This post is inspired partially by the recent, woefully underreported news of the Pakistani truce with the Taliban, in which our good buddy Musharraf essentially turned over control of the border region to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
It’s also inspired by the rather emotional interview I heard on NPR last night with a colleague of Hakim Taniwal, the recently assassinated governor of Paktia Province. At his funeral yesterday, a Taliban suicide bomber killed at least seven people.
The much-ballyhooed American reconstruction effor is falling apart. Taliban are now assassinating collaborators in areas that were formerly considered successes with near impunity.
Despite all of the talk and bluster five years ago, the commitment of the Bush administration to building peace and stability in Afghanistan has proven laughably weak when compared to their determination to be a force for change in Iraq. Though the adventure may not quite be an abject failure yet, a few more years of indifference underfunding should get us pretty close.
So I’d like to ask conservatives, Bush supporters, and especially those who continue to support the Iraq war: five years after the fact, what is your plan for dealing with the country that spawned 9/11?
Good one. Hardly anyone disputed that going into Afghanistan was a good idea. Hardly anyone disputes that there was a Taliban - terrorist connection. Establishing democracy in Afghanistan is an excellent idea. The Afghans actually did greet us with flowers. We’ve got a real coalition of the willing. I bet Congress, Republicans and Democrats both, would fund anything the White House asks for.
Good one. Hardly anyone disputed that going into Afghanistan was a good idea. Hardly anyone disputes that there was a Taliban - terrorist connection. Establishing democracy in Afghanistan is an excellent idea. The Afghans actually did greet us with flowers. We’ve got a real coalition of the willing. I bet Congress, Republicans and Democrats both, would fund anything the White House asks for.
I’m not a conservative (in the sense I think the OP meant it, anyway) but I’m strongly, strongly behind the Afghanistan war.
Regrettably, what we have here is a failure by most NATO countries to commit much to the war. NATO’s biggest country with the most reason to fight in Afghanistan, the USA, went traipsing off on a war of sheer imperialism before the job was done, and one of NATO’s other big boys went with them. That took resources, men and attention away from the war that mattered. The rest of NATO for the most part either is trying its best but has too small an armed forces to make a really substantial commitment (like Canada) or hasn’t bothered to try very hard.
The war in Afghanistan started great and they fucked it up by diverting resources to Iraq. This isn’t like Iraq where everyone and their dog knows it’s about conquest and oil; the war was actually justified, and many ordinary people in Afghanistan stood to benefit, more so than in Iraq. But they let up, and it’s like fighting ants; either you nail the whole colony in one shot and kill 'em all, or you’re just delaying the inevitable re-infestation.
Can the war still be won? Sure, go in strong with substantially more troops on the ground, kill Taliban and al-Qaida, catch bin Laden. But none of the conditions I have outlined have changed; the US and UK are tied down in their retarded little Iraq adventure and the rest of NATO is unwilling or unable to assist in Afghanistan. The Iraq was has in fact sapped the will of those other countries to help the USA in Afghanistan.
I have another word - indifference. The Bush Admin and the neocons never have cared about Afghanistan; they wanted Iraq. They put in the minimum amount of effort they could into Afghanistan, and went to Iraq as soon as they could. They still don’t care, which is why they can’t deal with the Taliban or other problems with Afghanistan; they aren’t trying, they don’t care, therefore it won’t get done.
What it would really take, no one would have the guts to do.
Full-out totalitarian crackdown & slaughter of everyone showing any sympathy to Taliban ideology, Shariah extremism, Islamo-fascism, whatever you wanna call it.
Schools for girls weren’t closed, adulterers (& moreso adulteresses) weren’t stones in public stadiums, the most stringent interpretations of Shariah weren’t enforced because a little group of fanatics bullied a vast but powerless majority into it. All these things happened because the majority either peacefully went along or happily signed on to them.
This conservative is starting to think the whole place is one God-forsaken
hole & we should put most our efforts into becoming Energy-Independent from
MidEastern oil, secure Israel, Egypt & Jordan, and let the rest of that region
wallow in its self-imposed Hell.
Well, I’m not a conservative either, not in the sense the OP means. RickJay gave a great summation of why things went tits up in Afghanistan so I won’t bother with going into that further.
The plan to defeat the Taliban? Gods know…I don’t. I suppose, were I in charge, I’d have to say that the only way would be to commit a massive amount of ground troops to Afghanistan and hope for the best. The country is idea for an insurgency…much more so than Iraq. Its also got a hell of a lot less economic potential in the short, medium and long terms. They have no real vast natural resources (rocks and dirt being in abundance but not exactly sought after commodities), no potential for heavy industry (no sea ports, being land locked)…the Afghani’s were basically fucked over when it came to dealing out natural goodies. Unless the silk road comes back into vogue they will remain a poor nation regardless of what we do.
So, perhaps the best we could do is attempt to stamp out the Taliban for the Afghani’s and give them at least the chance to be poor but free from those fanatics. To do so would require not just the US but a heavy NATO commitment to the fight. The key though, as RickJay pointed out is the US…we have the real muscle militarily. NATO is just the support cast. So, the US would need to re-commit its ground forces to the fight in strength…and we need to do so about 2 years ago while the Taliban was still reeling.
In the current political climate I don’t see this happening. If anything, once the scales tip on Iraq and the American people start clamoring to bring the troops home, the next phase will be the same thing in Afghanistan…which will leave two countries in highly unstable states, ripe for Islamic militants to move in and take over.
The alternative is to nuke Afghanistan from orbit…its the only way to be sure…
I’m not a conservative either, but I’m willing to cut the Bush administration a little more slack on Afghanistan than some here. Whilst I think efforts to capture Bin Laden and support for efforts to establish good government in the country were compromised by the Iraq adventure (and eagerness to deal with the warlords to defeat the Taliban short term), I don’t really think that it made much difference to the medium term fate of the country. I just don’t think anybody can hold the place, let alone establish an enduring respectable system.
IANAC, but I don’t think the situation in Afghanistan is as dire as the OP suggests. We’re screwed in Iraq because we’re there by ourselves (with a smattering of coalition forces) and we don’t have the support of the Iraqis. The Afghans by and large don’t want the Taliban back in power, and we have NATO troops with us there to help quell the violence. As much as I do think Iraq distracted us from the situation in Afghanistan, we did have most of the world behind us in the latter conflict and we can rely on other countries to send troops there as needed.
From a story today by AP (emphasis added):
All our allies understand why we went into Afghanistan and why it’s important to keep the Taliban at bay. And they’re willing to participate in that effort. Not so in Iraq.
All you’re saying is true - but doesn’t explain why the Taliban are resurgent. (And killing lots of them, though fine, doesn’t make me feel good - they shouldn’t have regrouped enough to put up this kind of effort.) The problem is that we promised to make the life of the Afgahani people better, materially, and we’re not doing it. We promised aid when the Russians got booted and didn’t deliver, and we’re doing it again. If we had spend a fraction of the money we’ve wasted in Iraq building infrastructure in Afghanistan, the world would be a much safer place.
Who said things couldn’t be done better? In fact, you quoted me where I specifically said the war in Iraq was a distarction from what needed to be done in Afghanistan.
Well, we could use really small nukes. Say, in the 25 Kt range. That’s only almost twice the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Me, defining my version of “compassionate conservatism.”
All kidding aside, that’s a sledgehammer solution to a flyswatter problem.
IMO, we should’ve never went into Iraq; and leaving precipitously would only destabilize things worse (yes, it can get worse; we haven’t reached the “Rwanda” stage yet), so we’re kinda screwed on our Afghan Options, unless we want to reaalllyyyy stretch our military out to the extreme (leaving next to nothing in the cupboard).
However, we could re-base troops in Afghanistan as we conduct a phased withdrawal from Iraq, and use those troops to increase the operational tempo against the resurgent Taliban, but I think this is a “spitting on an incipient forest fire” kind of solution.
Bottom line: too may holes opening in the dike, not enough fingers (troops) to plug 'em all. Strategic overreach has suckered skilled, professional generals who have planned against it; politicians seem to run towards it with arms wide open.
Where did I say that the situation now is worse than under the Taliban? We’re headed in the wrong direction, but things have hardly fallen apart yet. I presume that the point of this thread is how to change course so that things don’t disintegrate.
So, do you support the emphasis on infrastructure? (And I’m not implying that you don’t.) My point was that we have an example of where neglect caused a big problem - and we seem headed in that direction - now, not three years ago.
In other words, is there some reason you think the current strategy isn’t working?
Americans (and Westerners in general) simply have no frame of reference in which to measure success or failure in a counter-insurgency war. The hard fact of the matter is that stabilizing Afghanistan will take decades. It’s taken decades in most other conflict areas like Yugoslavia and Cyprus, which arguably had conditions favourable by comparison, what makes you think Afghanistan can be done in a matter of 2 or 3 years? Every experienced military expert I’ve ever spoken to, and most of these were current or former military who were decidedly in the PRO-war camp, have warned as loudly as they can that serious progress in Afghanistan cannot be expected in under 10-15 years, even under the best of conditions. Anyone who thinks it can be done in 2 or 3 years probably can’t even find the place on a map.
Mainly because the situation is quite clearly deteriorating on all fronts : the Afghan governement is discredited, the people are more and more distrustful of/angered by foreigners, security is more and more unexistant outside major cities, support for talibans is growing, local leaders and warlords pay less and less attention to the central government, corruption is on the increase, and so on…
Basically, all indicators are turning red. While some years ago it seemed that, though it would probably be a daunting and difficult task, Afghanistan could be stabilized, and this, to some extent at least, with the support of large parts of the population, the overall situation is now really worrying. It’s not that the progresses are slow, it’s that it gets worst with each day passing.
IMO, the main goal should be to somehow restore the authority of the state and the confidence of the Afghan people in said state, but I’ve absolutely no clue how this could be achieved, especially since said state is feeble by nature, being the very unstable product of a lot of dubious compromises in a country which isn’t exactly known for its unity.
NATO is asking for more men, yet France just yesterday declined sending more troops to Afghanistan – saying they are unable due to the investment in Lebanon (of what? 200 men. Impressive!). Actually the only country that has stepped up to the plate is Poland.
