Is the US Military Presence Driving the Afghan Insurgency?
DOD Photo
Spencer Ackerman on the key issue raised by Matthew Hoh:
The concern about the U.S. presence fueling the insurgency — not for what the U.S. does, but merely for the fact of its existence — was raised by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January, but it has not yet seemed to penetrate most discourse about the war. Gates himself backed away from the critique in September, saying that Gen. Stanley McChrystal convinced him that the U.S. military could mitigate the danger by actively providing for the Afghan people’s well-being. And indeed, McChrystal has tacitly paid respect to the critique, saying in his much-derided London address that jobs programs could do much to deprive the Taliban of foot soldiers who fight because their lack of economic alternatives accelerate their antipathy to the U.S. presence. That approach won the support yesterday of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in his uneasy embrace of a modified version of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy. But if Hoh is right, then it’s simply too late for that strategy, as the mere presence of the U.S. military will have reached the “tipping point” that Gates warned about in January.
I think the beginning of wisdom on this is just to flat-out acknowledge that of course our presence fuels the insurgency. If a bunch of Chinese troops showed up in Detroit, decided they were going to bring security and good government to Detroit, installed a new Detroit political leadership, and went about very earnestly trying to solve Detroit’s problems there would be a lot of resistance to their effort. The question is whether their security, stabilization, and reconstruction efforts could be successful enough to on balance improve things.
For our case in Afghanistan I think that the key point is that there needs to be some kind of horizon on our presence. There’s always going to be distrust of a foreign army roaming through your country. In part you can dispel that distrust through good works. But in part you can dispel that through showing people what a post-American Afghanistan would be like and how we’re going to get there. I don’t know if that means a chronologically-boud timetable or a political checklist or what, but it’s got to be something. What you don’t want is to get in the situation of saying, basically, that we can’t leave Afghanistan until first we kill everyone who wants us to leave Afghanistan. For a while our Iraq policy was stuck in that loop, and I worry that our Afghanistan policy may veer in that direction.
21 Responses to “Is the US Military Presence Driving the Afghan Insurgency?”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 27th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
You sure about that? Have you seen Detroit lately? If this happened, I think we’d at least see how they’re doing before we put up any resistance.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
If a bunch of Chinese troops showed up in Detroit, decided they were going to bring security and good government to Detroit, installed a new Detroit political leadership, and went about very earnestly trying to solve Detroit’s problems there would be a lot of resistance to their effort.
That’s a poor analogy, Matt. It’s completely different when we do things. USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
October 27th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Would those Chinese be accompanied by drones, body armor, and a tendency to bomb wedding parties?
October 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
If a bunch of Chinese troops showed up in Detroit, decided they were going to bring security and good government to Detroit, installed a new Detroit political leadership, and went about very earnestly trying to solve Detroit’s problems there would be a lot of resistance to their effort.
I love it when Matt uses this analogy and says we’re like the Taliban/al Qaeda.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
If a bunch of Chinese troops showed up in Detroit, decided they were going to bring security and good government to Detroit, installed a new Detroit political leadership, and went about very earnestly trying to solve Detroit’s problems there would be a lot of resistance to their effort.
Ah yes, if the Chinese were willing to commit serious resources to turning around Detroit, I would cheer them on. I doubt they’d need many troops, but they’d need a LOT of civilian advisors.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Some far away, granola-munching Yglesias commenters might be willing to give the Chinese a chance in Detroit, but I’d expect the Ted Nugents in the vicinity would have a different reaction.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
“I think the beginning of wisdom on this is just to flat-out acknowledge that of course our presence fuels the insurgency.”
So, you’re saying that Obama screwed up when he threw an extra 20k troops into to Afghanistan earlier this year? You may be right. Casualties have certainly skyrocketed since then.
Maybe those extra 20k troops were the “tipping point”?
“I love it when Matt uses this analogy and says we’re like the Taliban/al Qaeda.”
He’s not saying we’re like the Taliban/Al Qaeda, he’s saying black people are. Detroit isn’t exactly representative of a typical American city. It’s a stupid analogy anyway though. The Detroit blacks would never figure out how to use IEDs and would present little resistance for the Chinese, who would have no qualms about mowing down resistance.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“I love it when Matt uses this analogy and says we’re like the Taliban/al Qaeda.”
I love it when clueless American hawks pretend to be offended by observations that are self-evident to everyone on planet earth.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias: For our case in Afghanistan I think that the key point is that there needs to be some kind of horizon on our presence… I don’t know if that means a chronologically-bound timetable or a political checklist or what, but it’s got to be something. What you don’t want is to get in the situation of saying, basically, that we can’t leave Afghanistan until first we kill everyone who wants us to leave Afghanistan. For a while our Iraq policy was stuck in that loop, and I worry that our Afghanistan policy may veer in that direction. [...]
October 27th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Some far away, granola-munching Yglesias commenters might be willing to give the Chinese a chance in Detroit, but I’d expect the Ted Nugents in the vicinity would have a different reaction.
Detroit isn’t known for its heavy population of gun-toting rednecks.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
The only reason the Taleban has any power or support is because the US invaded. It was barely a blip before the US was there. oh wait…
October 27th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
The frustrating thing about Matt is that he’s smart enough to recognize the reality in front of his face but lacks the nerve to follow it through to its logical conclusion. So, if the Chinese occupy us, we’d be kinda pissed but would wait and see how well our new alien overlords rule us? Um, no. We’d fight, scratch, claw, gouge, and bite until they left. So, the occupation does fuel the insurgency as Matt is honest enough to recognize, but I remain highly skeptical that our (very problematic) ability to deliver DemocracyWhiskeySexy! will appease them very much and forestall resistance to foreign occupation.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“The only reason the Taleban has any power or support is because the US invaded. It was barely a blip before the US was there. oh wait…”
You’re right, we chased them out, they were very unpopular, the locals didn’t like them a whole lot, and they didn’t have much political appeal. Until we supplied them with one by staying and staying and staying, bombing weddings and the like and very visibly supporting a very corrupt and unpopular central government whose only efficient practices seem to be bribery, dope dealing, and vote rigging. The prolonged open-ended occupation has given them a political platform that they lacked before.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Detroit isn’t known for its heavy population of gun-toting rednecks.
The Detroit Metro Area? Yes, it is absolutely known for having a substantial number of gun-toting rednecks.
The city of Detroit is also known for gun toting, but redneck is not the first descriptive word that comes to mind.
October 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Matt left out the part where the Chinese “invaders” worked with local Detroit opposition groups to overthrow the Christian Right Dictatorship which was burying gays alive and executing uppity women in public and denying school to little girls and sports to little boys and demolishing synagogues and defacing the work in the Detroit Museum and executing black males who refused to grow a beard and were now attempting to regain power and re-institute their reign of theocratic terror while exporting their far Right revolution to Canada.
Yeah the people of Detroit would really quickly join their former tormentors to drive out their rescuers.
October 27th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Even in Iraq there was a window. Not a big one, but the window was there.
The people of Iraq didn’t like Saddam, but I think they had a deep understanding that things could get a hell-of-a-lot worse if Saddam was say, suddenly ripped and replaced by an occupying foreign power.
And when the Americans arrived it seemed to me there brief pause. The people of Iraq took a few months to sit back and take stock of the situation, and when it became clear to them that life under American rule was going to be a fuckload worse than life with Saddam, all hell brook loose.
Nothing in life is etched in stone. All you can is search for ways to increase your odds. And if you want to make friends, you don’t increase your odds by being a dickhead.
October 27th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Choo! is basically correct, but in that alternate reality the Chinese already failed miserably to remedy the situation and have instead made a series of missteps with often deadly consequences for native Detroiters. Now young gun toting “rednecks” are joining up with the CRD-taliban because of their experiences with the Chinese propensity to blow up their friends and neighbors. Should the Chinese simply send more troops? After more than eight years of watching the “invaders” romp around their county shooting at people without much positive impact, Detroit’s citizens are a little leery of this proposition. The general population no longer trusts the Chinese and many think it might be best if they went home. It doesn’t matter that the Chinese have good intentions or that they may have been making real progress many years ago.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
MY: “What you don’t want is to get in the situation of saying, basically, that we can’t leave Afghanistan until first we kill everyone who wants us to leave Afghanistan. For a while our Iraq policy was stuck in that loop, and I worry that our Afghanistan policy may veer in that direction.”
Good post, Matteo, by the by.
Yeah, it’s kinda like picking up apples. You know? There are fifteen apples on the ground and when you try to pick them all up, the thirteenth apples slips out under your armpit and falls to the ground. Every time.
Now you can stay there all day and attempt the impossible -to pick up the perfect fifteen. Or you can accept that twelve apples is all you get and go on your merry, apple munching way.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Max424: Great example. And our window (if there ever was one) in Afghanistan is long gone.
I’m willing to bet that there would be a counter-insurgency against the Kharzid government if we weren’t there. But lets be frank here, we’re drawing it out as long as we are propping Kharzid up. This fight has an ethnic as well as an religious/ideological element out there, you’re going have to bring some “moderate” Taliban into the government if you want a Pashtuns to feel represented. And we know that ain’t happening.
I don’t know what to exactly think about Afghanistan anymore after reading The Great Gamble recently and Ghost Wars a couple of years ago. We had a slim window to make something of this, instead we got tangled up in Iraq. As much as I hate to say this, Afghanistan’s internal politics are screwed and are going to be screwed for a long time. This country has hardly ever been functional and it will never be functional in our lifetime with this 30 year-long warfare it has experienced.
It’s just time to call it quits there, I think the chances something good coming out of this are slim to none.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:49 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias is with Greenwald: [...]
October 28th, 2009 at 10:01 am
If Matt hasn’t said that America is like al Qaeda…it’s likely because he hasn’t picked up on Sibel Edmonds’ revelations regarding Turkish intelligence spying on the US and running black ops for NATO using mercenaries who resemble Guess Who ?
Brad Blog broke that a couple of weeks ago. Where is your intel ? Now as far as what are we doing there…there’s a list.
Money Laundering
Drug Running
Milking the ‘Defense’ budget
Murdering local government so as to defuse opposition to pipelining, etc.
The latest idea I saw even included using the whole PNAC Iraq+ scenario of removing local government in the oil-bearing countries of the Middle East and Asia as an AIPAC/Israel resource securing move.
Kissinger wouldn’t push for that, do you think ?
Need a link ? o.k.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/
There’s square one where Rumsfeld filed it years ago.