What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?
Earlier this month, conservative flamethrower Ann Coulter turned her fire onto her own side. Coulter lit into Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney by name, and a raft of other conservatives by implication, because they called for the gaffe-prone Republican National Committee chairman to resign for declaring that the Afghanistan war was a “war of Obama’s choosing” and “not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in”:
Keep in mind, again, [inadudible] our federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not, this was not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. It was one of those, one of those areas on the total board of of foreign policy of the middle east, that you would be in the background, sort of shaping the, the changes that were necessary in Afghanistan, as opposed to directly engaging troops. But it was the President, who tried to be cute by half, by flipping the script, demonizing Iraq while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well if, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan. Alright? Because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan that do not [indaudible] …
Michael Steele’s comments seemed daft to most. Anyone with any memory whatsoever recalls that the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan began as a direct response to the 9/11 terror attacks during the Bush administration. We’ve been engaged in low intensity warfare against the Taliban and al-Qaeda there ever since.
It seems odd that Coulter, of all people, would defend Steele. After all, it was Coulter who famously wrote two days after the attacks of 9/11, while the country was still reeling in shock: “We should invade their countries, kill their [Muslim] leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
But her stance isn’t inconsistent, even if her column isn’t one of her best. Coulter’s complaint is based upon her understanding that the Bush administration took out the ruling Taliban and their infrastructure, removing al-Qaeda’s safe haven and putting Osama bin Laden on the run ever since. After that, she seems to be under the impression that we relegated Afghanistan to little more than a holding action while we took on the state-sponsored terrorism of Iraq and dealt with the fallout of insurgency and near civil war as we tried to rebuild their nation.
Iraq is won. It has been, as much as any insurgency has a notable end time, since the surge brought the Sunni insurgents into the government and forced the Shia militias underground. But Coulter supports Steele’s statement, because she reads it as saying that Afghanistan is Obama’s war since he chose to change how the conflict was being waged.
That is an intellectually consistent argument. I can’t defend it, and will not try. I do understand her ultimate point, however — even if we should have all asked it far earlier. What are we trying to accomplish in Afghanistan? What does winning look like? If our goal isn’t to win, then why are we asking our troops to fight and die?
These are legitimate questions. We cannot expect to nation-build for a culture that does not tend to think of itself as a nation. We cannot expect diplomatic efforts to succeed with their “national government,” when its ability to project power is less than that of some city councils and school boards.
Instead, we’ve poured billions into a corrupt government, propping up a pro-Western Hamid Karzai simply because he smiles as he pockets our money. We’ve occupied and then left regions of the country. Sometimes we’ve been all but pushed out as in Wanat and the Korengal Valley. We’ve poured in men and material only to find our technology ill-matched to the primitive conditions, and our men in isolated outposts all but marooned by geography and neutered by bizarrely politicized rules of engagement.
Everyone remembers Coulter’s biting post-9/11 quote, but few remember the entire paragraph as written:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.
destroy this, kill that, death sentence for civilians…you seem to suggest the same “search and destroy” strategy employed by the Soviets few years ago, with more than 100.000 men. It worked out pretty well.
I do not believe we have won “any” war in the middle east… We like to say we have, to keep troops over there, kill more of our people, spend money we don’t have. Keep something stirred up to divert attention..
“those” people will revert to what they have been for the past 3000+ years!!..we are not going to change things. They must help themselves. We could do things covertly better than we do overtly. They are not afraid of the big bad USA..all they have to do is whine to the press and we’ll prosecute our own soldiers.
We are so “dainty” with war no wonder no one respects us . Okay I’d rather they feared first than respected, but hey go hand in hand.
I think Steele and Coulter have it right. Personally I’m not a fan or Steele, I think he is ineffective and Coulter breaths fire..she should control the war front.
I sort of expect the writers on this site to be more perceptive or at least on the same level as the average reader.
I would say at least the ability to take a quote and put it’s various parts into the proper context should be minimum.
We’re fighting against an ancient totalitarian enemy that’s every bit as evil and dangerous to the West as the Nazis and the Soviets were. Islamic imperialism (aka Jihad) has been around since the very inception of Islam. Muhammad and the vast army of his early fanatically loyal religious followers stormed all across traditionally Christian lands all thourghout the Middle East and North Africa with a sword in one hand a koran in the other. They then pushed East into India and Asia, South into Africa and North into Europe – raping, murdering and pillaging millions along the way. They occupy much of this territory still to this day and even colonized and enslaved large sections of Christian Europe for several hundred years – and even made it as far as Austria.
It took many hundreds of years for European Christian Knights to push them back out of Europe (aka the Crusades) in order to reclaim their former lands – something which Africa and Asia unfortunately couldn’t replicate. And even the Christian Europeans with their advanced understanding of science and technology still couldn’t hold and later liberate the ancient capital of Western European Christian Civilization – Canstantinople (now known as Istanbul, Turkey). There’s a linear history and tradition of muslims waging jihad against unbelievers from the very beginning of Islam to the current day.
Taking over the entire world and forcing every man, woman and child on this planet to live under barbaric sharia law has been the central objective of Islam from the very beginning. It’s layed out in great detail in the koran and the hadiths – despite lies and assurances from muslims (and their liberal apologists) that Islam is a tolerant religion of peace (it isn’t and never has been). That’s what these Islamic terrorists are doing. That’s what the Taliban are doing. Since the Islamic civilization (ummah) is far too weak now to spread their religion through conventional military force – as they did in the past – they’re now doing it through terrorism and irregular warfare.
The Taliban wants to enforce their strict version of sharia law over both Afghanistan and Pakistan (and the world if they could) and that’s what they’re primarily fighting for. They believe they’ve been instructed by God to do so. And they honestly believe that if they die for this cause then they’ll be having sex with 72 dark eyed virgins in Heaven with mountains of fruits to eat and sweet milk to drink – because Islamic scripture tells them exactly that. Now, how does this affact us thousands of miles away? Why do we care about Afghanistan and the people living there?
Well, firstly, because it’s the right thing to do. We have a long tradition as Americans of fighting not just for own liberty but the liberty of others as well – even if they live thousands of miles away. And secondly, 9/11. People can poopoo the threat from Islamic terrorist groups such as al qaeda all they want, but groups that only have a few thousand (or even a couple hundred) members can actually do quite a bit of damage using modern technology – as was proven on 9/11. Make no mistake that these Islamic terrorist groups are doing everything they can to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction on Western civilian populations. It isn’t just Bush administration propaganda, they regularly admit it themselves that they are indeed trying desperately to acquire and use these weapons.
And thirdly, we’re actually already in an undeclared 3rd world war. We’re currently waging dozens of hot military operations all over the planet battling these Islamofascist groups. You just don’t hear much about it in the press because it’s been carried out primarily by special operations soldiers. But every once in a while you’ll hear about this underground war on the news such as missile stikes in Yemen, Delta Force raids in Africa, Special Forces missions in Asia, etc.
Whether we like it or not, we’re currently in the middle of a religious war for the future of who will lead humanity: The forces of democracy, equal rights for women, the freedom to worship any religion you wish (or no religion at all), secularism, free speech, etc, vs. the forces of religious intolerance, stonings of adulterers, beheadings of “apostates”, hangings of homosexuals, etc. In short, we’re in a clash of civilizations (whether we want to admit or not) between primarily the West and Islam. Now, while we in the West might not want to view the conflict in such a way – we certainly don’t see our actions in Afghanistan as a holy Christian Crusade – the Islamofascists certainly see the conflict in such terms.
Now, given that context of differences in perception between the Western and Islamic world, are you starting to understand why a defeat in Afghanistan would be such a strategic travesty in this global clash of civilizations? Try to imagine this conflict through the eyes of an Islamist just for a second. If a group of 15,000 to 20,000 poorly trained and poorly equipped malnourished jihadists can defeat not only America (the leading “infidel” nation), but the UK (the former leading “infidel” nation), NATO (Christian Civilization in their view), the UN and a whole host of literally dozens of different countries from Japan to New Zealand, then how could the active forces of Islamofascist groups all around the world (and their fence sitting admirers in the muslim world) view such a remarkable victory as anything less than a confirmation from Allah that their Jihad is blessed and unstoppable?
I’m telling you, if the Islamists win in Afghanistan then all hell will break loose all around the world. Maybe not all at once but we’ll definitely lose the global momentum in this strange and unholy long term global conflict. Afterall, Osama himself said that “People always choose the stronger horse”. And by that he meant that the strategy of his terrorist organization was to convince the muslim world that Jihad was on the rise and the forces of the infidel West were weak, divided and unwilling to defend themselves. And as someone who’s studied military history a bit, what he says is very true. Uprisings succeed or fail based on their actual performances on the battlefield.
If an uprising is deemed to have been successful on the battlefield then people from all over the lands will flock to it in droves. But if it’s deemed to be unsuccessful on the battlefield then would-be admirers and onlookers would rather stick to their normal lives then run off and die for nothing. We must understand that historical lesson within the context of our fight in Afghanistan. It’s the same reason why it was so extremely crucial to win in Iraq. When we removed the Saddam regime, muslims from all over the world saw that as the final straw and tens of thousands of foreign fighters poured into Iraq to wage jihad against the American “Crusaders”. Us kicking their *sses there in ancient Mesopotamia (home to several ~very~ important muslim landmarks) had a ~massive~ demoralizing effect on the global Islamofascist movement – which can’t be emphasized enough.
If we would have lost in Iraq – as the left in the West tried so desperately to accomplish – oh my God… I don’t think people realize how utterly devastating the consequences would have been – far worse than if we eventually lose in Afghanistan actually. Iraq would have turned into the capital of a new terrofying Jihadist/terrorist empire. All that oil wealth + a central location in the heart of the Middle East would have been very very bad – to say the least (it probably would have destabalized the entire region…). And while a defeat in Afghansitan wouldn’t be quite as bad as it would have been in Iraq, it’s still of enough strategic importance to justify our current level of commitment there – and even moreso in my opinion.
Now, this justification for staying in Afghanistan isn’t one that’s very easy to express to the general public but it’s nevertheless extremely true and crucially important to recognize.
In short, no, Ann Coulter was wrong.
So Marsh, is perpetual war all around the globe, via insane rules of engagement that equate to the slaughter of young American men and women your bottom line?
Maybe a better way would be, all out wars when necessary, with rules of engagement that allow the use every resource available, to kill the enemy and break all of his stuff.
Or maybe my kind of thinking is post-civilized and we can rely upon the U.N. to take care of our future problems. Is that it from your perspective? If it is then you need to start working on the campaign to re-elect the Messiah in 2012.
It’s pretty easy to tell that someone has no idea what they’re talking about when they advocate mass bombings of Afghans. Nobody who’s actually spent a lot of time on the ground there would advocate such ridiculous insanity. The Soviets tried that a couple decades ago and it failed spectacularly.
There’s a direct correlation between Afghan civilian casualties and our casualties. The more Afghan civilians we kill the more Afghans hate us and fight us. The more civilian casualties we avoid the more support and intel we get from the locals which helps us locate IEDs and defuse them.
That’s what happened in Iraq. Al qaeda had as much to do with our victory in Iraq as the surge did. Al qaeda brutalized Iraqi civilians and as a result they turned to us for help in getting rid of them. The same is true in Afghanistan. By killing more civilians in Afghanistan we’re just going to be shooting ourselves in the foot.
The cold hard reality is that restictive rules of engagement will kill more of our soldiers in the short term but will save more of our soldiers in the long term by actually winning the war. That’s the kind of lesser of 2 evil decisions our military commanders have to make all the time.
And by bombing the Afghans we’d be making enemies out of friends. Most people don’t seem to realize that the large majorty of Afghans are actually on our side. They support us being there. Only about 10% of Afghans support the taliban.
The rules of engangement need to be common sense based. In some areas we need to do a lot of killing in order to simply wipeout the taliban. In other places we need to be humanitarian workers with rifles. It’s up to the local commanders to get it right.
Marsh spells it out well. It’s no accident that the campaign to portray the Crusades as some sort of evil assault on poor little Islam rather than the reaction to Islamic conquests of Christian lands started at about the same time that the Islamists began their demand for a new jihad. The left in this country thinks they’re masters of revising history as a means to justify their totally unworkable and previously failed approaches to governance. In reality, they do a lousy job with their revisions but the average person is so disengaged from the history we’re beneficiaries of that they don’t care and then the leftist national media just chant the revisions as if they’re facts.
The West should be proud of the fact that it halted and even rolled back Islam, the greatest racist mass murder machine in history. Ann is right in that regard, we should be more than willing to do it again no matter what the “collateral damage”. Any “religion” that demands new adherents take on an Arab name to replace their given name is race based, and anyone who doubts it only need read the real history of the sadist who started the religion. If operating a slave trade focused on enslaving black folks in Africa to this very day isn’t sufficient proof of racism, then the repeated references to what fair skin the “profit” had should at least give even dullards a clue.
have a nice day
You make some great points but the Muslims of the western nations have already gone way beyond your wild war with the West. Just look at Europe today, they are rapidly becoming Muslim in number and it won’t be too much longer before the ballot box is theirs for the taking. They no longer need to wage violence against us because they are the most prolific religion on the earth. I saw a chart of the European countries and all have below replacement birth rates. It needs to be at least 2.1 as an average to keep your culture alive and most of the
Euro countries ar at 1.2 to 1.6. The Muslims are at 4 or 5. Nothing can change this dynamic. I have tried to educate my children that “Moderate” Muslim means until they win control. But they have been raised in the everyone is a good person and will respond to good will. The US is staying above the replacement level because of the hispanic invasion. Say goodbye to the white race.
The cities of Europe and Japan were not bombed or fire bombed to break the population’s psychological will, but in order to destroy their capability to wage war. The objective was to destroy the industry, civilian casualties were incidental to this, they were not the objective.
The British, bombing at night with the technology available to them, could only target cities. The US bombing during the day, could and did target the industrial, transportation, and military targets of the campaign (Europe). The firebombing of Japanese cities was to take advantage of the way they were constructed with far more wood available for burning & destruction, than was thought to be available in the European cities. Yes firebombing did occur in Europe, but later in the war – and it was deliberately done in a manner to create firestorms, to completely destroy those cities and all that was in them. Dresden, Hamburg and some other cities in Europe joined Tokyo and many/most Japanese cities in that form of deliberate destruction.
No, actually, Coulter was correct.
So is Mr. Owens, because the ONLY way to win the Afghan war is ‘total war.’
However, Mr. Owens fails to describe the end–the purpose–of this war. Is it to eliminate, totally, the Taliban? Good luck with that; Afghanis are very happy with Shari’a law. Is it to take out OBL and 100 of his closest friends? If so, that can be done with SF.
“Marsh” apparently thinks that the US can take out all of Islam, because that’s the logical conclusion to his War Party plea. And Marsh is utterly confused over US battles of the past. We did NOT ‘fight for others’ freedom.’ In fact, the US engages battles in its OWN interests (or should have; WWI is, arguably, a horrific exception to that rule.) If Marsh and his War Party pals would simply stick to that formula–the National Interests–there would be a lot less bodybags.
In the alternative, we have what seems to be Marsh’s strategy: Take out all of Islam. Yah, that’s easy.
Then find the Fount of Eternal Youth, which is undoubtedly within reach of US Armed Forces someplace on the planet.
Take out OBL and his pals. Then leave.
I agree with Coulter and Steele. It’s O’s war.
Bush had it right. Keep a holding action until done elsewhere, like Iraq.
But for Pete’s sake, after that just let these worms sit on their damned dunghills and isolate them with a certain death if they come off it. Barry Goldwater wanted to do that in Vietnam. We killed 58,000 young boys and left another 280,000 mangled for life because the Demogoguic Party with LBJ laughed at him.
sdraio,
“destroy this, kill that, death sentence for civilians…you seem to suggest the same “search and destroy” strategy employed by the Soviets few years ago, with more than 100.000 men. It worked out pretty well.”
I read this silly argument on other blogs and I finally have to answer it.
you forgot to mention the fact that the Soviets lost in Afghanistan because we supplied the mujhadeen with buttloads of modern equipment to fight the Red Army. Take that key equation out of the mix and there’s no reason why the Soviets couldn’t have eventually won in Afghanistan. In fact, they were actually winning when we got involved. Never underestimate the value of logistics, since we played a huge role in the defeat of the Soviets there. If you’re going to make that argument, then present all of the facts.
good point. however, today the taliban enjoy the benefits of a very lucrous contraband of poppy and weapons; they don’t need any foreign power to send them help. moreover, it is not very clear wheter sections of Pakistan’s ISI are totally out of the game.
Moreover, even if you succeed in occupiyng the whole country, it does not mean you won THIS war. this is not a country vs country war, where all you need to do is reach the enemy’s capital. this is guerriglia. you need to control the whole country AND win over the population, to avoid them joining the insurgency; otherwise they will have an infinite pool of recruits. You will never reach this second goal with the Soviet’s strategy.
We are there and it would be wrong to just up and leave. Screw the public opinion polls and lets get busy allowing as many private companies who would be willing to go into the mountains of Afghanistan and begin mining for all those huge deposits of metals the world needs.
President Bush and his administration were crippled by the public words “we are in Iraq for Big Oil.” As a result we screwed ourselves out of huge oil contracts that could have paid for much of our efforts in Iraq. Just plain dumb politics. We should have taken all the Oil we could legally get our hands on. It was the likes of Senator Schumer who became the biggest opponent of Americans gaining access to Iraqi Oil (he has always been the complete asshole).
Economics is the only way out for us and we should have started a couple of years ago. Get those huge private companies in there, protect them from the brain dead Muslims, get their economy going through the mining of valuable minerals rather than opium. Just some simple logic.
Oh you mean, like, fight a … war-war!
Anne Coulter is absolutely right. It is time for the Republicans to stand up to the democrats and their culture. The war in Afghanistan is being waged by democrats who hate the military and who believe that the Islamic radicals are just in their cause. How can we continue to send troops to this battlefield under these conditions. Michael Steele made an excellent point; Obama, the god president, made a statement that Afghanistan was the good war and Iraq was the bad war, so he bought the Afghan war it is his. Let us start to see Republicans joining the anti war chorus just like the dems did five years ago. Dem wars always end in our defeat; i.e. Korea , Vietnam etc etc.
“Dem wars always end in our defeat: Korea, Vietnam, etc.”
Huh??
The US/UN basically WON the Korean War (if you define victory as preserving the existence and freedom of South Korea) despite the fact that a Democratic administration was in power for most of it (Eisenhower, a Republican was in power by the end).
With regards to Vietnam, the first advisers were sent to South Vietnam during a Republican administration. Democrats Kennedy and Johnson escalated that war but lost power after 1968, at which point Republican presidents Nixon and Ford came into power. Nixon dicked around for several years with peace talks and eventually “declared victory”, which actually means he pulled out US troops and left the South Vietnamese to fall on their own. The Soviets and Chinese did NOT stop supporting the North Vietnamese so they inevitably won the war while the whole Vietnamese people lost by being put under a Communist dictatorship which rules them to this day.
What role did President Ford play in the Vietnam War? Try actually reading Atlas Shrugged, Hank.
When you lay wounded on the Afghan plains
Before the women come out to cut up your remains
Turn your rifle ’round and blow out yer brains
And go to your god like a soldier
Kipling
Everybody likes Kipling
So let me see if I understand this right. If you’re a white Doctor do-good Howard–the quack–Dean, the chairman of the DNC, it’s OK to call Iraq “Bush’s war”, or call it a white elephant, wrong, hate full, a fiasco, American imperialism run amok, but if you’re a black chairman of the RNC it’s not OK to call Afghanistan, the “good war,” Obama’s war? Is that it? Looks like a skin thing to me. Maybe the RNC chairman was just giving the DNC a little taste of tit for tat gutter politics? But I suppose there is some value to holding the RNC to a higher standard compared to the DNC, although it’s rare for nice people to win.
This is just a guess but maybe it’s more accurate to describe Iraq as “Bush’s War” because he, y’know, kind of STARTED THE WAR! Were you in a coma for all of 2003 or something?
There is no comparison between the “wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, versus the real war that happened in World War ll. It seems to just about everyone believes that our primary purpose in the former is to avoid killing anyone. We profusely apologize whenever a terrorist gets inadvertently killed.
We nuked Japan twice, turned Tokyo into a burning funeral pyre, and turned entire German cities into smoldering cinders. In Iraq, we used concrete “bombs” to take out tanks in order to avoid breaking out windows, or scratching the paint on buildings.
Total war is impossible. The targets would have to be all Afghans, or most or all of the Pashtun. They apparently frequently change sides. So did Mr. Karzai, I believe. If you go from Taliban to pro-democracy, you can go the other way again.
As for Iraq, it may be true that staying in Iraq prevents an Islamist center from arising. It’s also true that Iran’s influence has increased because of the American intervention, and that at least 40% of suicide bombers, according to many reports, are from the US’ Saudi ally.
The war will keep on being half-fought, chaotic and cause as much danger as problems it solves.
What the author is suggesting was done in the early part of the 20th Century. After the (largely Catholic) rebels laid down their arms, an insurgency (Muslim) continued in the southern Philippine isles. Pacification was 1st tried with ‘carrots’, negotiations, allowing the local leaders to rule with local laws (which included legal slavery), and trying to avoid any civilian casualties. The latter encouraged the Moro rebels to use civilians and shields. The war dragged on with increasing U.S. casualties.
Frustrated, the military commanders took their gloves off. Civilians used as shields became targets. Villages were raised, crops were burned, and the Moro body count continued to climb (estimates as high as 20,000). Atrocious? Brutal? Evil? Yes… But effective. By 1913 the war was over with.
Cut’n'run-Coulter?
Well I guess its no problem if a few months after we leave Mhulla Omar is back in charge. I mean what can happen? 9-11 or something? Oh come on, thats sooooo 2001…
The problem is political, and it’s here in the United States, not in Afghanistan. The administration cannot explain what we’re doing in this war, other than to win. Such an unfocused definition is useless in developing operational policies to accomplish our goals. In this sense, the war is beginning to appear similar to Vietnam: we can’t agree on our goals. Several strategies have the potential of working, but we have to decide upon one and support it. The American people have to be convinced that the goal is achievable and desirable, then they will continue to support the war. A lack of political leadership got us into trouble in Vietnam, and it has the potential to get us into trouble here. Mr. Obama, what’s the plan? Other than Not-Bush, that is?
The ultimate question that goes unanswered is: What exactly is victory in Afghanistan? What does it look like? What type of power structure does it leave behind? What is the basis for stability – economically, politically, socially?
The simple fact is that we cannot successfully conduct a nation-building operation in Afghanistan on the timeline given by Mr. Obama. It is impossible and a waste of men and resources to try. Nation building takes decades and a solid commitment of blood and treasure from the country that undertakes it. Hence, nation building can not be our policy. If it is our policy, then it is doomed to failure. Please note that this is not a criticism of our troops or General Petreaus. Just a simple statement of fact. If anyone disagrees, then please point to any example in history that shows it can be done with same limitations imposed by the Obama administration.
We will never have the overt support of the civilians as long as they see us as short-timers. Why would they fight openly against the Taliban when we plan to withdraw shortly and thus allow the Taliban to return and enact their revenge.
I support removal of the poppy trade but it must be replaced with something otherwise the small farmers will suffer the most. How long do we plan to destroy the crop? It will just return as an industry when we leave.
Good luck trying to break the will of the Afghan people. They have chewed up armies since Alexander the Great. We need to learn more from the British example than the Soviet example. The key is not huge armies but rather using an army effectively and strategically.
Strategy is the use of battles to achieve ultimate victory. The United States can win almost any battle in Afghanistan that it puts its mind and resources to winning. But can the U.S. translate those victories into ultimate success. It is an impossible task as long as the administration does not define victory.
Steele was right, even if what he said lacked clarity. Coulter and others like Diane West are right that we need to have a debate over our Afghan policy.
If you have been following what Diana West has been writing about the futility of trying to change Muslim behavior, the idiocy of accomodating Islam becomes apparent. I will take my hat off to Clinton about Kosovo, although I think he bombed the wrong side.
I’m not anti-war by any means and I have a great deal of respect for all our troops including General Petraeus, but the current Afganistan campaign is doomed to abysmal failure. The State Department and the White House contend that the purpose of the war is to establish a viable national government and a national Afgan army and police force that can prevent a Taliban resurgence. There’s one major problem with this goal: there is not now and never will be a national anything in Afganistan because Afganistan is a geographic area not a country. Our optimal strategy is to continue targeted air strikes and special forces missions based upon the best intel available.
I don’t know that Steele and Coulter have it that wrong. Afghanistan was a backwater war while we were fully engaged in Iraq. One might posit the theory that once Iraq was lost to the Jihadists they naturally gravitated to Afghanistan, the only front left in the WOT. However how much of the resistance we are facing is foreign? It seems to me to still be overwhelming Pashtun.
US troop levels were a little over 5000 in 2002 but steadily increased to 62000 by the end of Bush’s term so Steele is wrong that this is Obama’s war. Yet you can’t discount the fact that Obama has made a half assed effort at a surge that will soon bring the numbers up to over 100,000 this fall, a 66% increase. The troop levels have surged as violence has surged but I wonder if one follows the other and feeds on itself, more troops mean more violence needing more troops. When we had 5000 troops little seemed to be going on even though we had no real presence in the south. I think that we either have to massively commit to this war, go all in as Coulter suggests with all that total war encompasses or let it simmer down to the level of activity we had in the early years. Any effort at changing the culture and establishing a functional central government is futile. Obama couldn’t fully commit to the surge, lowballing his general’s lowball estimate of the minimum troops necessary for a successful CION strategy while sabotaging the effort with a timetable for withdraw. So we can pretty much throw the total war scenario out the window.
At the risk of sounding obtuse, there is only one way to win/end a war. Muslims felt no compunction at the loss of civilian life on 9/11, they even widely celebrated the event. I will never forget the scenes of joyous dancing in the street when Arabs learned of the destruction in New York and Washington, I sensed revulsion and anger, I wanted payback on a grand scale.
Of course, I’m a racist.
We went there to get bin Laden.
He got away. We stayed there to have bases from which to continue the hunt for bin Laden. Strategic lilypads at Bagram & Kandahar were cluebats that got the attention of Russia, China, Iran, India & Pakistan and reinforced the message that America can project power even into Central Asia. We had a pretty good Special Forces Olympics going on for about three years. When we invaded Iraq, Afghanistan became the Good War to Democrats and the war NATO countries would help us fight. John Kerry made a big deal about the war in Afghanistan being “underresourced” but all sideshows are. It was an Economy of Force operation for militarily sound strategic & logistic reasons.
Then in 2005, the Uzbeks, goaded by Russia & China, kicked us out of Karshi-Khanabad Air Base & joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. We should have wound down Operation Enduring Freedom then, but Musharraf cut us a good deal on a Line of Communications & the Can Do types sucked it up & drove on.
Then Musharraf was turned out and Mr. Ten Percent can’t secure the LOC.
We’re stuck for a while. Orderly retrograde is a most difficult operation. Pull out too soon, leave too small a rear guard, it gets massacred. A bunch of Taliban, Haqqani, HiG & “innocent civilians” who support them will have to be killed in sufficient numbers to make the point that messing with us on our way out is a bad idea.
Darken the sky of Afghanistan with a REAL American Army, a la World War 2. End the war in a month. Eliminate Aghanistan as a nation state in its current form, as in Nazi Germany. Rebuild it to our liking.
Thus is the Western world when it remembers it is the most powerful culture in human history.
We went there to get bin Laden.
He got away. We stayed there to have bases from which to continue the hunt for bin Laden. Strategic lilypads at Bagram & Kandahar were cluebats that got the attention of Russia, China, Iran, India & Pakistan and reinforced the message that America can project power even into Central Asia. We had a pretty good Special Forces Olympics going on for about three years. When we invaded Iraq, Afghanistan became the Good War to Democrats and the war NATO countries would help us fight. John Kerry made a big deal about the war in Afghanistan being “underresourced” but all sideshows are. It was an Economy of Force operation for militarily sound strategic & logistic reasons.
Then in 2005, the Uzbeks, goaded by Russia & China, kicked us out of Karshi-Khanabad Air Base & joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. We should have wound down Operation Enduring Freedom then, but Musharraf cut us a good deal on a Line of Communications & the Can Do types sucked it up & drove on.
Then Musharraf was turned out and Mr. Ten Percent can’t secure the LOC.
We’re stuck for a while. Orderly retrograde is a most difficult operation. Pull out too soon, leave too small a rear guard, it gets massacred. A bunch of Taliban, Haqqani, HiG & “innocent civilians” who support them will have to be killed in sufficient numbers to make the point that messing with us on our way out is a bad idea.
Hmmm….let me see… I think that Islamist terrorists aka Al-Qaeda exist in countries around the globe. Cells exist everywhere and in almost every country. Are we to invade every country where we find their presence to attempt to neutralize them and force them to hide in mountains or push them into the sea. This would be absurd and illogical. Ann Coulter and Michael Steele were correct in their philosophy. If and when we are attacked again on our own soil, we should react with such force and retribution aka nuclear strike, that would make “shock” and “awe” look like a fireworks display. I for one am tired of this nonsense of nation building around the world when we cannot afford to adequately provide for our own people here in the U.S. Gloves off!
I have to agree with Richard S.
It’s one thing to attack countries that are basically anarchies like Afghanistan was in 2001 or that under the thrall of dictators like Saddam Hussein but most countries are NOT in that category. The article proposes attacking several provinces of Pakistan. Pakistan is a democracy that has a decent relationship with the US. It is also a Muslim country. Is it really credible to propose carpet-bombing or even nuking Pakistan?
What about all the other countries that have Muslims? Many of them may have Al Qaida cells. Are they all to be nuked or carpet-bombed? I’m Canadian and our national security organization, CSIS, caught and arrested an Al Qaida cell (or at least most of it) that was gearing up for terror attacks on Canadian soil, including attacks within Toronto. Does this give the US licence to carpet bomb Toronto? I would certainly hope not!
I would hope we could all use a bit of imagination and figure out ways to stop Al Qaida without nuking or carpet-bombing a major percentage of the Earth! Otherwise, I fear that the US will alienate EVERYONE and find itself fighting alone against the entire world.
I have to say I’m disturbed to detect the apparent growth of an oversimplistic formula commonly attributed to ordinary soldiers: “Kill ‘em all and let God sort it out.”
It’s a tough challenge, Henry. I believe your view of Pakistan is pretty rosy. After all, their intelligence service, the ISI, is ‘credited’ as the prime creator of the Taliban, with the Saudis as financiers. If you are the US, there is probably no justification for going after Pakistan. The Indians would have a much better case. But it’s the same old story – basically liberal, multicultural democracy with large Muslim minority has no real aggressive intentions. They’re afraid of Pakistan because they are impressed with the ferocity of the Jihad. Looks to me as if Pakistan attacked India viciously in the Mumbai ‘incident,’ but India sits tight.
Islam, for all its unifying aspects (for Muslims), is in fact quite fractured in many ways. This both makes the challenges multiple and dangerous, and makes it impossible to declare some sort of ‘war on Islam.’ Well, of course it is possible, but given the widespread fear of Muslims, their tendency to go nuts, the oil issue, and the rivalries between them, the West appears to be forever locked into some sort of ‘containment’ program that involved constant bailing.
However, I am sure that if Islamist cells based in Canada caused major damage in US cities, there would be some sort of response. Probably fairly muted, though.
“What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?”
Killing terrorists, I hope.
Ain’t no other reason to be in that pesthole.
We didn’t “win” in Iraq — that implies that there was a coherent goal, a plan of action to achieve that goal, and actually succeeding in achieving it. We made a pre-emptive attack because Iraq was supposedly an immediate threat — it wasn’t. There were suppose to be WMD’s and links to al-Qaeda — there weren’t. The supposed objective was claimed to have been reached in 2003 — it wasn’t. It’s 2010 and Iraq is still a mess.
As far as Afghanistan goes, there was actually a legitimate reason for invading that in the first place, but Bush’s attention wavered not long afterwards.
All of which makes Coulter’s comments as relevant as, say, Lindsay Lohan giving advice about how to live a good life.
‘We didn’t “win” in Iraq’
True.
The Baathists, terrorists operating out of Iraq, and lefty traitors got their asses kicked.
But, America won…big time.
Dave Surls wrote: The Baathists, terrorists operating out of Iraq, and lefty traitors got their asses kicked.
Sorry, Sherlock: 1) The Baathists are/were no more than an Arab nationalist group, and in the case of Iraq, they and Hussein came to power with the help of the CIA; 2) despite the colossal disinformational BS by the likes of Stephen Hayes, the only terrorists of any sort that Hussein supported were Palestinian — a pain in the butt for Israel but of no consequence to us; and 3) I do believe all the American soldiers and the many times more Iraqi civilians who got badly injured or died came out the worst from all this.
“Sorry, Sherlock”
You, and your disloyal leftoid friends have a lot to be sorry for, no doubt about that.
Unfortunately for you, the lefty non-stop lying propaganda campaign wasn’t enough to give the victory to your Baathist friends.
Hard to understand why you’re still spewing the same old lies after the war’s been won though. Is that just force of habit?
To Dave Surls: “Non-stop lying propaganda campaign“? Really? Where do you get your news from — The Daily Made-up? The Weekly World Wacko? The National Buffoon? The Ejit Times? The Disinfo Dispatch?
‘“Non-stop lying propaganda campaign“? Really?’
Yes, really.
Unluckily for you, your lying propaganda didn’t help the Baathist/terrorist side win the war. Luckily for you, people like me aren’t running America, because if we were a lot of left wing scumbags would be rounded up, tried for treason and dealt with appropriately (the same way the Brits dealt with Lord Haw Haw).
Well, there’s plenty of time for that to happen in the years to come. Eventually, there’ll be a day of reckoning for the Noam Chomskys, the Jane Fondas, and the BCs of America.
In the meantime, enjoy spewing your lies…it ain’t going to help you any…but, enjoy anyway.
Funny thing – Saddam’s BAATH party (Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party) was a big friend of the USSR. More of Saddam’s weaponry – both conventional and WMDs were a free gift from the USSR.
In short – Saddam was created by liberals. And, before I forget, Saddam came to power in 1979, when Barack Hussein Carter was the US president.
Try to fast forward about 5 years, BC. Your baseless diatribes are getting tiresome.
To Dave Surls and Jim Baker: Ah yes, nothing infuriates a right winger more than information that contains verifiable facts, context, history and/or fairness. Feel the anger, smell the bile….
“Ah yes, nothing infuriates a right winger more than information that contains verifiable facts”
Nothing is less likely to emerge from the mouth of a lefty liar than a verifiable fact.
I have a feeling my post will make you mad….
What’s coherent goal that Obam has for Afghanistan? Does he have a plan of action to achieve that goal? Is there a reasonable chance for him to achieve that goal? Is Afghanistan an immediate threat to US? Does Afghanistan have WMD? Do we have a legitimate reason to continue occupation of Afghanistan?
Good luck answering these questions…
To Hyphenated American: I have a feeling my post will make you mad….
Nah, I’m the one who just gets snarky and baiting at best.
What’s coherent goal that Obama has for Afghanistan?
To weaken if not destroy completely a real threat against the US — al-Qaeda and any allies of it, including the Taliban. And especially not to repeat the mistakes Bush made.
Does he have a plan of action to achieve that goal?
He’s been pretty clear about his intentions towards al-Qaeda and Afghanistan before he became President.
Is there a reasonable chance for him to achieve that goal?
Yes.
Is Afghanistan an immediate threat to US?
As al-Qaeda’s traditional base of operations, yes.
Does Afghanistan have WMD?
Nope, but you don’t exactly need WMD’s to be a threat.
Do we have a legitimate reason to continue occupation of Afghanistan?
See the above.
Good luck answering these questions…
Luck? I don’t need no steenkin’ luck….
There is no winning in a landlocked country when there is no end-goal, no political will, inane rules of engagement, and the prospect of changing a religion and culture. Afghanistan will never become another Connecticut. The theater is narco-politics. Winning there is stuffing sand down a spider hole.
Kill the Taliban, burn the opium, and leave as “diplomatically” as possible. Next time we go to war, leave the state department at home. Winning the hearts and minds as a strategy barely works in U.S. elections.
We allowed ourselves to get entangled in Afghanistan based on the faulty reasoning that we should try to prevent groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban from establishing a base of operations. We got hung up on that nonsense because Osama Bin Laden used to operate from there. The crucial thing that we failed to understand is that while Bin Ladin may have had his HQ in Afghanistan his operatives were were not based there. They were moving around freely in various first world countries supported with unlimited expense accounts.
So here we are wasting so many young lives and billions of dollars chasing after impoverished and illiterate goat herders in the hills of Afghanistan while the real enemy with unlimited funding continues to burrow into western civilization like so many termites, slowly but surely eating away at our cultural foundations. We congratulate ourselves when every once in awhile we manage to take out a few suspected Taliban fighters holed up in a shack somewhere while here at home plans to build a gigantic mosque overlooking ground zero continue to move forward with virually no official opposition. It frustrates and saddens me to no end that our political and military leaders seem incapable of recognizing this glaring disconnect.
Whatever we can do or should do in Afghanistan is beside the point. We can be sure that neither will be done under President Obama.
Obama is not competent to win the war in Afghanistan and it’s clear that, despite his campaign rhetoric, he is not interested in leading such a war.
I see no point in wasting any more American or Afghani lives in that conflict while Obama is President.
Opium grows well there and is a lucrative crop for those who farm it.
HOW are we going to induce anyone in Afghanistan to abandon this crop?
HOW are we going to deal with the huge terrorist sanctuary that is Pakistan?
HOW are we going to create a stable government in a country that consists of many troglodytes armed with modern infantry/artillery weapons?
For people who say silly things like: ‘let them enrich themselves with their minerals instead of their opium’…..does it occur to you that the people who would make money from the minerals would NOT be the people who make money from opium. Furthermore, any mineral operation in any backward part of the world is pretty unlikely to yield wealth that will actually be shared with the natives.
I say we set up a plan to suppress our enemies over there as necessary. Otherwise, we should let Afghanistan be whatever it wants to be, in line with our real-world security interests.
What Ann Coulter suggest is nothing short of genocide. No wonder the country is turning on the GOP and their special, malevolent brand of lunacy.
Yeah, fighting, “kill them wherever you may find them” doesn’t require that you fight fire with fire. Better to just kneel down and hang your head forward for the executioner.
It’s a shame that the security and prosperity of this nation has been frittered away on people like your parents who allowed or encouraged you to become so obscenely bathed in fantasy that you can’t have a bowel movement without apologizing to the bacteria expelled from you gut.
have a nice day
Come back in November and tell us how the country is turning on the racist, lunatic, malevolent, and genocidal GOP. Ann Coulter doesn’t speak for any political party, but she most certainly speaks out against yours, and that is why I like her.
‘Earlier this month, conservative flamethrower Ann Coulter turned her fire onto her own side. Coulter lit into Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney by name, and a raft of other conservatives by implication, because they called for the gaffe-prone Republican National Committee chairman to resign for declaring that the Afghanistan war was a “war of Obama’s choosing”’…
Well, there’s a reason Steele is taking heat, and the reason is because what he said is pure unadulterated nonsense.
Obama is a grade A jackass, but the war we’re fighting in Afghanistan has absolutely nothing to do with the choices he’s made, as any two year old knows. Hell, even a liberal is smart enough to figure out that that’s nonsense. If you’re going to go around making it sound like it’s all Obama’s fault that we’re fighting a war in Afghanistan, then you’re going to lit up by anyone with a shred of integrity.
Leaving aside the politics (Steele, Obama, etc.) the question is valid — what STRATEGIC goal do we achieve by “winning” in Afghanistan? What is the “win condition”? What are our strategic objectives? I am afraid the real answers to those 3 questions are: nothing, we don’t know, and we don’t have any.
As Dr. Savage pointed out once, we did not respond to Pearl Harbor by attacking and occupying the “area of the ocean” from which the Japanese attacks occurred. We have already accomplished our objective of toppling the Taliban and scattering Al Queda in Afghanistan. Everything else is a diversion.
Who is our real enemy? The Jihadists and the Islamists that fund and support them.
Where are they located? Throughout the world.
How do we respond? We established a democracy in the middle east by force. That was a step. But we must contain Iran and cut the lines of finance from the Petroleum states. And if necessary — and it will be necessary if there is ever another 9/11 style attack — cut off the heads of the snake.
What do we do next? Keep playing “wack a mole” with UAV, yes. But also — culturally — root out those who take the Islamist money, halt the mosque building, refuse “cultural accomodation” and call out those who for ridicule. We keep this up until the day they overreach.
I am going to say something very Coulteresk here. This won’t end until we nuke Mecca. By doing so we will remove the 5th pillar of Islam (no place to do Hajj at that point) and damage the 1st (yeah, go ahead and pray 5 times a day to your melted radioactive ruin). Of course the Muslim world will go nuts. Too bad. Better to get it over with.
SunSword has got it about right. Islam is an expansionist political ideology that intends to destroy us – just like Soviet Communism was. The same people who wanted to surrender to the Soviets then want to surrender to the Muslims now. Unfortunately, a lot of otherwise sensible Americans believe that the policy of “religious tolerance”, which enabled Christianity to free itself of the awful burden of schismatic wars, is somehow a fundamental American value. Until we dispense with that silly sentiment, we can’t even point our guns in the right direction, let alone pull the trigger.
I expect we will get this all sorted out eventually. What will it take? I am guessing it will be a nuclear attack on one or more US cities. Until that happens, Obama is not the problem. The people who voted for Obama are the problem.
The goal of the war on Terrorism is to prevent attacks on the US
by denying the terrorists sanctuary states from which to operate.
Afghanistan was one such state, and could be again if al-Qaeda
returns; The US does not have the resources to establish Karzai’s
puppet regime over the Tribes, but it can make a simple bargain
with them: Make each Khan secure in his territory against attack
by the Taliban, buy the entire poppy crop, and put a bounty on
the heads of terrorists.
This previously impossible task is made possible by increases
in the capabilities, and decreases in the cost, of unmanned
vehicles used both for reconnaissance and attack.
I remember hearing about Iraq’s 10 year war with Iran and thinking how long that was. It is one thing for those sharing a border to fight for a decade but now seeing our country engaged in something that appears to be a multi-decade war in Afghanistan against an enemy that doesn’t have an airplane, I believe something is very wrong. The reasons for the war aside, I don’t understand how the USA cannot pound sense into someone in less than decades. If we can’t why do we keep spending so much money on the military. We should just hire the Afghanis!
Coulter and Steele are right. The defenders of our attempt to colonize Afghanistan are clueless.
The Taliban were kicked out of Afghanistan quickly and easily with Special Forces helping the Northern Alliance. That is how you deal with Afghanistan. Get it?
Only an arrogant fool willing to spend other people’s money, and other people’s lives, would try to convert Afghanistan into a place it’s not.