Interchangeable Quagmires

By Steve Hynd

Let's try a little experiment. Who do you think wrote this?

The current strategy is exactly what Al Qaeda wants�the United States distracted and pinned down by internal conflicts and trapped in a quagmire that has become the perfect rallying cry and recruitment tool for Al Qaeda. The United States has no good options given the strategic and tactical mistakes made, but simply staying the course with an indefinite military presence is not advancing U.S. interests.

...The fundamental premise of the surge strategy�that leaders will make key decisions to advance their country�s political transition and national reconciliation�is at best misguided and clearly unworkable.

...The �no end in sight� strategy fosters a culture of dependency among Iraqis by propping up certain members of the national government without fundamentally changing political dynamics. It does so at the cost of grinding down the strength of U.S. ground forces, as the readiness of these forces continues to decline.

Or this:

The United States should mitigate increasingly violent fragmentation by ceasing the unconditional arming and training of national security forces until a political consensus and sustainable political solution is reached. As the United States redeploys its military forces, it should immediately phase out its training of  national security forces and place strict limits on arming and equipping them. Spending billions to arm  security forces without political consensus among leaders carries significant risks�the largest of which is arming faction-ridden national units before a unified national government exists that these armed forces will loyally support. Training and equipping security forces risks making the civil war even bloodier and more vicious than it already is today. It also increases the dangers that these weapons will one day be turned against the United States and its allies in the region.

Some peacenik blogger writing about Afghanistan? No, those quotes are from a 2007 paper on Iraq by Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress. I cheated - I scubbed out all references to the country they were talking about. And when it comes to Iraq, present events are proving they were right. As Joost Hilterman wrote this week:

the problems in Iraq are much more profound, and much more threatening, than occasional bomb blasts, however powerful. The bombings distract from the sobering fact that politics remain so dysfunctional as to disable governance. Following a two-year lull in which security steadily improved but politicians made no progress on the principal constitutional issues dividing them�particularly on the questions of how to share or divide power and wealth, and how to settle territorial disputes�Baghdad has entered a season of crisis that may undo the relative peace that has been achieved.

It seems to me that you could make a case for all they said to be applicable to Afghanistan too, though. Yet again we have a multi-factional and violent scene; with national leaders jockeying for supremacy rather than working together while the U.S.-led occupation trains corrupt security forces with divided loyalties while insurgents sap American blood and treasure.

Post surge, the CAP team of Korb, Duggan and Jull wrote again about withdrawal. As above, I'll file off anything identifying the country they're talking about so we can see how it fits Afghanistan.

the American invasion and occupation has produced several unintended consequences. A large and indefinite military presenc has allowed Al Qaeda and the Taliban to reconstitute itself, diverted U.S. attention ... weakened the United States� ability to project its hard and soft power around the world ...The latest unintended consequence is widespread opposition to the seemingly indefinite American troop presence.

...Recent calls for a specific timetable for the withdrawal of American forces represent the beginning of a broad cross-sectarian parliamentary bloc that could provide the organizing principles for accommodation in the short term and eventual reconciliation. No such consensus yet exists as to what the new nation will be, but broad consensus does exist around the belief that no genuine, sustainable unity can develop while the government continues to be underwritten by a large foreign military presence.

Back in November 2008, President Karzai did indeed call for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Unlike during the Bush years, however, CAP has made no noticeable calls upon the Obama administration to accede to that request. "We'll leave if they ask us to" is apparently only a good thing if it doesn't suit CAP's favored political ends.

Finally, in another 2006 paper, Korb and Katulis set out the benefits of withdrawal. Again, I'll file off the name of the nation to see how they fit Afghanistan today. They wrote that a "comprehensive strategic redeployment" would:

• Restore the strength of U.S. ground troops


• Exercise a strategic shift to meet global threats from Islamist extremists


• Prevent U.S. troops from being caught in the middle of a civil war


• Provide time for elected leaders to strike a power-sharing agreement


• Get those just fighting to end the occupation to lay down their arms


• Motivate the U.N., global, and regional powers to get more involved

Those all sound like they'd be applicable to Afghanistan to me.

Yet C.A.P. has been, broadly, favorable to Obama's continued involvement in Afghanistan and to the McChrystal plan for a surge in further escalation of U.S. involvement there.

At no point has C.A.P. tried to explain why, if "at least 170,000 troops ... trying to quell multiple conflicts while risking the destruction of the all-volunteer U.S. Army" was a bad thing in Iraq, it isn't a bad thing in Afghanistan. Saying "Afghanistan is the central front" doesn't count. It isn't. If there is such a thing, it is now in Pakistan - but many experts argue that safe havens can be anywhere and that in any case they are unneccesary to the distributed network of affiliated franchises that Al Qaeda has become.

In the absence of those arguments, convincingly presented, it looks a lot like C.A.P.s unstated position is "Republican policy bad, Democrat policy good". That's not a stance people should be dying for.