Attack in Afghanistan
Taliban forces killed ten French soldiers today in Afghanistan in what I believe is the largest loss of life for France thus far in the war. It’s interesting to check out the reader comments on Le Monde’s coverage; sentiment runs strongly against French participation in the war and the term “quêpier” — which is like the French version of a quagmire, though it has a different literal meaning — comes up several times.
European public opinion is generally more anti-militarist than in the United States, so you’re bound to see some of this no matter what happens. But it’s worth considering that continued US engagement in Iraq has a really toxic impact on European public opinion regarded Afghanistan — insofar as we’re simultaneously engaged in both conflicts and our resources are somewhat fungible, Europeans are not wrong to believe that their deployments in Afghanistan serve, in part, to bolster the viability of an American mission in Iraq that they rightly see as unjust. Redeployment away from Iraq, an end to occupation there, and a more singular focus on the much more legitimate effort in Afghanistan would by no means eliminate anti-war European sentiment but it should reduce it to some extent.
27 Responses to “Attack in Afghanistan”
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August 19th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Our invasion of Afghanistan was definitely more legitimate than our invasion of Iraq. The question of whether or not we stay in Afghanistan at this point, and how much effort we put in there, has to be argued on the merits. I haven’t seen any convincing arguments for this. Perhaps the European public is merely being perceptive about the cost-benefit trade-off.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Guêpier. Not sure if this was just a run of the mill typo, but maybe somebody wanted to look it up and was confused.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Thanks, Simon. I hadn’t tried looking up quêpier*, but I was wondering. Guêpier makes sense — I’d say the colloquial English equivalent would be “hornet’s nest.”
August 19th, 2008 at 11:18 am
This is absurd. Had we never invaded Iraq, and the French lost the same 10 men, the same article would have been written.
You can disagree with our policy vis-a-vis Iraq all you want, but the Europeans would not magically become more engaged in Afghanistan if we waved a magic wand and turned back time for a do over.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:27 am
1) The really interesting question is how Condi Rice can drag the EU into a holy war against Russia when Europe knows that she and George Bush turn into pumpkins in a few months.
2) Yet if EU waits until March 2009 for the new Administration to figure out what policy it wants the US to follow, the question becomes moot. Because Russia will be firmly emplaced in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by then.
3) Looks like Russia learned a lesson from Ariel Sharon — the best time to act is in the 3 month window before a tightly contested US Presidential election. At that point, neither Republicans nor Democrats want to do anything lest it be misportrayed and lose them the election.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I’m not at all convinced. European public opinion was against our invasion of Afghanistan even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The French sent only token support. The Germans sent only token support, and non-combat support at that, but doing so nearly brought down the government there was so much opposition. Japanese public opinion was opposed to even sending naval support ships to help with operations off Afghanistan. The rest of our European allies have such small militaries that they can’t really help even if they wished to — itself a statement of their opposition to military force.
NATO’s support for the US in Afghanistan was and is driven by elite opinion that failure to support us there would lead to the end of NATO as a genuine and credible alliance. The public has always been opposed to our presence there.
Matt needs to accept the fact that the rest of the world sees military force, for any purpose, as largely illegitimate. That may be all to the good when we’re trying to keep the necons from starting a war with Iran/Russia/China, but when it comes to legitimate acts of self-defense, or intervention to stop genocide, we can’t expect non-english-speaking countries to do any actual fighting. If 9/11 didn’t prove that, nothing will.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Matt lives in a world where the Kellog Briand pact had value, and the Washington Naval talks of 1921-24 served a purpose. He’s never really wrapped his head around the idea that polite talks can’t solve all problems.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
As a Canadian, I think there’s a couple of additional points that come up frequently in our media discussion of Afghanistan that have been missed in the discussion here:
1. Contra DCreader’s comments, public opinion within NATO countries was not against invading Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. Part of the reason that there was not more involvement in terms of troop levels was because Rumsfeld and co. wanted to send a message that the U.S. could do this on their own. From Canada’s perspective, we initially ahd offered to give more troops then were included in the original invasion, and our troop levels only increased once the U.S. troops were withdrawn to prepare for the original invasion of Iraq. This was a huge topic of debate within Canada because the perception was that even if we didn’t take part in the invasion of Iraq, we were implicitly subsidizing it because we were replacing U.S. troops in Afghanistan who were leaving to take part in Iraq.
2. Part of the reason that public support in Canada has decreased for the military involvement in Afghanistan in recent years is that on most nights the two top stories on the news would be the war in Afghanistan, which would be first because of the Canadian involvement, but would not have much actual video to accompany the stories due to the difficult terrain and the limited media presence there; and the ongoing war in Iraq, which would have much more video accompaniment due to the presence of the U.S. media there. As a result, as the carnage increased in Iraq, there was a sense from the coupling of the reporting that the carnage was also increasing in Afghanistan, regardless of whether or not this was the case. The Canadian government did not make much of an effort to correct this sense in part because the support for military involvement in Afghanistan was less strong the more the public discussion was focussed on it, and both the Liberals and Conservative governments were hesitant to have the war there be specifically associated with their governments.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
In the aftermath of September 11th, NATO invoked the collective security clause of its charter, effectively saying it was joining as a full and equal partner in the invasion of Afghanistan. The US told them to pound sand and not get involved, except insofar as the US might need some auxillary aid, and not as a NATO operation.
The Germans sent only token support, and non-combat support at that
I can’t possibly imagine why Germany might only be willing and able to send its military forces abroad in a non-combat capacity.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Or, put another way: the United States is genrally more militarist than European public opinion, so you’re bound to see American politicians and pundits supporting wars and more wars no matter what happens.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Even if the sentiments of DCreader and James Robertson were actually true, it is still amazing to me that there is a line of logic from that position to support for candidates like John McCain, much less a refusal to actively condemn him at every turn.
There was a difference that opened up sometime in the last 6 years between the classic war bloggers and the Belgravia Dispatch. Neither is particularly thrilled with the liberal view of foreign (or domestic) policy. But someone with the ability to re-evaluate his prejudices (like the Dispatch) was able to come around to realize the corruption and idiocy at the core of Republican policy-making and executive decision-making. You’re left with no choice other than unconditional support for the Dems at the national level in US politics at this point. Most of the rest… I guess their either political operatives or just too wedded to certain preconceptions about the two parties.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Re James Robertson
Mr. Robertson is badly misinformed relative to the Naval treaties of the 1920s. They saved all the participants pots of money that would otherwise have been spent on worthless battleships and in fact were further useful in that they allowed experimentation with naval aviation which ultimately proved decisive in World War 2. I would further argue that Hitlers’ infatuation with battleships which lead him to authorize the construction of the Bismarck and the Tirpitz may well have been a major contributing factor in the German defeat in World War 2. One can only imagine the effect of having 75 Uboats, instead of the 2 battleships, available in June, 1940 after the fall of France.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I’d go further. Rumsfeld didn’t even want significant numbers of US troops in Afghanistan. He wanted just sufficient force (combined with air power) to give the Northern Alliance a decisive advantage, then he wanted to leave. He was never quite on the same page as the neocons or the liiberal interventionists. He wanted to demonstrate that the US could topple hostile governments with minimal force. He wanted it done with no lingering entanglement so that it could be done over and over without public disaproval.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
This will hasten Sarkozy’s tenure by a factor of 5.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
This subject drives me batty. Ohnoes, the French only sent 1200 men instead of the 2400 we asked for!
There are 150,000 American troops in Iraq! Compared to that, these “NATO shortfalls” are a rounding error of a rounding error.
You know why the US only asked for some non-combat support in Afghanistan? Because we have plenty of troops in our military to fight that war all by ourselves!
You know, the war against bin Laden?
I’m going to go throw stuff now. Batty, absolutely batty.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
The French have also been the only other country helping us train the Afghan military.
Well, there is the question of whether sending any type of Japanese troops abroad is Constitutional under Clause 9.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
SLC:
The point of the Naval talks weren’t to save money on outmoded ships and experiment with new ones; the theory was to make war impossible by making the long reach technology of the era limited.
So yes, they failed. Badly. Something Matt and his ilk should ponder when nuclear arms limitations are bandied about.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Matt :”the much more legitimate effort in Afghanistan”
Matt – still clueless after all these years (well, four years out of college.)
Get a fucking grip. Afghanistan was NEVER a “legitimate effort”. It was another neocon move over an oil pipeline and the desire for the CIA to get back in the heroin game, as well as a PR stunt to gin up the neocon war hysteria. The Taliban were irrelevant to anybody outside of Afghanistan, and bin Laden and Al Qaeda could have been fought effectively outside of Afghanistan (or in a worst case scenario, by covert action inside Afghanistan.)
Matt really is fucking clueless about the options. He believes Bush whole heartedly about this Afghanistan crap.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Let me clear some things up:
msmackle: Canada does not fit the “non-english speaking” description and was not who I was talking about. Britain, Canada & Australia are all clearly allies worth having.
Tyro: I’m well aware that NATO invoked article 5. As I said, elite opinion in Europe was firmly behind this but public opinion was not. Gestures of solidarity were fine but actually sending combat troops was not supported by the European public in general. Again, Germany found a legal way to send some troops (elite opinion again), but this was deeply unpopular.
mpowell: Where do you get that I’m a McCain supporter? I even included a dig at neocons in my post!
To reiterate my point: the British, Canadians, & Australians to one side, the rest of our NATO allies offered at best tepid support of the war in Afghanistan even in the immediate after-math of 9/11, so there’s no reason to believe Matt’s assertion that getting out of Iraq would suddenly increase their enthusiasm. Continental Europe is, generally speaking, not in favor of military force under almost any circumstances. Any realistic foreign policy prescriptions needs to take that into account. I’m not going all neocon-national-greatness on anyone here, just pointing out a fact that constrains the value of those allies.
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