Joe Carter has already commented on George’s Will’s “lack of will” on Afghanistan. On the whole Joe is right: Will’s proposal would amount to nothing less than defeat. But it would be unfair to suggest that Will is simply running up the white flag. As William Kristol observes, Will concedes that we have a core national interest in Afghanistan—“to prevent reestablishment of Al Qaeda bases,” and thinks that mission can be achieved by other means. (Actually, the core national interest in Afghanistan are broader than that, e.g., Pakistan, but, for the sake of simplicity and for the sake of argument, let’s leave all that aside for now.)
The important point of contention regards the plausibility of Will’s proposal to achieve even that goal. Will says that “forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan.” Kristol rightly wonders whether Will’s proposal would succeed in preventing the re-establishment of terror bases, and suggests that this “’comprehensively revised policy’ doesn’t sound much more engaged than U.S. Afghan policy in the 1990s.” Michael Gerson makes a similar point:
Airstrikes from a distance—the anti-terrorism strategy of the previous decade—would not have sufficed. Both government and camps needed to be removed. It is likely that the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops, at this point, would leave a vacuum filled by radical, triumphant elements of the Taliban, allied with al-Qaeda. Nothing about this strategic reality has changed—except for the advance of American exhaustion and forgetfulness.
Again, Kristol and Gerson are on target, but I have a quibble with the analogy to pre-9/11 Afghanistan. To be fair, the counter-terrorism strategy suggested by Will and others as an alternative to the broad-based counterinsurgency strategy being designed by General McChrystal, would not be nearly so “kind and gentle” as our Afghanistan policy in the 1990s. It would most certainly be much more kinetic than that. For the uninitiated the term kinetic means that we would be killing far more Taliban and Al Qaeda through Predator air strikes, and Special Forces direct action missions than did in the pre-9/11 era. The better analogy, I would suggest, is to the failed strategy in Iraq, prior to the “surge” or more appropriately the implementation of a new counter-insurgency strategy in early 2007.
Which is why, watching this debate unfold one can’t help having, with apologies to Yogi Berra, déjà vu all over again. Prior to the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy under General Petreaus in early 2007 the U.S. military was, in large measure, committed to something very much akin to the strategy now proposed by Will. This small-footprint, high-tech, direct action, counterterrorist strategy, while not without some tactical successes, brought us the brink of disaster in Iraq, and to precipice of strategic and humanitarian catastrophe in the region. The implementation of a counterinsurgency strategy, most crucially the decision by Generals Petreaus and Odierno that US forces would no longer “commute to work” from large bases—the Iraq analogy to Will’s suggestion that “engagement” be conducted from “offshore” in Afghanistan) turned things around.
All of which brings us to a remarkable comment by David Ignatius in his Washington Post column “A Middle Way on Afghanistan“:
Obama will have to roll the dice when he decides on Afghanistan strategy. McChrystal’s broad [counterinsurgency] approach is risky, but so is the limited, counterterrorism alternative that Biden and others are advocating. In truth, the kinetic counterterrorism approach is what we’ve been doing—and it hasn’t been working.
I will resist the temptation to comment on the irony of Vice President Biden playing the role on Afghanistan that Donald Rumsfeld, the chief architect of the light-footprint Special Forces-centric strategy played in Iraq, and focus instead on Ignatius’ remarkable concession that the light footprint “kinetic counterterrorism approach” has not been working thus far in Afghanistan either—not in pre-9/11 Afghanistan, mind you, but post 9/11 Afghanistan. General McChrystal knows all this, of course, which is why the only game in town is the broad-based counterinsurgency strategy he is proposing, along with the increase in required troop strength. How, one wonders, is the choice “roll of the dice,” when the one option has proven to be such a failure?
President Obama told us during the campaign that Afghanistan was the “good war,” but nobody left or right could be sure it all wasn’t just a campaign ploy. We are about to find out because even if it is the “good war,” it is also the “long war.” He would have done well to reflect on the implications of that fact and how to explain to the American people why the burdens to be borne are worth the effort. If he doesn’t do so, and soon, we will have to declare defeat and withdraw. The American people will never buy the fraudulent claim that we can declare victory and withdraw. Not this time. Not with so much at stake.
September 2nd, 2009 | 3:24 pm
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September 2nd, 2009 | 4:14 pm
While I would hesitate to endorse Mr. Will’s recommended policy, I am afraid that I have a quibble with Mr. Pavlischek’s “quibble with the analogy to pre-9/11 Afghanistan.” He characterizes Mr. Will’s plan as far more aggressive, but then asserts that “the better analogy… is to the failed strategy in Iraq, prior to the ‘surge’…” I was in Iraq executing that strategy throughout 2007, and closely observed the course of events before, during, and after the change. What we were doing before the so-called surge was similar to Mr. Will’s suggestion only at the level of buzzwords such as “small-footprint, high-tech, direct action, counterterrorist,” and so on.
We were conducting a quasi-occupation with large forces in place throughout the country, but in most areas were taking a far-too-”hands-off” approach, had concentrated our maneuver forces on large bases separated from the populace, and were refraining from high-tempo aggressive action against insurgent networks in the fear of sparking large uprisings, such as those seen from the Sadrists in 2004. Most importantly, we were handing over authority to the Iraqis before they were capable of exercising it, or confident that they could do so, and in such a way as to make it obvious that we intended to “edge out the door” at a high rate of speed. All actors in Iraq, including the then-numerous and powerful ethno-religious militias, made their own calculations, and took their own actions, in view of this reality.
It is certainly true that our counterinsurgency strategy of occupying a large number of small outposts in critical urban areas in order to protect the population made an immense difference — crucially, by convincing everyone that we had changed our minds, and were NOT about to drop everything and flee the scene. A critical component of the strategy which is almost always overlooked or minimized by commentators was our concurrent and aggressive effort to target, attack, and destroy the upper- and mid-level leadership of insurgent and militia networks. In conjunction with the Sunni sahwa movements, and the self-discrediting thuggery of the Jaish al-Mahdi, this effort broke the will of many of our active enemies, even as it reduced their power and influence.
Both strategies which I have just discussed pursued the goal of establishing an effective state, composed of institutions minimally acceptable to the liberal-democratic West, in the entire territory of Iraq. They succeeded or failed on those terms. What Will is proposing is not an inferior strategy for pursuing such a goal in Afghanistan, if I understand him correctly. Based on his understanding that such a goal is not practical in that country, as it was for Iraq, he asserts a strategy for attaining different goals, one that he believes are feasible, and worth pursuing there. As Mr. Pavlischek goes on to do, one may criticize his evaluation of our current goals, the new goals that he suggests, or the efficacy of the means he proposes to achieve them.
For example, I estimate that to effectively conduct such operations from truly “offshore” locations would be practically impossible, and that the legal sovereignty of Pakistan would have to be continually violated in order to do so, since its boundaries are not respected by our enemies, or enforced by its government. That being said, though, I would caution that the means used in Iraq are extremely unlikely to achieve anything like the same result in Afghanistan, for the simple reason that the important factors in the two cases differ dramatically. To continue to employ them in the expectation of a similar end would be misguided.
September 2nd, 2009 | 5:33 pm
I agree with everything Paul Jones says particularly in his second and third paragraphs, so I’m not sure just where we differ enough even for a quibble.
Perhaps I have given the impression that a well designed counterinsurgency strategy will not also include a robust counterterrorism effort. Mr. Jones says, “A critical component of the [Iraq] strategy [after 2007] which is almost always overlooked or minimized by commentators was our concurrent and aggressive effort to target, attack, and destroy the upper- and mid-level leadership of insurgent and militia networks.” I don’t doubt it for a second. And I don’t question for a second that the counterterrorist effort in Iraq successfully killed and captured a lot of bad guys (e.g, Zarqawi being the most notable) even before the implementation of the “surge” (so-called).
But after 2007, as Mr. Jones also notes, the targetting of “upper and mid-level leadership” was set against the broader decision not (to borrow Bing West’s phrase) to “commute to work.” Mr. Jones recognizes this: “It is certainly true that our counterinsurgency strategy of occupying a large number of small outposts in critical urban areas in order to protect the population made an immense difference…”
Indeed it did. Security (protecting the population) for one thing improved in those areas. But there is more to the story. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the ability to target, attack and destroy mid-to high level insurgents improved significantly because of the improved intelligence gained from the grunts on the ground, (working the street-beat, as it were) providing the kind of street-level intell that you can’t get from Predators and you can’t get from other technical means. That, I would suggest, is a major lesson-learned that is relevant to an admittedly different (more rural, for one thing) fight in Afghanistan.
Bottom line–you can’t fight insurgents, guerillas and other asymetrical warriors successfully from over the horizon, even if you do have the greatest counterterrorist commandos in the world. To apply a domestic analogy–swat teams are important, but you gotta have the street cop walking the beat.
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