Obama’s Afghan Surge Fails

I have become a veritable Cassandra with my warnings about the folly of America’s involvement in Afghanistan. Instead of wondering why I keep beating this dead horse, however, my only wonder is why more people aren’t doing the same…

Nothing suggests that the war in Afghanistan is being waged in a parallel universe quite like more people protesting the killing of Trayvon Martin than those protesting the killing of thousands of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan … for no good cause.

Hell, even the recent spate of them being killed by the Afghans they’re supposedly training to kill Taliban fighters has done nothing to incite national outrage.

(“Another Sign of America’s Lost Cause in Afghanistan,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 29, 2012)

Well, it’s time for another beating of this dead horse. This one was provoked by a U.S. military report (published yesterday) that finally confirmed what some of us predicted years ago; namely, that the surge of troops into Afghanistan would do nothing but provide more targets for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters:

The U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan ended last week. Conditions in Afghanistan are mostly worse than before it began…

That conclusion doesn’t come from anti-war advocates. It relies on data recently released by the NATO command in Afghanistan, known as ISAF… According to most of the yardsticks chosen by the military — but not all — the surge in Afghanistan fell short of its stated goal: stopping the Taliban’s momentum…

Meanwhile, the pathway ‘out’ of Afghanistan, training Afghan forces, is imperiled by Afghan troops turning their guns on their U.S. mentors. There is little to no appetite within the country for another U.S. troop surge in what is now the U.S. longest war — and an unpopular one.

And there’s a number missing from ISAF’s latest set of war data. That’s 988 — the number of U.S. troops killed in action in Afghanistan or who died from their combat wounds since Obama announced the troop surge.

(Wired, September 27, 2012)

But this report should come as a surprise to nobody. To demonstrate this, I’ve decided to reprise Obama Escalates Afghan War – the commentary I wrote on December 2, 2009 delineating why I thought Obama’s highly touted troop surge was ill-advised and ill-fated:

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The media did quite a Barnum & Bailey job of drumming up suspense, but President Obama’s address tonight on his new military strategy “to bring this war [in Afghanistan] to a successful conclusion” was wholly anticlimactic. Not to mention the pedantry he displayed in restating all of the (now Bushy) reasons why this is a just war, which only served to remind us of all of the reasons why the war he’s still waging in Iraq is an unjust one….

We must deny al-Qaida a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum… And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government.

In any event, his now infamous dithering over this strategy clearly telegraphed his intent to find the most politically palatable way to give his generals the additional forces they requested. And there can be no denying that political concerns figured every bit as prominently in his deliberations as military ones.

In fact I’m sure Obama spent most of the past six months trying to fashion a strategy that would protect his political hide at home while achieving some (objective) measure of success in Afghanistan. Alas, I doubt even King Solomon could fashion such a strategy.

For, on the one hand, he’s clearly trying to pacify his liberal (Democratic) supporters by sending only 30,000 of the 40,000 (or 65,000 according to some reports) troops requested, setting all kinds of political and military benchmarks, and articulating a plausible exit strategy; while on the other, he’s trying to appease his conservative (Republican) critics by showing a hawkish willingness to fight (even choosing to announce this escalation at the Military Academy at West Point) and assuming full responsibility for winning this “good war.”

Meanwhile, because of his predecessor’s misguided, six-year preoccupation with that “bad war” in Iraq, Afghanistan has descended into a political and military quagmire that would take 500,000 troops and decades to stabilize.

Therefore, it makes one wonder what possible reason – other than cynical political pandering – Obama has for not sending at least the 40,000 troops his generals requested…. Moreover, it seems more than a little disingenuous for him to declare that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011. After all, even if he does, it could still take years after that date to reduce the number of troops deployed there to today’s level … or lower.

But this was not nearly as disingenuous as his touting NATO participation in this surge. For, having criticized President Bush for making a similar claim, he knows full well that the vast majority of those NATO troops will serve as nothing more than political window dressing. Hell, the Italians have become a laughing stock for their jingoistic refusal to even leave their cloistered and heavily fortified base; similar “combat caveats” limit German participation to “gardening”; and the French, well, plus ca change… .

These are just some of the reasons why his proverbial splitting of the baby will end up pleasing neither his supporters – who will accuse him of just aping the war-mongering policies of George W. Bush; nor his critics – who will (eventually) accuse him of playing politics and undermining the war effort by shortchanging his generals. Even worse, I fear it will amount to nothing more than the kind of march of folly in Vietnam that doomed the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

I appreciate of course that Obama is merely fulfilling his campaign promise to fight and win this war. But the changed circumstances on the ground today – viz the political mess that would compromise even a perfect military strategy – makes his decision to follow through almost as foolhardy as Bush’s decision to follow through with his invasion of Iraq even after it was clear that there were no WMDs there.

No doubt you’ll be inundated with the belated insights of Johnny-come-lately commentators and weather-vane politicians criticizing Obama for escalating this war. By contrast, here are a few excerpts from previous commentaries establishing my informed and principled criticisms dating back to 2005:

These wars have converted multitudes of peaceful Muslims into Jihadists who welcome the opportunity to sacrifice their lives in bin Laden’s holy war. Moreover, these Jihadists have demonstrated that they are as committed to (and capable of) killing Americans (in Iraq and Afghanistan) as President Bush is committed to (and capable of) “routing them out … one by one.” And it doesn’t take a genius in military war strategy to figure out who will win this war [especially on their turf].

[Please spare us the al-Qaeda obituaries, TIJ, December 2005]

Not so long ago, some of us considered the war in Afghanistan as much an unqualified success as we deemed the war in Iraq an unmitigated failure. But a new crop of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are beginning to surpass die-hard insurgents in Iraq in their ability to undermine US efforts to “stand up” a democratic Afghan government…

Alas, victory in Afghanistan may prove another casualty of the war in Iraq.

[Meanwhile over in Afghanistan: snatching defeat from the hands of victory, September 18, 2006]

Nothing is more responsible for the bedeviling success of the insurgents in Iraq (and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan) than Bush’s refusal to deploy enough soldiers to win these wars. And this despite pleadings by his most respected military advisers, including his Secretary of State Gen Colin Powell and Army Chief of Staff Gen Eric Shinseki, for Bush to deploy 4 to 5 times the number of troops he finally ordered into battle.

[Support the Draft to prevent stupid wars, TIJ, March 17, 2007]

The irony is not lost on me that McCrystal’s grim assessment makes it woefully clear that nation building in Afghanistan (even under the guise of a “counterinsurgency strategy”) is no longer advisable or feasible. Indeed, all indications are that the die has been cast for this “good war.”

Accordingly, the US legacy there will be distinguished either by a terminally wounded national pride as American forces beat a hasty retreat in defeat (following the Russian precedent in Afghanistan), or by tens of thousands of American soldiers being lost in Afghanistan’s “graveyard of empires” as they continue fighting this unwinnable war (following America’s own precedent in Vietnam) … [And more troops only mean more sitting ducks for Taliban fighters.]

Not to mention the prevailing fallacy that America must wage war in Afghanistan because it (still) constitutes the central front in the war against al Qaeda. After all, for the past six years the Bush administration prosecuted the war in Iraq as if it was the central front in this war.

Moreover, there’s no denying that the last vestiges of al Qaeda are now so splintered that they are just as likely to be found in Pakistan, Somalia or, indeed, in the United States, which makes the strategy for taking them on in Afghanistan patently misguided.

Therefore, Obama would be well-advised to cut America’s losses and run ASAP; to let the Afghans govern themselves however they like; and to rely on Special Forces and aerial drones to “disrupt and dismantle” Taliban and al Qaeda operations there.

[‘Without (or even with) more forces, failure in Afghanistan is likely’, TIJ, September 23, 2009]

[E]veryone from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Sen Kerry himself has insisted that Obama will not send over any more troops until the Afghan government gets rid of corruption.

And since the corruption UN officials uncovered at the presidential level is in fact endemic throughout the entire government, nobody believes there will be any change in this respect even if the next president could channel honest Abe Lincoln.

Accordingly, I urge Obama to stop his Hamletian dithering on this issue. In particular, he should ignore the (conservative) chicken hawks who are egging him on to surge troops in Afghanistan to follow the precedent President Bush set in Iraq.

Because the only instructive precedent here is the one President Johnson set in Vietnam, which should warn Obama not to allow a military quagmire to doom his presidency the way a similar quagmire doomed Johnson’s.

[Karzai submits to runoff election, TIJ, October 21, 2009]

Unfortunately, this means that troops are bound to be returning home in body bags throughout his entire presidency. Because, frankly, given the military quagmire Afghanistan has become, sending 20 (or even 40) thousand additional troops amounts to the proverbial tossing of a 50-foot life line to a man drowning 100 feet away

[Picture of Obama saluting war dead the defining image of his presidency? TIJ, October 30, 2009]

Enough said?

Well, to be fair, in rejecting the Vietnam precedent, Obama cited UN support for this war, lack of general support in Afghanistan for the insurgents and the fact that the 9/11 attacks were launched from there.

But he conspicuously failed to counter the three salient points on which this precedent is based, namely: that the military is caught in a quagmire (fighting Afghans who are essentially engaged in their own feudal/territorial wars, not al Qaeda’s holy war); that American soldiers are dying in a misguided search for al-Qaeda fighters who everyone knows are no longer there; and that the US is trying to prop up an Afghan government that shows no signs of developing into anything worth fighting for.

I should also note that the president said, in effect, that he will be able to stamp “mission accomplished” on Afghanistan before he leaves the White House … in seven years.

But I suspect he’s predicating this on a little too much hope: first, that this ill-fated escalation won’t doom his run for reelection; and second, that conditions will be better in Afghanistan then than they were in Iraq when Bush declared “mission accomplished” there, woefully prematurely, six and a half years ago.

Never mind the folly of announcing that he’ll begin bringing troops home in 18 months and have them all out in seven years to make sure the Afghan government gets the message that he’s “not giving them a blank check.” After all, this not only encourages the Taliban to simply lie in wait, it also defies the common sense of conveying this message privately.

Meanwhile, I do not see how Obama can possibly justify the loss of life and waste of money that will occur over this period just for him to end up doing in seven years what President Nixon did way too belatedly in Vietnam: i.e., declaring victory and going home….

* This commentary was published originally last night at 9:19