too: We're going to prevail!
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Nov 23, 2007 11:48:39 AM
"President Musharraf has been unable to deal with these bases..."
UNABLE? I believe the word the author was looking for was UNWILLING. Anyone who thinks Musharraf is really serious about disabling or dismantling the Taliban clearly knows far too little about the political history of Pakistan over the past 30 years to comment intelligently on the matter...
Posted by: jjcomet | Nov 23, 2007 11:50:27 AM
Is "balls-up" a PC version of "tits up?" It's an interesting question. On its face, it would certainly seem to be. But.... Both sexes have tits. Only one sex has balls. Both men and women are serving in the armed forces in Afghanistan. It would seem that "balls-up" is in reality the more gendered, sexist term.
Regarding Afghanistan, fields that grow poppy can probably grow cotton. While I am against sweatshops and am a fair trade advocate, quite a while ago, I thought the best thing to do in Afghanistan is to "enlist" The Gap, Levis, Nike, and potentially even an Intel or two and get them to setup maquiladoras in Afghanistan. Bootstrap a clothes production industry. I note that when I buy clothes, I often do purchase clothes with a tag that says they came from Pakistan or Vietnam.
I'm not sure that can still be done. (I also had a simplistic plan to stop the insurgency in Iraq very early on in June 2003. It involved shipping premade hundred or thousands of , ready to go, 1MW containerized, grid compatible, diesel electric generators and enlisting the Iraqis to deploy/staff/maintain them.)
People should listen to me more :(
Posted by: jerry | Nov 23, 2007 11:58:52 AM
Divguy: I suggest you look at previous Senlis reports. They're not exactly neo-con fellow travellers. If you read the report, they're downright scathing about US policy thus far, calling it (in so many words) the prime recruitment tool for the Taliban.
Posted by: John | Nov 23, 2007 11:59:11 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071122/wl_nm/afghan_nato_dc_2
Do we believe the Afghanis or some think tank sitting in Canada? What's dishonest is how people sitting safely behind their computer in America call our solider's scarfices failure when they have no clue what they are talking about. Keep basing your opinion on journalist and think tank opinions the rest of us will base in on soliders and those actually fighting.
Curious if you think WWII was worth fighting through all the loses we suffered? In that war there was actually a real possiblity of loseing. Same with the reconstruction afterwards, should we have bailed on Germany? Don't we still have more soliders in Europe then Iraq? Almost as many in Asia as well?
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 23, 2007 12:53:13 PM
the victory in Afghanistan actually seemed to hold for a year or two, unlike the victory in Iraq that never was.
Media hype. The Taliban/Pashtun influence in the central and south Afghanistan country side was never gone, just driven underground.
As for drugs, drug trafficking constitutes the third largest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade. The US has the oil covered in the Middle East, with strong ties to Saudi Arabia and military ocupations in Iraq and Kuwait, and leads the world in arms sales. Afghanistan and Colombia are the largest illicit drug producing economies in the world, so the US military and the drug-dealing CIA are in these places also. Opium from Afghanistan bound for Europe goes through Turkey and Kosovo.
Mike Ruppert: "Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world's opium. But then the CIA moved in, and by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world's heroin supply. By 1999, they were churning out 3,200 TONS of heroin a year nearly 80% of the total market supply. But then something unexpected happened. The Taliban rose to power, and by 2000 they had destroyed nearly all of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3,000+ tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction! This enormous drop in revenue subsequently hurt not only the CIA's Black Budget projects, but also the free-flow of laundered money in and out of the Controller's banks"
Now the Taliban is gone from the 'government', the US is in with its puppet Karzai and opium production is back where it was before the Taliban. Let's see: 2+2=4
Afghanistan has been sold to Americans as 'the good war'. Most leftys are even in favor of it, so we need to hang in there for the long haul. Admiral Mullen: " . . .this long war on extremists is generational – it will take many, many years. . ." And there's all that drug money.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 23, 2007 2:11:44 PM
I thought journalists and think tanks got us into this mess in the first place?
Posted by: k | Nov 23, 2007 5:04:11 PM
Bacon, I was never in favor of bombing Afghanistan, though I admit that even left-liberals in the US tended to think me crazy when I expressed the view. 'Leftys' like me, however, tended to understand.
Posted by: wcw | Nov 23, 2007 5:23:30 PM
"How about we just legalize opium, both here and there? That'd take the wind out of the Taliban's sails pretty quickly, I think. Granted, it wouldn't solve all of Afghanistan's problems, but it would make a hell of a lot more sense than having to redesign our flag to incorporate another two stars.
Posted by: George Tenet Fangirl | Nov 23, 2007 9:00:59 AM"
Because that would have made sense. When our allies in NATO first invoked for the first time "an attack on one is an attack on all" and offered a lot more troops than they ended up sending, it would make sense to accept those troops. Bush turned down their offer because he didn't want to share more decision-making power than he had to. Focusing on Afghanistan instead of dropping the ball and going to Iraq would have made sense, but that's not what they did. Making sense doesn't make you popular to the Republican base. "Looking tough," like Reagan acting in our propaganda films in WWII instead of fighting (like the elder Bush, whom they hated, Eisenhower, whose principles they abandoned or McGovern and Kerry, whom they wanted to destroy) is what gets the Republican base motivated. They love the war on drugs because good Christians don't use drugs. Bush had lived by the base and we're losing this war because of that base.
Posted by: Reality Man | Nov 23, 2007 9:21:56 PM
I think of it like this, the US military has been fighting a war with an enemy that wasn't and has lost a war with an enemy that was.
The taliban was that enemy. As it is I have always thought that the war on terror is a sham none the less.
-=topper=-
Posted by: -=topper=- | Nov 24, 2007 8:32:46 AM
NateO--your comparison to Germany isn't quite correct:
--The US went into Iraq with 138,000 troops, we went into Germany with a couple million.
--If we wish to Germanize Iraq we'll need to add at least 500,000 troops to do the job...the place has to be saturated.
--Germany was easier to democratize than Iraq. Iraq is a country cobbled together by prior empires which failed to account for extreme tribal differences.
--We are doing a disservice to our troops to keep them in a war which can't be won under the current circumstances.
Posted by: Texican | Nov 24, 2007 10:28:11 AM
Texican, I have many family members that served and are serving in Iraq, ontop of that many more friends and family friends serving. Not one of them has ever expressed an opinion like yours or said anything close to us having done them a disservice. The complaint I do hear from almost every one of them is how much it hurts when they hear comments similar to yours about them not being capable if winning this war or we lost this war. No statement I read on blogs bothers me more then liberals projecting their anti war views on our soliders. Your comments are the greatest disservice to our soliders, maybe you should spend Thanksgiving with a table full of them before decalring the war lost and their job a failure.
Posted by: NateO | Nov 24, 2007 4:31:05 PM
Texican, I have many family members that served and are serving in Iraq, ontop of that many more friends and family friends serving.
Also, I am a self-made millionaire veteran of the special forces who dropped out of harvard when I realized that I had trained most of the professors in what they know....
Yes, NateO, we've heard it all before. Cut the crap with that idiotic, "you're insulting our soldiers when you criticize the validity of the mission" McCarthyist witchunting crap you're spewing. You should be ashamed of yourself for the deviant behavior you just display. Unacceptable.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 24, 2007 11:09:01 PM
I disagree with Ezra. First of all, saying that the report calls for invading Pakistan strikes me as misleading. The report calls for NATO to "offer support to the Pakistani military's already extensive mission to defeat militant Islamists in its troubled western provinces," and makes clear that any NATO forces operating in Pakistan "would serve under the operational control of Pakistan."
As for Ezra's assertion that NATO nations aren't willing to make the troop commitments that the report calls for, that's prejudging the outcome of a debate that the United States ought to be having. If the United States decides that we need 80,000 troops in Afghanistan, we can make that happen all by ourselves by transferring troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Let me also say a word in defense of NATO. The decision of NATO to invoke the mutual defense clause was symbolicly important, even though everyone understands that no nation is going to actually take an attack on an ally as seriously as it takes an attack on itself. Our NATO allies have backed that up with significant commmitments of forces. France in particular deserves credit for standing by us in Afghanistan during the period that we were referring to the French as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" and eating "freedom fries."
This page lists some examples of Bush's lack of commitment to winning in Afghanistan. For example, the United States sent a Special Forces group to Afghanistan that spoke the local languages. After six months of cultivating the trust of the locals, the unit was pulled out so that it would be available for the upcoming invasion of Iraq (the invasion that Bush was saying publicly was a last resort which would occur only if Iraq refused to give up its alleged WMD). They were replaced by a Special Forces unit trained in Spanish.
This lack of commitment by the United States to winning in Afghanistan matters because the United States is an essential part of NATO. The U.S. military is much more powerful than that of any other NATO member, with capabilities that no one else has. But from the perspective of the United States, the fact that NATO can only be effective when its goals are the same as those of the United States is hardly a drawback.
The good news from the Senlis report is that, if their analysis of the situation is correct, it is still possible to defeat the Taliban. The war in Iraq captures all the attention, to a degree that I suspect that withdrawing from Iraq is a prerequisite to achiving victory against the Taliban. But the message I get from the Senlis report is that if we turn our attention to Afghanistan, and we decide that despite the passage of time it is still important to defeat the Taliban (I think it is), then we have a reasonable chance of doing so.
Posted by: Kenneth Almquist | Nov 25, 2007 3:58:47 AM
Tyro, always there with a childish rebuttal, you are reliable. Congrats on being a self made millionaire, sounds like your bragging a little but if you need a pat on the back there it is. I always thought Ivy League schools where over rated so that was probalby a good call to!
I'm really the last one that should be correcting grammer but I must clear this up for you;
validity of the mission means questioning rather we should be there or not, should have invaded etc. He specifically said, "...in a war which can't be won " We as American's should fully debate rather the invasion was proper and if we should continue to be there. We should not, now or ever, tell a solider a war they are being sent to can't be won. I really should leave it here as my point has been made, but after just 3 days ago spending Thanksgiving with my brother activy Navy served in Iraq, Sister who just left the Army to go to PA school then reenlist, active reserves, also servered in Iraq, and her husband active army 2 tours in Iraq I can't help but to tell you to F off you unamerican piece of S. Yellow spined word twisting American hating scum like you should be deported. In the minimum learn to read before you cover for stupid comments. There is no war America can't win if we are behind it, period.
Posted by: NateO | Nov 25, 2007 8:35:35 PM
Take the pledge, Tyro...
Posted by: jmack | Nov 25, 2007 8:45:28 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
