Afghanistan, Escalation, And The Wuss Factor

By Steve Hynd

Michael Cohen has a problem with "chest-thumping" propagandisers for more and more escalation in Afghanitan.

You know, I recognize the fact that I could be completely wrong in everything I've written about Afghanistan - perhaps the security risks of an al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan necessitate the US maintaining a long-term presence in the country. Perhaps the risk of instability in Af/Pak is so great that US troops must maintain a presence for the foreseeable future. Perhaps we have a moral responsibility to stay the course.

Perhaps all of this is true. Perhaps I am wrong. But at least, I believe, I am being reasonably honest about what we can accomplish or what is realistic in Afghanistan. The same cannot be said of the armchair generals who continue to sound off the same empty platitudes about staying the course.

I am really sick and tired of listening to people like Michael Gerson tell me that we have "No Choice But To Try" in Afghanistan - and then simply refuse to tell me what victory looks like.  He's not alone. Yesterday Max Boot wrote paragraph after paragraph in the Wall Street Journal about "How To Win in Afghanistan" and nowhere in this chest-thumping screed could he be bothered with explaining what winning actually means. Tony Cordesman tells the world, here is How We Lose in Afghanistan, but can't be hassled with an explanation of how victory is achieved. Pete Wehner doesn't bother to do much more then accuse war critics of losing nerve.

I agree entirely with Michael. If the COINdinistas and the pro-occupation Very Serious People are right and I'm wrong then, as the Sainted General might say, "Tell me how this ends".

And I mean realistically tell me. That means without invoking an entire My Little Pony abbattoir of impossibly sustainable pipe-dreams.  Without the US paying billions, for decades, for a beefed up Afghan military that has "attempted coup" against the incredibly corrupt, ineffective and illigitimate narco-warlords of the civil government written all over it. Without papering over the cracks of ethnic and tribal divisions and the feedback loop of warrior honor codes that together have created violence for centuries. Without telling us that any amount of Western investment short of decades and trillions (and a fair bit of ethnic cleansing) will bring lasting democracy, peace, equality or even a modicum of reasonable government to Afghans who resent the West's meddling in the first place.

And please leave out the fearmongering in search of a mission too. Don't pretend we're hunting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan - even Petraeus admits they've not been there for years and are unlikely to return even under Taliban rule. The Taliban aren't a threat to the West, they're entirely a local movement, focussed on quasi-nationalistic Pashtun goals. There is no chance that the Taliban or Al Qaeda can destabilize Pakistan either, which has the fifth largest military in the world and a military moreover that directly own or controls over half the civilian economy. There's no chance of that military letting AQ seize its nukes by force (and no, suicide bombers at the front gates of sprawling, high-security nuke facilities don't count as serious attempts). Perhaps the most destabilizing factor for Pakistan right now is the Western military presence there and in Afghanistan - it's incredibly unpopular and is a major driver of votes towards Pakistan's religious right parties.

Never mind the Afghans, when the connection between theory and real-world outcome requires America to do some things that are unlikely or impossible, you should know your strategy and it's theoretical foundations are in trouble. Despite the bombastic rhetoric of neo-whatevers, a true solution to the region's problems, if one exists at all, lies in solving the geopolitical threat triangle between China, India and Pakistan, not in Afghanistan. The latter is just the battleground for a proxy war of economic and geopolitical encircement strategies.

So - why are we there, and how does it end?

Michael touches on what I believe is the really real reason the West is doubling down in Af/Pak. Call it "The Wuss Factor". He points to Max Boot, who writes:

Losing wars is a bad thing. It is especially bad if you are a superpower that depends on an aura of invincibility to keep rogue elements at bay. That should go without saying, but those calling for a scuttle from Afghanistan seem to have forgotten this elementary lesson. They might cast their minds back to the 1970s when we were reeling from defeat in Vietnam and our enemies were on the march from Nicaragua to Iran. Or back to the 1990s when, following the U.S. pullout from Lebanon and Somalia, Osama bin Laden labeled us a weak horse that could be attacked with impunity.

And replies:

So Max are you suggesting we should have stayed in Lebanon and Somalia forever because we couldn't dare show weakness to some guy who lives in a cave? To read Boot is to believe we can never quit a conflict because of how it might "look" to the bad guys. And if Boot can't define victory or give a sense of what winning means then why should I listen to a word he says - because his recipe for American foreign policy is perpetual, unending war.

Boot has inadvertently let the cat partially out of the bag. As usual, foreign policy is about inflicting the needs of purile domestic politics upon foreigners. It's not that Osama might call Western leaders wusses if they admitted the blindingly obvious - that we've no realistic mission nation-building  mission in Afghanistan but we're escalating anyway - but that their domestic political oppositions might.

Over at The Atlanticist, James Joyner's excellent webzine for the Atlantic Council (the main NATO-boosting think tank in the U.S.), there's been a great series of essays on "the Afghan brawl". Recently, both Hugh De Santis and Thomas Rid have pointed out that Obama is wussing on confronting his domestic rivals - who would love the opportunity to call him a wuss on "keeping America safe" - and thus he will not draw down the U.S. presence in Af/Pak. A similiar dynamic holds true for Britain's Gordon Brown - even though when David Cameron succeeds him the paleocons in his own party will probably force the new P.M. into a drawdown in any case - and for other Western leaders who are still outwardly committed to sending and keeping troops in Afghanistan.

Rid offers an analogy:

If I�d given my money to an activist investor (that would be the previous administration) who then forced a previously rock-solid company (that would be the U.S. military) to go after a product that doesn�t seem to work as advertised (that would be the war on terror) � I�d consider selling. Certainly the investor and his former advisers would have reduced credibility today, but also the current executives of the troubled company. Or at least they would have to put forward careful and considerate arguments for waiting out the crisis � in a calm, civilized, and sober way. If they�d overpromise or shout them in my face, I�d think something�s wrong.

Yet overpromises and shouting is all we get from the administration and from pro-occupation VSP's. We're being told by SecDef Gates that, after eight years, the Afghan war is "only now beginning." 

We're still in Afghanistan because, as Peter Hitchens recently wrote, politicians and military leaders are too afraid to admit getting involved was a mistake to begin with, too afraid of the embarassment of being seen to withdraw "in defeat". There are no other real reasons.