Hard Decisions – Afghanistan
The President has a “difficult” decision to make on Afghanistan. In my mind the difficulty is in doing the right thing as opposed to the easy thing. It amazes me that anyone listens to John McCain who is demanding we honor General McChrystal’s request, who never saw the war on the ground in Vietnam, still thinks it was winnable, and had the Iraq war totally wrong. He and others pushing for the easy way are the same folks who told us Iraq would be a cakewalk. After all they lament, the general in the field has spoken so why don’t you honor his request? The answer to that is fairly straightforward: The general was given the mission to win the war and asked what do you need? What do you think he wants? But one has to step back and say, how many more troops for how long, how much will that cost, and do we have both a military and a public that can support that? Oh and of course, is it worth that cost?
Tom Friedman, in his column, Don’t Build Up, answered these questions better than I could. Probably the most insightful part of this editorial was his assertion that all the great strides forward between warring parties has been made by them, not some outside force. That includes the “Awakening” in Iraq when the Sunni’s were already throwing out the Al Qaeda thugs and we just leveraged them. Makes you pause when you recognize that our partner in Afghanistan is a totally dysfunctional government. But what I found even more interesting was politburo minutes unearth in Russia of Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, speaking to the Soviet Union’s Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986 about their war in Afghanistan.
“Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.” He went on to request extra troops and equipment. “Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time.” (Transcript of Defeat).
Sound familiar? Why then is it the easy decision to just send more troops? Because politically, like the Russians, it is almost impossible to recognize our limits, if necessary admit defeat, and move on. The trouble with making the easy decision is in the details. How is the country going to afford this while nation building at home is our top priority? How can a volunteer military and very few continue to bear this burden? But what about all those generals and their advice? They want to win; it is in their blood. They were wrong in Vietnam and they are wrong now. They are wrong because winning on their terms simply isn’t worth what it will cost us. This is a political decision, not a military decision and is why we do not blindly follow general’s advice as the Republicans are urging.
Will President Obama summon the courage to do the right thing, instead of some political compromise to nowhere? Well if what you hear coming out of the White House is that there will be some compromise additional troops, then no he will not summon the courage to ignore the politics. He will once again try to accommodate everyone, and in the end promulgate another failed policy. Whatever he decides, he certainly will have to support what he is doing by a detailed plan on the end game. If he actually followed Tom Friedman’s advice he would face extreme criticism from the right on being weak. But it was false bravado and weakness from these same actors that has us bogged down in this quagmire. Real strength would be a President who knows our limitations, decides how to best move this country forward, and ignore politics of a failed policy that will kill more young Americans.
Finally let us remember what Afghanistan is. It is a 5th century country run by a mobster. The government by all accounts is part of the problem. The Taliban are estimated at 20,000 strong and they are not some foreign invader. Yes they are aided and abetted by Al-Qaeda, but as long as we are there, we are the issue. So the reality is this is a 20 to 40 year problem. We need to decrease our footprint, spend our precious treasury more effectively on keeping the Taliban out of total control, while we help in humanitarian efforts to educate the people so they can solve the problem themselves. That is not more troops. More troops is just kicking the can down the road over the bodies of more and more young Americans who will have died in vain.
Oh, and one more thing we continue to ignore. The Taliban are a creature of our own creation. We thought it was a good idea to provide religious fanatics with guns and rocket launchers so they could depose the Russians. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.