Washington Times Pentagon reporter Bill Gertz reports that counter-insurgency expert Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster has been tapped by Gen. Petraeus as a top aide. Human Events editor & ex-Marine & ex-Regan defense official Jed Babbin questions whether our counter-insurgency strategy in Afhganistan can succeed. JB frames the issues squarely:
Republicans can no longer afford a frivolous debate on the war. They have allowed George Bush's nation-building strategy to morph into Obama's without attempting to undertake the most urgent task in war: if what you are doing isn't working, you have to start at the beginning and examine whether you're fighting the war the right way, or even fighting the right war.
Let us admit that what we are doing in Afghanistan -- or anywhere else -- isn't working. Defending Obama's approach to the war simply because it's a continuation of Bush's leaves Republicans -- and all Americans -- in the attitude of Britain's pre-war government. As Churchill described it in 1936, it was "decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."
War, as Sun Tzu wrote about 2300 years ago, is of the most vital importance to the State, the province of life and death, the road to survival or ruin. In short, a war is to be defined as a matter of national survival to which the state must devote all its intelligence, will, and resources to winning. This we have not done. So let us begin by evaluating the war in Afghanistan in those terms.
Is the war in Afghanistan a matter of national survival? If so, how must it be fought?
If we withdraw from Afghanistan, what will the consequences be for America?As defined first by Bush and now by Obama, the answer to the first question is no and makes the second moot. The goal of that war was to rout al Qaeda in Afghanistan and to prevent that nation from becoming the sanctuary from which terrorists could and did mount attacks against the United States that it was before 9-11.
But al Qaeda, as Gen. Petraeus testified in his recent confirmation hearing, is now relocated to Northwestern Pakistan. As its Somali branch al Shabab proved with last Sunday's attack in Uganda, al Qaeda has the ability to mount attacks outside the nations in which its forces are based. And, as the resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq shows, when U.S. forces begin to withdraw, it quickly returns. It will return to Afghanistan too, soon after we leave.
After he explains why he thinks the current strategy will fail--corrupt Afghan government, unreliable partners (Pakistan) JB argues for a new strategy:
Does that mean we cannot withdraw in the foreseeable future?
It does, especially if we stay on the current course. But if the current strategy doesn't lead to victory, why should we maintain it? In short, we must not. The options we have are few, and all are anathema to Obama.
We cannot win the kinetic war before we win the ideological war which we have not begun to fight. Our strategy should be to split Islam by condemning all -- Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, Yemenis, even Americans -- who support or excuse the hegemonic ideology that so many Islamists follow. We defeated communism not only by containing the Soviets' military adventurism but as importantly by attacking their central beliefs. We have to do the same to the Islamists.
Soviet Premier Brezhnev said that communism would inevitably rule the world. The Islamists' belief parallels his. Obama's administration demands that our enemies be labeled without reference to Islam. As long as that continues, we cannot win the ideological war.
Terrorists don't respect borders and neither can we. Any nation that harbors them should be on notice that we will strike wherever we can find enough terrorists to justify the expenditure of ammunition.
And the most important -- and most difficult -- task is to stop nations from sponsoring terrorism. They must be attacked openly when all else fails. We have failed, utterly, to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. Because no peaceful option exists, we should do whatever is necessary -- with the Israelis or alone -- to destroy Iran's ability to build and deploy nuclear weapons.By doing so, we would send an unmistakable message throughout the Islamic world: America will defend itself and its interests by whatever means necessary. The result will be an enormous diminution of Iran's and other nations' support for terrorism.
JB proposes we supplement of efforts with active use of cyberwar against terror-sponsoring nations.
Meanwhile, a top EU official says the US - Europe alliance is "not working"--a sharp reversal from the euphoria with which Bush-43-phobic Europeans greeted The One's election. Foreign policy expert Richard Haass writes that the Afghan War is neither winnable nor worth fighting. He notes that Team Bush, after ousting the Taliban in 2001, decided against trying to build a nation & declined to join European reconstruction efforts. Team Obama is nation-building, supporting corrupt Hamid Karzai, who lacks legitimacy. Haass argues for a policy of decentralization, short of formal partition, that cedes Taliban-controlled areas & tries to contain them. Then he would draw down troops levels & focus on helping Pakistan's government fight Taliban inside that country. Haass rejects the spillover theory, that trouble in Afghanistan means trouble in Pakistan. His piece is cogent and worth a full read.
Bottom Line. The US faces momentous strategic choices in the next two years. Above all, we must transition away from manpower-intensive models of operation in failed states. These will not in the future be politically sustainable. We lack a large enough military to rotate large troop numbers and thus put our entire ground force at risk of permanent damage. And we lack a neo-colonial administrative apparatus to run things in failed states, even if the locals would tolerate such superintendence. We need to apply force remotely, with ground presence limited to advisers & special ops. There are too many potential failed-state havens around the Islamic belt for us to repeat either Iraq or Afghanistan models of war fighting and governance.Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, WMD, Foreign Policy, Conservative Politics
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