Two New York Times Opinion Columns Explain the Options in Afghanistan

© 2010 Peter Free

 

28 June 2010

 

Two recent New York Times columns illustrate the options in Afghanistan

Two recent newspaper columns by Ross Douthat (One Way Out) and Bob Herbert (Worse Than a Nightmare) set out the options in pursuing or discontinuing the war in Afghanistan.

Douthat has done a better job of presenting the reasons for staying than the President or his generals have.  Herbert eloquently makes the opposing case.

Herbert has the stronger argument.  Seeing that requires some analysis.

From a policy-maker’s perspective, both columns contain analytical weaknesses

From a geopolitical standpoint, both editorials contain analytical weaknesses that have to be overcome to make persuasive cases for acting on their premises.

(This is not a criticism of either columnist.  Space constraints prevent them from making readable, but water-tight arguments.)

Herbert’s column does not examine the aftermath of leaving Afghanistan

Bob Herbert's argument (in favor of leaving Afghanistan) is based on the premise that the war is not working and will not, in part because our heart is not in it.

He supports the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine.  Paraphrased: If you ain't in it to plausibly crush your adversary, don't start it.

Because Herbert considers the war unwinnable and the price of continuing the war too high to pay, he does not analyze the after effects of leaving.  In effect, he implies, there is no point to analyzing a course of action that has no viable alternative.

The aftermath of the course he proposes, however, would be an important consideration for political and military leaders, who like to know what they will be facing.

Douthat makes unwarranted assumptions about leaving, which are probably mistaken

Douthat conveniently approaches the leave-or-stay problem from the after-effects of leaving end. What happens, he asks, if we change course?

Unfortunately, he makes three unwarranted assumptions that necessarily determine his answer.  The most significant of these assumptions is about the danger of leaving a security vacuum behind us, when we leave.

This is the same kind of unexamined proposition that typified "domino effect" thinking during the Vietnam era.  That assumption got us into the war and maintained the senseless massacre throughout.

Unwarranted assumptions are generally fatal to reasoned arguments

As a general introduction to the following analysis, unexamined assumptions are fatal to most analytical thinking.

Unanalyzed assumptions usually predetermine the direction of argument.  Being unexamined, and usually unstated, they escape review and, if wrong, inevitably lead to significant error.

Specifically, Douthat cites three reasons for pursuing the current counterinsurgency strategy

Douthat writes that, if our counterinsurgency effort fails, we will have to prop an Afghan state beyond the year 2020.

He reasons that we have to succeed at counterinsurgency because:

First, the memory of 9/11, which ensures that any American president will be loath to preside over the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul. Second, the continued presence of Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan’s northwest frontier, which makes it difficult for any American president to contemplate giving up the base for counterterrorism operations that Afghanistan affords. Third, the larger region’s volatility: it’s the part of the world where the nightmare of nuclear-armed terrorists is most likely to become a reality, so no American president can afford to upset the balance of power by pulling out and leaving a security vacuum behind.

[Ross Douthat, One Way Out, New York Times, 27 June 2010]

 

Douthat is politically correct, but strategically wrong

Douthat’s arguments are political realistic, but geopolitically and strategically inaccurate or unconvincing.

His reasons for staying illustrate what happens when people confuse (conflate) domestic politics with complex historically-based geopolitical realities.

Geopolitical realities often have nothing to do with domestic political perceptions and everything to do with vital, describable, and analytically-supportable American interests.

Restated, geopolitical forces and history are not the same as conveniently sound-bited, domestically-palatable aphorisms.  We Americans ignore this truth at our peril.

Douthat’s reasoning accurately represents the conventional thinking that the President would have to overcome to change political and military course.  But his list of reasons equally illustrates the dangers of making unexamined assumptions to support a probably mistaken strategic Reality argument.

Were the President to follow Douthat’s thinking (as the Administration is currently doing), he may be able to successfully retain the Presidency in 2012.

At the same time, he will almost certainly be presiding over a marked (and unnecessary) diminution of the United States’ economic, military, and moral strength.

Douthat’s analysis dissected ─ the Taliban

Douthat’s first reason for continuing the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan is that no President will want to preside over the Taliban’s return to power in light of memories of the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers.

His reasoning here mistakes domestic American politics for sound military and geopolitical strategy.  No administration likes to admit that it screwed up, but that is different than insisting that continuing a screw up is good strategic policy.

The Taliban is not al Qaeda.  Remaining in Afghanistan to violently oppose the Taliban movement merely increases the likelihood that the Taliban will expand itself into an international terrorist organization, rather than remain the domestic religiously-oppressive group it started as.

A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan is arguably an offense to humankind.  But it is not a direct threat to the United States.  And it is arguably the responsibility of Afghani peoples to oppose the Taliban, if they are so inclined.

If the non-Taliban citizenry is too weak, or too lacking in courage, to oppose a movement that the United States initially booted out of the country, trying to save them now is not going to work.

The Taliban has nothing that the non-Taliban citizenry does not have access to.  Arguing that Americans owe Taliban resistance groups training and funds with which to fend off their fundamentalist attackers is nonsense.  If anyone already knows how to fight (when motivated), it is the Afghans generally.

In regard to American security, the United States can use the same means to interdict terrorist training camps and terrorists emanating from them that we currently do in other nations that we do not currently occupy.

Getting used to opposing terrorism without invading nations would be good practice.  We are currently in only two nations and are already well over our heads in affordably escalating such futile responses.

Douthat’s analysis dissected ─ giving up Afghanistan as a base

Here, Douthat seems to assume that we would lose access to Pakistan’s northwest frontier, and to al Qaeda members hiding there, if we de-escalate the McCrystal-inspired counterinsurgency.

In reality, there is a big difference between Patraeus-McCrystal counterinsurgency (which seeks to nation build Afghanistan) and merely retaining a base of operations.

You generally don’t need to hold onto a nation to retain a logistical and operative foothold there.

Second, it is not clear that U.S. operations inside Pakistan are measurably benefitting the cause of defeating terrorism against the American homeland.

Admittedly, killing terrorist leaders on Pakistan’s northwest frontier with drone attacks is, perhaps, a militarily good thing.

But the evidence also argues that the civilian casualties and the violations of Pakistani sovereignty work against our overall interests.

Innocent casualties associated with the drone attacks motivates replacement of killed terrorist leaders and their forces with substantial numbers of new recruits to the anti-American cause.

Sovereignty violations further weaken the Pakistani government’s already loose control of its fractious peoples.

Though Pakistan may be almost as fictitious a state entity as Afghanistan, it is relatively clear that losing the governmental and military controls that exist there is not necessarily going to benefit anti-terrorism efforts.

In short, Douthat’s statement that Americans should be loathe to give up Afghanistan as a base is a statement about our political inclinations, rather than an assessment of strategically plausible gains to be made on the ground.

Indeed, the concept of retaining a base of operations skips the vitally necessary step of outlining our overall goals and strategy.

Neither the President nor his generals have come up with anything worthy of being called strategy for American anti-terrorism efforts or for pursuing American interests in central Asia.

Consequently, arguing about retaining Afghanistan (as a supremely expensive base of operations) drags the strategy dog by its tactical tail.

Douthat’s analysis dissected ─ Afghanistan as a security vacuum sucking in nuclear terrorists

Douthat writes that the volatility of the Afghan region may serve as a security vacuum, if U.S. forces leave.  He presumes the lack of American-provided security would attract nuclear-armed terrorists.

However, there is nothing to distinguish this part of the world from others that are (a) equally volatile and (b) equally within reach of merchant-of-death inspired efforts to provide banned materials.

It is also difficult to see why it would be a logistical advantage to nuclear terrorists to have to cope with Afghanistan’s and the northwest frontier’s impoverished infrastructure ─ while they are creating and dragging around a nuclear bomb or radioactive material.

At some point, terrorists need equipment to assemble their package of nuclear doom, and they need ways to get it to the target.  Those targets, presumably, are in developed places.

Furthermore, why would you choose to do all this in one of the comparatively sparsely inhabited desert places on the planet?

Afghanistan is a place where Americans might conceivably be able to justify (to themselves) dropping a tactical nuclear weapon to foil terrorist bomb-making.  Better to hide, the terrorists will probably reason (if history is a guide), in the embrace of their urban target-to-be.

Last, since the United States has been completely unable to provide security in contested parts of Afghanistan ─ how can one argue that (a) our failure to provide security today (b) is going to be fatally weaken Afghanistan tomorrow, when (c) we take our inability to provide it home with us?

Douthat’s security vacuum argument is not convincing.

He is, nevertheless, astute in implying that his argument will appeal to (short-sighted) military and (insecure) political types.

Those are the same guys who got our kids into this killing field for no defensible strategic purpose and with no long-term plan.

That pattern is called murderous stupidity.

Time to stop and plan forward

It is time for careless-with-life strategic thoughtlessness and sloppy presidential and military command to stop.

Let’s analyze our real interests in central Asia and come up with a soundly reasoned, anti-terrorist plan to achieve them.

Why do we care?

If our military youth can give their lives in Afghanistan (and Iraq), our political and military brass can certainly try to use their brains and find their political spines in compensation for that gift of courage.

Staying in office should not be the goal.  The goal is honorable service to the nation.

The goal is being or becoming worthy of those who have sacrificed everything for an American ideal that increasingly is tarnished by those who presumably have been elected to protect it.