View Full Version : The U.S. Challenge in Afghanistan
HowardCohodas
10-20-2009, 06:32
Another thoughtful article from STRATFOR. The U.S. Challenge in Afghanistan (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20091019_u_s_challenge_afghanistan?utm_source=GWee klyA&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091020&utm_content=readmore)
From Sunday's Dallas Morning News.
Richard
Editorial: Obama should embrace McChrystal's Afghanistan plan
There is no easy solution to the Afghanistan conundrum. Not only is there no clear route to victory, it's difficult to define what victory is.
Yet there is a solid definition of defeat: allowing Afghanistan to descend further into chaotic violence so the Taliban can return to power and resume playing host to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. Whatever President Barack Obamadecides, he cannot allow this to happen.The president must decide whether the troop-surge plan by his Afghanistan commander, Gen. StanleyMcChrystal, is more likely to head off such an outcome than the alternative favored by Vice President Joe Biden and others, which is to reduce the U.S. military presence and focus on fighting al-Qaeda.
Make no mistake, this is an exceedingly complex, multilayered problem involving Pakistani nukes, billion-dollar opium-trafficking networks and internecine regional meddling.
Obama cannot turn back the clock on the neglect that occurred after the U.S.-led invasion of 2001; today, he faces a series of bad choices with uncertain prospects. Considering the thousands of lives in the balance, his least bad option is to heed the advice of McChrystal, his hand-picked military adviser, and move quickly to boost American troop levels in Afghanistan.
We do not advocate an open-ended commitment to escalation, but McChrystal's plan deserves a try before the administration turns to other options. Its success or failure could be evident by the time the 2012 presidential campaign begins. American voters may well be the final judges, as they were when they elected Obama last year, knowing his commitment to increasing troop levels in Afghanistan.
Lessons from the past
This newspaper opposed Gen. David Petraeus' 2007 troop-surge strategy in Iraq for reasons similar to those skeptics are using to criticize the McChrystal plan. We were wrong; Petraeus was right. His plan brought surprisingly quick results. The insurgency in Iraq is not completely vanquished, but it is manageable enough that Washington can stick to its 2011 withdrawal commitment.
This is not to suggest American commanders always get it right. In Vietnam, a massive troop buildup and heavy bombing led nowhere. Afghanistan is neither Iraq nor Vietnam, but those wars offer valuable cautionary lessons. The Pentagon's understanding of counterinsurgency warfare is light years ahead of what it was during the Vietnam era.
Military might alone will not stop a guerrilla insurgency, as Vietnam proved. Success in Iraq wasn't solely because of the troop surge but depended heavily on the quiet U.S. effort to bribe and cajole Sunni tribal leaders into abandoning support for the insurgency. Americans would have been outraged, amid the carnage of 2005-06, to learn of plans to pay off and negotiate with the very Sunnis who were ordering attacks on U.S. troops. In the end, though, the strategy paid big dividends.
Increased troop strength did allow the U.S. to provide the crucial security component that Iraqis demanded, while buying time to train Iraqi soldiers and police into their proper security roles. Today's vastly improved security conditions, unimaginable in early 2007, are what allow the U.S. to fulfill its 2011 withdrawal promise.
Cautious but realistic goals
McChrystal, a former head of the Joint Special Operations Command who has directed U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for seven years, warns that Afghanistan's challenges are more complex than Iraq's and that the administration should not expect identical results. Yet the basic requirements remain the same: Afghans need security before they can join the effort to stabilize their country.
Just as Iraqi security forces were timid and desertions rampant in the early days of the surge, Afghan troops and police today are reluctant because they are outnumbered and outgunned by the Taliban. Building confidence requires a clear demonstration of U.S. and NATO resolve. The Taliban's advance cannot be halted and reversed at existing U.S. troop levels – much less the reduced levels envisioned by Biden.
It's also important to identify less-radical elements within the Taliban. Before the 9/11 attacks, Republican and Democratic administrations had 33 documented conversations with the Taliban leadership. Even today, the Taliban maintains Western news media contacts, suggesting a desire to keep communication lines open. Ask no less a conservative than former Speaker Newt Gingrich whether the approach used with moderate Sunnis in Iraq would work with the Taliban: "That would be your goal, I think, to split them," he said.
The primary goal remains to relentlessly pursue al-Qaeda while putting heavy pressure on the Taliban so its leadership realizes that the insurgents cannot seize power through military force. Wiping them out isn't feasible, but Taliban leaders – especially moderates – must learn that fighting the U.S. entails increasingly painful consequences.
Once that message gets through, prospects will grow for an accommodation with the Taliban, giving Afghans the security and stability they seek.
Weighing the consequences
No one can predict whether McChrystal's plan will work. But it's reasonable to expect an Afghan implosion if U.S. troops withdraw, giving both the Taliban and al-Qaeda a claim of victory and an enormous boost in recruiting power, setting back U.S. anti-terrorism efforts years, if not decades.
Little would remain to block radical elements from sweeping through Afghanistan and Pakistan. They could easily reignite the conflict in Kashmir between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India. A nuclear conflagration is not unthinkable under this scenario, with al-Qaeda moving ever closer to accessing Pakistan's nuclear weaponry.
Leaving U.S. troops at current levels allows the Taliban to continue exploiting Afghanistan's deteriorating conditions. Corruption and massive vote tampering by President Hamid Karzai are adding to Afghan disaffection and hopelessness. The longer Obama waits, the worse it gets.
Biden proposes an end to fighting the Taliban, but that doesn't mean the Taliban will suddenly stop attacking U.S. troops. They will continue, and the mission of fighting al-Qaeda will be undermined as Taliban forces keep advancing.
What McChrystal proposes will be a long, difficult slog. There are other important theaters to be addressed, particularly in Pakistan, and plans must be developed to contend with new threats as they develop. But Afghanistan is the question Obama must address now.
By embracing McChrystal's plan, Obama will hardly wow his liberal supporters or advance his standing as a Nobel peace laureate, but he will increase the chances for security in a country that has known only war and hardship since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
Mr. President, this is a risk worth taking.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-afghanistan_1018edi.State.Edition1.172015a.html
Seems as if the administration is going to wait to see who "wins" the new Presidential "election" in November. Who ever looses is going to cry foul, and it will start all over again.
Kind of like Boeing and EADS vying for the contract for the new KC-X. No matter who wins. the loser will cry foul and get a new chance to put forth their proposal.
So now it has been 52 days since the General's proposal landed in DC, and we have to wait another 3 weeks before the new "election", to see who comes out on top. I wonder howmany of our brothers and sisters will die in the meantime? I have to wonder if the administration gives a damn....
Slantwire
10-21-2009, 09:49
So now it has been 52 days since the General's proposal landed in DC, and we have to wait another 3 weeks before the new "election", to see who comes out on top. I wonder howmany of our brothers and sisters will die in the meantime? I have to wonder if the administration gives a damn....
I'm starting to think the decision has been made. But the president knows that announcing "we're quitting" won't play well, so he's stalling until the situation deteriorates so badly that the general public won't complain about pulling out.
Just a thought. I've been wrong before....
I'm starting to think the decision has been made. But the president knows that announcing "we're quitting" won't play well, so he's stalling until the situation deteriorates so badly that the general public won't complain about pulling out.
Just a thought. I've been wrong before....
Unfortunately, by deteriorating that means deaths of our brothers and sisters. I wonder if he has the guts to talk to the families of the fallen, like Bush did. Somehow I doubt it.
LongWire
10-21-2009, 11:52
What ever happened to "Supporting the One war we have", that I kept hearing repeatedly last year?
Source is here (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hqegRwRhxl3yQSLWa30w5H5wkxgAD9BIVUO00).Obama says he will not rush Afghanistan decision
By CHARLES BABINGTON (AP) – 31 minutes ago
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — President Barack Obama pledged on Monday not to "rush the solemn decision" to send more troops to battle in Afghanistan as he weighs military options on what to do next in the troubled war.
"I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary," Obama told service men and women at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. He promised a "clear mission" with defined goals and the equipment needed to get the job done.
Obama, who is in the process of weighing options put forward by the Pentagon that include various levels of increased troops, spoke of the latest example of the dangers and sacrifices there — helicopter crashes that killed 14 Americans in the deadliest day for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in more than four years.
"Fourteen Americans gave their lives. And our prayers are with these service members, their civilian colleagues and the families who loved them," Obama said. "They were willing to risk their lives, in this case to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida and its extremist allies."
His visit to the naval air station came after he met at the White House with his national security team for a sixth full-scale conference on the future of the faltering war.
Waves of boisterous cheers greeted the president. Obama noted that representatives of all the nation's military services attended the gathering.
The administration is debating whether to send tens of thousands more troops to the country, while the Afghan government is moving to hold a Nov. 7 runoff election between President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah. The runoff comes after complaints by international monitors of fraudulent voting in the first election.
But Obama did not tip his hand on how he might decide.
"I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way," he said.
If it is necessary, Obama added, "we will back you up to the hilt."
Framed by dozens of white-uniformed sailors, Obama stood on a stage under a huge American flag.
"By being here, you join a long, unbroken line of service at Jacksonville — naval aviators from World War II to Korea to Vietnam, among them a great patriot named John McCain," he said.
McCain, the former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war and now senator from Arizona, was Obama's Republican presidential opponent. McCain's family lived in Jacksonville for several years while he was a prisoner of war. Upon his release, he lived here, serving as a commanding officer of his squadron.
"Thank you for reminding us of the country we can and must always be," Obama told the troops.An interesting turn of words. As the White House's website has not posted the transcript of the president's remarks, it remains to be seen what the president actually meant.
I'm starting to think the decision has been made. But the president knows that announcing "we're quitting" won't play well, so he's stalling until the situation deteriorates so badly that the general public won't complain about pulling out.
Just a thought. I've been wrong before....
Pinhead, you nailed it. Get those GPF out of dodge. They don't have the support needed to prevail in an uncertain mission.
Send in the drones and the contractors. Just think, our first outsourced low intensity conflict.
It will be interesting to see what Gates and Petraeus say publicly.
People should read GEN McChrystal's Initial Assessment and recommendations and SecDef Gates' analysis of what we can (have) and cannot do for the time being - they are very enlightening.
See post #57 at:
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25620&page=4
Richard's $.02 :munchin