Afghan quagmire

By Weekly Archive On Oct 20, 2010

In preparation for the December presidential review of how well the U.S.-NATO strategy in Afghanistan is working, U.S. civilian and military leaders in charge of the war are making qualified claims of progress against Taliban insurgents. But the realities on the ground suggest the United States may be facing another Vietnam-style quagmire in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration made a mess of the war in Afghanistan, which Barack Obama inherited. Things didn’t start that way. Following 9-11, there was a near-unanimous consensus in the United States in favor of retaliating against Al-Qaeda — the organization that perpetrated the attacks that killed about 3,000 Americans — and the Taliban government that gave Al-Qaeda sanctuary. The vast majority of the international community was on board too.

The strategy used by Bush’s Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, based on a reliance on Afghan allies, heavy use of air power, and relatively few U.S. ground forces, managed to quickly overthrow the Taliban government and sent Al Qaeda scurrying for cover. But the reliance on proxy forces (the “Northern Alliance”) and a small contingent of American ground troops made it impossible for the United States to capture Al Qaeda’s leader Osama Bin Laden, his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Taliban head Mullah Omar, among others. They slipped away into Pakistan by crossing the rugged border between the two countries. To this day, they continue to preach jihad and to promote terrorist attacks against the United States and other countries.

Despite the Bush administration’s failure to decapitate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it quickly lost interest in Afghanistan and set its sights on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Before the job in Afghanistan was completed, it began to divert key personnel and resources away from the Afghan theater to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

But the glow of the initial military victory in Iraq soon faded, and a major insurgency and horrendous carnage ensued. Meanwhile, while U.S. forces were distracted in Iraq, the Taliban were rearming and regrouping in Pakistan and Afghanistan. By the time the Obama administration took power in 2009, the situation had deteriorated to the point that the Taliban controlled much of the country outside the capital. Cynics referred to Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “the Mayor of Kabul” because his power hardly held sway outside the capital. Meanwhile, NATO countries were increasingly withdrawing their troops. It was clear that the U.S.-NATO strategy wasn’t working.

The new administration did not want to rush headlong into a major military commitment in Afghanistan. But neither did it want to preside over defeat, the return to power of the Taliban, and a new safe haven for Al-Qaeda. In early 2009, President Obama, along with his key civilian aides and the military high command, conducted a painstaking process to design a new Afghanistan policy.

Obama was in a difficult spot. During the campaign, he repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for neglecting Afghanistan. But, once in the White House, Obama also was keen to avoid the disastrous fate of empires (from Alexander the Great to the Soviets) that had tried to rule Afghanistan and failed disastrously. Accordingly, Obama wanted a limited commitment of troops and a deadline for withdrawal.

As a new book by journalist Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) makes clear, Obama was boxed in not only by his campaign rhetoric; he was also boxed in by his entire military chain of command, including Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, and General David H. Petraeus (then head of Central Command [CENTCOM] now the top commander in Afghanistan).

The military demanded an additional 40,000 troops on top of the additional 17,000 Obama already had committed to the Afghan war. Obama balked; he said the proposal was unacceptable and ordered the military to develop a different plan. The military closed ranks and never presented the president with an alternative proposal. In the end, Obama chose not to confront his generals and instead produced his own compromise plant: 30,000 more troops and a July 11, 2011, date for the beginning of a withdrawal of American forces. The Defense Secretary and the generals agreed to the plan.

Despite that and official declarations of progress, the situation in Afghanistan continues to be dire, and Petraeus and Congressional hawks like John McCain already have begun to talk about July 11, 2011, as a “flexible deadline.” Thus the conditions are ripe for stumbling into another never-ending war and an open-ended U.S. involvement.

Even with the new troops, military success against the Taliban has been spotty and achieved at the cost of a sharp increase in U.S. casualties. The recent Afghan elections were marred by major irregularities. The government of Afghanistan is so corrupt and the reach of the Taliban is so pervasive that much of the money the U.S. government spends to pay Afghan contractors ends up either in the pockets of corrupt officials or, more often, those of the Taliban. The Afghan military and police are in no shape to take on the Taliban on their own any time soon.

Thus it looks increasingly probable that, come July 11, 2011, the situation in Afghanistan will be such that an American withdrawal will be tantamount to an orderly defeat. With the 2012 presidential elections on the horizon, the military and hawks in Congress will have more leverage on Obama than ever. Although only about one in three Americans currently support the war in Afghanistan, only 6 percent consider the war the most important issue in the elections. Thus Obama cannot count on an electorate demanding that he end the war. But he can count on a powerful elite consensus that demands he avoid anything that looks or sounds like defeat. Next summer, when the decisions about the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan will have to be taken, will Obama be able to withstand the pressure from the military and conservative elites and take decisive steps to extricate the country from the longest war in its history? Or will he allow his presidency to be defined by an interminable an interminable and ultimately pointless war.