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Monday, August 08, 2011

Warriors Without a Cause 

When I heard about the crash of a Navy SEAL helicopter in Afghanistan that killed its crew of 38, my feelings of sadness were tempered with anger. Anger to kill every Taliban I should meet, of course, but also an anger at a president and an administration who are squandering the lives of our armed forces in Afghanistan without a clue as to what they are trying to accomplish.

To be fair, the Bush administration didn't have a clue about Afghanistan either. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld described Afghanistan as a war that was won within a few months of the Taliban's fall from governance. The administration treated it like an "economy of force" operation while optimistically holding elections. But by 2005 the Taliban had regrouped in Pakistan and resumed their incessant offensive to return to power.

The Obama administration realized that the Taliban controlled the momentum of the war, but it was of two minds in prosecuting it. The Gates-Clinton camp wanted to ramp up the troop levels and take the fight to the Taliban. The Biden-Eikenberry-Holbrooke faction wanted to ramp down and abandon nation-building, focusing on negotiations with the Taliban and limited missions against al Qaeda leaders.

What we've ended up getting from the Obama White House is an 18-month surge, followed by a drawdown over the next year back to pre-surge levels (and a complete withdrawal by 2014.) But what goal are our troops fighting for in Afghanistan? What will the country look like when it's time to go home? And is that a goal that's worth dying for?

I think the Obama administration has pinned a lot of hope on "negotiations" with the Taliban but it's taking the attitude of "we'll take what we can get." President Obama has claimed that we're "negotiating from a position of strength." That's a bald-faced lie when we've already announced our exit date, the Taliban is able to wage attacks with impunity, and their leaders are sheltered in Pakistan. Truthfully we will need to hammer the Taliban for at least one more fighting season before they're ready to make any real concessions.

If America is truly negotiating with the Taliban, we'll either be negotiating the terms of the Taliban's surrender (the World War II approach,) or negotiating a way for the Taliban to return to power without making us look bad (the Vietnam approach.) President Obama should take the nuanced view that the Bush administration took towards the Iraqi insurgency: negotiating with nationalist and tribalist Sunni insurgents in exchange for their assistance against irreconcilable groups like al Qaeda. The core Taliban, those insurgents who want to restore hardline Islamic law, put the Afghan women back into burquas, and assert Pashtun dominance over the Tajiks and Uzbek minorities, cannot be reconciled or negotiated with. And the US military effort should be a merciless campaign against their leaders rather than negotiations.

The Afghan insurgency should not be a hard one to quell. 60% of the population consists of the Tjiks and Uzbeks in northern and western Afghanistan who hate the Taliban. And of the 40% Pashtun population in the south and east, there is little love for the Taliban either. But America has announced that it won't be sticking around, and the Pashtuns are being intimidated into supporting the Taliban. This is the consequence of the "war by timetable" strategy that the Democratic party has been promoting since Vietnam.

A responsible strategy in Afghanistan would realize that governance in the Pashtun areas will be corrupt for the forseeable future, and not pin its hopes on a shining example of democracy. But we need a "good enough" state in Afghanistan that can unite Pashtun, Uzbek and Tajik leaders against the Taliban, and field a competent army to protect the population centers. The Soviets actually left a competent Afghan army behind, in spite of their limited successes in nation-building. Post-Soviet Afghanistan fissured into civil war because the Soviets and Russians were not willing to spend the money on the military assistance funding that the Afghan communist government needed to fight off the mujahedeen.

On the homefront, the American people have grown weary of this war. They want to declare victory because Osama bin laden is dead, not realizing that the Afghan war is about denying sanctuary to the future bin Ladens. They want to spend money rebuilding America, even though continued funding will be a key factor in helping the Afghan National Army preventing the Taliban from rebuilding itself. And Americans need a president who can set a realistic goal for what America can achieve in Afghanistan, rather than playing to the populist sentiment. America's armed forces need somebody who will tell them why they are fighting and dying, instead of the lies about election-driven timetables and negotiating to save our reputation. We should hope that by January 2013 they will get a president who understands the nature of war. Until then we can only pray for their safety.

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