McCain and Lieberman on Afghanistan

"Niagara of ignorance" -- nice touch. Can we use that on others, too?

I don't understand why you have to end what was a substantively good piece with a cogent argument by indulging in pathetic and petty slurs.

You always attack your colleagues in the press for their poor reporting. I'd rather an annoyingly repetitive press than a sarcastic and bitter one.

Is he really looking for success in the Af/Pak region or just angling to put a political hurt on the President?
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He likely drinks his own koolaid. I don't find it all that hard to believe that he simply doesn't understand that the extra boots on the ground weren't the only factors in the surge's successes. McCain has never struck me as all that detail oriented.

A good read, The two acts ,the Boot the Kagan Trio and the Cain-Lieber Duet looks like two shots aimned at reviving Neocon BS. Where in Graham? not sulking I hope.

Joe Klein:
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With respect to:
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The Afghan National Army is a real success story, comprised of multi-ethnic units (unlike much of the Iraqi security force) who have proven their willingness to fight the Taliban.
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Have you seen this piece of reporting on the situation in Afghanistan?
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How does this report square with your description of the Afghan army as a "real success story"?
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Have you seen this Maddow interview with the Times' Afghanistan correspondent Dexter Filkins?
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MADDOW: I know you just got back from Afghanistan and Pakistan. I know you even met with a Taliban commander in the tribal areas while you were there. It must have been harrowing to get there.
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On the ground, is there a sense the Taliban is at war with us, at war with the Afghan government, at war with the Pakistani government are they at war with all of those entities? What was your sense?
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FILKINS: Yes, I think so. I mean, it‘s sort of on both sides of the border what you could conveniently call Pasthunistan; it‘s like 45 million people, 45 million Pashtuns. And in the Afghan part of that, that‘s where most of the American soldiers are fighting. And in—on the Pakistani part of that, the government there has basically lost control of that. I mean—so—in some ways, the Taliban are actually stronger in Pakistan than they are in Afghanistan because nobody is trying to kill them there.
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MADDOW: So, when we look at this proposal what we‘re hearing from your paper, from the “New York Times,” that they‘re proposing a 400,000 strong Afghan national security force, that‘s, what, police and soldiers. It‘s a huge increase in the size of, essentially, the authorities in Afghanistan.
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FILKINS: ...I mean, I think, if the government in Kabul is ever going to have control of that country, they are going to need a lot more soldiers than they have or else—or else we have to do it. And so, I think, it‘s—you know, it‘s a long-term thing. It will take a long time. The Afghan army now only has 70,000 people in it. So, you are talking about a huge increase. It will take a very long time.
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If you look at Iraq where the numbers are about 600,000 -- I mean, that took—that took almost six years to get there. So, these are very long-term things, but at some point, we want to be able to hand the baton to them.

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How does this report square with your description of the Afghan army as a "real success story"?
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You also wrote:
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The problem is finding enough suitable recruits, especially for both the Army and police. As General Petraeus has noted, Afghanistan is much poorer country than Iraq, with a literacy rate of perhaps 30%, most of which is concentrated in the cities. It is impossible to be a police officer if you don't know how to write out an arrest report.
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MADDOW: You were there in 2001, 2002. You‘d just been there recently. Do you feel like from the Afghans that you‘ve met and from the way that people live, the prospect of quadrupling the number of Afghan young men mostly that are wearing uniforms—is that something that you can imagine them doing, culturally, economically, wanting to do that?
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FILKINS: Well, I think the hard part would be paying for it.
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MADDOW: Yes.
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FILKINS: I mean, that‘s just an economy that‘s—I mean, when you go into these villages, it‘s like the fourth century. I mean, there is no electricity, there‘s no water, there‘s no—nothing.
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But I think, you know, my experience in Afghanistan when you go into these villages, people are pretty much the same everywhere. They don‘t want war. They don‘t want fighting. There‘s the Taliban over here. There‘s the Afghan government and the Americans over here, and they‘re kind of stuck in the middle.
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So, I think what they really want is order. You know, they want they want security for them and their families. And so, it‘s going to be a while before they get that, I think. It will probably get worse before it gets better.

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While your (and David Petraeus') account of the situation squares with Filkins' reporting from the ground, neither you nor Petraeus seem to want to bring up the cost of the kind of buildup everyone in establishment fp circles is talking about.
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When Filkins mentions (almost in passing) "the hard part would be paying for" " the prospect of quadrupling the number of Afghan young men mostly that are wearing uniforms", don't you feel as if you have left out a significant part of the story, Joe Klein?
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What about the cost? How much will it cost the taxpayer to proceed with this scheme?
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What will the American people need to sacrifice in order to recreate Afghanistan (and Pakistan)?
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Until you and your colleagues deign to speak to us about what is required of us, fretting about whether these plans will work or not is beside the point, Joe Klein. With public support for the enterprise drastically trending downward, don't you think it would be a good idea talk frankly with the American people about what these plans entail? Do you really want to repeat the Bush Administration's follies with respect to giving the American people real information about what our military plans cost...and what the probabilities of payoff really are?

Here is the question I have, Why is anybody giving McCain any attention any damn way? For most of the war in Iraq nobody gave a damn about what McCain had to say about the tactics. It wasn't until he was a probable Presidential candidate that anybody paid attention to him. Well NEWS FLASH he lost. Can we please move on now? I am not saying whether his ideas are good or bad. What I AM saying is he is nothing but a frikkin Senator now putting out an idea. The only plan that really matters is the President's plan. I seem to recall John Kerry as Presidential candidate saying that we needed bilateral talks with North Korea to get them to abandon their nuclear ambitions. After North Korea reneged on their agreement to stop working on their nuclear program I didn't see one frikkin article rehashing Senator Kerry's approach. Here is a novel idea, quit giving the guy the spotlight and maybe he will STFU or at the least take his concerns and ideas to the president instead of twittering it for the world to see.

SZ
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Do you have your own blog? If you don't I and I am sure others certainly think you should.

Just to clarify because this is the intertubes, I mean that in a good way. I am sure other people might want to see your take down of articles much in the way you do it here. I know everybody and their cousin has a blog these days but still I think it would be enlightening.

SZ: "What will the American people need to sacrifice in order to recreate Afghanistan (and Pakistan)?"
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Who has the answer to that question?

How does this report square with your description of the Afghan army as a "real success story"?
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Doesn't that entirely depend on your definition of success? One could easily construe the Afghan army as a real success story simply because of its existence. Whereas Filkins says they "only" have 70,000 troops, that's 70,000 more than when they started. They may not be where they ultimately want to be, but that doesn't make it any less of a success.

somepeoplelikeit:
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Who has the answer to that question?
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In my opinion, that would be the responsibility of the people who report on the finances and expenditures of, and the people who report on the wars that expend the resources of United States.
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To have a discussion of the particular merits of plans for occupying Afghanistan without an accompanying description of the costs seems...well, academic, for one.

Joe: I find your directness refreshing. But I have serious problems with your thoughts on an effective Afghan army. The Afghanis don't have the resources and the "national will" to sustain a standing army. Given up-to-date arms and equipment I see men going back to the tribal homes and otherwise disappearing into the Pashtun lands. The fundamental flaw in any American (and European) view of how to have a stable Afghanistan is to look at a nation state in "Eurocentric" terms. Afghanistan has never been a cohesive and efficiently run nation state with authority emanating from the centre to the periphery.

The desire for national unity does not come from a broad cross-section of Afghanis encompassing a wide range of tribal elders and their supporters/tribesmen. We salute our flag. Afghanis use theirs for target practice.

sz: While I can't quibble with the need to explore what these alternatives will cost the American people, let's not leave out what it will mean to this country if Af/Pak disintegrates with nuclear weapons within its borders.
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Not that I would ever take on the role as a Joe Klein defender, I think in this case when he pointed to the success of the Afghan army he was not talking about what victories they represent on the ground in the overall war, although that is an important element by which to judge success.
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I think he was referring to their ability to meld different ethnic groups unlike the Iraqis, who may still return to sectarian violence because none of the political problems, that are really thinly disguised ethnic entrenchments, that were supposed to be addressed as part of the surge have been addressed.
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In comparison, the Afghan army is representational of the Afghan population of the afghan population and if it continues to grow and maintain its multi-ethnic make-up can only be a plus for the country.

damack:
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Doesn't that entirely depend on your definition of success?
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Not really, in my opinion.
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Since the purpose of the Afghan National Army is to prevent the possibility of Taliban dominance over various regions in Afghanistan such that the conditions for safe-havens for international terrorism to exist are also prevented, then the "success" of the army should reasonably be linked to that purpose. Can the Afghan National Army fulfill its purpose at the present time...or at least in the near future? If the answer to that question is "no", then I think it's probably premature to call the army a "success", don't you agree?
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Put another way, if my goal is to buy a car, and I have saved a quarter of the cost of a car at this point, can my savings --no matter how meritoriously frugal I have been-- really be called a "success" in terms of purchasing that car? If I haven't bought a car yet, shouldn't appropriate terms for my efforts be more modest than "success"? If it looks like I'm never going to save the three-quarters of the purchase price of the car, shouldn't a more apt description of my savings be "failure to save enough to buy a car"?
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Because of the past eight years of semantic (and, let's face it, propagandists') games around "civil war" vs "not a civil war", "war" vs "occupation", "mission accomplished", "democracy" etc. which have plagued American discourse surrounding events in Iraq, I think that it's best to be extremely carefully precise with respect to reporters' descriptions of the situation in Afghanistan.

Academic for sure. But, who out there has an answer to the question you pose to Joe Klein?
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It seems there are so many variables there and those have to be spread out over such a long period of time. Even then, the principals will at some point change necessitating a recalculation based on changes in strategy.
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So does anybody out there have an answer to the question that you would deem satisfactory? If so I'd be interested in the link.

An idea not mentioned...pull out and let them and god sort it out. Wouldn't that be a shock to the world? America reverting for a time to isolationism. That dirty word. Which also translates into not mucking about in other countries business. The ice bath treatment. No American involvement. What would happen? We would find out. It might be better than what has happened with the traditional course of our foreign policy.
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For those of you poopahing this thought...we don't need to do anything. Do you understand the extreme power of the military that we spend a major portion of our budgets on? Do you? With the power that it represents, we don't need to do anything in any time frame. Let's sit back and watch for a change. American foreign policy (war policy) is a sham. You can't defeat minds with all of that power. Let it rest.

"The Afghan National Army is a real success story, comprised of multi-ethnic units (unlike much of the Iraqi security force) who have proven their willingness to fight the Taliban."
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SZ--It seems to me that while you may be right in everything you are saying about the Afghan army, you are wrong in your critique of the Klein statement. He is making a comparison and concluding that in comparison this is a success.
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Now just as I agree with you that too much obfuscation has gone on in our political discussion, it is just as harmful when we take statements out of context as when the press does it. In fact, I believe we have even a greater responsibility as their critics not to engage in the tactics that we abhor.
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Just as many others here I look forward to your comments and find them insightful. However in this instance I think you have argued against apples when oranges are the subject on the table.

Whatever success there is to the internal security forces derived from our tax dollars, in Afghanistan, or Iraq, it is paid help, or better put, prostitution. Not necessarily bad, but also not necessarity good, either.

OK, gotta go, but as a final word, I don't give a fk what McCain, or Lieberman, or Joe Klein thinks about Afghanistan. That is all a continuing legacy of failure.

somepeoplelikeit:
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But, who out there has an answer to the question you pose to Joe Klein?
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In theory, it would be the people who report on government officials when they talk about sacrifice:
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Jed Purdy, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who has written extensively on what it means to be an American:
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In recent decades, "We've had an unfortunate tradition for decades of presidents soothing us," he said. "We have sort of an addiction to having our cake and eat it too. Clearly Bush missed the moment after 9/11. That was a time when Americans might have been willing to give something up. The nation was ready to take collective action.
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"Now, Obama has an opportunity to succeed where Bush failed. There's nothing like a financial meltdown to sober people up! You don't have an enemy like after 9/11, but you have more pinched circumstances. Obama's sense prior to the crisis was that Americans were yearning for this sense of community, sense of engagement. Now he may have the conditions that will allow him to achieve that.
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"In Obama's inaugural address, he said America is a place where people are willing to work fewer hours so their friend won't lose their job. That was a very explicit call to sacrifice — much more explicit than Kennedy's 'Ask not what your country can do for you.' We haven't had that kind of specifics since Franklin Roosevelt."

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I really don't want to hear anybody in our government talking about how we "can't afford" health care reform, or that "deficits matter" while we exclude these factors from discussion of projects like Afghanistan. I, like many Americans, am becoming angry at the idea, actually. It speaks to the premise that those who are tasked with analysis of the merits of the project aren't doing so with even the awareness of the perspective of the rest of us --as if they're making these judgments from some sort of ivory tower on Mars.
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It seems there are so many variables there and those have to be spread out over such a long period of time.
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Yes, it appears complex. There are many things we do not know and cannot know in advance. It also seems that we should not be paralyzed as a country, and that cost vs benefit analysis should not be precluded because of these facts. The volume of un-knowables, i.e. the risk should compel even more inclusion of costs into the discussion.
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Even then, the principals will at some point change necessitating a recalculation based on changes in strategy.
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The time for that "recalculation" is now and ongoing. There is a feedback loop with political and economic reality at home that must be kept intact, or we'll end up with another Bush moment.
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So does anybody out there have an answer to the question that you would deem satisfactory?
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Not at this time, but that's why I'm here making the case to Joe Klein. I'll be making the same case to DDay and every other intelligent participant in the discussion I can find.
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Thanks for the discussion, somepeoplelikeit.

Dee:
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He is making a comparison and concluding that in comparison this is a success.
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I take your point, Dee. However, I am very uncomfortable when I read pieces that are even slightly reminiscent of the Bushists' tendency to redefine success downward to meet the political objective's involved in creating public support for whatever the policy is at the moment.
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Just as many others here I look forward to your comments and find them insightful. However in this instance I think you have argued against apples when oranges are the subject on the table.
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I understand what you are saying. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. For me, it's impossible to separate the goal of getting 70,000 Afghanis into a National Army from the goal of getting Afghanistan governable, even though they are differnt things.
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Thank you so much for the compliment, Dee, and thanks very much for the cogent discussion.

SZ, thanks for the well though out response.
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I can't disagree with the core of your argument. I too am tired of people here talking about things this country can't afford while simultaneously being in awe at the money we are spending abroad.
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My point, however, was much smaller picture. The question you ask, we agree, has no simple answer. But I don't want that to limit my ability to be informed on singular issues such as this. If we can't talk about Af/Pak strategy without knowing an exact price tag then the conversation will be limited, IMHO.

somepeoplelikeit:
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If we can't talk about Af/Pak strategy without knowing an exact price tag then the conversation will be limited, IMHO.
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Of course I concur with this statement.
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To be clear though, I'm not advocating limiting the discussion at all. I'm advocating not perpetually limiting the discussion.
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I'm advocating for a discussion in which the costs of operations are sometimes included, instead of the current parameters of Serious debate adhered to by Joe Klein (and others in the Serious Foreign Policy community), in which the costs of operations are never included in our deliberations.
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I appreciate your response, somepeoplelikeit.

Withdraw from Afghanistan NOW. Its a QUAGMIRE. I am tired of Chickenhawks like Obama who are willing to send US Boys into battle when they never served themselves.

I think Klein, in praising the Afghan army, is speaking relative to two things that has talked about in the past. First, the sectarian makeup of the Iraqi Army and (especially) its National Police, which was blamed for the bulk of the extrajudicial torture and execution of Iraqi Sunnis. Secondly, the Afghan Army is, by all accounts, vastly more professional and better equipped than the Afghan police, which are completely outgunned by the militants and are also accused of extreme corruption.