I hope the president realizes that our military doesn’t know what the hell they are doing in Afghanistan and it is time to cut our losses and get the hell out.
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
I don’t think the American people really want to be handing over a lot of money to Taliban leaders. I’m sure they don’t want to be handing over lots of money to people who are only pretending to the Taliban leaders. We don’t know the players, we don’t understand the game, and we have no clue how to patch the country together. This is not the way to honor or avenge those who lost their lives on 9/11. This is nothing more than an expensive fool’s errand. Usama Bin-Laden is laughing at us every day that we spend chasing our tails in Afghanistan. It’s over. Let’s get out.
They should have asked for his birth certificate.
Afghanistan…where empires go to die. everyday there is a waste
It is time to leave.
This is a deeply embarrassing professional failure by our intelligence people.
First the double spy takes out the CIA right on their own turf and now this. So where will the hurt pride take our commanders now?
Obama has basically laid his honor as president upon achieving some sort of victory in afghanistan. We’ll be setting money on fire there for a long, long time.
It all depends on how you define victory and who gets to claim the credit.
Obama has defined victory as (1) removal of non-state military groups that use terror as a tactic from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and (2) a stable Afghanistan that no longer is a haven for such non-state military groups.
Both of these are achievable. But not if the US insists on claiming the credit for the achievement. See my comment below.
Obama surged in Afghanistan.
Yes he did. Because the generals told him that was the way to accomplish his definition of victory–although he had to write his overall strategy himself because of the generals’ unwillingness to commit to anything real except staying forever. Had Obama not surged he would not have had the clout with the military to cashier McChrystal for what was in effect insubordination. And he would not have successfully ordered Gen. Counterinsurgency Petraeus to go show the world how the job is done.
As a result Obama’s credibility with the military is rising even as Republican credibility is falling with their political stunt on the START treaty. The military is very clear that rejecting the START treaty endangers US security by starting a world arms race that the US cannot win.
All of this is connected together. So when Obama orders the military to leave there is none of the “Democrats stabbed us in the back” bullshit that exists about Vietnam. The truth is that a country cannot do successful counterinsurgency against another country’s citizens. Even the British “success” in Malaysia only bought time, less than a decade, before the British granted independence. And even then it came by playing the Chinese community against the Malayan Communist Party:
The counterinsurgency strategy operated from 1948 to 1960, with the Malay Federation (later renamed Malaysia) gaining independence in 1957.
It is domestic politics, not Obama’s strategy, that is keeping us in Afghanistan. Just like it kept us in Vietnam. The Republicans want to pin the “soft on…” label on Democrats to distract from the fact that 9/11 happened on George W. Bush’s watch.
This war was lost a long time ago and arguably on the day it was launched. Traditional militaries who dont want to take casualties very rarely defeat fourth generation non state actors and even the very rare vistories havent happened for decades, and the tactics of the enemy may now actually have started using fifth generation warfare although dont expect any badly misnamed military corrspondents, analysts or strategists to admit to this as it would mean even if we want to withdraw we cant end the war as it has gone global and we do not control when it ends. That was the stupidity of the war on terror notion. It set us up for a long war, not on out terms and almost certain defeat
The nature of warfare has changed a lot and unfortunately it has passed by the idiotic military command who will fixate on not losing a single battle, keeping deaths down and masturbating theirselves senseless over hugely expensive and impressive pieces of military hardware that uinfortunately have no use whatsoever in the current round of modern wars while missing the rather salient poin that war is about achieving a set of poltical/economic goals that it was started with.
I don’t know about lost, but the war became irrelevant for the US the moment bin Laden and company escaped from ToraBora.
Out of curiosity, how exactly are the “four generations of non state actors” described?
I have advocated for some time a fundamental rethinking of our national security establishment, something that hasn’t been done since Harry Truman was president.
Yet another failure in US intelligence, the most expensive intelligence organizations in the world. The intelligence organization blessed with so many people that they are tripping over each other and creating more internal messages than paying attention to external information. It is time to admit that the structure put into place in 1947 and gaining accretions through the years has become ineffective and a new and smaller, more efficient intelligence operation needs to be put in place. That’s the first lesson learned.
Cheney’s determination to deal with some unsavory characters in order to do operational intelligence has backfired big time. That’s the second lesson learned.
It is time to return to the first objective of American policy in Afghanistan — ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorists — and realize that the required solution might not require American involvement but require American disengagement.
It is time to leave but not time to announce that we are leaving. It is time to draw down troops by declaring the Afghan force able to control security in southern Afghanistan and withdrawing troops to Bagram from all over the country, except for now from the Pakistani border with the Northwest Territories and FATA. And return home the number of troops who were involved in the surge. And withdraw troops without fanfare until an announcement in August 2011 that we are leaving. Handling the response of the US military to this strategy will be more difficult than troop safety, as disengagement will reduce casualties and by reducing the number of provocative incidents lower the intensity of the warfare. Using major military equipment, like tanks, in the drawdown to Bagram could obscure the strategy.
So how do we ensure a stable Afghanistan that is not a haven for terrorists? Simple. We hand the costs of this off to the Chinese, who already have in place a regional bodies to arrive at a political settlement. That body is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which already has all the frontline states as members or observers. And most likely has already been engaged in figuring out a political settlement once the US and NATO leave. This organization also has in place a regional anti-terrorism task force. And a vested interest in not seeing the US return to the region because it has been attacked.
For the remaining diplomatic efforts against terrorism, the US needs to force an agreement between Israel and Palestine, including bringing Hamas to the table. And an agreement between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon (including bringing Hezbollah to the table). And these agreements must do what all sides know needs to be done but have been resisting for domestic political reasons. And if Netanyahu has to bring some hardliners to the table for cover, so be it. Just don’t allow the parties to leave without an enforceable agreement and a means of enforcement other than the national armies. (In other words, the IDF must stand down to have a successful agreement.)
And hand off security responsibility for the southern Arabian peninsula to Saudi Arabia. The folks who have been attacking the US with attempted bombings have a primary gripe with the US’s unyielding support of Saudi Arabian autocracy; let the Saudis defend themselves locally.
Then diplomatically tilt away from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and toward Turkey and Iran. A mutual non-aggression treaty with Iran would be a good first step.
Finally, work with nation states to make international law enforcement against terrorism more effective. Note that this will require that the US change from using destabilization and overthrow of states as a tactic of policy.
The hardest part of this strategy will be to deal with the fact that the “greatest military power”, the “sole hyperpower”, is not infinitely powerful to affect events. That U-S-A, U-S-A is fine at the World Cup but not at the UN. That “We’re #1” is now post-Bush fundamentally a comfortable lie.
And in the long term, the diplomatically hardest part will be to bring about a multi-polar international power structure grounded in the UN Security Council that honors China and India but that ensures that there is a framework for national security for every nation but a check on imperial ambitions. And the US must start with reducing its own imperial ambitions. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny is long gone. The American Century has passed. Thinking that America Alone is an effective foreign policy is a foolish conceit.
Especially since we might need those troops for N.Korea.
Not likely. There is China to consider. Remember Douglas MacArthur’s grand tour of North Korea?
I suspect that North Korea is on the Air Force’s and Navy’s ticket. “Shock and awe” and no troops north of the parallel.
Which is why I think that China will drag North Korea back from the brink once again. And if they are unsuccessful, China might act itself to gain stability on its border.
I suspect diplomacy with no breakthroughs. It depends a great deal on how rough or easily succession occurs and the leanings of the new ruler.
Most likely this is just some chest-beating about where in the sea the boundary line really is.
Doubtful on a number of those points, but it’s a bad situation all around.