Barack Obama gave a speech last night proposing to grow the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan from 70,000 to 100,000 and the amount of spending from roughly $70 billion per year to close to $100 billion (excellent nytimes.com graphics). The Afghan GDP in 2008 was $11.7 billion (source). In other words, we will be spending 8X the total Afghan GDP on our nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. Per my earlier posting “Who finances the Taliban?”, some percentage of whatever we spend in Afghanistan will inevitably find its way into anti-American hands. If, for example, 5 percent of our spending found its way into Taliban and Al-Qaeda’s coffers, that would be sufficient to pay 40 percent of the Afghan population to take up arms against us, i.e., virtually every man of military age.
Here is my summary of the transcript of Obama’s speech:
- Afghanistan has been an important training ground for Muslims who have attacked Americans
- Pakistan is also been a place where angry Muslims can do whatever they want, including plan attacks on Americans
- The U.S. will do whatever it takes to prop up the corrupt, unpopular, and incompetent government of Afghanistan so that the local police and military will kill or imprison angry Muslims before they can arrive in the U.S.
- The U.S. will scale back this effort starting two years from now
The speech raises more questions than it answers. If an unlimited number of Muslims can train and plan attacks on Americans in Pakistan and there are no practical restrictions on an anti-American Afghan emigrating to Pakistan, what difference does it make whether or not we turn Afghanistan into some sort of pro-U.S. client state? [let’s ignore for the moment the fact that there are plenty of other countries in the world where an angry Muslim can plan Jihad, including right here in the U.S. in the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan] If the Afghan government became suddenly honest, popular, and competent, why would it imprison Muslims who are anti-American? Is it against the law in Afghanistan to hate Americans or to plan violence against Americans outside of Afghanistan?
I have been reminded of the lyrics of the classic Vietnam-era Jazz song “Compared to What“: “The President, he’s got his war; Folks don’t know just what it’s for”.
The surge is necessary if we don’t want the Taliban to take over and bring us back to the situation of September 10, 2001, but unless it is accompanied by a change in strategy, it is unlikely to work, i.e. it is insufficient.
A big part of the problem is that we insist on treating Aghanistan as a united, centralized state, when all it is and ever was is a loose confederation of rival tribes who just happen to hate outsiders even more than each other.
A plan that does not take this basic fact into account is unlikely to work, just like swimming against the current usually ends with exhaustion, then drowning. Paddy Ashdown has an excellent write-up here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/paddy-ashdown-afghanistans-future-lies-in-strengthening-its-tribal-structures-not-in-its-corrupt-government-1806249.html
Have a look also at Jerry Pournelle’s take. He is a conservative, very much so in fact, but not a blinkered one (he was against the Iraq adventure, for one):
http://jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q4/view599.html#Afganistan
He is incorrect about the genesis of the Taliban, however. Child molestation is apparently an institution among Afghan warlords, and the Pakistani-funded Taliban militia initially cultivated public support by rescuing boys from buggery and restoring them to their families. At some point a people exhausted by war will long for stability of any kind, and even the oppressive but deterministic diktat of the Taliban seemed preferable to the capriciousness of the warlords. The UIC adopted the same law-and-order strategy in Somalia, with similar results.
What astonishes me are the costs: $30 billion per year to send 30,000 more troops. That’s a cool $1 million per troop!
Amazing, cause somehow I doubt it’s the ‘extravagant’ salary that we’re paying grunts these days…
The odd thing about B.O.’s latest move is that presuming that these are new brigades being deployed, which they must be because all the replacement brigades for 2011 have already been scheduled, and that it takes 1 year of training and preparation for a brigade to be deployed he is basically saying that the surge will be for about 6 months. of course this doesn’t even address the issue that since there are certain “down” times required for a brigade after it returns from a deployment that we may not actually have the brigades available to deploy until well into 2011 anyway, making the “surge” even briefer. Maybe we could just put them all in C5s and fly them over Afghanistan a few times and call that a surge.
The surge seems to be used to provide political cover for the eventual withdrawal of US forces, just like how “Vietnamization” provided cover for the withdrawl of US Troops from Vietnam more than three decades ago.
Afghnistan is called “graveyard” of empires for a reason. History doesn’t seem to be on our side. Pulling troops out of seems to be the least objectionable option, among many other objectionable options.
As for dealing with Al Qaeda after the withdrawal, we have many dedicated and intelligent professoinals in the CIA and the military. Let them figure it out. The rest of us have an economy, a dire employment situation, and a looming deficit to worry about. Unemployment and big deficits can hurt the US in ways that Al Qaeda could never even dream of.
American foreign policy has no memory.
Most of the decisions that we make in our personal and business life are guided by two things. The first is, what we think is a good idea at the time. the second is, the dreadful lessons of the past.
American foreign policy has no remembrance of history. There is no acknowledgement of past errors, and the desire to not repeat them. Every decision is made looking forward to a distant but brighter future.
Now during the George W. Bush White House years, this was understandable. Poor Dubya did not know enough history to be able to avoid repeating the glaring errors of the past, and accordingly, with the help of incredible incompetents (his Advisors and Secretaries), managed to lurch from disaster to disaster, followed by his faithful Fundamentalists, who at best, are history revisionists, and are only confused by the truth. These are the people who witnessed the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor, and were able to somehow convince themselves that this blunderer was the person to keep the nation safe! Eeeek!
But I digress.
We now have people in the White House who appear in contrast to be relatively mentally competent, and with a little luck have a faint grasp of history.
First, the idea of war is to get rich by plundering. The entire GDP of Afghanistan would not even pay the interest on the annual expense the US is incurring, taking into account the risk of the investment. So the idea of plunder is out.
Now there is the issue of security. We are transporting huge quantities of weapons and money into the Afghan environment. In battling with them, we are teaching them our battle techniques, and therein lie the seeds of our defeat.
Russia is getting the last laugh. During the Reagan-Bush years, the US clandestinely supplied weapons and money to the Afghan resistance. When the Russians pulled out, the US starved the Afghans, having no further political use for them. The estimated death toll included 1,500,000 children who died of starvation, and the hardening of Afghan resolve against the US and their heartless use of Afghanistan to wage a Western war against the Russians, rather than as a friend of Afghanistan, bred a new cynicism, and a poverty that welcomed money, even terrorist money, to alleviate starvation.
With the US’s economic Armageddon under way, this is an excellent time for Russia to break out the chess pieces. First, a little payback. Give the Taliban some money and weapons, preferably American weapons. Second, a little statesmanship. Give America another black eye, pointing up the weakness of the US military while simultaneously setting the global stage for the demise of America astride the world, the end of the holder of the reserve currency, the sunset of the role of misguided Keeper of the Peace.
The cost of the war in the Middle East is not measured in American dollars. It is measured in reputation. Compromised principles, denial of responsibility, the White House behavior that opened the 21st century was simply beneath the US and all it stands for.
Let’s hope for a strong and principled showing for the future. I’m rooting for Barack, and somehow a good US showing! The Republican posturing that hopes for his failure is tantamount to hoping that the whole of the US goes to the doghouse, and Chinese ethics rule the world.
However disgusted I have been with US behavior (and Americans) during the GWB Presidential fiasco, I believe that the US has enormous powers of self-correction, and that the hearts of the American people are in the right place. China may be admirable for what it has achieved, but I do not relish living in a world guided by Chinese concepts of human rights.
But then, I was born in New Zealand. Although I live in California, what the hell would I know? 🙂
I agree with your sentiments and want to know what a victory consists of? If you can’t define the end goal, then how do you know what troop levels you need and what your withdraw timeframe is? If the situation is so critical why not more allied nation support?
How much of this decision was to buy time for the 2010 mid-term elections? I suspect a lot. One can imagine the uproar from Republicans if Obama had announced a decision to withdraw instead. We would be in the middle of a cacophonous maelstrom about our defeatist, Communist President right about now.
Given the scorched-earth obstructionism of Congressional Republicans – and the murky prospects of any future course of action with regard to Afghanistan – I suspect Obama decided the political cost of a withdrawal was too great. Small comfort to the troops though.