Thursday, March 29, 2012
“Zugzwang” in Afghanistan
OP ED
Afghanistan today presents the U.S.
Iraq
Twenty-five hundred years ago a Chinese military strategist named Sun Tzu warned against engaging in long wars. The Soviet Union learned the wisdom of this advice in 1988, when it was forced to abandon its disastrous nine-year-long campaign in Afghanistan
Fast-forward ten years. To punish them for harboring al-Qaida members training for 9/11, the U.S. launched an attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan
Today, in the eleventh year of an interminable war in Afghanistan Iraq
Zugzwang
In the game of chess, there is a concept called a Zugzwang (German for “compulsion to move”) in which a player gets into an untenable position. No matter what subsequent moves are made, the situation only becomes worse.
Two unfortunate incidents--one involving the burning of copies of the Koran and the other the murder of 17 Afghan civilians by a mentally unstable American sergeant--have placed the safety of American troops and aid workers in jeopardy, and the future of the anti-terrorism operation and reconstruction in doubt.
Osama bin Laden is dead, but his message that the West wants to dominate the Middle East to subjugate its people, destroy its religion and exploit its resources has been given additional life by our continuing presence and by such incidents.
The Lessons of History
In the lead-up to the short Iraq war and the long occupation of Iraq Afghanistan , we should take counsel from what we learned in Iraq
Only one realist saw Iraq Iraq
Weighing his words carefully, the general, a West Point graduate, offered his best professional military opinion that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers is probably the figure that would be required." He added, "We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."
General Shinseki knew whereof he spoke; he formerly commanded the allied peacekeeping effort in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Clearly irritated by the general's statement, within hours Pentagon civilians went into action to discredit him.
Deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz appeared before the same committee three days later and pooh-poohed the general's troop estimate as "wildly off the mark." Completely ignoring the underlying ethnic and religious factionalism viciously suppressed by Saddam Hussein, he claimed that Iraq had no history of the kind of ethnic strife that plagued Bosnia
Iraqi civilians would welcome allied forces joyously, Wolfowitz predicted, and Iraq
General Shinseki’s boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, also retaliated by announcing the name of his successor as Army Chief of Staff more than a year before his retirement.
Arranged in chronological order, here are opinions voiced by various pundits and politicians about Iraq
1. "It is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq Washington
2. "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq Washington
3. "Iraq Iraq
4. "And I said on my program, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." --Bill O'Reilly on Good Morning America
5. "So it turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their demands were just. 'No War on Iraq ,' they said--and there wasn't a war on Iraq
6. "We really don't need the Europeans. Anyway, they will be the first in line patting us on the back following our success and saying they were with us all along. Only fear will re-establish [Arab] respect for us." --Former CIA Director James Woolsey in the Glasgow
7. “Mission
8. "The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
9. "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." --Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Defense Secretary, in Vanity Fair, July 2003.
10. "The war has been a magnificent success. Liberals carp about every bombing. We're not liberating Ohio
11. [See comment 4] "I'm sorry." --Bill O'Reilly apologizes on Good Morning America
12. [See comment 11]”But then I go on Good Morning America yesterday and say that I'm personally sorry my analysis on WMDs before the war was wrong, and I'm angry about the CIA mistake. Well, that's dishonest. I still believe removing Saddam was the right thing to do and that history will prove it. And there's also the possibility that WMDs will be found, so I might have to apologize for my apology. I don't mind. I still hope they find WMDs. --Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor," Feb. 12, 2004.
13. "With the capture of Saddam Hussein the war in Iraq
14. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." --Vice President Dick Cheney on Larry King Live, June 20, 2005.
15. "But, lest we build up the enemy into 10-foot-tall supermen, it's important to realize how weak they are. Most of the conditions that existed in previous wars waged by guerrillas, from Algeria in the 1950s to Afghanistan in the 1980s, aren't present in Iraq Los Angeles
The Cost of Being Wrong
After Iraq refused to provide legal immunity for U.S. soldiers, the last U.S. troops were gone by Dec. 18, 2011.Here’s what all the bad guesses, empty words and macho swagger cost us in Iraq
A total of one trillion U.S. tax dollars, 4,486 U.S. dead (3,532 sacrificed in combat) and 32,223 U.S.
Labels: Afghanistan War, Op Ed
Monday, November 30, 2009
Mr. President, It's Time to Stop Meddling in the Middle East
OP ED
Dear Mr. President:
First, a truism: You can end this unpopular, undeclared war, but you cannot win it. Unfortunately, it's another in the long succession of wars that we have waged since 1941 in contravention of the Constitution, which gives Congress the sole power to wage war.
Don’t let anyone kid you. This war is about oil. And every other clash in the Middle East has been about oil. The current scramble to scoop up leases for exploratory drilling in Iraq confirms this. But whether a nation has oil or not, oil has been at the root of the trouble. Afghanistan is one of the "have-not" nations. It is rich in minerals such as copper, iron, coal, molybdenum and gold, but produces no oil or natural gas.
Afghanistan has something even more valuable than oil or minerals: A strategic position between the rich oil and gas fields of Central Asia and a warm-water port in the sliver of Pakistan on the Arabian Sea. In 1995, Unocal (Union Oil Company of California) began negotiations for a pipeline across Afghanistan, but was deterred by the continuing civil war in Afghanistan.
Ask the average American to point out Afghanistan on an outline map of the world. Ask them to recite one significant fact from Afghanistan’s history. Ask them to tell you how large is Afghanistan or its population. Ask what languages are spoken there. Ask them to define the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaida. In every case, total ignorance will be evident. Yet we have been fighting a bloody was in that benighted country for the past eight years with little or nothing to show for it other than a rapidly growing casualty list and increasing discontent back home.
There are many reasons to extricate ourselves from the quagmire of Afghanistan. The fact that we have no national interest at stake is perhaps the single most important reason. It has prompted Americans of every political stripe to wonder about the sincerity of your pre-election comments about Iraq and Afghanistan and to begin asking questions. Here are seven questions crucial to any decision making:
1. Exactly what do you hope to achieve by sending more troops to Afghanistan? Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 17, you defended U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, saying, "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans." Yet your own national security adviser estimates the number of al-Qaida members now in Afghanistan as about 100. Attempting to destroy al-Qaida and its adherents by evicting them from Afghanistan is a futile goal. They are now active in a more than a dozen other countries from which they pose an even greater threat.
2. Does it make any sense for us to be spending more dollars each year on Afghanistan than its gross national product? Mr. President, in March you ordered in 21,000 troops, doubling the overall American deployment in Afghanistan. It costs a million dollars to send a soldier to Afghanistan. Talk has it that 10,000, 20,000 or 40,000 troops may be sent there next. At those prices, I would remind you that every thousand soldiers, sailors or marines (or combination thereof) equates to another billion dollars of debt that future generations will have to shoulder. We are talking about adding ten, twenty or forty billion dollars to an already monstrous bill for the war in Iraq and the mounting bill for the war in Afghanistan.
3. Are you aware of the enormity of the problems in Afghanistan? Iraq was a tough nut to crack, and we are far from being able to declare a victory in that misguided misadventure and bring our troops home. Let me cite a few statistics comparing Afghanistan and Iraq: Both have populations of about 28 million. Afghanistan, slightly smaller than Texas, is half again as large as Iraq, and is mainly mountainous as compared with Iraq’s relative flatness. Gen. Shinseki’s estimate that it would take several hundred thousand troops to occupy and pacify Iraq will have to be made larger in Afghanistan because of its inhospitable mountainous landscape, poor communications and inherent hostility. Both countries are predominantly Muslim. Iraq has twice as many Shia as Sunni, and we supported the majority Shia. Afghanistan has four times as many Sunni as Shia. The Taliban we are fighting in Afghanistan are Sunni. Why do we insist on getting involved in Islam’s factional religious frictions?
The Taliban developed in madrasas, religious schools in Pakistan teaching Islamic theology and religious law. (Talib is the Arabic/Persian/Pashtun word for "student.") In these schools, students were mostly young, poorly educated Pashtuns, many of whom had lost their fathers and uncles in the struggle against the Soviets. The Taliban fought off rival mujaheddin and other warlords, and went on to take the city of Kandahar, beginning a successful campaign that ended with their capture of Kabul in September of 1996. Their success was largely due to their ability to restore civil order that the central government was not providing after the chaos of the preceding war years. They did this by imposing extreme interpretations of Islamic law, with severe restrictions on the activities of women. Measures were enforced with public floggings and stoning, practices condoned by the Christian Bible.
Counterinsurgency doctrine calls for some 560,000 troops to control a population the size of Afghanistan’s--28 million. As for increasing the number of troops on the ground, the more ambitious the operations we have to undertake, the more sure you can be that our enemy is winning--a lesson one would have thought we had learned in Vietnam. The one mistake of Vietnam you must not repeat is to succumb to the military’s continuing requests for "more troops." President Johnson fell under the spell of that mantra. Before he knew it, there were more than 500,000 Americans fighting in Vietnam. A black granite wall in Washington with more than 58,000 names on it reveals the awful toll that senseless war levied.
General Stanley McChrystal has asked for 40,000 more American troops to undertake the ambitious decades-long nation-building program outlined in his leaked memorandum. That would bring the number of American stationed there to 108,000. Are you aware that the total number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan at the height of the Russian invasion was 120,000—and they had to withdraw and concede defeat?
If 120,000 Russians could not prevail, how can we possibly believe that 108,000 American troops make a difference or achieve success? Is this tiny number expected to usher this giant corrupt nation out of its eighth-century feudal tribal culture and its violent warlords into a modernity more substantial than the ubiquitous AK-47s and Toyota pickup trucks? If every future military adventure is to include pinning our fortunes on pulling backward nations out of the mire of ignorance, in Afghanistan we are setting ourselves up for colossal national failure.
Your military advisers will tell you that counterinsurgencies have traditionally been defeated and cite historical successes in Greece, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia and Peru. This is true. These defeats have occurred in countries with comparatively stable national governments--and Afghanistan’s government is a joke. But in wars of national liberation (and the war in Afghanistan is such a war) in which guerrilla forces clash with occupying forces, the guerrillas always win. Britain left Malaya, Kenya, Palestine, Cyprus and Aden. Portugal left Angola and Mozambique, France left Vietnam, the Soviets left Afghanistan and the Russians left Chechnya, and Israel left Lebanon.
4. What do you know about Afghanistan’s history? Everyone familiar with the long history of Afghanistan knows that Afghans have traditionally fought to expel invaders since the beginning of time. That fact alone should make it evident that any war in Afghanistan will be unendurably long and unwinnable.
The tenacity of the ancestors of these people caused Alexander the Great’s army to refuse to continue the march eastward and to return home. Afghans fought the British to a standstill in three Anglo-Afghan wars--1838-1842, 1878-1880 and 1919. They repelled the Soviet occupation between 1980 and 1989.
The Pashtuns are the key to understanding Afghanistan. They make up almost half of its population and are the ethnic majority. For them, warfare is a way of life. There are 12.5 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan, but an even greater number, 27 million, in Pakistan. The boundaries of Afghanistan bear no relationship to natural features, but were set by other nations to suit their own interests. The Pashtuns pay little attention to borders and move with impunity between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
When historians caution against optimism in battle against the Afghans, it is the Pashtuns they have in mind. The "Afghans" that the British futilely battled in the 19th century were the Pashtuns. The majority of the mujaheddin ("warriors in a holy war") who ultimately drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan were Pashtuns.
Pashtuns are fierce fighters and are known for their marksmanship, as American troops are discovering in Afghanistan right now. They are accustomed to hardship and poverty, are undeterred by an imbalance in the size of opposing forces, and can prevail in conditions that would easily defeat others. Following the Russian Revolution, Afghanistan became the first nation to recognize the Soviet Union with ratification of a. Soviet-Afghan treaty in 1928. This was ironic, for Pashtuns would later unite and drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980-1989 Soviet-Afghan war.
Hospitality is extremely important to the Pashtuns. The sanctity of protecting a guest is crucial to the honor of a Pashtun. This principle was behind the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States after the attacks of 9/11. In 1996, the Taliban granted safe haven in Afghanistan to Osama bin Laden, who had returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family construction business after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Bin Laden then called for a jihad against the United States.
Al-Qaida, the terrorist organization formed and headed by bin Laden, was identified as the organization behind terrorist acts against the United States, the most destructive being the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The United States demanded the surrender of bin Laden for his part in 9/11, but the Taliban refused to give him up, claiming that Pashtunwali (specifically, their concept of hospitality and the responsibility of a host to protect a guest) did not allow them to do so.
Pashtuns can reconcile themselves to poverty, but cannot tolerate foreign rule. The Greeks, Persians, Arabs, British, and Russians have learned the historical truth the hard way. When a foreign invader invades Afghanistan all tribal feuds are temporarily suspended. A ceremony may even mark the armistice; however, once the invader has been driven from Afghanistan feuds may resume where they left off.
Mr. President, you could mobilize every unit in the National Guard and Reserve components and move them to Afghanistan with every available member of the armed forces. You would bankrupt the country to do it, but you still could not win this unwinnable undeclared war.
5. Are you aware that our war-fighting tactics have been wrong? We have been fighting a Fourth Generation War with Second Generation tactics. For much of the past eight years, we have depended on air power in the form of piloted bombing planes and pilotless drone aircraft to wage war against the Taliban. But air power is counterproductive, killing people who were not our enemies, inciting their relatives, friends, and fellow tribesmen to acts of violence in blood feuds as newly made foes. In this kind of war, bombing planes make as much sense as long-range field artillery.
The Taliban are light infantry, carrying food and water and little in the way of heavy equipment. The American soldier may be burdened with as much as one hundred pounds of body armor and special devices. The Taliban are not interested in capturing and holding terrritory, but in striking the enemy hard and pulling back quickly. Combining the Second Generation warfare’s traditional massive thrusts, heavy with men and machines, with lots of softening-up bombing in Pashtun-controlled Afghanistan means we wind up fighting most, if not all of the Pashtuns. For every Pahtun killed, purposely or accidentally, we make enemies of their cousins, their uncles and their aunts, not to mention their other tribal members. In Afghan wars, the Pashtuns have always won in the end by sheer perseverance and unwillingness to quit.
Our repeated big, noisy offensives, launched with boastful advance publicity have achieved nothing. The enemy merely buries their guns, ammunition and explosives and allows our troops pass through an area. They will resurface and still be there after we are gone. Body counts so beloved by generals are embarrassing, for they always include substantial numbers of innocents and noncombatants.
The present state of our futile war in Afghanistan is best summed up in a little joke making its way around in military circles: American soldier to Afghan farmer: "Seen any enemy around here?" Afghan farmer: "Yes, you."
6. Does it make sense for us to support an American puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai? Elected fraudulently, he heads a government rife with graft and corruption from top to bottom, including officials at every level and the police. Put into office in a glaringly embarrassing stolen election, Karzai controls Kabul and little else, Like all Quisling governments, this one is bound to fail because it can never achieve legitimacy.
Afghanistan supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s opium. Its economy is totally dominated by opium farming that feeds the world’s appetite for heroin. As one of the planet’s largest consumers of heroin, the United States could help by curbing its own use of this product. Last year Afghanistan’s government revenue was $715 million. Illicit poppy production yielded $4 billion. Imagine an entire country run by the Mafia, and you have Afghanistan.
7. How will we know when we have achieved victory in Afghanistan? No one has ever been able to define what we mean when we speak of victory in Afghanistan. To win this war, we must achieve something that we can call "victory," but our guerrilla enemies do not. They not only can fight on until the end of time, they intend to do just that--if not against us, then against anyone and everyone else foolish to try to remake Afghanistan into a modern state.
Common sense should tell us that we have neither the national interest, the financial means, the domestic support, the NATO partners, nor an Afghan government worth saving to warrant expending another American life. Instead of nation-building in a land whose people do not want us there, let us rebuild our collapsing infrastructure at home. As a friend with whom I served in the Army during World War Two wrote to me recently, "Why the hell are we filling pot holes in roads in Afghanistan and neglecting to fill them here at home?"
Our history of meddling in the Middle East cannot be a source of national pride. In 1951, the Iranian parliament nationalized Iran's oil industry and elected Mohammed Mossadegh to be prime minister. Since 1913, the oil industry in Iran had been controlled exclusively by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, controlled by the British government.. In 1951 the British tried to retaliate by planning a coup, but American President Harry S. Truman wisely refused to participate. His successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, was not as astute and allowed the CIA to undertake its first covert operation by overthrowing the government of Iran.
The 1953 coup d'état engineered by the CIA deposed the democratically elected Mossadegh government and allowed an heir to the ancient Iranian throne to become an authoritarian monarch who would rule for 26 years. US support and funding continued with the CIA training the SAVAK, the Shah's feared secret police. The coup significantly contributed to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which deposed the Shah, seized our embassy and replaced the pro-western monarchy with the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran in power today. It should come as no surprise that U.S. companies were granted the majority of the oil concessions from the Shah's government after the coup.
Similarly, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed a secret directive calling for the CIA to aid opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. This action caused the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan. Desiring to increase US regional influence, the CIA worked with wealthy Saudi contractor Osama bin Laden to recruit and train Saudis, Egyptians and other nationalities and send them to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Osama bin Laden's group, known as al-Qaida ("the base") successfully caused the Soviet invaders to withdraw in 1989.
After throwing away an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in Afghanistan by letting him slip away in Tora Bora in 2001, two years later our nation was conned into invading Iraq with deception and falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction. Once again we have reached a crucial moment of decision. Instead of recognizing the realities of Afghanistan and the bitter lessons of its long history, we are on the brink of expanding our foolish attempt to do the impossible. If ever there was a cause and a country not worth asking a single American to die for, that cause is nation-building and that country is Afghanistan.
In the meantime, we face mounting costs of conducting a full-scale war in an inhospitable country against a people who have never been defeated and who do not want us there. At the same time, money is running out. Back home, people are getting edgy about the vast sums of printing-press money being churned out. And China, India and al-Qaida are all smiling at our debilitating preoccupation with expending blood and treasure uselessly in the Middle East. Uncle Sam has truly become Uncle Sap, seemingly bent on proving the wisdom of the adage that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. We need nation-building here at home. Our infrastructure and economy are in tatters. We've got our work cut out for us. Let’s make America strong again.
Robert Scott
Editor of Postscripts
Dear Mr. President:
First, a truism: You can end this unpopular, undeclared war, but you cannot win it. Unfortunately, it's another in the long succession of wars that we have waged since 1941 in contravention of the Constitution, which gives Congress the sole power to wage war.
Don’t let anyone kid you. This war is about oil. And every other clash in the Middle East has been about oil. The current scramble to scoop up leases for exploratory drilling in Iraq confirms this. But whether a nation has oil or not, oil has been at the root of the trouble. Afghanistan is one of the "have-not" nations. It is rich in minerals such as copper, iron, coal, molybdenum and gold, but produces no oil or natural gas.
Afghanistan has something even more valuable than oil or minerals: A strategic position between the rich oil and gas fields of Central Asia and a warm-water port in the sliver of Pakistan on the Arabian Sea. In 1995, Unocal (Union Oil Company of California) began negotiations for a pipeline across Afghanistan, but was deterred by the continuing civil war in Afghanistan.
Ask the average American to point out Afghanistan on an outline map of the world. Ask them to recite one significant fact from Afghanistan’s history. Ask them to tell you how large is Afghanistan or its population. Ask what languages are spoken there. Ask them to define the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaida. In every case, total ignorance will be evident. Yet we have been fighting a bloody was in that benighted country for the past eight years with little or nothing to show for it other than a rapidly growing casualty list and increasing discontent back home.
There are many reasons to extricate ourselves from the quagmire of Afghanistan. The fact that we have no national interest at stake is perhaps the single most important reason. It has prompted Americans of every political stripe to wonder about the sincerity of your pre-election comments about Iraq and Afghanistan and to begin asking questions. Here are seven questions crucial to any decision making:
1. Exactly what do you hope to achieve by sending more troops to Afghanistan? Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 17, you defended U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, saying, "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans." Yet your own national security adviser estimates the number of al-Qaida members now in Afghanistan as about 100. Attempting to destroy al-Qaida and its adherents by evicting them from Afghanistan is a futile goal. They are now active in a more than a dozen other countries from which they pose an even greater threat.
2. Does it make any sense for us to be spending more dollars each year on Afghanistan than its gross national product? Mr. President, in March you ordered in 21,000 troops, doubling the overall American deployment in Afghanistan. It costs a million dollars to send a soldier to Afghanistan. Talk has it that 10,000, 20,000 or 40,000 troops may be sent there next. At those prices, I would remind you that every thousand soldiers, sailors or marines (or combination thereof) equates to another billion dollars of debt that future generations will have to shoulder. We are talking about adding ten, twenty or forty billion dollars to an already monstrous bill for the war in Iraq and the mounting bill for the war in Afghanistan.
3. Are you aware of the enormity of the problems in Afghanistan? Iraq was a tough nut to crack, and we are far from being able to declare a victory in that misguided misadventure and bring our troops home. Let me cite a few statistics comparing Afghanistan and Iraq: Both have populations of about 28 million. Afghanistan, slightly smaller than Texas, is half again as large as Iraq, and is mainly mountainous as compared with Iraq’s relative flatness. Gen. Shinseki’s estimate that it would take several hundred thousand troops to occupy and pacify Iraq will have to be made larger in Afghanistan because of its inhospitable mountainous landscape, poor communications and inherent hostility. Both countries are predominantly Muslim. Iraq has twice as many Shia as Sunni, and we supported the majority Shia. Afghanistan has four times as many Sunni as Shia. The Taliban we are fighting in Afghanistan are Sunni. Why do we insist on getting involved in Islam’s factional religious frictions?
The Taliban developed in madrasas, religious schools in Pakistan teaching Islamic theology and religious law. (Talib is the Arabic/Persian/Pashtun word for "student.") In these schools, students were mostly young, poorly educated Pashtuns, many of whom had lost their fathers and uncles in the struggle against the Soviets. The Taliban fought off rival mujaheddin and other warlords, and went on to take the city of Kandahar, beginning a successful campaign that ended with their capture of Kabul in September of 1996. Their success was largely due to their ability to restore civil order that the central government was not providing after the chaos of the preceding war years. They did this by imposing extreme interpretations of Islamic law, with severe restrictions on the activities of women. Measures were enforced with public floggings and stoning, practices condoned by the Christian Bible.
Counterinsurgency doctrine calls for some 560,000 troops to control a population the size of Afghanistan’s--28 million. As for increasing the number of troops on the ground, the more ambitious the operations we have to undertake, the more sure you can be that our enemy is winning--a lesson one would have thought we had learned in Vietnam. The one mistake of Vietnam you must not repeat is to succumb to the military’s continuing requests for "more troops." President Johnson fell under the spell of that mantra. Before he knew it, there were more than 500,000 Americans fighting in Vietnam. A black granite wall in Washington with more than 58,000 names on it reveals the awful toll that senseless war levied.
General Stanley McChrystal has asked for 40,000 more American troops to undertake the ambitious decades-long nation-building program outlined in his leaked memorandum. That would bring the number of American stationed there to 108,000. Are you aware that the total number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan at the height of the Russian invasion was 120,000—and they had to withdraw and concede defeat?
If 120,000 Russians could not prevail, how can we possibly believe that 108,000 American troops make a difference or achieve success? Is this tiny number expected to usher this giant corrupt nation out of its eighth-century feudal tribal culture and its violent warlords into a modernity more substantial than the ubiquitous AK-47s and Toyota pickup trucks? If every future military adventure is to include pinning our fortunes on pulling backward nations out of the mire of ignorance, in Afghanistan we are setting ourselves up for colossal national failure.
Your military advisers will tell you that counterinsurgencies have traditionally been defeated and cite historical successes in Greece, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia and Peru. This is true. These defeats have occurred in countries with comparatively stable national governments--and Afghanistan’s government is a joke. But in wars of national liberation (and the war in Afghanistan is such a war) in which guerrilla forces clash with occupying forces, the guerrillas always win. Britain left Malaya, Kenya, Palestine, Cyprus and Aden. Portugal left Angola and Mozambique, France left Vietnam, the Soviets left Afghanistan and the Russians left Chechnya, and Israel left Lebanon.
4. What do you know about Afghanistan’s history? Everyone familiar with the long history of Afghanistan knows that Afghans have traditionally fought to expel invaders since the beginning of time. That fact alone should make it evident that any war in Afghanistan will be unendurably long and unwinnable.
The tenacity of the ancestors of these people caused Alexander the Great’s army to refuse to continue the march eastward and to return home. Afghans fought the British to a standstill in three Anglo-Afghan wars--1838-1842, 1878-1880 and 1919. They repelled the Soviet occupation between 1980 and 1989.
The Pashtuns are the key to understanding Afghanistan. They make up almost half of its population and are the ethnic majority. For them, warfare is a way of life. There are 12.5 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan, but an even greater number, 27 million, in Pakistan. The boundaries of Afghanistan bear no relationship to natural features, but were set by other nations to suit their own interests. The Pashtuns pay little attention to borders and move with impunity between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
When historians caution against optimism in battle against the Afghans, it is the Pashtuns they have in mind. The "Afghans" that the British futilely battled in the 19th century were the Pashtuns. The majority of the mujaheddin ("warriors in a holy war") who ultimately drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan were Pashtuns.
Pashtuns are fierce fighters and are known for their marksmanship, as American troops are discovering in Afghanistan right now. They are accustomed to hardship and poverty, are undeterred by an imbalance in the size of opposing forces, and can prevail in conditions that would easily defeat others. Following the Russian Revolution, Afghanistan became the first nation to recognize the Soviet Union with ratification of a. Soviet-Afghan treaty in 1928. This was ironic, for Pashtuns would later unite and drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980-1989 Soviet-Afghan war.
Hospitality is extremely important to the Pashtuns. The sanctity of protecting a guest is crucial to the honor of a Pashtun. This principle was behind the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States after the attacks of 9/11. In 1996, the Taliban granted safe haven in Afghanistan to Osama bin Laden, who had returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family construction business after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Bin Laden then called for a jihad against the United States.
Al-Qaida, the terrorist organization formed and headed by bin Laden, was identified as the organization behind terrorist acts against the United States, the most destructive being the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The United States demanded the surrender of bin Laden for his part in 9/11, but the Taliban refused to give him up, claiming that Pashtunwali (specifically, their concept of hospitality and the responsibility of a host to protect a guest) did not allow them to do so.
Pashtuns can reconcile themselves to poverty, but cannot tolerate foreign rule. The Greeks, Persians, Arabs, British, and Russians have learned the historical truth the hard way. When a foreign invader invades Afghanistan all tribal feuds are temporarily suspended. A ceremony may even mark the armistice; however, once the invader has been driven from Afghanistan feuds may resume where they left off.
Mr. President, you could mobilize every unit in the National Guard and Reserve components and move them to Afghanistan with every available member of the armed forces. You would bankrupt the country to do it, but you still could not win this unwinnable undeclared war.
5. Are you aware that our war-fighting tactics have been wrong? We have been fighting a Fourth Generation War with Second Generation tactics. For much of the past eight years, we have depended on air power in the form of piloted bombing planes and pilotless drone aircraft to wage war against the Taliban. But air power is counterproductive, killing people who were not our enemies, inciting their relatives, friends, and fellow tribesmen to acts of violence in blood feuds as newly made foes. In this kind of war, bombing planes make as much sense as long-range field artillery.
The Taliban are light infantry, carrying food and water and little in the way of heavy equipment. The American soldier may be burdened with as much as one hundred pounds of body armor and special devices. The Taliban are not interested in capturing and holding terrritory, but in striking the enemy hard and pulling back quickly. Combining the Second Generation warfare’s traditional massive thrusts, heavy with men and machines, with lots of softening-up bombing in Pashtun-controlled Afghanistan means we wind up fighting most, if not all of the Pashtuns. For every Pahtun killed, purposely or accidentally, we make enemies of their cousins, their uncles and their aunts, not to mention their other tribal members. In Afghan wars, the Pashtuns have always won in the end by sheer perseverance and unwillingness to quit.
Our repeated big, noisy offensives, launched with boastful advance publicity have achieved nothing. The enemy merely buries their guns, ammunition and explosives and allows our troops pass through an area. They will resurface and still be there after we are gone. Body counts so beloved by generals are embarrassing, for they always include substantial numbers of innocents and noncombatants.
The present state of our futile war in Afghanistan is best summed up in a little joke making its way around in military circles: American soldier to Afghan farmer: "Seen any enemy around here?" Afghan farmer: "Yes, you."
6. Does it make sense for us to support an American puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai? Elected fraudulently, he heads a government rife with graft and corruption from top to bottom, including officials at every level and the police. Put into office in a glaringly embarrassing stolen election, Karzai controls Kabul and little else, Like all Quisling governments, this one is bound to fail because it can never achieve legitimacy.
Afghanistan supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s opium. Its economy is totally dominated by opium farming that feeds the world’s appetite for heroin. As one of the planet’s largest consumers of heroin, the United States could help by curbing its own use of this product. Last year Afghanistan’s government revenue was $715 million. Illicit poppy production yielded $4 billion. Imagine an entire country run by the Mafia, and you have Afghanistan.
7. How will we know when we have achieved victory in Afghanistan? No one has ever been able to define what we mean when we speak of victory in Afghanistan. To win this war, we must achieve something that we can call "victory," but our guerrilla enemies do not. They not only can fight on until the end of time, they intend to do just that--if not against us, then against anyone and everyone else foolish to try to remake Afghanistan into a modern state.
Common sense should tell us that we have neither the national interest, the financial means, the domestic support, the NATO partners, nor an Afghan government worth saving to warrant expending another American life. Instead of nation-building in a land whose people do not want us there, let us rebuild our collapsing infrastructure at home. As a friend with whom I served in the Army during World War Two wrote to me recently, "Why the hell are we filling pot holes in roads in Afghanistan and neglecting to fill them here at home?"
Our history of meddling in the Middle East cannot be a source of national pride. In 1951, the Iranian parliament nationalized Iran's oil industry and elected Mohammed Mossadegh to be prime minister. Since 1913, the oil industry in Iran had been controlled exclusively by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, controlled by the British government.. In 1951 the British tried to retaliate by planning a coup, but American President Harry S. Truman wisely refused to participate. His successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, was not as astute and allowed the CIA to undertake its first covert operation by overthrowing the government of Iran.
The 1953 coup d'état engineered by the CIA deposed the democratically elected Mossadegh government and allowed an heir to the ancient Iranian throne to become an authoritarian monarch who would rule for 26 years. US support and funding continued with the CIA training the SAVAK, the Shah's feared secret police. The coup significantly contributed to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which deposed the Shah, seized our embassy and replaced the pro-western monarchy with the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran in power today. It should come as no surprise that U.S. companies were granted the majority of the oil concessions from the Shah's government after the coup.
Similarly, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed a secret directive calling for the CIA to aid opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. This action caused the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan. Desiring to increase US regional influence, the CIA worked with wealthy Saudi contractor Osama bin Laden to recruit and train Saudis, Egyptians and other nationalities and send them to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Osama bin Laden's group, known as al-Qaida ("the base") successfully caused the Soviet invaders to withdraw in 1989.
After throwing away an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in Afghanistan by letting him slip away in Tora Bora in 2001, two years later our nation was conned into invading Iraq with deception and falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction. Once again we have reached a crucial moment of decision. Instead of recognizing the realities of Afghanistan and the bitter lessons of its long history, we are on the brink of expanding our foolish attempt to do the impossible. If ever there was a cause and a country not worth asking a single American to die for, that cause is nation-building and that country is Afghanistan.
In the meantime, we face mounting costs of conducting a full-scale war in an inhospitable country against a people who have never been defeated and who do not want us there. At the same time, money is running out. Back home, people are getting edgy about the vast sums of printing-press money being churned out. And China, India and al-Qaida are all smiling at our debilitating preoccupation with expending blood and treasure uselessly in the Middle East. Uncle Sam has truly become Uncle Sap, seemingly bent on proving the wisdom of the adage that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. We need nation-building here at home. Our infrastructure and economy are in tatters. We've got our work cut out for us. Let’s make America strong again.
Robert Scott
Editor of Postscripts
Labels: Afghanistan War
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Mr. President: ‘We Don't Have a Dog in This Fight.’
OP ED
Note: The title is taken from a favorite saying of former Secretary of State James A. Baker.
Dear Mr. President:
Shortly before Christmas of 1945, I was discharged from the Army at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. I decided that I would make a point of studying the waging of war, a profession that had appropriated four years of my youth. Sixty-four years later, now with a large store of knowledge about war, military science and tactics, and military history, I find myself no closer to fathoming why this country continues to wage wars, particularly wars in which we have no national interest and, lately, no particular skill in fighting. Or why we insist on invading countries about whose cultures and religions we know little or nothing. I write as an ordinary citizen. I mention my war service only to discourage superpatriots from attacking me on that score.
Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention on August 17, you defended U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, saying, “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
That's a favorite argument of the hawkish elements in our society who always see war as the only solution. Coming from you, Mr. President, these words were a great surprise. In effect, you acknowledged that the only justification for an increased commitment of American troops and materiel in Afghanistan is the fear that if the Taliban isn't defeated in Afghanistan, they will eventually allow al-Qaida to re-establish itself there. This would enable al-Qaida to mount another attack on the United States--a pretty tenuous reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan.
I respectfully beg to differ. History shows otherwise. Afghanistan had little or no role in 9-11. Nothing we do in Afghanistan is likely to prevent another 9-11 from occurring again. As a result of ignorance or bad advice, your words are an attempt to refute the history of the planning for 9-11, as detailed in the report of the 9-11 Commission.
First, the 9-11 attack was planned and hatched not in the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan, but in Karachi, Pakistan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Hamburg, Germany. Yet no one is suggesting that we invade those other places, including Germany, to prevent it from happening again.
Second, the absolutely essential training of the 9-11 terrorists took place in flight schools in the U.S., right under our very noses. For that, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Third, the Afghanistan camps primarily trained fighters against the Northern Alliance. Whatever incidental training they provided for 9-11 was minimal and could easily have been performed elsewhere. Pilot training was the key to the operation.
These are not suppositions. I repeat: These are all facts detailed in the 9-11 Commission’s Report. Chapter 10 of the Report describes how only three days after 9-11, the State and Defense departments, working swiftly, produced a joint memorandum outlining a course of action: The State Department proposed delivering an ultimatum to the Taliban: "Produce Bin Laden and his deputies and shut down al-Qaida camps within 24 to 48 hours, or the United States will use all necessary means to destroy the terrorist infrastructure." The State Department did not expect the Taliban to comply. Thereafter, State and Defense would plan to build an international coalition to go into Afghanistan.
Both departments proposed to consult with NATO and other allies and ask for intelligence, bases, and other support from countries, according to their capabilities and resources. Finally, the plan proposed that America use all its resources to eliminate terrorism as a threat, punish those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, hold states and other actors responsible for providing sanctuary to terrorists, work with a coalition to eliminate terrorist groups and networks, and avoid malice toward any people, religion, or culture.
The memorandum was entitled, “Gameplan for a Political-Military Strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan,” and dated 14 Sept 2001. How different history would be if a belligerent cowboy president with token “playboy” military service and little concept of the world had not ignored this memorandum and decided that the U.S. would not only go it alone in Afghanistan, but, in response to prodding by Paul Wolfowitz, would also attack Iraq.
The United States unilaterally invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy the al-Qaida safe haven there—an action that was clearly justified by the 9/11 attacks. But al-Qaida is no longer based in Afghanistan, nor has it been based there since early 2002. According to current intelligence, bin Laden, the movement’s spiritual father, is now headquartered across the border in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan is clearly linked with al-Qaida and sympathetic to it, but there is little evidence of al-Qaida infrastructure within Afghanistan today that could directly threaten the U.S. homeland. Besides, the risk of a successful reestablishment of al-Qaida in Afghanistan isn’t really any higher than the chances of al-Qaida growing more powerful in any number of weak states where it is active: Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti or Eritrea on the margins of the Indian Ocean. The Philippines. Uzbekistan. Even parts of Latin America or southern Africa.
In the spring of 2003 we invaded Iraq with about 130,000 troops. Here it is, more than six years later, and we still have about 130,000 troops in Iraq. We have about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan. We expect to have 68,000 troops there by the end of the year. How many troops would you guess, Mr. President, will we have in Afghanistan another six years from now?
We have lost 772 service members in Afghanistan thus far in eight years, and the monthly casualty numbers are rising. Add that number to the more than 4,200 dead in Iraq and 30,000 wounded. I implore you, Mr. President, do not waste any more of the flower of American youth in another war in which we have no national interest. There is much to be done at home if we are to make the American dream a reality again.
Respectfully,
Robert Scott
Editor of Postscripts
Note: The title is taken from a favorite saying of former Secretary of State James A. Baker.
Dear Mr. President:
Shortly before Christmas of 1945, I was discharged from the Army at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. I decided that I would make a point of studying the waging of war, a profession that had appropriated four years of my youth. Sixty-four years later, now with a large store of knowledge about war, military science and tactics, and military history, I find myself no closer to fathoming why this country continues to wage wars, particularly wars in which we have no national interest and, lately, no particular skill in fighting. Or why we insist on invading countries about whose cultures and religions we know little or nothing. I write as an ordinary citizen. I mention my war service only to discourage superpatriots from attacking me on that score.
Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention on August 17, you defended U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, saying, “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
That's a favorite argument of the hawkish elements in our society who always see war as the only solution. Coming from you, Mr. President, these words were a great surprise. In effect, you acknowledged that the only justification for an increased commitment of American troops and materiel in Afghanistan is the fear that if the Taliban isn't defeated in Afghanistan, they will eventually allow al-Qaida to re-establish itself there. This would enable al-Qaida to mount another attack on the United States--a pretty tenuous reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan.
I respectfully beg to differ. History shows otherwise. Afghanistan had little or no role in 9-11. Nothing we do in Afghanistan is likely to prevent another 9-11 from occurring again. As a result of ignorance or bad advice, your words are an attempt to refute the history of the planning for 9-11, as detailed in the report of the 9-11 Commission.
First, the 9-11 attack was planned and hatched not in the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan, but in Karachi, Pakistan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Hamburg, Germany. Yet no one is suggesting that we invade those other places, including Germany, to prevent it from happening again.
Second, the absolutely essential training of the 9-11 terrorists took place in flight schools in the U.S., right under our very noses. For that, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Third, the Afghanistan camps primarily trained fighters against the Northern Alliance. Whatever incidental training they provided for 9-11 was minimal and could easily have been performed elsewhere. Pilot training was the key to the operation.
These are not suppositions. I repeat: These are all facts detailed in the 9-11 Commission’s Report. Chapter 10 of the Report describes how only three days after 9-11, the State and Defense departments, working swiftly, produced a joint memorandum outlining a course of action: The State Department proposed delivering an ultimatum to the Taliban: "Produce Bin Laden and his deputies and shut down al-Qaida camps within 24 to 48 hours, or the United States will use all necessary means to destroy the terrorist infrastructure." The State Department did not expect the Taliban to comply. Thereafter, State and Defense would plan to build an international coalition to go into Afghanistan.
Both departments proposed to consult with NATO and other allies and ask for intelligence, bases, and other support from countries, according to their capabilities and resources. Finally, the plan proposed that America use all its resources to eliminate terrorism as a threat, punish those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, hold states and other actors responsible for providing sanctuary to terrorists, work with a coalition to eliminate terrorist groups and networks, and avoid malice toward any people, religion, or culture.
The memorandum was entitled, “Gameplan for a Political-Military Strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan,” and dated 14 Sept 2001. How different history would be if a belligerent cowboy president with token “playboy” military service and little concept of the world had not ignored this memorandum and decided that the U.S. would not only go it alone in Afghanistan, but, in response to prodding by Paul Wolfowitz, would also attack Iraq.
The United States unilaterally invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy the al-Qaida safe haven there—an action that was clearly justified by the 9/11 attacks. But al-Qaida is no longer based in Afghanistan, nor has it been based there since early 2002. According to current intelligence, bin Laden, the movement’s spiritual father, is now headquartered across the border in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan is clearly linked with al-Qaida and sympathetic to it, but there is little evidence of al-Qaida infrastructure within Afghanistan today that could directly threaten the U.S. homeland. Besides, the risk of a successful reestablishment of al-Qaida in Afghanistan isn’t really any higher than the chances of al-Qaida growing more powerful in any number of weak states where it is active: Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti or Eritrea on the margins of the Indian Ocean. The Philippines. Uzbekistan. Even parts of Latin America or southern Africa.
In the spring of 2003 we invaded Iraq with about 130,000 troops. Here it is, more than six years later, and we still have about 130,000 troops in Iraq. We have about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan. We expect to have 68,000 troops there by the end of the year. How many troops would you guess, Mr. President, will we have in Afghanistan another six years from now?
We have lost 772 service members in Afghanistan thus far in eight years, and the monthly casualty numbers are rising. Add that number to the more than 4,200 dead in Iraq and 30,000 wounded. I implore you, Mr. President, do not waste any more of the flower of American youth in another war in which we have no national interest. There is much to be done at home if we are to make the American dream a reality again.
Respectfully,
Robert Scott
Editor of Postscripts
Labels: Afghanistan War, Op Ed
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
"What the F*** Am I Doing Here?"
CURRENT AFFAIRS
No soldier, sailor or Marine serving in Iraq or Afghanistan can be faulted for questioning with the above colorful phrase their presence in either country, or even question being in the comparative safety of Kuwait. Ever since 2001, the Bush administration has a labored mightily to sell the American people on the concept that we are engaged in a war. By calling it a war, of course, it becomes too easy to think of military force as the only solution available to us.
Instead of treating the horror of 9/11 as the criminal act it was, and enlisting the aid of the civilized countries of the world to apprehend and punish the criminals responsible for perpetrating it, this nation launched two preemptive wars, first against Afghanistan and then against Iraq--countries about whose history, culture, language, religion, and politics we really knew little. Having sowed the wind, it should come as no surprise that we reaped the whirlwind. We have finally become aware of the steep price of going into battle under a commander in chief impatient to exhibit the valor of ignorance.
In a nation that President Bush continues to insist is "at war," only about one-half of one percent of the population is serving in the military. Under our current military policy, our troops are still being forced to follow an inexcusable rotation system. Repetitive combat tours in the Middle East will eventually break the regular Army, Reserve units and the National Guard long before they ever achieve success. As our uncomplaining soldiers, sailors and Marines continue to deploy to the heat-stricken sands of Iraq and the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan, back home the rest of the country blithely heads to air-conditioned malls to spend what remains of its economic stimulus checks before our economy descends into depression. But hasn’t mindless shopping always been President Bush’s universal remedy for whatever ails this country?
Our war-fighting strategy is skewed and lopsided. It requires a few individuals to sacrifice everything, including their lives, while the rest of us give nothing. As a policy, this is not only morally bankrupt but also totally unforgivable. If the politicians in Washington are unable to reduce the number of wars in which U.S. forces are fighting and dying, then this nation should demand that any administration that pursues undeclared wars must find a way of increasing the number of troops available to fight in them.
If it’s a war, why doesn’t it feel like one?
Good question. Of course, we are at war. President Bush has been saying so for seven years. Michael Chertoff said so as recently as last year. Surely you remember Mr. Chertoff, the cadaverous secretary of Homeland Security. You know--the one who managed to evade criticism for the shortcomings of his underling, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) after Hurricane Katrina.
In an op ed piece in The Washington Post titled "Make No Mistake, This Is War," Mr. Chertoff assured us gravely that we are indeed at war. His reason? We are at war because Osama bin Laden said we are. Here’s what Mr. Chertoff wrote:
"Is this actually a war? Well, the short answer comes from our enemies. Osama bin Laden’s fatwa of Feb. 23, 1998, was a declaration of war, a self-serving accusation that America had somehow declared war on Islam, followed by a ‘ruling’ to ‘kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military in any country where it is possible to do it."
What the fatwa said was quite specific. It stated that American troops' use of the Arabian Peninsula as a "staging area" and our sanctions against the people of Iraq were a clear declaration of war against God, God’s messenger (Mohammed) and Muslims everywhere. Mr. Chertoff would have you believe that the United States, acknowledged possessor of the world’s most powerful military force, is now in a state of retaliatory war with a sick old man holed up beyond our reach somewhere in the northwest corner of Pakistan.
What’s Wrong with Calling It a War?
The administration has not treated its wars as traditional wars to be declared by Congress under Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution. Instead, they lumped its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under the rubric of a "global war on terror," and let it go as that. No one questioned the phrase, perhaps because there have been other wars against such ills as drugs, poverty or illiteracy on which large amounts of taxpayers’ dollars have been expended without much to show for it. Nevertheless, the damage done by the self-inflicted wound of these four words far exceeds the wildest dreams of the fanatics who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.
The phrase "global war on terror," is, of course, meaningless. It defines neither a specific theater of war nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a technique of warfare--political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants, often using improvised weapons like airliners or roadside bombs. The very vagueness of the Bush administration’s cleverly conceived phrase was deliberately calculated to accomplish one major objective and encourage the emergence of a culture of fear.
The four words have almost become a Madison Avenue mantra to be trotted out on appropriate occasions. But the culture of fear is also like a genie let out of a bottle that quickly acquires a life of its own and demoralizes its liberators. Seven years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror have actually undermined our ability to confront the real challenges we face, with the result that America has become insecure and more paranoid.
Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they are pursuing. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it received without the repeated use of this phrase plus the carefully fabricated lie about the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, reelection of President Bush in 2004 was the result of an appeal for a nation at war not to change commanders in midstream. In this, the concept of a lurking danger, however imprecise, was reinforced by the illusion that we are "a nation at war."
To justify its "global war on terror," the administration promulgated the false impression that the conflict resembles earlier struggles, first against Nazism and then against Communism. Both concepts ignored the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were formidable military powers, a level of threat al-Qaida can never hope to achieve. President Bush’s ultimate fear mongering and justification for U.S. troops' presence in Iraq was his ludicrous claim the "we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here."
"Well, if it isn’t a genuine war, what am I watching on TV?"
Readers may very well ask that question. What you are seeing now in footage carefully censored to avoid graphic scenes is the U.S. occupation force of 140,000 keeping the lid on what is, for the present, a low-key Iraqi civil war. In this sense, it is not unlike the Lebanese civil war. Let me refresh your memory: A quarter-century ago, for humanitarian reasons and as part of a multinational force, U.S. Marines landed in Beirut, occupying a makeshift barracks at the Beirut airport a quarter century ago. Early on the morning of Oct. 23, 1983, an embryonic Hezbollah group exploded a massive truck bomb in the lobby of the building, causing almost total destruction. Some 244 U.S. service personnel were killed and 60 were injured. President Ronald Reagan realized there was little or nothing our military could do to counter an internecine civil war and wisely withdrew our troops.
Even with the number of American military deaths declining now in Iraq—and one per month would be one too many--the dollar cost, a staggering $3 billion per week, puts us deeper in hock to creditor countries. How many more years will these aimless conflicts continue before the American people insist that they end? Every dollar spent on Basra or Baghdad is a dollar that could have been spent on Buffalo or Baltimore. Every bridge we rebuild over the Tigris River in Iraq is one less bridge that could have been replaced in Minnesota lest it collapse into the Mississippi.
Nearly seven years after invading and occupying Afghanistan and more than five years after doing the same on a grander scale in Iraq, America and its dwindling collection of allies (dubbed "the coalition of the billing") have failed to achieve anything resembling a victory. We have been fought to a standstill by ragtag forces dedicated to liberation of their respective countries from foreign invaders. Our armed forces in Iraq alone have suffered 4,168 deaths and tens of thousands of wounded. The fighting in Afghanistan has been less intensive—almost six hundred American dead in seven years--but the conflict there has been just as purposeless and discouraging. To make these numbers even more forbidding, ever since last May casualties in Afghanistan have exceeded those in Iraq.
Recent "tell-all" accounts of the Bush administration have revealed that waging war in Iraq was the President’s intention from the start, and he let nothing stand in his way. From the very beginning of his term and well before 9/11, President George W. Bush failed to heed clear warnings about al-Qaida's impending terrorist attacks in the United States. Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor, facilitated his self-deception. An academic expert on German-Russian relations with no experience in the Middle East, she was a peculiar choice as national security advisor. Timorous in the presence of a crafty Cheney and an overbearing Rumsfeld, she saw her task as requiring that she insulate Bush from bad news about the Middle East. She played this role so diligently, it left a trusting and uncurious President more ill informed than ever.
Had President Bush known anything about the history of the region he might have hesitated before committing troops to two concurrent pre-emptive wars. Over the centuries, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, the French, the British, and the Russians all invaded parts of the Middle East only to admit ignominious defeat. Now it’s our turn to pack up and depart.
Did no one warn President Bush about the perils of invading the Middle East? Did none of his advisors explain to him that Iraq was a veritable ethnic melange, a nation of nearly 30 million riven by tribal jealousies and ancient blood feuds? Did no one whisper to him that Iraq has been a battlefield where Muslim orthodoxy and secularism clashed for centuries as warring Sunni and Shia factions, the latter strongly influenced by Iran? Did no one hint to him that historically Iraq has been a fiercely contested combat zone of clashing religions, political movements, social classes, and ethnic groups?
Despite these grim realities, our president thrust the United States into the cauldron of the Middle East in the naively foolish belief that democracy, human rights and individual freedom could be imposed at the point of a bayonet. Back home, a preoccupied citizenry, compliant Congress and timid media allowed the armed forces to be hijacked into this mindless military exercise. Following our initially successful invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, we quickly painted ourselves into a corner. Our military, trained and prepared to engage a huge traditional force armed with modern tanks, weapons and missiles on the plains of Central Europe, was flummoxed when it met resistance to our occupation. Challenged by lightly armed civilians and poorly equipped militias, we suddenly found ourselves involved in wars of national liberation--the hardest kind of a war in which to prevail—precipitated by the inadequate size of our occupation forces.
So, What Else Is New?
Slouching unconcernedly from one crisis to the next has been a hallmark of the Bush managerial style. He was similarly unprepared for Hurricane Katrina and out of touch with reality. (Remember his famous remark, "Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job."?) Lately, he has done nothing about the challenge of climate change caused by polluting greenhouse gases.
As he nears the close of his term, Mr. Bush, who has an M.B.A. from Harvard, was equally unprepared with a solution to the financial crisis precipitated by the practices of greedy, unregulated bankers and mortgage lenders. His administration proposed to solve this full-blown imbroglio with a hastily cobbled together rescue plan, the "mother of all bailouts." Under this one-sided salvation of the troubled free-market system, bankers’ profits would be protected but a trillion dollars worth of losses will be passed to taxpayers. To accommodate this, Congress must authorize elevation of the national debt limit to a whopping $11.3 trillion.
And as a result of ex-oilman Bush’s failure to anticipate the rest of the world’s growing demand for oil, we now face an oil crisis exacerbated by the declining value of the dollar against other currencies. Most egregious of all his sins of inattention, he has done absolutely nothing about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, obviously intending to leave office as a "wartime president." and dump them into the lap of his successor.
What has the sacrifice of so much blood and treasure in the Bush wars accomplished? Without having secured a single drop of the oil that was supposed to finance our invasion of Iraq, the United States has saddled itself with a rundown and virtually ungovernable protectorate incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than four years after national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a handwritten note reading, "Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign," to announce the handover of power to the new Iraqi government, Iraq’s sovereignty remains a will o’ the wisp.
Recalling U.S. success in rebuilding Germany and Japan after the Second World War, the neocons in the administration who launched the Iraqi nation-building project were confident that that the U.S. could replicate those feats. How wrong they were! Today, generation of electricity in Iraq barely meets half the daily national requirements. Oil production has finally reached pre-invasion levels, but distribution systems and pipelines are vulnerable to sabotage. Reports of fraud, waste and incompetence in the administration and distribution of U.S. aid are commonplace. American officials complain repeatedly about the squabbles that paralyze the Iraqi parliament and the unbridled corruption within Iraqi ministries. If one of the principle functions of government is to provide services to its people, then the government of Iraq can be said to barely exist.
In the long run and under the best of circumstances, our misguided efforts will yield an Iraq that is in worse shape than it was before we invaded, a breeding ground of unrest and resistance long into the foreseeable future. Even should we make the decision to withdraw from Iraq, additional American casualties and the abandonment or destruction of billions of dollars’ worth of equipment and supplies will accompany our departure. From this cauldron will emerge a powerful and determined Shiite majority openly linked to Iran, and a minority Sunni population allied with the most regressive political and religious forces in the Muslim world. Both sides will be heavily armed. Having known a measure of independence from Arab rule in Baghdad, restive non-Arab Kurds in the north will not give up that hard-won advantage easily.
In reality, the war's effects are precisely what the Bush administration should have expected. Baghdad’s U.S. embassy has become a fortified bunker with some 57 other fortified strong points scattered around the country. If the Iraq War revealed anything to the rest of the world, it was the narrow limits of political or military action open to the world’s greatest military power. It also emboldened adversaries such as Iran, and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, the stomping ground of a resurgent and defiant al-Qaida. More damagingly, it fanned anti-American sentiment to incredible levels, recruiting uncounted numbers to al-Qaida’s ranks.
At one time a young American outfitted with a knapsack on which was sewn an American flag could hike north from Mauritania in West Africa to Morocco, eastward across North Africa, then north again along the Mediterranean and then east through Turkey and Muslim countries all the way to Sinkiang in China and be warmly welcomed everywhere along the way. Regrettably, today that same hypothetical hiker would hardly get a few miles outside Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, before meeting an unhappy fate. Therein lies the greatest tragedy of the "global war on terror."
No soldier, sailor or Marine serving in Iraq or Afghanistan can be faulted for questioning with the above colorful phrase their presence in either country, or even question being in the comparative safety of Kuwait. Ever since 2001, the Bush administration has a labored mightily to sell the American people on the concept that we are engaged in a war. By calling it a war, of course, it becomes too easy to think of military force as the only solution available to us.
Instead of treating the horror of 9/11 as the criminal act it was, and enlisting the aid of the civilized countries of the world to apprehend and punish the criminals responsible for perpetrating it, this nation launched two preemptive wars, first against Afghanistan and then against Iraq--countries about whose history, culture, language, religion, and politics we really knew little. Having sowed the wind, it should come as no surprise that we reaped the whirlwind. We have finally become aware of the steep price of going into battle under a commander in chief impatient to exhibit the valor of ignorance.
In a nation that President Bush continues to insist is "at war," only about one-half of one percent of the population is serving in the military. Under our current military policy, our troops are still being forced to follow an inexcusable rotation system. Repetitive combat tours in the Middle East will eventually break the regular Army, Reserve units and the National Guard long before they ever achieve success. As our uncomplaining soldiers, sailors and Marines continue to deploy to the heat-stricken sands of Iraq and the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan, back home the rest of the country blithely heads to air-conditioned malls to spend what remains of its economic stimulus checks before our economy descends into depression. But hasn’t mindless shopping always been President Bush’s universal remedy for whatever ails this country?
Our war-fighting strategy is skewed and lopsided. It requires a few individuals to sacrifice everything, including their lives, while the rest of us give nothing. As a policy, this is not only morally bankrupt but also totally unforgivable. If the politicians in Washington are unable to reduce the number of wars in which U.S. forces are fighting and dying, then this nation should demand that any administration that pursues undeclared wars must find a way of increasing the number of troops available to fight in them.
If it’s a war, why doesn’t it feel like one?
Good question. Of course, we are at war. President Bush has been saying so for seven years. Michael Chertoff said so as recently as last year. Surely you remember Mr. Chertoff, the cadaverous secretary of Homeland Security. You know--the one who managed to evade criticism for the shortcomings of his underling, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) after Hurricane Katrina.
In an op ed piece in The Washington Post titled "Make No Mistake, This Is War," Mr. Chertoff assured us gravely that we are indeed at war. His reason? We are at war because Osama bin Laden said we are. Here’s what Mr. Chertoff wrote:
"Is this actually a war? Well, the short answer comes from our enemies. Osama bin Laden’s fatwa of Feb. 23, 1998, was a declaration of war, a self-serving accusation that America had somehow declared war on Islam, followed by a ‘ruling’ to ‘kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military in any country where it is possible to do it."
What the fatwa said was quite specific. It stated that American troops' use of the Arabian Peninsula as a "staging area" and our sanctions against the people of Iraq were a clear declaration of war against God, God’s messenger (Mohammed) and Muslims everywhere. Mr. Chertoff would have you believe that the United States, acknowledged possessor of the world’s most powerful military force, is now in a state of retaliatory war with a sick old man holed up beyond our reach somewhere in the northwest corner of Pakistan.
What’s Wrong with Calling It a War?
The administration has not treated its wars as traditional wars to be declared by Congress under Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution. Instead, they lumped its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under the rubric of a "global war on terror," and let it go as that. No one questioned the phrase, perhaps because there have been other wars against such ills as drugs, poverty or illiteracy on which large amounts of taxpayers’ dollars have been expended without much to show for it. Nevertheless, the damage done by the self-inflicted wound of these four words far exceeds the wildest dreams of the fanatics who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.
The phrase "global war on terror," is, of course, meaningless. It defines neither a specific theater of war nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a technique of warfare--political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants, often using improvised weapons like airliners or roadside bombs. The very vagueness of the Bush administration’s cleverly conceived phrase was deliberately calculated to accomplish one major objective and encourage the emergence of a culture of fear.
The four words have almost become a Madison Avenue mantra to be trotted out on appropriate occasions. But the culture of fear is also like a genie let out of a bottle that quickly acquires a life of its own and demoralizes its liberators. Seven years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror have actually undermined our ability to confront the real challenges we face, with the result that America has become insecure and more paranoid.
Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they are pursuing. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it received without the repeated use of this phrase plus the carefully fabricated lie about the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, reelection of President Bush in 2004 was the result of an appeal for a nation at war not to change commanders in midstream. In this, the concept of a lurking danger, however imprecise, was reinforced by the illusion that we are "a nation at war."
To justify its "global war on terror," the administration promulgated the false impression that the conflict resembles earlier struggles, first against Nazism and then against Communism. Both concepts ignored the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were formidable military powers, a level of threat al-Qaida can never hope to achieve. President Bush’s ultimate fear mongering and justification for U.S. troops' presence in Iraq was his ludicrous claim the "we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here."
"Well, if it isn’t a genuine war, what am I watching on TV?"
Readers may very well ask that question. What you are seeing now in footage carefully censored to avoid graphic scenes is the U.S. occupation force of 140,000 keeping the lid on what is, for the present, a low-key Iraqi civil war. In this sense, it is not unlike the Lebanese civil war. Let me refresh your memory: A quarter-century ago, for humanitarian reasons and as part of a multinational force, U.S. Marines landed in Beirut, occupying a makeshift barracks at the Beirut airport a quarter century ago. Early on the morning of Oct. 23, 1983, an embryonic Hezbollah group exploded a massive truck bomb in the lobby of the building, causing almost total destruction. Some 244 U.S. service personnel were killed and 60 were injured. President Ronald Reagan realized there was little or nothing our military could do to counter an internecine civil war and wisely withdrew our troops.
Even with the number of American military deaths declining now in Iraq—and one per month would be one too many--the dollar cost, a staggering $3 billion per week, puts us deeper in hock to creditor countries. How many more years will these aimless conflicts continue before the American people insist that they end? Every dollar spent on Basra or Baghdad is a dollar that could have been spent on Buffalo or Baltimore. Every bridge we rebuild over the Tigris River in Iraq is one less bridge that could have been replaced in Minnesota lest it collapse into the Mississippi.
Nearly seven years after invading and occupying Afghanistan and more than five years after doing the same on a grander scale in Iraq, America and its dwindling collection of allies (dubbed "the coalition of the billing") have failed to achieve anything resembling a victory. We have been fought to a standstill by ragtag forces dedicated to liberation of their respective countries from foreign invaders. Our armed forces in Iraq alone have suffered 4,168 deaths and tens of thousands of wounded. The fighting in Afghanistan has been less intensive—almost six hundred American dead in seven years--but the conflict there has been just as purposeless and discouraging. To make these numbers even more forbidding, ever since last May casualties in Afghanistan have exceeded those in Iraq.
Recent "tell-all" accounts of the Bush administration have revealed that waging war in Iraq was the President’s intention from the start, and he let nothing stand in his way. From the very beginning of his term and well before 9/11, President George W. Bush failed to heed clear warnings about al-Qaida's impending terrorist attacks in the United States. Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor, facilitated his self-deception. An academic expert on German-Russian relations with no experience in the Middle East, she was a peculiar choice as national security advisor. Timorous in the presence of a crafty Cheney and an overbearing Rumsfeld, she saw her task as requiring that she insulate Bush from bad news about the Middle East. She played this role so diligently, it left a trusting and uncurious President more ill informed than ever.
Had President Bush known anything about the history of the region he might have hesitated before committing troops to two concurrent pre-emptive wars. Over the centuries, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, the French, the British, and the Russians all invaded parts of the Middle East only to admit ignominious defeat. Now it’s our turn to pack up and depart.
Did no one warn President Bush about the perils of invading the Middle East? Did none of his advisors explain to him that Iraq was a veritable ethnic melange, a nation of nearly 30 million riven by tribal jealousies and ancient blood feuds? Did no one whisper to him that Iraq has been a battlefield where Muslim orthodoxy and secularism clashed for centuries as warring Sunni and Shia factions, the latter strongly influenced by Iran? Did no one hint to him that historically Iraq has been a fiercely contested combat zone of clashing religions, political movements, social classes, and ethnic groups?
Despite these grim realities, our president thrust the United States into the cauldron of the Middle East in the naively foolish belief that democracy, human rights and individual freedom could be imposed at the point of a bayonet. Back home, a preoccupied citizenry, compliant Congress and timid media allowed the armed forces to be hijacked into this mindless military exercise. Following our initially successful invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, we quickly painted ourselves into a corner. Our military, trained and prepared to engage a huge traditional force armed with modern tanks, weapons and missiles on the plains of Central Europe, was flummoxed when it met resistance to our occupation. Challenged by lightly armed civilians and poorly equipped militias, we suddenly found ourselves involved in wars of national liberation--the hardest kind of a war in which to prevail—precipitated by the inadequate size of our occupation forces.
So, What Else Is New?
Slouching unconcernedly from one crisis to the next has been a hallmark of the Bush managerial style. He was similarly unprepared for Hurricane Katrina and out of touch with reality. (Remember his famous remark, "Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job."?) Lately, he has done nothing about the challenge of climate change caused by polluting greenhouse gases.
As he nears the close of his term, Mr. Bush, who has an M.B.A. from Harvard, was equally unprepared with a solution to the financial crisis precipitated by the practices of greedy, unregulated bankers and mortgage lenders. His administration proposed to solve this full-blown imbroglio with a hastily cobbled together rescue plan, the "mother of all bailouts." Under this one-sided salvation of the troubled free-market system, bankers’ profits would be protected but a trillion dollars worth of losses will be passed to taxpayers. To accommodate this, Congress must authorize elevation of the national debt limit to a whopping $11.3 trillion.
And as a result of ex-oilman Bush’s failure to anticipate the rest of the world’s growing demand for oil, we now face an oil crisis exacerbated by the declining value of the dollar against other currencies. Most egregious of all his sins of inattention, he has done absolutely nothing about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, obviously intending to leave office as a "wartime president." and dump them into the lap of his successor.
What has the sacrifice of so much blood and treasure in the Bush wars accomplished? Without having secured a single drop of the oil that was supposed to finance our invasion of Iraq, the United States has saddled itself with a rundown and virtually ungovernable protectorate incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than four years after national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a handwritten note reading, "Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign," to announce the handover of power to the new Iraqi government, Iraq’s sovereignty remains a will o’ the wisp.
Recalling U.S. success in rebuilding Germany and Japan after the Second World War, the neocons in the administration who launched the Iraqi nation-building project were confident that that the U.S. could replicate those feats. How wrong they were! Today, generation of electricity in Iraq barely meets half the daily national requirements. Oil production has finally reached pre-invasion levels, but distribution systems and pipelines are vulnerable to sabotage. Reports of fraud, waste and incompetence in the administration and distribution of U.S. aid are commonplace. American officials complain repeatedly about the squabbles that paralyze the Iraqi parliament and the unbridled corruption within Iraqi ministries. If one of the principle functions of government is to provide services to its people, then the government of Iraq can be said to barely exist.
In the long run and under the best of circumstances, our misguided efforts will yield an Iraq that is in worse shape than it was before we invaded, a breeding ground of unrest and resistance long into the foreseeable future. Even should we make the decision to withdraw from Iraq, additional American casualties and the abandonment or destruction of billions of dollars’ worth of equipment and supplies will accompany our departure. From this cauldron will emerge a powerful and determined Shiite majority openly linked to Iran, and a minority Sunni population allied with the most regressive political and religious forces in the Muslim world. Both sides will be heavily armed. Having known a measure of independence from Arab rule in Baghdad, restive non-Arab Kurds in the north will not give up that hard-won advantage easily.
In reality, the war's effects are precisely what the Bush administration should have expected. Baghdad’s U.S. embassy has become a fortified bunker with some 57 other fortified strong points scattered around the country. If the Iraq War revealed anything to the rest of the world, it was the narrow limits of political or military action open to the world’s greatest military power. It also emboldened adversaries such as Iran, and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, the stomping ground of a resurgent and defiant al-Qaida. More damagingly, it fanned anti-American sentiment to incredible levels, recruiting uncounted numbers to al-Qaida’s ranks.
At one time a young American outfitted with a knapsack on which was sewn an American flag could hike north from Mauritania in West Africa to Morocco, eastward across North Africa, then north again along the Mediterranean and then east through Turkey and Muslim countries all the way to Sinkiang in China and be warmly welcomed everywhere along the way. Regrettably, today that same hypothetical hiker would hardly get a few miles outside Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, before meeting an unhappy fate. Therein lies the greatest tragedy of the "global war on terror."
Labels: Afghanistan War, Global War on Terror, Iraq War
Thursday, July 03, 2008
A Voter’s Guide to Reality in the Middle East, or What the Politicians Won't Tell You
CURRENT AFFAIRS
In a little more than four months from now, this country will elect a new President, a new Congress and one-third of the Senate. Candidates will promise to make changes in the conduct of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of their campaign promises, what the President and members of Congress actually are able to do will be limited by three immutable realities. Failure to take these into account could have tragic consequences for this nation.
Reality No. 1: Victory in the traditional sense is simply not possible in Iraq. There will be no formal surrender with terms clearly stated in a treaty. Insurgents will simply fade back into the shadows, taking their weapons and stores of explosives with them for future use. A major problem is that proponents of keeping our troops in Iraq until victory is achieved never seem to be able to define what constitutes victory. Our government claims the point that will trigger a major withdrawal of US troops is the ability of the Iraqis to create a functioning government able to stand on its own and defend itself from internal and external enemies. At the moment, the only areas of Iraq or Afghanistan that can be described this way with certainty are the Kurdish portion of northern Iraq and a tiny enclave around Kabul in Afghanistan. (The explosion of a car bomb outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, negated the accuracy of this statement with respect to Afghanistan.)
Pragmatic experts do not foresee victory of any kind in Iraq, no matter how long occupying forces remain. The reasons can be read in the tea leaves of military history. Since the end of the Second World War uprisings have flared up around the world. These can be classified as either of two main types: The first (Table 1) are revolutions in which a portion of the population rises against an oppressive government, are what might be called true insurgencies. These have been singularly unsuccessful. In contrast, the second type (Table 2) comprises struggles in which insurgents fight to eject the forces of an unwelcome occupying power. These so-called “wars of national liberation” have been uniformly successful.
Table 1: True Insurgencies
In a little more than four months from now, this country will elect a new President, a new Congress and one-third of the Senate. Candidates will promise to make changes in the conduct of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of their campaign promises, what the President and members of Congress actually are able to do will be limited by three immutable realities. Failure to take these into account could have tragic consequences for this nation.
Reality No. 1: Victory in the traditional sense is simply not possible in Iraq. There will be no formal surrender with terms clearly stated in a treaty. Insurgents will simply fade back into the shadows, taking their weapons and stores of explosives with them for future use. A major problem is that proponents of keeping our troops in Iraq until victory is achieved never seem to be able to define what constitutes victory. Our government claims the point that will trigger a major withdrawal of US troops is the ability of the Iraqis to create a functioning government able to stand on its own and defend itself from internal and external enemies. At the moment, the only areas of Iraq or Afghanistan that can be described this way with certainty are the Kurdish portion of northern Iraq and a tiny enclave around Kabul in Afghanistan. (The explosion of a car bomb outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, negated the accuracy of this statement with respect to Afghanistan.)
Pragmatic experts do not foresee victory of any kind in Iraq, no matter how long occupying forces remain. The reasons can be read in the tea leaves of military history. Since the end of the Second World War uprisings have flared up around the world. These can be classified as either of two main types: The first (Table 1) are revolutions in which a portion of the population rises against an oppressive government, are what might be called true insurgencies. These have been singularly unsuccessful. In contrast, the second type (Table 2) comprises struggles in which insurgents fight to eject the forces of an unwelcome occupying power. These so-called “wars of national liberation” have been uniformly successful.
Table 1: True Insurgencies
Location | Opponent | Outcome |
| Greece | Greek government | Communists lose |
| Namibia | South Africa | South Africa loses |
| Eritrea | Ethiopia | Ethiopia loses |
| Somalia | US | US withdraws |
| Gaza Strip | Israel | Israelis withdraw |
| Sri Lanka | Indian government | India loses |
| Nicaragua | Sandanista government | US-backed Contras lose |
| El Salvador | Salvadoran government. | Communists lose |
| Bolivia | Bolivian government | Communists lose |
| Angola | Angolan government | US-backed Savimbi loses |
| Peru | Peruvian government | Shining Path leaders captured |
Those who claim that insurgencies cannot succeed often cite only the examples of Table 1, which shows that national governments can usually successfully suppress rebellions arising within their own borders. When insurgent groups oppose occupation by foreign troops, however, the picture changes and it becomes impossible to apply principles of traditional counterinsurgency theory, such as winning the hearts and minds of the local population. The bleak results that come when foreign governments, either colonial powers or invading military forces, touch off wars of national liberation are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2: Wars of National Liberation
Location | Power involved | Outcome |
| Malaysia | UK | UK leaves |
| Kenya | UK | UK leaves |
| Palestine | UK | UK leaves |
| Cyprus | UK | UK leaves |
| Aden (S. Yemen) | UK | UK leaves |
| Indonesia | Netherlands | Dutch leave |
| Angola | Portugal | Portuguese leave |
| Mozambique | Portugal | Portuguese leave |
| Vietnam | France | France leaves |
| Vietnam | US | US leaves |
| Cambodia | Vietnam | Vietnam withdraws |
| Algeria | France | France leaves |
| Afghanistan | USSR | Soviets leave |
| Chechnya | Russia | Russians leave |
| Lebanon (Hizbollah) | Israel | Israel withdraws |
| Gaza | Israel | Israel withdraws |
| Iraq | US, UK | UK leaving/US? |
The Vietnam War is a classic example of a war of national liberation in which insurgents prevailed. Similarly, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both qualify as small wars of the same type. In each case, despite overwhelming technological superiority, U.S. forces have been unable to achieve victory. Barring drastic changes in U.S. policy, guerrilla fighting could drag on for years in both countries.
Unfortunately, partial success in reducing the level of violence in Iraq as a result of the surge has not meant any substantial political gains for the al-Maliki government. We should remember that the surge was never intended to win the war in a military sense. Contrary to popular opinion, Gen. Petraeus never promised victory. He and other senior officers have already pronounced the war to be militarily unwinnable. Proponents of the surge were quite clear that the surge exercise was not intended to impose our will on the insurgents, but rather to facilitate political reconciliation among warring Iraqi factions. The reality is that the Iraqis are still not ready to go it alone, hampered as they are by the 1,400-year-old schism between the Sunni and Shiia branches of Islam.
Reality No. 2: American forces cannot leave Iraq quickly or easily.
Getting out of Iraq will require almost as much effort as it took to get in. Politicians who talk about speedy departure from Iraq simply do not understand the sheer volume of the military equipment on the ground that must be removed.
Civilians with no experience in military matters may think that departing American troops have only to pack up their weapons and ammunition, jump into their vehicles and drive to Kuwait with their equipment. Easier said than done. Vehicles now in Iraq include a total of 10,000 flatbed trucks, 1,000 tanks and 20,000 Humvees and MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles resistant to land mines and improvised explosive devices. Just to move so many vehicles from Iraq to Kuwait at 30 miles per hour would consume 75 days. This would be the equivalent of a continuous line of bumper-to-bumper traffic stretching from the island of Manhattan all the way to Denver.
According to the watchdog Government Accountability Office, 300,000 pieces of large and expensive equipment will have to be cleaned and crated or wrapped. After use for even a short time in Iraq's dust and sandstorms, the Army's 70-ton M1A2 Abrams tank ceases to be an awesome fighting machine and becomes a crippled repair headache in which sand has infiltrated everything from the 25-ton rotating gun turret to the intricate gun-pointing electronics. Major tank overhauling operations cannot be done in the field or at rear echelon bases in Kuwait. Helicopters must be shrink-wrapped. Even treated as an emergency, evacuation of most of the combat brigades and support troops plus millions of tons of equipment in orderly fashion would take a minimum of 20 months.
The idea of simply abandoning much of the heavy equipment and leaving it in Iraq is tempting but too risky. To do so could allow lethal weapons to fall into the hands of forces hostile to whatever government we are able to prop up to govern the despoiled country. Nor will evacuation be easy. The present 334-mile supply route for convoys that run between Kuwait and Baghdad is permanently under the threat of hit-and-run attacks by insurgents, particularly with highly effective improvised explosive devices. There is no reason to believe that insurgents will let up in their attacks once the US announces that its armed forces are leaving.
Reality No. 3: Afghanistan has always been the graveyard of foreign armies. Compared to the conflict in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has been treated almost like a sideshow, with funds and equipment allocated grudgingly. But the conflict in Afghanistan has always been more important and an even harder war to win than the one in Iraq. In the months of May and June of 2008, more U.S. and coalition forces were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
One reason Afghanistan is such a tough nut to crack is the porous border with Pakistan, making it easy for enemy forces to move in and out of Pakistan’s so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where Osama bin Laden and the upper echelon of al-Quaida are believed to be hiding since 2002. Two other reasons for gloom are the superb fighting abilities of the Afghan guerrilla warrior and the forbidding mountainous terrain characteristic of much of the country.
An impoverished nation whose economy is based on the opium poppy, Afghanistan has been devastated by warfare for the last three decades. As part of the Cold War, the U.S. provided the Afghans with millions of dollars’ worth of weapons with which to fight the Russian invasion. After Russia pulled out in 1989, the U.S. quickly lost interest in the fate of the country.
Our 2001 invasion of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and capture or kill Osama bin Laden followed by the subsequent occupation of the country by the U.S. and a NATO Security Assistance Force are all a continuation in “The Great Game” played in the nineteenth century between Britain and Russia. In 1839, British and Indian troops marched into the capital, Kabul, with banners flying and bagpipes skirling, taking the city almost without resistance. They quickly learned just how resilient the Afghans could be.
This invasion, like others, followed a pattern. First, an almost unopposed occupation of the capital, followed by upcountry skirmishes that went from minor to major, and then open resistance. In 1842, the Afghans showed what their ragged fighters could do to a traditional army of the period. When the British expeditionary force of 4,500 British and Indian troops and 10,000 camp followers tried to escape from Kabul and reach the British base at Jalalabad, only about 90 miles away as the crow flies, it was almost totally wiped out by guerrilla attacks as it threaded its way down narrow river valleys and through mountain passes. Only a few prisoners survived in captivity. One member of the invasion force who made it to Jalalabad was the assistant surgeon, Dr. William Brydon.
Even if American planners were ignorant of the British experience in Afghanistan in the 19th century, they could have drawn upon the more-recent calamitous Russian disaster there. In December of 1979, ignoring the historical record, Russian army tanks and trucks moved into Kabul. As invasions of Afghanistan tend to do, the operation went easily and smoothly. From the moment of their arrival, however, the Russians experienced nothing but trouble and harassment.
In ten years, the Russians killed more than a million Afghans by indiscriminate carpet-bombing of hundreds of villages. Five million Afghans crossed borders to safety in Pakistan's Tribal Areas or in neighboring Iran. Another two million were displaced inside Afghanistan. By the time the Russians accepted the inevitability of defeat, and the last of their tanks and trucks rumbled back across the Friendship Bridge into Tajikistan, Russian losses were staggering.
Russia claimed troop deaths totaling 14,453 in Afghanistan, but some experts put the actual figure at more than 20,000, with close to 100,000 seriously wounded. The Russians also lost nearly 500 aircraft, including 350 helicopters shot down by missiles supplied by the CIA. Countless numbers of burned-out hulks of tanks, trucks and personnel carriers still dot the countryside. Huge quantities of artillery weapons and other equipment were destroyed.
The Central Intelligence Agency supplied weapons to Osama bin Laden and helped to create al-Quaida in the hope that Afghanistan would be Russia’s Vietnam. Their strategy succeeded beyond their wildest dreams--the debacle in Afghanistan contributed to the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden’s stated aim is to cause the U.S. to exhaust itself by expending men and money in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the Middle East America’s second Vietnam. Iraq is the size of California, and Afghanistan is the size of Texas.
Summing Up. The three above-cited realities govern the possible actions of those who will direct the military fortunes of this country after the election. So, if candidates promise to keep our troops in Iraq only long enough to achieve victory, don’t believe them--demand that they define victory. If any candidate promises to withdraw troops from Iraq quickly, be wary and ask to see the timetable. And if any candidate promises that our experience in Afghanistan will be different from that of other invaders, withhold your vote. As in Iraq, there can be no quick and easy solution in Afghanistan.
A Brief Biographical Note from the Author, Robert Scott.
Screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood correctly described the years spent by those who fought in the Second World War as “the best years of our lives.” From early in January of 1942 to just before Christmas of 1945, I gave four of the best years of my life as one of the millions of Americans busy with that war. In his 1998 book The Greatest Generation, TV journalist Tom Brokaw called us "the greatest generation any society has produced." Yet we never thought of ourselves or what we were doing as great. A big job had to be done, and the whole country pitched in with quiet determination to do it.
At war’s end, I was left with an abiding interest in the art of warfare, its history, strategy and tactics. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., who actually hungered for battle, saw war as the finest expression of the human condition. Countless others have looked at war’s carnage, and regard it as an expression of the most foolish impulses of humankind. A few wars can even be called “good wars.” World War II was such a war. Nevertheless, all wars are worth studying for the lessons they can impart.
After the war, I spent many years working as an exploration geologist looking for oil in Europe, North and West Africa, and the Middle East, and visiting old battlefields and war cemeteries in my spare time. (War exacts an incredibly heavy toll.) This itinerant experience also gave me a wider perspective on how the rest of the world lives. Thanks to having learned a smattering of local languages, I can attest that Turkish is easier to learn than Arabic. I also have a closer understanding of culture and attitudes in the Middle East, a part of the world in which we are now fighting two simultaneous and inconclusive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have not been what one could call “good wars.”
I cite these fragments of my history only to establish my modest credentials to counter those neocon chickenhawks who never risked their lives in battle yet are willing to offer up the lives of others in two wars in which we have no national interest. I do it, too, to counter the opinions of garrulous politicians and TV “consultants” who have never been close to an oil well or a battlefield, or who have never lived in the Middle East, yet pretend to have all the answers.
Labels: Afghanistan War, Iraq War
