Will on Afghanistan
George Will has now proposed his own Plan B for Afghanistan:
[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
It may well come to that, or a more robust variation of that, but I think Will's prescription is premature. We have to see what, if anything, emerges from the Afghan election. We have to see what, if any, impact the augmented U.S. troops--who are still arriving--have on the fight. We have to see what, if any, impact the augmented non-military component--the increased aid, the additional aid workers and economic development specialists--have on Afghanistan. You might ask: why wait if the thing is a disaster, as Will proposes? A legitimate question.
There are two answers: One is that the U.S. has a real national security interest in Afghanistan. We don't want to see it revert to its former status--run by Taliban extremists who provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda (who may be looking for new digs if the Pakistanis amp up the pressure in the Northwest Frontier areas, as promised). This is a significant difference from the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, neither of which had significant national security implications (indeed, both wars diminished our security by draining our military and obliterating our standing in the world). The other answer is that we have a moral obligation to the Afghan people, just as we had to the Iraqis when we stomped in there and destroyed the most basic institutions of civil society (corrupt and authoritarian institutions to be sure, but they provided a semblance of order which we replaced with a semblance of anarchy).
Having been to Afghanistan twice in the past year, with another trip looming, I have a strong sense that the Afghans would be quite amenable to an international presence that helps restore order and helps to establish the rudiments of civil society--schools, security, sanitation and so forth--and then leaves. It is something we owe them, if we can achieve it...and that is a big if. It is a fundamental principle of counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine that you can't succeed without a reliable local partner. COIN succeeded in quieting down Iraq--relatively, and for the moment--because the Iraqi government, a mess when General Petraeus arrived, became more stable over time as Nuri al-Maliki established himself as a strong leader. We have a similar mess now with Hamid Karzai.
If the fraud proves so extensive that the recent election is considered a joke--or if Karzai fails to reconstitute his government in a way that promises better governance, less corruption and a more aggressive effort to reconcile with those Taliban who are not attached to Al Qaeda (the vast majority of them, apparently), then we've got a major problem on our hands. And a major decision to make.
The military's reflexive instinct is to keep trying until the mission is completed. That's what we pay them to do. We pay Presidents to make decisions about whether the mission is possible, advisable, needs to be scaled back or abandoned. I hope President Obama has ordered the military to come up with a set of alternative options if the post-election Karzai government turns out to be as useless as the pre-election Karzai government. He has painted himself into a corner on this one, calling Afghanistan a "war of necessity" before the VFW last month. The war against the Al Qaeda leadership is necessary; I'm not sure that the best way to fight that war is to try to prop up a hopelessly corrupt government in Afghanistan. As I said, I'm not ready to concede that George Will is right--but the President has to consider the possibility that Will is...and make a decision about how to proceed in the next few months.
-
1
Rut-roh. Now he's done it.
Will has forced others of his ilk either to (1) accept the premise that maximized militarism is not the exclusive answer to foreign policy problems, (2) support Obama's position on something, or (3) keep their yaps shut.
Heads may soon be asplodin' all over the right wing punditocracy. What will the Post do with all that white space?
-
1.1
It will be fun to watch the Crystals and Kagans of the world react to Will's latest garbage. Isn't this the same George Will who blasted Bill Clinton for using a "bomb-them-from-on-high" strategy in Afghanistan?
Taking military advice from George Will is akin to taking pet care advice from Mike Vick.
-
-
2
America should do only what can be done from offshore
In spite of my propensity to prefer less military involvment when given a choice, Will's solution strikes me as the worst of both worlds. Like it or not, our US soldiers are 'the face of America" to much of the rest of the world. Whether we're seen as 'protectors' or 'invaders' depends in large part on their conduct.
.
If the only US presence the Afghans deal with directly is "death from the sky" then certainly our reputation as guarantors of safety will evaporate in rather loud puffs of smoke.-
2.1
Paul--I think both you and George Will are a bit out of date on American air strategy in Afghanistan. McChrystal has pretty much ended the blast-em-to-smithereens air support strategy that was causing so many civilian casualties. The casualty figures are way down since he took over.
My guess is that if we do have to fall back to a counter-terrorism as opposed to a counter-insurgency strategy, "death from the sky" will come in the form of highly targeted predator strikes, of the sort that have been very effective in taking out AQ/Taliban leadership in northwestern Pakistan.
-
2.2
The really unfortunate theme that is unfolding in Afghanistan today Joe, with the current Obama strategy is that American Soldiers are dying. Dying in numbers greater than previously under the Bush Administration.
.
How long can we continue this? "McChrystal has pretty much ended the blast-em-to-smithereens air support strategy that was causing so many civilian casualties. The casualty figures are way down since he took over." But, our soldiers are dying instead, that fact remains very clear.
.
I think Will is right. Use un-manned drones to selectively cut through the night sky and decimate the al-Qaeda / Taliban leadership, keeping them off-base. While our soldiers remain alive.
.
Many great armies have gone into Afghanistan, simply to be sent packing back home with nothing changed. Blockade the place and starve the insurgents out of their caves and holes. Keep our losses to a minimum. -
2.3
Paul, how much do you want to bet that Will ripped Bill Clinton for bombing supposed Taliban bases as a response to the bombings in Africa?
Now he's advocating the same strategy?
As I note, below, Will seems rudderless since Cheney left office. No one is telling him what to write anymore.
-
-
3
For eight years it was a full frontal attack on any one suggesting that America "cut and run" and now its okay to bug out. Part of the problem we face in Afghanistan and other places around the world, is this reputation America has for leaving folks in the lerch. On Bush's watch, the Pakistanis only respected their alliance with us about three days out of the week. The remainder of the week was spent hedging their bets with the Taliban devil they knew. They believed that in the end America would leave them when short term interests were satisfied, as we did after the Russians were defeated. Perhaps, when we focus on our own national interests, we might want to have a clearer understanding of the full nature of those interests. Too often we look at only the immediate impact of actions as if the long term is neither coming or matters when it does.
-
4
We should listen to Colonel George Will. He's a full-bird colonel, I believe, and although the bird is a chickenhawk, his glasses and bowtie are evidence he knows what he's talking about.
I think Will should sign on as an adviser in Klein's ongoing flame war.
-
5
I'm not sure why anyone should give a sh*t what George Will says about anything. Besides being a partisan hack masquerading as a journalist, his actual training is as an economist, and almost everything he says/writes about the economy is either wrong, laughably out of date, or based on the work of economists no one takes seriously.
-
6
Dee: the meme now seems to be: we took our eye off Pakistan and Afghanistan is an intractable problem. History tells us winning and holding Afghanistan is a no no. The Afghanis, all the tribes, have no sense of national identity. There is nothing holding the periphery to the centre. Without that our only contribution appears to be the blood of our own and the blood of the locals. And money we don't have going into a sinkhole.
Joe seems to base his hope on McChrystal. He is the new Petraeus. Will he succeed? I am not clear what his goals are. There is a lost of whistling here in Washington.
-
7
Will is a broken clock...but he's right about this.
I think Will's prescription is premature.
I disagree. You have too many 'ifs' in your rebuttal, and we've already spent seven years waiting for the dominos in Afghanistan to fall just right...Do you have a solid reason for thinking they will now, Joe?
-
7.1
Frankly, our chance to make good on our efforts in Afghanistan went up in smoke when Bush and company decided to go off to Iraq.
.
Our hands are hopelessly bloody now, and we find ourselves in two quagmires...we can't even afford one.
.
Heckuva job!
~
-
-
8
Actually, no, Bitter--I place my hopes, those few that I have, on Holbrooke and Eikenberry steering Karzai toward a government that produces better services, more security and more justice for Afghans. Only if they can do that will the military have a chance to secure the population.
-
9
George Will seems rudderless since Cheney left office.
-
10
To further slowp, George Will spent the first 6 months of this year lying about what some scientists had written about climate change. I am a trained scientist, and in my book Will is a professional liar who thinks nothing of misrepresenting something to push an ideological agenda.
In this sense he is just like Pete Hoekstra, his words should have little value, except to comedians. George Will might be right on this, but seriously, anything he writes is now what is known as 'fruit of the poison tree'.
Until mainstream journalists quit treating professional liars as legitimate debating partners, their business is going to continue to die.
P.S. I bet Newt Gingrich or that McCaughey lady lied about health care today...shouldn't somebody be out taking their dictation? -
11
There's one more argument in favor of a withdrawal and containment strategy for Afghanistan -- it's cheaper. We're spending way too much money on the current strategy.
-
11.1
Pray, remind us -- what did the thousands of kids were are killing in Afghanistan do?
Do you loved ones - kids maybe? Would you grieve if something happened to them - while some righteous foreigners were in pursuit of members of a terrorist groups you have no association with - say, the KKK and the murderous militia groups who cavot in the forests of the USA's Appalachia? Would your loss be less painful to you if the righteous foreign invaders were after the members of Democratic party in power in USA?
Of course such considerations are not to be entertained by the likes of George Will, Joe Klein, Kra
t cost us millions of precious lives. Aren't we glad that we were victorious in our standoff, on our land, with that foreign colonial UK?
-
-
12
" ... only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, .."
Perhaps that is a more civilized way - kill them without seeing the whites of their eyes. Right?
Maybe no innocent kids and their mothers will be killed that way. I forget, what did those kids do to us? [And even if they did plenty to us, here is where we forget all that sh*t about (judaic and christian) unconditional forgiveness and human kindness, right?]
Vengeance is mine? Innocent victims? Offshore? Intelligence? Air-strikes? Small units? Gratuitous carnage?
9/11 anyone?Most of those who we have tortured, raped and killed in the wars of aggression in the middle east were innocent 'salt of the earth'. Somehow I get the impression that if bloodlusting, gore-seeking, death-spewing, soul-reaping George Will would see DEATH coming his way he would bolt pell-mell in the opposite direction .... I may be mistaken.
-
13
[i]we have a moral obligation to the Afghan people, just as we had to the Iraqis[/i]
Huh?
Afghanistan [i]really was[/i] a base and haven for the actual Al Queda terrorists who committed 9/11 and other atrocities vs the US. The Taliban gov't [i]really did[/i] provide them with material assistance.
Iraq, on the other hand, we blew up by mistake.
As a humanitarian I'd like to help the Afghan people as much as they'll let us, but our obligation to absorb casualties and expend treasure in rebuilding their society seems far less than in Iraq.
-
13.1
" .. The Taliban gov't [i]really did[/i] provide them with material assistance. .."
Mhh.
Of what kind and to what extent?
Or should we take that to mean as much damning "material assistance" as you think that we (USA/UK) provide to the terrorist KKK murderers and other murderous armed militia groups who thrive in our nation? Or would that be as much damning "material assistance" as, say, we provide our official (CIA) and/or non-official (Blackwater and local hired militia) in our favorite countries of the third world?
-
-
14
"We have to see what, if anything, emerges from the Afghan election"
What will emerge is a corrupt government of warlords because that is what is running. Similar to Vietnam, there is no government to back. The current government can not unite Afghanistan and keep the population safe. We should not be trying to prop up a corrupt government. The Taliban didn't rule all of Afghanistan the last time and they won't again. This is all going to degenerate back into what it was before. We may as well let it since it is unfortunately inevitable. Use special forces and Klein's omnipotent CIA to address Al Queda. It probably won't work either since the CIA has never accomplished anything in its inglorious history. But the knowledge of its existence seems to keep Klein from wetting himself. While that may be useful, its probably not worth the $40B or so that it costs.
-
15
[...] original here: Will on Afghanistan - Swampland - TIME.com Share and [...]
-
16
Having been to Afghanistan twice in the past year...I have a strong sense that the Afghans would be quite amenable to an international presence that helps restore order and helps to establish the rudiments of civil society--schools, security, sanitation and so forth--and then leaves.
.
Really? I thought that's been the plan for four years now.
.
Are we really having foreign policy experts fly over there, smack their foreheads, and mutter "Ooooh, reBUILD Afghanistan, now I get it!"-
16.1
Is it possible that some pompous scribe may have found it clever to report the following tripe during the period when rose up against the british in our wars with them?
"Having been to America twice in the past year...I have a strong sense that the Americans would be quite amenable to an international presence that helps restore order and helps to establish the rudiments of civil society.."
Maybe.
"Let freedom ring". "yearning to be free" we don't mean that anyone would want to be free of invaders. [But then we, the Americans. don't consider ourselves to be invaders. Not in the Middle East. Not in Vietnam. Not in Grenada. And of course, the Europeans were/are not invaders in Africa]
[Free from the Taliban and into a international (call that USA) presence? Consider Haiti. And Grenada. And the de facto western colonies of Kenya, Uganda, South Africa ... Did someone say "From the frying pan into the fire?"] -
16.2
This may smack of American exceptionalism, but I think the conditions of the American Revolution are quite a bit different from those in Afghanistan.
-
16.3
" .. This may smack of American exceptionalism, but I think the conditions of .... are quite a bit different from .."
Indeed it smacks of run-of-the-mill exceptionalism - perhaps not as grand as the euro-centric evil stance that the invasion of Africa and the cataclysmic massacre and enslavement of millions of Africans was good for Africans. Call it "manifest destiny". [Not to forget the Incas, Aztecs, Cherokee, Aus Aborigines, ...]
-
-
17
[...] original here: George Will’s Exit Plan for Afghanistan: Premature (Time Magazine) VN:F [1.6.3_896]please wait...Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)VN:F [1.6.3_896]Rating: 0 (from 0 [...]
-
18
...then we've got a major problem on our hands. And a major decision to make.
.
Mmmm, yes, more vague prognostication, that's what we need!
.
How is it that we don't already have major decisions to make on Afghanistan? -
19
his long history of saying nice things about the military is all the qualification he needs!
-
20
Why has no one in the MSM called George Will an extremist yet?
.
Can you imagine if a liberal suggested cutting and running as a strategy? -
21
Joe, I stand corrected and am sorry for misrepresenting your position. While your confidence rests on Eikenberry and Holbrooke, both seasoned veterans whom I take seriously, my basic point is that Afghanistan has not been and won't be, in the foreseeable future, ready for independence as I understand the term in geopolitics.
I base this on a reasonable familiarity of the region - boots on the ground and all that - and a family which includes a couple of Colonial wallahs who served in the NWFP eons ago.
The only kind of conquest, if one can call it that, is that Alexander the Great and his horde left a lot of blue and green eyed people in that region.
Derek: if a Liberal suggested abandoning Afghanistan the outrage would have registered 10 on the Republican richter scale, The denunciations would pour in and MoveOn.org would have to take out an ad apologising for it. Perhaps one should: it would drive Limbaugh crazy and he might bust a gut. And Glen Beck??????
-
22
"Derek: if a Liberal suggested abandoning Afghanistan the outrage would have registered 10 on the Republican richter scale, The denunciations would pour in and MoveOn.org would have to take out an ad apologising for it. Perhaps one should: it would drive Limbaugh crazy and he might bust a gut. And Glen Beck??????"
I know exactly what a liberal would be accused of, hating America, hating the troops, for trying to deny them victory, siding with the terrorists, wanting to put the safety of the American people at risk, being soft on defense, and other things in a similar vein.
-
23
Oh, one more thing...
The other answer is that we have a moral obligation to the Afghan people, just as we had to the Iraqis when we stomped in there and destroyed the most basic institutions of civil society...
I disagree; that's an invalid comparison.
Although the reason stated for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq were the same - eliminating Al Qaeda - Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda turned out to be negligable and overblown...not so much with the Taliban.
My humble opinion is that if we use 'moral obligation' as a reason for continuing to throw money and bodies into Afghanistan, it's a weaker rationale than it was for Iraq.
-
24
Although the scene of the naricissistic Klein pondering the senile ramblings of that museum-quality fool George Will is comical enough to bring a smile, we musn't forget what a comprehensive fraud Klein's self-serving career in the service of power and money has been, as demonstrated thoroughly and conclusively in analyses by Glen Greenwald and others' testimony about Klein's peevishness and vacuity.
Time does a disservice to the public by featuring him.
-
25
[...] opposition to the war in Afghanistan is at an all time high. President Obama needs to identify an exit strategy for a war that can no longer be [...]
- TIME The scoop on Google Buzz from @techland | http://su.pr/1zDlZ6 - 4 hours ago
- TIME Are the bible stories true? Evidence from archaeology | http://su.pr/2ekoPX - 5 hours ago
- TIME Why is NBC pretending Conan never existed? | http://su.pr/4Pbjbh - 6 hours ago
Most Popular »
- NBC: There Was Never a Conan O'Brien
- Undercover Boss Is Phony and Manipulative. But Don't Hold That Against It.
- NH Poll: Dems Face A Thumpin'
- Gibbs Mocks Palin, Tea Party Convention
- Barack Obama: Then vs. Now
- Irony of the Day
- Paul Ryan Won't Run For Prez In 2012
- Today's Health Care Checkup - GOP Plans Under the Spotlight
- Do You Spend Less than $2,000 Annually on Internet, TV, Cell Phone Service, and Video Games?
- CO Gov Poll: Hickenlooper +4
- Asian Carp Battle: Foreign Fish Threaten Great Lakes
- Is the Bible Fact or Fiction? Archaeology's Discoveries
- Spain's Troubled Economy: Fears Over Euro Zone Outlook
- Kennewick Man, Archaeology Find: Who Discovered America?
- Al-Qaeda, Yemen, Wedding: Unlucky Name, Celebration
- Tea-Party Convention: Lessons on Palin and the Movement
- Venezuela: Chavez Protests at Ball Game Over Electricity
- Jim Frederick, Black Hearts in Iraq's Triangle of Death
- Marja: Operation Moshtarak Tests Obama's Afghan War Plan
- Why China Needs The U.S. -- And Vice Versa
Quotes of the Day »
RSS