Afghanistan: The Good War Gone Bad

Andrew Bacevich, a former army colonel and a prominent self described 'catholic conservative' has also been one of the most prominent critics of American foreign policy since 9/11. His essential argument is that we should have spent all the money and resources we wasted on foreign wars and occupations instead on a reasonably functional Homeland Security Department and better border and port security which would have been just as effective if not more so at deterring and preventing terrorist attacks on US shores. In this provocative article, Bacevich argues that the US should reduce its contingency of troops to a few hundred special forces soldiers and military advisers that will work with local tribal leaders to contain Al Qaeda and the Taliban, hunt down Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and operate a forward area where aircraft and unmanned drones could be used to assist the military in this task.

The article makes a strong case for this action and also that there is a historical precedence of Afghanistan literally being a 'graveyard of empires' citing failures of Alexander the Great, the Persians, Rome, Mughal India, the various Russian empires, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union all as great powers that had significant technological and military advantage that were ultimately unable to achieve their strategic goals in the region.

There are a few telling quotes from the full article in Commonweal magazine (http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2609) that merit highlighting.
The first is a useful historical comparison to the domino theory and the failed containment strategy that got the US mired in another nation building quagmire in Vietnam

"What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny."

The second posits a very useful hypothetical interchanging Mexico with Afghanistan

"any politician calling for the commitment of sixty thousand U.S. troops to Mexico to secure those interests or acquit those moral obligations would be laughed out of Washington—and rightly so. Any pundit proposing that the United States assume responsibility for eliminating the corruption that is endemic in Mexican politics while establishing in Mexico City effective mechanisms of governance would have his license to pontificate revoked. Anyone suggesting that the United States possesses the wisdom and the wherewithal to solve the problem of Mexican drug trafficking, to endow Mexico with competent security forces, and to reform the Mexican school system (while protecting the rights of Mexican women) would be dismissed as a lunatic. Meanwhile, those who promote such programs for Afghanistan, ignoring questions of cost and ignoring as well the corruption and ineffectiveness that pervade our own institutions, are treated like sages."

Indeed why is President Obama so fixated on listening to military and civil leaders from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, to General McIernan when all of these policy makers have yet to specifically denounce the very ideology of Wilsonian nation building that got us into Iraq? Why is his entire foreign policy team with the exception of National Sec. Advisor Jim Jones, who incidentally most observers say feels isolated from the White House, composed of these liberal neocon's that still believe in the almighty transformative power of the US to nation build in spite of its failures in places ranging from Iraq to the Balkans and earlier to Vietnam all the way back to the Philippines?

Candidate Obama was supported by stark realists like Bill Richardson, Anthony Lake, Igbinew Brzewinski, Brent Scowcroft, General Shinseki, and Bacevich himself. Where are they now? Only Shinsheki is in the cabinet and there occupying the largely ceremonial backwater of the Veterans Affairs Department.

I find it incredibly disturbing that President Obama insists on applying the successful tactics of the surge that worked in Iraq to the failed state of Afghanistan where they will ultimately fail. How can an urban counter insurgency operation succeed in a largely mountainous country with arid terrain? I think the fact that casualties in Afghanistan are starting to dramatically outpace those in Iraq is proof that this strategy is foolhardy. With the nearly seven year quagmire of Iraq largely coming to a close as America's longest and financially most costly war with none of the original goals or objectives being met and with only the hope of stability when we're gone as the sole victory metric, why is the President choosing to continue the grave mistakes of his predecessor when it comes to Afghanistan?