Yep we have to dump the present regime, it seems to me.
Nope, Afghanistan was a cesspit when we got there. We did not create the instability. We are pushing for a stability that will make us safer.
Yep the use of airpower as we have used it has been counterproductive. We need to change that.
Did you just say all of this once before in the top half of your post?
Yep you’re right. We will need a massive scholarship program, huge amounts of road building and telecommunications infrastructure, massive health improvements. We have alot to do. Airplanes with bombs don’t seem to have a big part to play.
A soldier is a function. You’re making a political argument. I find it rather tedious you’re dressing up that argument in veteran clothing.
Doubtless because the Sunk Cost Fallacy is such a powerful one in human behaviour.
Yes, indeed. 2001 however is not 2011.
If there was a need, one should hope that lessons would be learned and no long-term " let’s magically transform Afghan culture into Little Town USA culture" would be on the table.
Of course even better would be to learn the lesson to fight via proxies unless you have no good proxies at all.
There’s your problem. You’re not paying for real estate. Again the bad analogies funnelled through the American hyper myopia driven by the WWII experience. WWII was an exceptional experience, an exceptional sort of war. You’re not going to repeat it.
Three thousand people is … actually, not a lot of people. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have already cost more than that, in terms of bodies (more by several orders of magnitude if you include non-American lives, which you should.) What you’re proposing will cost significantly more people than three thousand.
You’re not in the states at the moment, so maybe you’re unaware of the current political climate. On the one hand, Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to prevent raising taxes (or even just rolling back Bush’s tax cuts) to pay for our current debts - they’re even fighting for more tax cuts, in fact. OTOH, the Republicans are screaming and crying that we need to cut domestic services such as Medicare, Social Security, Head Start, Planned Parenthood, infrastructre spending, Healthcare, etc.
Bottom line: there is zero possibility of anyone in the current political situation going to bat for tax increases to expand our military involvement in Afghanistan. It’s not happening.
Given that we don’t have the money, the troops, the will, or the patience to successful conquer Afghanistan and wait a few generations for it to succumb to Disney & MacDonalds - we might as well cut our losses.
Why are you surprised? Qin Shi Huangdi said withdrawing from Afghanistan would be bad for national self-esteem. It’s very direct.
Despite military support and billions of dollars in aid from the U.S. How much more money do you think it will cost to get that working properly? It’s evident to me that they don’t give a shit. The country is their fiefdom. They’re in it to make as much money as they can, and they’re doing pretty well at that, thank you very much.
And that’s the legitimate concern. If the U.S. leaves, is this going to get worse? Will terrorist attacks and regional instability get worse? They might. At this point I have no idea. I see a mess if the U.S. leaves and a mess if it stays.
That’s not how it works, and you’re kidding yourself if you think bombing and bribing are going to fix that.
You can call it by whatever cutesy euphemism you like. It’s not going very well.
I’m not disputing that.
This is empty bluster and it does not address the merits of any course of action or the wisdom in viewing the problem through the lens you’re suggesting. I know terrorists kill people.
Really, how odd, these techniques cleared up that Nazi infestation. Why would they not be part of the arsenal this time around? Of course many other courses of action will be required too.
Look, do you really think in the long run the people of the Middle Part of the Map are going to live under dictators and bullies? In the long run, would we agree the West has the winning cards here?
So you’re signing up for the infantry when you turn 18? And we’re going to be policing every goddam dusty hellhole in the world for the next 50 years? And this is going to accomplish what, exactly?
You know, the Vietnam comparison is worth making. We spent billions and billions of dollars, thousands and thousands of Americans died, millions of Vietnamese and other southeast asians died, the country was wrecked, we had a deliberate policy of deforestation of the country. And all for what?
When we left, the communists took over, shot a bunch of people, rounded up even more people and sent them to the camps. And then what? The future of Vietnam was up to the Vietnamese people. And now Vietnam under the same communist regime is pretty much a normal third world crappy country. This was the future we were fighting desperately to prevent.
No, I understand that at the time Global Communism was still a concern. Except that didn’t turn out so well, and now Fidel Castro is the last Communist true believer in the world. And he’s 80 years old and barely alive.
When people get all askeert about Islamism, what they’re really revealing is a lack of confidence in liberal values. They think Islamism is winning, and only a full-out effort on the part of the west will avert Osama bin Ladin’s triumphal march through the streets of Paris.
Except that’s pretty much a fantasy. It’s a fantasy of people who don’t really believe in America’s or Europe’s strength. We don’t have to “win” anything. Yeah, every so often some fuckheads will put together a training camp, and we should bomb the crap out of it. So what? The real pressure on terrorist orgs comes from normal boring police work, and that includes, guess what, a lot of informants from Muslims who like peace and prosperity and provide intelligence to the cops.
Osama bin Ladin wishes that this was a global war between Islam and the West. But it ain’t. It’s a few guys with delusions, exactly the same sorts of delusions that the militia movement guys had. It’s fun to play war, it’s fun to imagine yourself an important person. It’s the exact same thing as Columbine, and has the same political and social significance.
Oh wonderful fine. You’re going to dump it and then given the deep and sophisticated understanding the American military has so far displayed in its dealings in Afghanistan and Iraq, we should wait for real excellence in choosing the next puppet government…
Ten years on you’ve gotten nowhere. Afghanistan was a failed state following the Sov invasion, foreign intervention hasn’t a good track record, nor do American third world interventions.
One can not engage in all those fine wonderful things unless there is domestic stability. Domestic stability is not generated by foreign armies in these times. Time to get out.
Thank you for a very thoughtful post. Exactly right in many ways. Maybe even more right than my OP. We are winning. Gosh though, I hate the thought of more women being beheaded or sold into marriage.
A lack of self-confidence is exactly a problem. Moral relativism and all that.
I hope you all would excuse me. I am feeling a bit under the weather and am going to take a dose of smuggled-in NyQuil. Tomorrow I have another day of teaching young Saudis about the rest of the world.
Seriously, thank you very much for your posts, they have made me think.
I think that’s been the case for a long time and I am not sure “the long war” is the solution to it. I think it’s possible that a significant portion of the population in the Middle East is wising up to the strategy their governments have employed: take all the oil money, give a pittance to the population without developing the economy, and blame everything on the U.S. and Israel. If that stops working, that would be fantastic. And yes, I think Al Qaeda has done a great job of alienating everyone because its strategy involves murdering everybody who is not a fanatical Sunni Muslim. But you were arguing in favor of something more specific, namely that the U.S. needs to stay in Afghanistan for another 50 years, and probalby even longer, since you’re saying the current U.S.-backed government should be scrapped.
On the one hand you’re saying a hammer can be a useful tool in building a house, which most people would agree with. On the other hand you’re saying ‘if we keep hammering at this rickety house for another 50 years, it’ll be fine.’ I think it’s reasonable for people to ask if that’s really a good use of their time.
Nazis and WWII are an entirely different history and problem than Central Asia and the Third World. The sooner Americans learn to stop trying to see every conflict through the unique lens of the European World War(s) the better.
I believe I already answered your question - my never was in respect to your particular proposition that Western troops would lead them there a la South Korea.
Of course we have the winning cards. That’s the point. We’re not in a desperate struggle to save ourselves from conquest.
Eventually people look around and compare their crappy country to other countries and ask themselves, “Why the fuck is our country a shithole, and their country is pretty decent?” And then they try Communism, and that doesn’t work, then they try Islamism, and that doesn’t work, and eventually they get the idea that the rule of law, democracy, governmental accountability, liberalism, and capitalism is the common thread behind all the non-shithole countries in the world, barring a few petrostates.
We’ve seen state after state pull themselves from shithole status to mediocrity with a few simple concepts. Of course it isn’t easy, since being a shithole is a vicious cycle that makes simple common sense improvements incredibly difficult. But development is a virtuous cycle where previous improvements make further improvements easier and easier.
So yeah, it’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to happen any time soon, and we’ll have to clean out training camps with bombs and guns sometimes. But we’re winning, and not because of our brave soldiers and bomber pilots. We have those because we’re so rich that we can afford to squander a heck of a lot of treasure bombing villages halfway across the world. The shiny fleets of bombers are a symptom of our success, not the cause of our success.
There is absolutely zero chance that the west will have the slightest long-term effect in Afghanistan. The people we’re fighting, drawn mainly from the southern regions of Afghanistan, are southern religious conservatives. They believe in traditional family values, they dislike change, they hate the evil influence of Hollywood and permissive culture, they ride around in pickup trucks, don’t believe in evolution and they hate gay people. Trying to bring about fundamental change in their society, trying to make them live under a system created by a culture completely alien to them, will only make them cling to their guns and their religion.
Seriously, you think we’re winning in Afghanistan? What gives you that idea?
And we’re spreading democracy in the Middle East? We’re propping up dictatorships all over the region and OKing them sending troops into other countries to crush pro-democracy protests by killing civilians.
It may make you feel better to post something like this but it’s arrant nonsense.
If “we” means the United States while the rest of the Western world wanders off (the story of the Afghanistan war), then I’m going to give Tonto’s answer from the old joke: “What you mean, ‘we’?”