Geopolitical Ineptitude Often Characterizes American Foreign Policy - Afghanistan

© 2010 Peter Free

 

 

03 May 2010

 

Clueless strategic policy in Afghanistan

 

American policy in Afghanistan has been so strategically mistaken that one wonders whether American political and military leaders have read history.  Or whether they bothered to distinguish between predominantly intra-Islamic groups like the Taliban and international terrorists like Al-Qaeda.

 

Wars of occupation are counterproductive except in the most extreme circumstances.  World War II qualified as such.  Everything since has not.

 

Successful anti-terrorism requires precisely aimed and narrowly controlled strikes which involve very limited collateral damage.  The appropriate anti-terrorist mindset is a policing one.  The apropos philosophy is disease management.  Both perspectives are the antithesis of sending large invading forces abroad.

 

No achievable purpose in Afghanistan

 

Afghanistan is a military engagement with no achievable strategic purpose.

 

The American experience in Afghanistan is a good example of what happens when an invading nation forgets history, culture, and geopolitics.  And acts reactively, emotionally, and without thinking.

 

How did our leaders think this was going to work?

 

The purported reason for the occupation of Afghanistan was that Al-Qaeda was using training camps there, apparently with the blessing of the Afghanistan’s (then) Taliban government.  The United States’ leadership reasoned that America should take over the country and kill or drive the terrorists out.

 

The idea was not realistically achievable.  If you don’t succeed in killing all the terrorists, and you don’t eliminate further recruitment to the terrorist cause, how is taking a country over going to help?

 

Presumably, the terrorists whom you do not kill or capture will go somewhere else.  And, unless American troops remain in the occupied country in insupportably large numbers, what is to prevent the bad guys from coming back?

 

History should have been a clue

 

Afghanistan’s history, terrain, and its mujahideen’s victory against the Soviets should have alerted American military and political planners to the low probability of destroying Islamic terrorism by occupation.

 

Was America intending to occupy nations wherever Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism went?  How was that going to work?

 

Is occupation the quickest route to your enemy’s heart?

 

In regard to terrorist recruitment, how was the occupation of Afghanistan going to reduce motivations to attack Americans?  The occupiers are predominantly Christian, Afghanis are predominantly Muslim, and history has made both groups into lingering, suspicious, and often bitter enemies.  Did the American establishment actually think that the invasion of a Muslim country was actually going to defuse hostility toward the United States?

 

(Ask yourself whether an Islamic-led military invasion of the United States would motivate Americans to welcome the occupiers.  Especially when military and drone strikes frequently kill or maim your innocent family members.)

 

In Afghanistan (and Iraq), the United States also initially tended to lump people together with too broad a brush.  The categorization made enemies of people who might have remained quiescent.

 

Grouping Al-Qaeda with the Taliban and other medieval-minded Islamic groups was (and continues to be) a strategic mistake.  It is one thing to become an Islamic terrorist in someone else’s country or people (Al-Qaeda).  It is another to be an Islamic insurgent attempting to repossess or control what is arguably yours.

 

Unlike Al-Qaeda, most elements of conservative Islam do not pose a direct threat to the United States.  Except as a regressive force of history with which most Americans disagree.  We do not make war on regressive forces of history that do not directly threaten our existence.  It is unlikely that anti-modern, quasi-medieval groups are going to mobilize the wide-ranging economic and military resources necessary to pose existential threats to technologically advanced nations.  By invading their nations, however, we give them the motivation to see us as an enemy whom they need to actively oppose.

 

Given these factors, it is obvious that no one in American power thought very far ahead when it came to planning and carrying out the war in Afghanistan.

 

 

Long-term thinking is not an American strength, and ignorance aggravates this failing

 

Successful strategists know their strengths and weaknesses.  They understand their enemy’s gifts and detriments.

 

Thinking strategically forward and for the long term are not American strengths.  Ignorance of world history and foreign cultures, combined with unjustified American political and military arrogance, aggravates these shortcomings.

 

In geopolitics and war, shortsightedness and a too-narrow perspective are not formulas for success.

 

We need to expand our time perspective.  And significantly deepen our knowledge of nations, cultures, and movements.

 

It is unlikely that we will learn much from this war, given our national penchant for violence

 

I doubt we have learned much from the mess in Afghanistan.  We Americans seem to enjoy our capacity for violence.  Even when it is essentially purposeless or makes us more likely to become victims of counter-reactions.

 

Patriotic chest-pounding appeals to us more than reasoned strategy.  It is easy to send someone else’s kids to war.  We are not there, when they come home dead, maimed, or brain-damaged.  We leave military families to cope with these tragedies alone.  Out of sight, and usually without just financial compensation.

 

Prudence in future wars would be nice

 

I would like our thoughtless resort to instant, strategy-absent violence to change.

 

For a lifetime, I have seen a significant portion of our military men and women come home maimed or in body bags.

 

Empty thanks are not enough

 

Thanking our military people for their service, in the ignorant way people generally do, is not sufficient.

 

Wise strategy is the only just gratitude

 

Wisdom in military deployment and action is the only appropriate gratitude to our military’s service.  Using one’s brain should come before someone has to take a bullet or bomb.

 

The “think first and be wise” survival exam

 

Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam failed the “think first and be wise in making war” exam.  How much longer are we going to keep failing this test?

 

It is a moral and survival question.

 

The fact that our nation weakens itself each time we come up with the wrong answer should be motivation enough to critique our leaders and ourselves.

 

“Who bleeds for them?”

 

When you see body bags coming home, when you witness veterans missing body parts or functions, ask yourself, “Who bleeds for them?”

 

Be wise.  Lead wise.