From preventing failed states to nation building and beyond, mission creep Obama style is now in play in Afghanistan.
Anthony H. Cordesman’s in the UK Times reveals the problem. It’s “clear, hold, build” add “shape”, making a quartet of goals, add nine brigades. That’s right nine. Now Cordesman is not exactly your average expert mouthing off. He was part of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s “Strategic Assessment Group” and is also associated with CSIS in D.C.
Nine brigades is around 45,000 troops in NATO terms.
If you do the math, this would bring our forces up to around 100,000, mimicking U.S. troop strength in Iraq.
But that’s only one part of Cordesman’s column, with another section sounding positively frightening in context with the rest, as it appears Mr. Cordesman believes the U.S. can change the very fabric of Afghanistan, including the foundational aspect of this country’s long history.
The military problems however, are only part of the story. The Afghan Government is corrupt, grossly overcentralised, lacking in capacity, and virtually absent in large parts of Afghanistan. The international aid effort continues to pursue unrealistic medium and long-term goals, and many organisations largely ignore the civil side of war fighting. What should be an integrated civil-military effort, focused on winning the war in the field, is a dysfunctional, wasteful mess that is crippled by bureaucratic divisions. Afghan power brokering, national caveats and tensions, and a failure to make good on pledges waste aid resources at every level.
There’s not an expert that doesn’t realize Afghanistan is “grossly overcentralised… virtually absent in large parts of Afghanistan,” but the notion that the U.S. is going to nation build this barren, extremely rugged land, while the American people nod and foot the bill, is extraordinarily naive, it seems to me.
As for the Taliban, Reagan helped Zia of Pakistan build this group up to what it is today and anyone thinking we can out last them or defeat them is seriously kidding himself. Hekmatyar and Haqqani aside, this next section from Cordesman reveals why my hair is standing on end.
This means shifting from a focus on defeating the enemy in the field to shaping operations that can secure the population centres, clear out the insurgents, hold the cleared areas in ways that provide lasting security, and then build a level of governance, economy and prompt justice that leads to sustained popular support. It is the strategy now called “shape, clear, hold, and build”.
Not to keep the Afghanistan mission simple and just to troop escalation, the New York Times is reporting that the U.S. is also planning to once again target drug lords running the opium trade.
To again remind people, having supported Obama’s original Afghanistan strategy, keeping the country from becoming a failed state so al Qaeda could move in again, this new campaign coming from the military side of things continues to make me nervous and pessimistic about Pres. Obama’s awareness of what he’s contemplating stepping into.
All for protecting Afghan women, the news drip, drip, dripping out of the assessment crew is heading into territory Obama should think thrice before entering.
I’m not prepared to say I’m against what’s rumbling as Obama’s new Afghan strategy, but I’m close.
If Pres. Obama does go in this direction, escalating troops, targeting drug lords, nation building the vast ruggedness of Afghanistan by believing we can decentralize a country that’s known nothing else, as well as eradicating Taliban elements without realizing when we leave they’ll step back in, it will once again prove to me that if he’d been in the Senate in 2002 he would have voted along with other Democrats to preemptively invade Iraq. Because now that he’s on the inside looking out he’s understanding first hand that responsibilities are seen differently when you’re part of the power structure with the military giving you advice, altering how you look at things.
We’re about to see if the Obama who made his anti Iraq war speech really understood what he was talking about. Escalating and expanding his Afghan mission will tell it all.
It will also illustrate that when it comes to military misadventures, Democrats have forgotten the lessons of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but also the lessons of George W. Bush. God help us.
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