Nation Building That Dare Not Speak It's Name

By Steve Hynd

In the WaPo, Eugene Robinson skewers the double-talk and illogic of the Obama administration. He deals with the 2011 withdrawal that isn't going to be any kind of withdrawal and the lack of a clear mission when the object of US desire, Al Qaeda, is no longer in the country occupied -- which means that "We're at war, apparently, because we're at war." But he is most eloquent on one bit of illogic that has been annoying me for months now:

Gates claimed that the administration's policy in Afghanistan is "really quite clear." But this is how he described it: "We are in Afghanistan because we were attacked from Afghanistan, not because we want to try and build a better society in Afghanistan. But doing things to improve governance, to improve development in Afghanistan, to the degree it contributes to our security mission and to the effectiveness of the Afghan government in the security area, that's what we're going to do."

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a similar description of the U.S. mission: "Afghanistan has to be stable enough, has to have enough governance, has to create enough jobs, have an economy that's good enough so that the Taliban cannot return" to establish a brutal, terrorist-friendly regime.

Is that clear enough? We're not, repeat not, engaged in nation-building -- but we're going to reform an unresponsive government, generate economic development and create loads of new jobs. Sounds like nation-building to me.

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that, as the UK's Daily Telegraph puts it in giving media cover to PM David Cameron's wish for an exit: "Afghanistan is an unwinnable war, and our leaders know it".

In his must-read book, World War One: A Short History, Norman Stone identifies one of the main reasons for Hitler's appeal: the success of the German Right in persuading millions of Germans that they could have won Great War and that they lost it because they were "betrayed". The American Right did a similarly and tragically successful job with public opinion in the United States: millions of voters believe that the war in Vietnam could have been won if it hadn't been for lily-livered liberals and student protesters � and if more soldiers had been sent.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that President Obama, surrounded by super-intelligent advisers from the best universities, continues with the Afghan war because, if America were to withdraw, millions of voters would believe that a wiser and tougher leader could have won, and so the President would lose the next election.

Or if you want Andrew Bacevich's more brutally direct version: "The President lacks the guts to get out."

[Obama] finds himself in a circumstance now where, having bought the war, it�s going worse now than it was last year. And he�s basically facing a reelection campaign right around the corner. Unless David Petraeus, our new commander, truly pulls a rabbit out of the hat, then President Obama will run for reelection in 2012 with this war still very much ongoing and, in all likelihood, with no end in sight. 

But you asked the question, where does the pressure come from? And the pressure comes from what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. The pressure comes from the national security apparatus. There are people in institutions who are deeply invested in maintaining the status quo. There are budgets, there are prerogatives, there are ambitions, that ostensibly get satisfied by maintaining this drive for American globalism, again, backed by an emphasis on military power. So I don�t discount for a second that the President would have had to, you know, shove aside some fairly stubborn resistance to make that course change on Afghanistan, and he chose not to do it.

Like Bacevich, I now believe that Af/Pak would be better handled as a "police action" and as a law enforcement problem, mostly involving folk like the CIA, FBI and some special forces. After all, we've invaded and occupied the wrong country! But the drive for votes, budgets and military career-enhancing headlines made that option impossible after 9/11 and make it almost impossible even now.

America is an Imperial nation, not by conspiracy but because American foreign policy can be best defined as domestic politics inflicted upon foreigners. Not "staying the course" or admitting that the US has no divine mandate to be the world's interventionist sole superpower and global leader are not seen as vote winners in D.C. and so policy options involving these are never even considered.

Bacevich again:

we do what we do in the world, to include in places like Afghanistan, not because we are threatened, not because we are obliged to respond to something over there; we do what we do in the world largely as a result of domestic imperatives, perceived domestic imperatives. And I think that if you evaluate US foreign policy and national security policy from that perspective, then it becomes rather obvious that we are an imperial nation, we are a hegemonic nation, we are a nation that has embraced a militarized approach to policy that sets us apart from every other liberal democracy, perhaps with the exception of Israel. And again, it doesn�t work. It�s not making us safer and more prosperous and enabling us to enjoy and pursue liberty. On the contrary, I think it generates enemies, it�s undercutting our economy, and in many respects, it�s contributing to the growth of a national security state that is at odds with the exercise of individual freedom.

Word.

And thus, by the tortured logic of the Beltway, we cannot admit we are nation-building in Afghanistan because we are obviously failing at it - even as we are unable to consider any options that don't involve nation-building. Madness.