Matt Yglesias

24 Responses to “Afghan Surge Skepticism”

1. Rich in PA Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 am

   Depends what you mean by surge. If you mean a dogmatic copying of the Iraq strategy, then it presumably wouldn’t work because it’s a different situation. But if you mean it more generically, in the sense that redoubled efforts (appropriate to the situation) will give us improved results to the point where we can hope to leave a viable state and society, that is much less contentious. Certainly there’s a case against even that generic case, but I don’t think Obama or most Democrats (much less Republicans) embrace the notion that Afghanistan is a hopeless case.

2. low-tech cyclist Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 am

   I’m hardly sure how we’d best use more troops in Afghanistan, but there’s plenty of evidence that we’ve been using airstrikes there in lieu of having ground troops that can accomplish the same ends.

   Airstrikes are obviously bad in a conflict such as this because bombs tend to kill the innocent along with our enemies, which doesn’t exactly help us win hearts and minds.

   So there’s my criterion: we need enough troops in Afghanistan so that we don’t periodically kill innocent civilians in airstrikes.

3. Richard Steven Hack Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 9:21 am

   Matt: “Barack Obama’s statements on Afghanistan — especially in their earliest form — could be read somewhat in that light.”

   No shit.

   Rich: Obama has specifically stated he will dump more troops into Afghanistan and he has specifically stated he will “defeat” the Taliban - and that simply isn’t happening and will not happen.

   The same applies to “take the fight to Al Qaeda in Pakistan”.

   Afghanistan is in fact a “hopeless case” and should be completely left alone to work out its problems by itself. The same applies to Pakistan - although there the US might be able to assist somewhat with economic aid to restabilize the economy so as to improve living conditions and reduce the growth of radicalism. All military operations in both countries should cease immediately.

4. El Cid Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 9:24 am

   I didn’t know that people were allowed to inquire skeptically about The Surge, and presumably other Surges. It seemed to me to mainly be something you demanded people recognize as working. As in, “BUT YOU WILL ADMIT THAT THE SURGE IS WORKING,” and stop there, rather than getting all detail-y about what was or was not happening.

5. Duncan Kinder Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am

   The Mumbai attacks have complicated the Afghan picture, according to Stratfor:

   Now, step back and consider the situation the Mumbai attackers have created. First, the Indian government faces an internal political crisis driving it toward a confrontation it didn’t plan on. Second, the minimum Pakistani response to a renewed Indo-Pakistani crisis will be withdrawing forces from western Pakistan, thereby strengthening the Taliban and securing al Qaeda. Third, sufficient pressure on Pakistan’s civilian government could cause it to collapse, opening the door to a military-Islamist government — or it could see Pakistan collapse into chaos, giving Islamists security in various regions and an opportunity to reshape Pakistan. Finally, the United States’ situation in Afghanistan has now become enormously more complex.

   By staging an attack the Indian government can’t ignore, the Mumbai attackers have set in motion an existential crisis for Pakistan. The reality of Pakistan cannot be transformed, trapped as the country is between the United States and India. Almost every evolution from this point forward benefits Islamists. Strategically, the attack on Mumbai was a precise blow struck to achieve uncertain but favorable political outcomes for the Islamists.

6. Richard Steven Hack Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 am

   Robert Gates’ Urge to Surge
   by Ray McGovern
   http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=13805

   It may become a biennial ritual. Every two years, if the commander in chief (or the commander in chief-elect) says he wants to throw more troops into an unwinnable war for no clear reason other than his political advantage, panderer in chief Robert Gates will shout “Outstanding!”

   Never mind what the commanders in the field are saying – much less the troops who do the dying.

   “The notion that things are out of control in Afghanistan or that we’re sliding toward a disaster, I think, is far too pessimistic,” Gates said. Yet the argument that Gates used to support his relative optimism makes us veteran intelligence officers gag – at least those who remember the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1960s, the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s,
   and other failed counterinsurgencies.

   “The Taliban holds no land in Afghanistan, and loses every time it comes into contact with coalition forces,” Gates explained.

   Our secretary of defense is insisting that U.S. troops have not lost one pitched battle with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Engagements like the one on July 13, 2008, in which “insurgents” attacked an outpost in Kunar province, killing nine U.S. soldiers and wounding 15 others, apparently
   do not qualify as “contact,” but are merely “incidents.”

   Gates ought to read up on Vietnam, for his words evoke a similarly benighted comment by U.S. Army Col. Harry Summers after that war had been lost. In 1974, Summers was sent to Hanoi to try to resolve the status of Americans still listed as missing. To his North Vietnamese counterpart, Col. Tu, Summers made the mistake of bragging, “You know, you never beat us on the battlefield.” Tu responded, “That may be so,
   but it is also irrelevant.”

   As Vietnamese Communist forces converged on Saigon in April 1975, the U.S. withdrew all remaining personnel. Summers was on the last Marine helicopter to fly off the roof of the American embassy at 5:30 a.m. on April 30. As he later recalled, “I was the second-to-the-last Army guy out of Vietnam – quite a searing experience.”

   The president-elect’s position has long been that we need to send “at least two additional brigades” (about 7,000 troops) to Afghanistan. So the defense secretary would have us believe, as he said Friday, that “surging as many forces as we can” is an outstanding idea. And with troops having to leave Iraqi cities by next June, in the first stage of
   the U.S. withdrawal demanded by the draft status-of-forces agreement, there will be more soldiers available to send into the mountains of Afghanistan. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?

   Ironically, this resembles closely the proposed policy of Sen. John McCain, who argued during the debate with Obama on Sept. 26 hat “the same [surge] strategy” that Gen. David Petraeus implemented in Iraq is “going to have to be employed in Afghanistan.” For good measure, Gov. Sarah Palin told Katie Couric “a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us
   to victory there, as it has proven to have done in Iraq.”

   Reality Bites

   Oops! Within a week, Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, undercut McCain and Palin, insisting emphatically that no Iraq-style “surge” of forces will end the conflict in Afghanistan. Speaking in Washington on Oct. 1, McKiernan employed unusual candor in describing Afghanistan as “a far more complex environment than I ever
   found in Iraq.” The country’s mountainous terrain, rural population, poverty, illiteracy, 400 major tribal networks, and history of civil war make it a unique challenge, he said.

   “The word I don’t use for Afghanistan is ’surge,’” McKiernan continued, adding that what is required is a “sustained commitment” to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution. McKiernan added that he doubts that “another facet of the Iraq strategy” – the U.S. military’s
   programs to recruit tribes to oppose insurgents – can be duplicated in Afghanistan. “I don’t want the military to be engaging the tribes,” said McKiernan.

   Recently, President-elect Obama has been relatively quiet on
   Afghanistan, and one lives in hope that before he actually commits to sending more brigades to Afghanistan he will assemble a group of people who know something about that country, the forces at play in the region, and insurgency. If he gathers the right people, and if he listens, it seems a good bet that his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan being the good war will remain just that, rhetoric.

   I’m all for civilian control of the military. But I see much more harm than good in political generals – like the anointed David Petraeus – who give ample evidence of being interested, first and foremost, in their own advancement. Why do I say that? Because Petraeus, like McKiernan, knows Afghanistan is another quagmire. But he won’t say it.

   Rather than do the right thing and brief his superiors on the realities of Afghanistan, Petraeus and the generals he has promoted seem likely to follow the time-honored practice of going along to get along. After all, none of them get killed or wounded. Rather the vast majority get promoted, so long as they keep any dissenting thoughts to themselves.

   It is the same pattern we witnessed regarding Vietnam. Although the most senior military brass knew, as the French learned before them, that the war/occupation could not be successful, no senior officer had the integrity and courage to speak out and try to halt the lunacy.

7. Persia Says:
   December 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 am

   Afghanistan is in fact a “hopeless case” and should be completely left alone to work out its problems by itself.

   Ah, yes, that policy worked out so well for us the first time.

   On a less snarky note, Obama is the first major political figure I’ve heard talking about Afghanistan’s need for economic development, which gives me some hope– he actually mentioned the poppy trade. It’s embarrassing how excited I am to hear someone talk about what should be basic facts.

8. Richard Steven Hack Says:
   December 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 am

   In fact, US policy is precisely why we’re in this situation. Had we ignored the Soviet Union’s efforts there, we wouldn’t have built up bin Laden’s influence in the first place. It was the attempt to bleed the Soviet Union by proxy that led to Afghanistan being a problem for the US - not to mention the US policy failures in the Middle East in general, for which bin Laden targeted the US.

   And Obama has said NOTHING about reversing those Middle East policy problems. In fact, by his appointments he is aggravating them.

   Clinton as Secretary of State? As the Giraldi article I posted elsewhere points out, gimme a break. She’s AIPAC through and through.

   As for Obama babbling about Afghanistan’s economic development, exactly how much of YOUR tax money does he intend to spread around over there and how?

   If you can’t answer that question - because HE hasn’t answered it, except in vague generalities - it’s hardly a solution.

   As someone pointed out, the ONLY solution to Afghanistan’s society is to kill every adult and put all the children in English boarding schools - and hope they don’t all grow up to take revenge on the West for their parents.

   Spreading a few billion dollars here and there is NOT going to change the society of 30 million people (not even counting the Pashtun in Pakistan.)

   It’s this kind of wishful, imprecise thinking that gets the US into trouble worldwide.

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