"To Encourage the Others"

Ooooh oooh I know the answer to this professor!! Could it be that withdrawing from Afghanistan would provide the Taliban with ample breaking space to re-take Afghanistan...and possibly threaten the status and stability of the pro-western government in Islamabad? Or maybe the answer has something to do with American prestige, and the fact that the U.S. Government relegate themselves into a position that they may not recover from in the immediate future (a superpower that cowers when S*%! hits the fan).

Washington may indeed want to back winners in international politics. The only problem with that is our winner (Hamid Karzai) turned out to be a loser.

Perhaps three years ago, the American "surrender" that you are endorsing would not be so devastating to U.S. national security. Back then, the Taliban insurgency was just a small-band of outlaws hiding in the mountainous of Pakistan. But, as you and your colleagues recognize, the Taliban is now a major fighting force to be reckoned with. Its rank-and-file numbers in the tens of thousands, and a large majority of these warriors are young Afghan men who have grown accustomed to supporting the nihilistic endeavors of Al'Qaeda.

Perhaps a quote from David Rohde's- that famous journalist who was captured by the Taliban- can shed some light onto this whole debate:

"Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of "Al Qaeda lite," a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

"Living side by side with the Haqqanis' followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world."

So, while the Taliban's goals may have been regionally-based in the past- such as retaking Afghanistan and imposing an Islamic state within its borders- its extensive relationship with Al'Qaeda has given them a "fundamentalist-type enlightenment" that continues to this day. Not only are Taliban militants more dangerous than their predecessors; they are scaring ordinary Afghans into submission. De-ja-vu all over again.

If you truly want Americans to get out of Afghanistan, I hope you are prepared for another Taliban Government...one that is more ideologically fervent and dogmatic than Mullah Omar's inner-circle.

Let's hope that a new Afghan presidential election can change this dire outlook (although I doubt it will make much of a difference).

http://depetris.wordpress.com

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Americans invade a country, kill tens maybe hundreds of thousands of its innocent inhabitants in addition to a handful of 'bad guys', prop up a puppet leader while they continue to occupy it. And then they, Americans, denounce said leader for his incompetence.

(Yes, you have heard it before b/c the same is happening with Iraq).

The US invaded Afghanistan and set it back decades, killed and maimed civilians and continues to do so, maintains a very brutal and unwelcome occupation that does not even have a clear enemy or goal.

Sitting in the comfy chair of American academia saying your government shouldn't bother with incompetent leaders smacks of blind arrogance and hypocrisy.

I entirely agree with Steve on this one. Afghanistan is a war of necessity? a vital security interest to the United States. The end of the Cold War should have made things less complex for the United States. There was a time when the US had to treat a Mobutu of Zaire as a dictator who had brought his country to ruin but who was on the right side in the Cold War. After the Cold War, the US could treat him merely as a dictator who brought his country to ruin. Much simpler and straightforward. Vietnam could claim importance way out of scale to its actual worth during the Cold War. Today, it is simply Vietnam. One must use an absurd logic to call the war in Afghanistan "a war of necessity" and to claim Afghanistan is a vital US security interest. Uncle Sucker indeed. Walt is spot on; the lesson will not be that the US has lost credibility but rather that it has finally gained some credibility along with sanity about how and when to exercise its military power. 40,000 more troops won't do anything to salvage Afghanistan. It would take hundreds of thousands of US troops. And for what? As Walter Lippmann pointed out years ago: States must remain solvent over the long term. Their commitments or liabilities must not far exceed their power or assets. When a state's commitments expand while its resources diminish, there will come a point at which the government is going to have a check returned marked 'insufficient funds.' The most obvious way that a balance of power will reemerge against the US is simply that the US fritters away its relative power advantage and comes crashing back to earth. The crucial task for US foreign policymakers is to strike a healthy balance between hegemonic absolutism and hegemonic abdication. Getting out of Afghanistan would be a major signal that the US is not going to play games anymore. No more Uncle Sucker. Amen.

The bulletin on fixing Af:
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/how-to-get-out-of-afghanistan

I sure wouldn’t want to get caught in the trap of having to stay there just because we are there. That sounds like the mentality of inner city gang warfare.

I remember a few years ago when a major issue was that we should not just go into Afghanistan and then neglect them by walking away. At that time, the issue of credibility seemed to be; umm---credible.

But, right now, about all that we are doing is demonstrating our inability to compete in the context of Afghanistan, and that sure doesn’t help our credibility.
The nature of Afghan politics has created a web of alliances between the Taliban and layers of factions throughout the country and inside the government. One of the fundamentals of counterinsurgency is to isolate the insurgents and consolidate your own unified stability. Instead, we imposed elections upon them which inflamed factionalism and further penetration by the Taliban. Corrupt or not, Karzai understands that he needs to become the top guy in the struggle to control and influence the many warlords and factions, but we are fighting him on that more than helping.

Now, we have created many difficulties and we can’t go back and start over again. We may now need a big brainstorming session about identifying our interests and our most feasible objectives for Afghanistan and the whole region.

Bob Spencer

depetris wrote:

"Ooooh oooh I know the answer to this professor!! Could it be that withdrawing from Afghanistan would provide the Taliban with ample breaking space to re-take Afghanistan...and possibly threaten the status and stability of the pro-western government in Islamabad?"

The problem with this analysis and prescription for continued occupation is that it ignores the fact that the process of invigorating the Taliban and destabilizing Pakistan has accelerated if not indeed been *caused* by the occupation we've *already* presided over.

In other words while it may be true that our continued occupation could change the trajectory of these things, that's still mere prognostication and the undeniable fact is that so far at least our occupation has gotten us exactly the opposite of that.

I think we made a mistake in trying to occupy Afghanistan. We had the right to go in to go after al Queda after 9/11 and the Taliban refused to turn 'em over. Staying afterwards though instead of just remaining over-the-horizon was a recipe for disaster, and we've now got it.

Maybe—maybe—things can be turned around by continuing to stay. But I fail to see how unless one wills the means to that willed end, meaning not just 40,000 more troops but maybe 400,000, for at least a decade or so if not longer. (With it costing us about $200,000 per year for each and every soldier we've got there, or at least so I've read.)

Otherwise I don't know that it would be a bad thing to withdraw and let the Taliban back in: Take the pressure off Pakistan while it still has a marginally sane government in power, and use all the high-tech and fancy stuff we've bought for our military to keep watch from over that horizon to prevent al Queda from establishing new bases or etc. in the new Afghanistan.

In short there is an argument to stay, not least in terms of keeping a base close to Pakistan in case that ball goes up and one believes that same is yet another matter where vital U.S. interests demanded that we had to handle same. But even with that belief, which I think is wrong anyway, there's also a helluva argument to get out of Afghanistan now too.

It's an old military axiom: Reinforce success, not failure. Use your reserves to reinforce the offensive breakthrough on the right flank, not the collapse on the left. The US gains no respect from propping up losers, and Afghanistan is a proven loser, many times over, for the West.

The same erroneous argument was used in Vietnam, that the US would "lose credibility" if it withdrew. Well, the US exercised a forced withdrawal, as will probably be the case in Afghanistan, and everything's fine. George W. Bush visited Viet Nam twice, when it was safe to do so, of course.

Terrorism is a crime, and a crime can't be defeated with a military force. It only creates more terrorism. The rest of the world knows this already, but the US is plain stupid about it in its foolish quest to expand its empire.

'In the case of Afghanistan, we are fighting on behalf of a corrupt and ineffective government that has resisted repeated calls for reform. If we were to stop throwing resources at it and it subsequently collapsed, we would be sending a powerful signal to other U.S. clients around the world.'

This is the exact same argument the left made to dump Musharaff. Things have been going swimmingly in Pakistan ever since, eh?

Here is an article by Ahmed Rashid. He is making a case that the US and NATO should stay in Afghanistan. http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22320

I guess that one of my question would be that since we have not demonstrated a successful strategy, why does he expect that to change soon enough.

Here is a key paragraph:
Ultimately the choices are stark. Either the United States and Europe abandon the region to the forces of violence, extremism, poverty and the danger of loose nukes—with all its consequences—or they remain committed and prepare to carry out both counterinsurgency and nation building. Afghanistan, Pakistan and central Asia are on the cusp of a critical historical moment on which the region’s future stability depends. Only U.S. leadership alongside that of the international community can assure that the region does not fall to extremists or other vicissitudes.

Professor Walt,

I bet you have already hear that phrase" Afghanistan is the graveyard of empire". It was true for Alexander the Great, true for the British, true for the Soviet Union and I am afraid it is about to become true for the United States. It seems to me that American suffers what I would describe of historical myopia. It has happened to us in Vietnam, it is repeating itself in Afghanistan. I think we need to check our "over-dimensioned ego" of winning at all cost when it is in fact loosing by any means. Before we leave Afghanistan, we need to normalize relation with Iran, work with India and Pakistan. By doing that, we will leave three regional powers as local proxies that can do our bidding while they might have their own agenda. These three countries would block China and Russia ambition and US companies would get their pipeline and oil. The US would not have to maintain a military presence in the region.