The Trouble in Afghanistan

Easier said than done.
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Joe--I've been wondering about the realism of the SOFA. I've long believed that the US will never withdraw entirely from Iraq, because it will be impossible to retain the country as a reliable client state without occupying forces, and without providing national defense capability (air, armor, logistics) that the country itself will not be permitted to acquire. I put up a blog post about this a while ago. Rose, in a comment, suggested permanent force levels of around 20,000 is what she expects.

Elizabeth Bumiller has an article today where Odierno says he expects troops to remain in Iraqi cities after the 2009 deadline.

Is there any way to get a realistic conversation going in the public sphere of what the plans for American occupation really are? Because the idea of complete withdrawal is simply not consistent with an Iraqi client state, or even an ally. Certainly not with actual elections taking place and no national defense force.

Easier said than done.
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Joe--I've been wondering about the realism of the SOFA. I've long believed that the US will never withdraw entirely from Iraq, because it will be impossible to retain the country as a reliable client state without occupying forces, and without providing national defense capability (air, armor, logistics) that the country itself will not be permitted to acquire. I put up a blog post about this a while ago. Rose, in a comment, suggested permanent force levels of around 20,000 is what she expects.
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Elizabeth Bumiller has an article today where Odierno says he expects troops to remain in Iraqi cities after the 2009 deadline.
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Is there any way to get a realistic conversation going in the public sphere of what the plans for American occupation really are? Because the idea of complete withdrawal is simply not consistent with an Iraqi client state, or even an ally. Certainly not with actual elections taking place and no national defense force.

Easier said than done.
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Joe--I've been wondering about the realism of the SOFA. I've long believed that the US will never withdraw entirely from Iraq, because it will be impossible to retain the country as a reliable client state without occupying forces, and without providing national defense capability (air, armor, logistics) that the country itself will not be permitted to acquire. I put up a (kroydblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/soft-sofa.html)blog post about this a little while ago. Rose, in a comment, suggested permanent force levels of around 20,000.
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Elizabeth Bumiller has an article today where Odierno says he expects troops to remain in Iraqi cities after the 2009 deadline.
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Is there any way to get a realistic conversation going in the public sphere of what the plans for American occupation really are? Because the idea of complete withdrawal is simply not consistent with an Iraqi client state, or even an ally. Certainly not with actual elections taking place and no national defense force.

jay seems to really want to make his point.
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Joe, thank you for posting this. Otherwise, I would have missed Ms. Chayes astonishing report. Your first post on Afghanistan the other day led to a very good thread, with considerable discussion of the nature of Afghan society pre-soviet invasion. I think this paragraph from the Post article captured it perfectly:
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Afghans remember the reign in the 1960s and '70s of King Zahir Shah and his cousin Daoud Khan, when Afghan cities were among the most developed and cosmopolitan in the Muslim world, when Peace Corps volunteers conducted vaccination campaigns on foot through a welcoming countryside, and when, my friends here tell me, a lone, unarmed policeman could detain a criminal suspect in a far-flung village without obstruction. Kandaharis -- even those who lost a brother or father in the 1980s war against Soviet occupation -- praise the communist-backed government of former president Najibullah. "His officials weren't building marble-clad mansions with the money they extorted," says Fayzullah, another member of my cooperative.

jay, I responded to your response down yonder:
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/12/12/why-people-hate-columnists/?apage=2#comment-27719

Here is a simple question Joe Klein. Is there any way that you can see how we can actually "win" in Afghanistan in a best case scenario?
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Based on your reporting and others I am beginning to get the strongest impression that the answer is no but nobody wants to say it.
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Somewhat shameful plug, I now have a blog. I am inviting any and everyone to drop by any time. (yes even you textee)

Sorry about that.

hilzoy has a piece on Iraq that is highly relevant to the Post story. Seems that "our" folks in Iraq thought they could transfer the strengthen the warlord model we used so "successfully" in Afghanistan.
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Last night I wrote about the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction's draft report. The NYT has put the draft online here. I'm still reading through it, but here's a bit from p. 65. The scene is an interagency conference on reconstruction about a month before we invaded:
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"Ambassador George Ward, head of ORHA's humanitarian pillar, asked, "How am I going to protect humanitarian convoys, humanitarian staging areas, humanitarian distribution points?" A flag officer who had flown in from CENTCOM said, "Hire war lords." "Wait a minute," Ward thought, "folks don't understand this. There are warlords in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. There were no warlords to rent." "At that point," Ward says, "I thought this was going to fail because no one is paying serious attention to civilian security.""
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A month before the invasion, and people still didn't understand absolutely basic facts about the country they were planning to invade.
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It's not news, but every new instance of this kind of basic ignorance about a country whose government we were proposing to topple, and which we were proposing to rebuild, still takes my breath away.
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Of course, by the time of the Anbar Awakening, there were warlords aplenty.

wvng
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That goes along with the report yesterday of Donny Rumsfeld saying we would not spend a billion dollars of our own money in Iraq just before the invasion. Yes, Seriously

sgw: That goes along with the report . . . that the Bush administration has the deepest disdain for actual knowledge of all types. The entire last 8 years are a monument to ideological belief over objective knowledge. They went out of their way to ignore the vast amount of actual information about Iraq, and the detailed reality-based plans, found in their own State Department.
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Of course, we all know this, and many have reported on it. Here's Dr. Judson on the Wild Side blog at the Times:
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President-elect Obama already has a long to-do list. But here's another item for it: to restore science in government.
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The most notable characteristic of the Bush administration's science policy has been the repeated distortion and suppression of scientific evidence in order to fit ideological preferences about how the world should be, rather than how it is.

wvng
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Did you see where that azzhat Inhofe is at it again trying to deny climate change? How does any reasonable person vote for a Republican EVER?

OT, but I have a question for Joe. Is there any journalists universe where a journalist can be allowed to do this?:
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CONNOLLY: Word on the street is that Karl Rove is going to be helping lead the fight against Eric Holder when his nomination for Attorney General heads up to the Senate.

sgw: How does any reasonable person vote for a Republican EVER? Interesting question. A poll that was pretty widely reported the other days indicates that many people who voted for Bush either have conveniently forgotten that they did of lie that they didn't (I think the numbers are around 30% saying they ever voted for him). It is just possible that the "break the union" escapade currently going on will make it impossible for anyone to remember ever voting for a repuglican, or actually ever voting for a repuglican again. Fer Gawd's Sake, they are killing the Big 3 to protect foreign automakers. The NASCAR crowd won't be happy if Chevy and Ford get killed.

wvng
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You did see where Leahy let Specter and the rest of the rethugs have it over the Holder nomination right? I wish he were the majority leader, seriously.

A simple question: Are we even making things better? Are our actions making it less likely a future terrorist attack or war will be triggered in Afghanistan?
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Now people have to choose between the corrupt Karzai government and the Taliban. Maybe if we were not aiding the Karzai government a better opposition to the Taliban would eventually arise; It's difficult for such a movement to build up when there are already two other political options. Pressuring Pakistan AND India to be tougher on terrorism and religious extremism may be more productive than focusing so much on Afghanistan.

rose, Obama has been plenty clear that the corruption in the Karzai gov't has got to stop. Hoagland has a fine op-ed about Obama's ability to use language in pursuit of change here and abroad:
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The power of the presidential jawbone atrophied under his two immediate predecessors. But Barack Obama has shown that he will employ subtle threats, brazen promises and words at large as his ambassadors in pursuit of personal and national goals.
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It is not a matter of being good at speechifying, which Obama certainly is. It is a matter of calculating -- at which Obama also excels -- the precise effect of words unleashed in presidential addresses, news conferences and on-the-hoof occasions. They all shape the battlegrounds on which a national leader must fight.

sgw, I did. That is what is called a properly calibrated public response designed to put repug actions in the proper context. Reid seems to have no idea how to do this. Where oh where is the Reid who jumped over a desk and started pummeling the guy who tried to bribe him?

wvng, I'm sure Obama understands the problems much better than Bush, and obviously he can verbally express American policies approximately 1,000 times better than Bush. But it's important to remember that there is no historical precedent of a successful military intervention in Afghanistan.

Joe: do you really see a future for US interests in Afghanistan? We get lots of anecdotal info on specifics acts against groups and individuals. But can we prevent that if the Afghanis allow it to happen. What is our interest? I can understand the view that Afghanistan's stability should be of concern to Pakistan, India and Iran. Other than stopping Al Q from settling into their own bases what else do we gain?

Here is what I think the truth is that nobody wants to say. In order for us to actually not only stabilize Afghanistan but make lasting changes we will need MORE troops than we had in Iraq and we will have to oust Karzai and put our own guy in. Thats not to say we SHOULD do it, but that to me is the honest to God truth of the situation. Anything less and either the region plunges into total chaos with loose nukes in the equation OR we find ourselves in a situation worse than Iraq and Vietnam COMBINED.
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Again just my opinion.

Rose, that is the question, isn't it. As in America after 9-11, Bush absolutely squandered/obliterated the goodwill of the Afghani people after the liberation, and the question is - "is it possible to get it back?" If the answer is yes, then there is still a chance. If no, then we will be as one with all the other invaders. with From the Post:
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This is why the Taliban are making headway in Afghanistan -- not because anyone loves them, even here in their former heartland, or longs for a return to their punishing rule. I arrived in Kandahar in December 2001, just days after Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar was chased out. After a moment of holding its breath, the city erupted in joy. Kites danced on the air for the first time in six years. Buyers flocked to stalls selling music cassettes. I listened to opium dealers discuss which of them would donate the roof of his house for use as a neighborhood school. I, a barefaced American woman, encountered no hostility at all. Curiosity, plenty. But no hostility. Enthusiasm for the nascent government of Hamid Karzai and its international backers was absolutely universal.
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Since then, the hopes expressed by every Afghan I have encountered -- to be ruled by a responsive and respectful government run by educated people -- have been dashed.

Way down in Joe's last Afghan thread, I posted a letter my brother (a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan in the 70s)wrote to his local paper in Virginia shortly after 9-11, when the rhetoric of vengeance was at its worst. It seems relevant to link it again.
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/12/11/latest-column-5/?apage=2#comment-27383

Great analysis, except the fact you're just writing about someone elses experience and opinion, all while you contiue to parrot whatever Obama says.

OT
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Also I will be blogging the Bucs/Falcons game here for anybody that is interested.

pointing and laughing
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA