Dead Pelicans = Outrage, Dead Afghans = Meh

By Steve Hynd

Bob Herbert points to the intellectual dissonance in American political debate today in his latest column. Oil covered pelicans in the Gulf? Outrage! Thousands of dead Afgahns - mostly civilians - and dead US servicemen? Meh.

And Michael Cohen points to the people who are to blame for this disturbing lack of debate about the twin occupations which the military keeps making noises about dragging on longer and longer - liberals, who have cravenly stayed silent when a Democrat is in the White House when they were all too willing to speak out when a Republican was in charge. 

But according to the just-released Gobal Peace Index for 2010, Iraq still ranks as the most violent nation on earth. Afghanistan is still third most violent. They are seperated in the rankings only by Somalia. 

Can we now admit that, in both nations, COIN and "surges" haven't lived up to their massive PR? Can we admit that the US military is great at tearing stuff down and terrible at rebuilding? Can we admit that the years-long commitments to "nation building" there were misguided wastes of blood and treasure? 

Herbert writes:

There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It�s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001.

Americans have zoned out on this war. They don�t even want to think about it. They don�t want their taxes raised to pay for it, even as they say in poll after poll that they are worried about budget deficits. The vast majority do not want their sons or daughters anywhere near Afghanistan.

Why in the world should the small percentage of the population that has volunteered for military service shoulder the entire burden of this hapless, endless effort? The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.

Our government leaders keep mouthing platitudes about objectives that are not achievable, which is a form of deception that should be unacceptable in a free society.

In announcing, during a speech at West Point in December, that 30,000 additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan, President Obama said: �As your commander in chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service.�

That clearly defined mission never materialized.

Can we haz debate now?

Perhaps a productive avenue would be to resurrect the debate over the success of the Iraqi surge by explicitly tying it to the Afghan one.

All the arguments liberal wonks made for a definite withdrawal date from Iraq apply just as much to Afghanistan, but so far those same think-tankers have not stepped up to say so. If anything, they've hidden from the fact. Some liberal Very Serious People have argued that the Surge was neither neccessary nor sufficient to explain what happened in Iraq in 2007-08, but far too few. Most have not really challenged the narrative that Iraq is now "safe" despite increasing current levels of violence from a "low" level that made Beirut look like Disneyland and continued factionalism which could break into multi-partite civil war very easily. Yet this year, Iraq still ranks as the most dangerous and violence-torn nation on earth. How is that "success"? At best, the Surge and its attendant narrative papered over the cracks for domestic Western consumption and its about time these "lefty" VSPs said so loudly. So far, the main criticism of accepted COIN wisdom in Iraq is coming from the Right.

In Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, there's no real independent Awakening movement, one that isn't of our creation, to take advantage of. There's no Sadr Ceasefire either. Those were the primary reasons the surge in Iraq seemed to gain purchase for a while and it seems obvious that the lack of such large-scale and purely local movements is a primary reason why the surge in Afghanistan is now failing.

However, we cannot create such movements out of whole cloth and expect them to have legitimacy. So now we do what actually worked in Iraq - we give them a definite date for withdrawal - because that will force the various factions to either stand up and work together or reveal themselves as committed to a factional and violent Afghanistan.

In any case, the U.S. should not be policing their civil war if they are determined to have one because that is a surefire route to "Empire by accident".

What we can learn from Iraq, though, is that withdrawal is almost impossible while the host nation remains bereft of the accoutrements of a true national security apparatus and is instead left dependent upon the US and its allies for essential military functions like logistics, medical support, artillery, air defense, C3I, true investigative/detection skills for police and even basic training. Without those abilities, the ANA and ANP will remain, like the Iraqi security forces, mere satrapy forces - militias able only to provide raw manpower for a rump Western presence that seems to jealously guard such assets unto itself. That lack is enough in itself to fuel charges by insurgents that the local security forces are merely pawns for occupiers, as we've seen in both countries.

By shortchanging - literally, and in dollar terms - the local security forces and instead concentrating on our own expensive escalations, I'd suggest we're being counter- productive if the objective is to end our stewardship and occupation sooner rather than far, far later.