Afghanistan and false compromises

Unsurprisingly, more Americans are starting to realize just how much of a challenge winning the war in Afghanistan will be. The "US Out of Afghanistan" crowd encompasses growing segments of the American left, traditional and paleoconservative voices like George Will and writers at The American Conservative, and realists like Stephen Walt. The mainstream consensus of this group is that America's military role in Afghanistan should be sharply reduced, and that we can accomplish what we want merely by picking off al Qaeda and Taliban from afar with drones, CIA operatives, and special forces soldiers. This would be plausible had we already not pursued this policy when the Iraq war diverted troops from Afghanistan. Trying to simply keep the Taliban and al Qaeda from taking over by killing the right people does not work.

For example, take the example of the Bundeswehr, which killed dozens of Afghans, many of them civilians, by bombing tankers it feared would become suicide bombs. Intercepting the tanker with ground troops would have been one thing, but simply letting an F-15 deal with it was the wrong choice. Or take our policy of "offshoring" Afghan policy in the late '90s - Bill Clinton took all the right steps of relying on intelligence and cruise missiles to retaliate for the embassy bombings, and of course we ended up with the USS Cole and September 11th. Sending special forces teams to shoot up AQ along the Durand Line did not do anything to stop the Pakistani Taliban and instead led to Pakistani border patrols shooting at our helicopters. McChrystal, our Afghan commander, was previously renown in military circles for his high-intensity campaign of targeted killings by special forces in Iraq. Yet McChrystal, elevated to command of the entire Afghan war, has emphasized counterinsurgency doctrine, not enemy-centric, highly kinetic special operations. Do George Will and other Afghan war skeptics understand something about the efficacy of special forces this veteran commander does not?

In reality, America and its allies tried and failed to halfway fight the war in Afghanistan. Over-reliance on airstrikes has had terrible consequences for civilians, and the enemy leaders we have eliminated has only left us with the war we are fighting now. The same goes for reliance on special forces. To once again invoke Sherman*, "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster." We attempted to fight terrorism easily and safely throughout the '90s, and the Taliban easily and safely during much of our time on the ground. The killing-on-the-cheap model Will proposes has already failed.

That said, does this just mean America should entirely pull out of Afghanistan and leave the whole country to rot? I disagree - leaving Afghanistan now would be a humanitarian disaster and at best mark a return to the civil war we left the country in after Soviet withdrawal. From a pragmatic perspective, leaving Afghanistan would also leave open the possibilty of more terrorist attacks originating from revived training camps. No, withdrawing will not dry up the well of terrorists - the al Qaeda members who attack the US are not poor, uneducated Pashtun farmers who have lost a family member to American bombs. They certainly do contribute to the Taliban, but AQ's deadliest members are self-selected and educated who seek combat.

That said, there are two issues that I might qualify as necessary conditions for the war effort. One is regional stability. If US efforts to stabilize Afghanistan were to destabilize things to the point where the collapse of the Pakistani government is imminent, it might be better to have the usual Taliban in power than loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan. However, this is a difficult line to cross and even if US presence did seem destabilizing, leaving at that point might make things worse. The other thing that scares me about Afghanistan is how much we've let our efforts get tied up in Karzai, who is on the road to becoming Afghanistan's Ahmadinejahd in terms of legitimacy. If we are completely done with the war and think there is no way to solve Afghanistan's problems or protect our limited interests there, that one matter. It is another matter to assume we can solve those problems or protect our intrests them with past errors.

*It seems both Robert Gates and I are fond of using the same quote. I hadn't read that issue of Foreign Affairs until now, I promise...