Two Bipartisan Consensuses On Af/Pak

By Steve Hynd

Steve Clemons notes Christopher Preble on one reason why there's no real impetus to change course on Af/Pak:

we're seeing bipartisan consensus emerging around U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The bad news? There are actually two bipartisan consensuses.

Technically, that is impossible. Consensus means "general agreement" or "a view reached by a group as a whole" so there can't really be more than one.

And that is the problem. So long as the right is fighting the right, and others on the left are fighting the left, policymakers will be inclined to focus on other policy issues, content to let Afghan policy drift, and hope for a miraculous turnaround (e.g. Karzai becomes less corrupt and more competent; the Afghan economy begins to produce something other than opium; the Pashtuns decide to make common cause with the Tajiks, Turkmen and Hazara; Afghan men decide that Afghan women should have rights, etc).

Our men and women in uniform, engaged increasingly in armed social work are caught in the middle while the pointy-heads pull on their respective chins.

The neoliberals at CNAS and Brookings have joined forces with the neocons at the AEI and Heritage to push for more troops, more money, more escalation. Meanwhile, paleocons like George Will and Chuck Hagel  have echoed Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders and less hawkish Dem think-tankers who talk of Vietnamization of the war. As Hagel writes:

The president and his national security team should listen to recordings of conversations that President Lyndon B. Johnson had with Sen. Richard Russell about Vietnam, especially those in which LBJ told Russell that we could not win in Vietnam but that he did not want to pull out and be the first American president to lose a war.

Should, but I fear, won't. The Wuss Factor still reigns supreme just as it did for LBJ. Yet support for escalation is waning fast, with only 25% favoring sending more troops into the region. Preble writes that the pro-escalation hawks favor ignoring public opinion and that "this faction says our objectives in Afghanistan are, if anything, insufficiently bold, and that we need more resources, and much more time, in order to achieve them." But they aren't exactly being honest about how long (forty years?) or how much (160,000 troops, costs of $trillions to dwarf even Iraq?). Preble wants to see the honesty start at the very top.

The president should go before the American people and honestly explain: the likely costs of our current strategy; the likelihood of victory; and the likely consequences that would ensue if we were to adopt alternative strategies, including the small footprint advocated by George Will on Tuesday.

But President Obama must be honest. The costs of our current strategy will be very high. More troops, more money, more casualties. The likelihood of victory is 50-50, at best (most nation-building missions fail, so I�m being charitable here). We will have to be there for many years; honest analysts admit that the commitment would likely extend for decades. We might like allies to help us, but they aren�t much interested.

I�m hungry for this debate. The policy in Afghanistan might ultimately prove the decisive factor in rectifying the gap between what the public wants and what the policymakers are giving them. As noted at the outset, my only regret is that our men and women in uniform are paying the price in the meantime, while the policymakers and pundits dither.

But we cannot postpone this debate any longer. To pursue a chronically under-resourced strategy is worse than counterproductive � it is immoral. To pursue such a strategy because the leaders fear that they cannot be honest with the American people is repugnant.

The trouble is, the President isn't being honest about mission creep in Af/Pak and neither is anyone else either in the official chain of command or among the neo-whatevers pressing for escalation. Reporters are already noticing that you can get any one of them to dance by trying to get them to say the words "nation building" aloud and on the record.

And the dishonesty is turning many away from the creepier and creepier mission. A couple of days ago, Richard at Vote Vets mentioned an email he received from a friend, a former veteran of Afghanistan who now works for the federal government. The author remains anonymous but I've a feeling I know who he is:

I still believe in the mission there, but at some point you have to either commit to executing a full-blown counterinsurgency mission, conducting a targeted, more limited counterterrorism mission, or you have to leave.  We were initially told by this President that it would be the limited counterterrorism mission--which was okay.  But then McKiernan was fired, McChrystal was sent over, and it suddenly turned into a counterinsurgency mission.  That's fine, too, but you have to do it right.  And that's where we're seeing the problem.  In the last six months, I've seen an administration that seems to have fallen in love with COIN without understanding how much time, how many people, what types of people, and how much money something like that will take.  And they're severely under-committing across the board.

So if we assume the limited counterterrorism mission is out, and I'm forced to choose between doing COIN wrong and leaving, then I say get the kids out of there.  The troops are great at counterinsurgency, but you can't leave them hanging like that.  And inadequately resourcing a COIN operation does no good for the Afghan people anyway.  You're just pushing off the inevitable that way and you're making it worse for Afghans in the long run.

To call what I'm feeling 'disappointment' wouldn't even begin to describe what I think about how this has been handled.  I only take solace in the fact that McCain would've screwed this up even worse because we would've invaded Iran earlier this summer.

Preble and Clemons are considering resuscitating their Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy to address their misgivings about the still-benchmarkless Obama plan. That's be a very good thing. Clemons writes:

I'm with those that think that "Surge Envy" is not a strategy - and that the inflation of America's commitment to a different order in Afghanistan is outrunning reasonable deployment of resources and any ability to sustain a stable national outcome that Americans will be able to support.

At Newshoggers, we were skeptics about Obama's Af/Pak plan before it was cool. We've been watching the growth of the bipartisan consensus on de-escalation and following the excuses of the neo-whatever hawks all along - including those who try to be "agnostic" as they sit on the fence between their progressive anti-war readership and their scoop-providing sources at the hawkish think-tanks and the Pentagon. We think some of those "Surge Envy" hawks are beginning to realise they backed the wrong horse, whether from personal or politically partisan reasons makes no odds, and we're looking forward to their changing their minds without ever admitting they've changed their minds.