By Fester
Go read Spencer as he has a great piece on the bastardization of counter-insurgency for counter-terrorism in Afghanistan with several clear disconnects in the logic flow. Here are a few key excerpts:
Much as I can see the argument that these things are complicated and rhetorical strategy isn't the same thing as actually winning an argument, when you see your own argument becoming, Well, this is kind of Vietnam-esque... that should really occasion a reconsideration of basic premises.
But there's a big difference between that and a counterinsurgency strategy for a nation-building objective, and a still greater one between that and a counterinsurgency strategy for a prophylactic objective. The American people have never approved sending 68,000 troops to suffer for Hamid Karzai, and certainly never approved sending them to keep Pakistan from falling to the Taliban. (Which, by the way, seems like a distinctly unrealistic scenario, especially now that the Pakistani military moved into Swat. The Taliban-led insurgency is a threat to Pakistan. It's not going to rule the country. Westerners have a tendency of predicting the imminent fall of Pakistan every five years or so.)
Perhaps I'm misreading what it is the people around McChrystal are saying, but it seems fair to say that the balance of evidence favors an interpretation that Afghanistan strategy is coming unmoored from the actual objectives of the war, and the actual interests at stake, and the White House is being either deluded or outright dishonest about what's happening.
I am immensely skeptical of a COIN campaign in Afgahnistan or in most places where the primary counter-insurgents are foreigners that will produce benefits to the counter-insurgent sponsors that are remotely proximate to the expenses whether those benefits are distributed economic, enhanced security or rule-set stabilization. Priaptic benefits don't count in that equation.
No comments:
Post a Comment