The war in Iraq is over, well,
maybe. On Aug. 31st our President did not exactly say that. He said,
"the
Iraq war was nearing
an end," whatever that is supposed to mean. Well, he did say all
combat troops have left Iraq. No, that is not right. Combat brigades merely
changed their names to Advise and Assist brigades. (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
These combat brigades,
who are not really combat brigades, but armed to teeth like ones, number about
50,000 American troops. They also die like those real soldiers in combat
brigades notwithstanding that their description was administratively changed.
I will continue to follow the
lead of the MSM in ignoring the State Department's hired guns in Iraq who
number 100,000 and likely to grow in number. Not unlike the Advise and Assist
troops, they are not combat soldiers, either, although armed to teeth like
ones. They are called contractors.
Ignoring this mass of oxymoron
issues, I am going to follow the advice of my President. I am going to "turn
the page" to the good war, Afghanistan.
Our ever-popular NATO commander,
Gen. David Petraeus, recently demoted to the position, has already asked for
more troops, a practice of generals since time immortal. Hat in hand he went to
NATO headquarters in Brussels requesting 2,000 more troops. It is not clear
where he is going to get them, probably the U.S. because the EU clearly wants
out " if he gets them. Prior to his assignment as NATO commander in
Afghanistan, Petraeus was the CentCom commander in charge of both the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan as well as much of the Middle East op area.
The expenditures for the
training of the ANA (Afghan National Army) and the ANP (Afghan National Police)
is projected to taper off from $11.6B next year to an average of $6.2B
over the next four years, according to a detailed NATO training mission
document.
Readers are learning why I
dislike this page. Unfortunately, I have only begun.
The question must be asked. Is
it worth it? Many feel that Afghanistan's strategic
interest to the United States is minimal. George Friedman of Stratfor writes,
"The only justification for the war is that al Qaeda launched its attacks on
the United States from Afghanistan. But that justification is no longer valid.
Al Qaeda can launch attacks from Yemen or other countries. The fact that
Afghanistan was the base from which the attacks were launched does not mean
that al Qaeda depends on Afghanistan to launch attacks. And given that the apex
leadership of al Qaeda has not launched attacks in a while, the question is
whether al Qaeda is capable of launching such attacks any longer. In any case,
managing al Qaeda today does not require nation building in Afghanistan." He
adds, "The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United
States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand
strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional
terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11
attacks. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths
cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly,
resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible,
disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be
blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the world's only global
power cannot be captive to this single threat."
Recently, Hamid
Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, known also as the mayor of Kabul,
implored the Taliban to come to the table for truce talks. It is a one-sided
conversation. The Taliban is not interested. The Taliban
at this point do not feel the pressure required for them to capitulate or
negotiate and therefore continue to follow their strategy of surviving and
waiting for the coalition forces to depart.
On the other hand,
top administration officials have been indicating that only token military
withdrawals will occur in July 2011, and Obama is not refuting the statements.
Indeed, in his comments from the Oval Office on Aug. 31, he stated that the
July 2011 withdrawals would be "conditions based."
Reader, I, too, am
trying to make sense of all this. Unfortunately, it gets a little worse.
Armed resistance in Afghanistan
is nothing new. It has existed
there for centuries, driven by a number of factors. A ten-year old boy in
Afghanistan can field strip an AK-47 and fire it with extreme accuracy. One of the primary factors in this calculus
is the country's geography. Because of its rugged and remote terrain, it is
very difficult for a foreign power (or even an indigenous government in Kabul)
to enforce its writ on many parts of the country. From the days of Alexander
the Great to the British Empire in the 1800's (twice) to the Red Army invasion
of Afghanistan, which led to an eight-year war culminating in the Red Army
retreating with its tail between its legs, Afghans have resisted all foreign
invaders before the birth of Christ. Also, Afghanistan is a different world. To
many troops it is almost as if they landed on a different planet.
A second, closely
related factor is culture. Many of the tribes in Afghanistan have traditionally
been warrior societies that live in the mountains, disconnected from Kabul
because of geography, and tend to exercise autonomous rule that breeds
independence and suspicion of the central government. A third factor is
ethnicity. There is no real Afghan national identity. Rather, the country is a
patchwork of Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and other ethnicities that tend also to be
segregated by geography.
Finally, there is
religion. While Afghanistan is predominantly a Sunni Muslim country, there is a
significant Shiite minority as well. The hardcore Pashtun Taliban are not very
tolerant of the Shia, and they can also be harsh toward more moderate Sunnis
who do things such as send their daughters to school, trim their beards, listen
to music and watch movies.
With respect to
Afghanistan I am bundle of contradictions, and not unlike our political and
military leadership, I am rapidly running out of solutions to the problem,
assuming I ever had any good ones in the first place. A precipitate withdrawal
would be very unwise. This is equally true of a years long stay in Afghanistan.
There are very serious doubts whether any semblance of victory in Afghanistan
is possible. After all, the U.S. has not achieved that in nearly nine years of
fighting. Worse, the Taliban with its affiliates in Pakistan is now stronger
than at any other given point. Is there any real expectation that change is in
the air for Afghanistan, or will Afghanistan remain as it has for the past 2500
years? Logic dictates the latter is true.