When I listen to various learned men talk about what we ought to do in Afghanistan, I get really bugged. Everybody takes a position about what we ought to do and bases it on their expectations about what will happen if we do what they want us to, versus what will happen if we do what someone else proposes. However, the truth is that no one can predict what will happen in Afghanistan with any certainty, short of our deciding to put an overwhelming force of, say, five million soldiers in there to occupy the country. Short of that, things are up for grabs, and the predictions we get from the various advocates are so much BS. Certainly General McChrystal can’t guarantee that his recommendation for an increase of 40,000 troops for an anti-terrorism/counter-insurgency/nation-building effort will work. Why not? Because he really can’t predict the response to that kind of surge by the Afghans.
What about Biden’s proposal, which calls primarily for anti-al-Qaeda and anti-terrorism efforts, but no counter-insurgency/nation-building? I think the outcome of this is also not clear, because he, too, can’t predict the response of the Afghans to that. In a previous diary, I advocated a withdrawal/cold war/containment/competition, rather than a shooting war, strategy for Afghanistan, and more broadly, for terrorism in the Middle East and Central Asia. Can I predict absolutely that this will be successful, that it will protect the United States from all terrorist attacks from abroad? No, but it does seem like a less risky strategy than the others, partly because it is a lot less costly and risks fewer soldiers and fewer civilian lives, but also because the alternative strategies being considered aren’t guaranteed to protect America either. For example, let’s say we followed McChrystal’s strategy, and it turned out to be entirely successful. Afghanistan became a reasonably stable political system at peace with its neighbors, not under Taliban rule, and with no “safe haven” for al-Qaeda or other Islamic terrorists. Would this mean that we had improved the security of the United States? How could we tell, based on what was going on in Afghanistan? Wouldn’t the terrorists just move somewhere else and launch attacks from there, while laughing at us for spending hundreds of billions of dollars (some people are blithely talking about a 10 year additional effort there) to secure a country that is not essential for al-Qaeda anyway? Does this really make any sense at all?
What if we followed Biden’s reported strategy, and it was completely successful? Would that prevent terrorist attacks launched from outside of Afghanistan? I don’t think so. Would the McChrystal and Biden strategies result in greater recruitment for al-Qaeda? Can’t say for sure, but judging from what has happened so far, I’d say the chances are good. If that happens, does success in Afghanistan with either strategy increase or decrease the probability of an attack on the United States while either of these efforts is going on? It seems to me that in both cases the answer might be that the probability of an attack originating in Afghanistan is probably smaller, but the probability of an attack originating somewhere else is probably increased. So, what are we likely to gain by following either the McChrystal or Biden strategies? Anything worthwhile at all?
What if we followed the withdrawal/cold war/containment/competition strategy, except perhaps for certain very limited attacks from the air, and perhaps using special forces in very rare cases? What would happen? Would the Taliban take over again? Who really knows? A lot of Afghan warlords might have something to say about that.
Even if the Taliban did come back, would al-Qaeda be granted a safe haven again? Ike Skelton (D-Mo) thinks they would “as sure as God made little green apples.” But, does he really “know”? For those, like Congressman Skelton, who are so certain that the Taliban would embrace al-Qaeda once again, recall how sure an earlier generation of American decision makers was about the domino theory in Southeast Asia, the theory that said that all of Southeast Asia would fall to communism, if South Vietnam fell to the communists. Famous last words. They cost the United States and Vietnam hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the United States, the success of the Johnson Administration poverty programs, and a change in direction in American politics that eventually led to the sorry state of our affairs that we see today.
We need to remember that the Taliban had their government dismantled by us last time, because they gave al-Qaeda a safe haven. They have paid a heavy price for their hospitality and al-Qaeda’s abuse of it. If we withdrew now, with an explicit promise to return again to depose any Government that gave al-Qaeda a safe haven once again, would the Taliban really take the chance that we would not dismantle their next regime? I can’t say for sure, but I think they’d pause before risking our return, since they’ve experienced a lengthy exile in Pakistan, and lost a lot of people, the first time around. After all, do the “Arabs” really mean so much to the Afghan Taliban that they’d risk another nine-year interruption in their fundamentalist Islamic rule?
Anyway, our conflict with international terrorism is unusual in that terrorists, or those who succor them, are most vulnerable to our armed forces when they are associated with a formal Government, and a defined geographic location that we are aware of. But they are least vulnerable to us, when their haven is a failed state, where they are among locals having no allegiance to a central government. So, we have common sense turned upside down, I think. If we do the withdrawal/cold war/containment/competition thing, and they come back with the Taliban, we can find them and hurt them. But if they don’t come back, but stay somewhere in Pakistan, or move to some other failed state, they are less vulnerable to our efforts to find and kill them, and ultimately more dangerous. So, in a sense, if we run that strategy and they come back, they’ve “made our day” as it were. Whereas, if we run some of the other strategies and they work to make Afghanistan free of al-Qaeda, as is their intent, this might actually be bad for us, because they’d just stay underground and plot their attacks from there.
Those who oppose a withdrawal, and favor continued armed intervention in Afghanistan, who seem to be the heavy majority of our politicians and decision makers it seems, may be advocating a variety of the worst things we can do at this point. I hope not, but I don’t see that any hot war strategy in Afghanistan actually speaks to the problem of localized terrorism animated by a fundamentalist ideological movement that is international in character. And, before a decision is made to follow one of the hot war options, I think the advocates for any and all of these, should be made to explain carefully, and in the context of the strongest criticisms that can be mustered from advocates of other options, including the option of withdrawal, how that can be expected to decrease the probability of an attack on the United States by Islamist terrorists.
The Administration needs to remember that there is risk in all options, not just the withdrawal option, and that a fair critical comparison of all of them might well indicate that the hot war options are much more risky than the cold war ones in the long term. And that, not to put too fine a point on it, it is time to leave Afghanistan, to bring most of our people home, and to follow that cold war, containment, and competition strategy to defend ourselves.
(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)