If you have any doubts about my claim that it will be hard if not impossible for any president to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, you have only to consider this editorial at the Washington Post to understand my reasoning:
Though most Americans wish to end the Afghan mission, there is little reason to abandon the country in haste. Of the more than 2,300 Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2001, 15 had died through July this year, and 53 since the drawdown in 2014. If the result of a quick withdrawal is the collapse of the government and the reestablishment of sanctuaries for terrorists, the United States could be dragged back into the conflict at a far greater cost — as happened in Iraq three years after the pullout. That’s not to mention the loss of all that this country has invested, in lives and treasure, in helping to build Afghanistan’s democratic political system and extend basic rights to women.
An acceptable agreement with the Taliban would condition the final withdrawal of U.S. troops on a settlement between the insurgents and the Afghan government. It would also provide for a continuing presence of U.S. counterterrorism forces to strike the Islamic State and other emerging terrorist threats. If Mr. Trump agrees to a pullout that omits such requirements, he will risk turning what could still be a successful outcome for the United States in Afghanistan into a shameful failure.
Another 15-20 years tops is all that would be needed to secure victory. Counter-insurgency is and always has been a strategy doomed to fail in Afghanistan. All the Taliban needs to do is wait us out. We have no strategic interest in Afghanistan as long as the country is not serving as a staging area for attacks against us. That points to a counter-terrorism strategy rather than counter-insurgency. The editors of the WP continue to support CI despite its abject failure.
“there is little reason to abandon the country in haste.â€
In HASTE? It’s been 18 fvcking years. These dumb-ass editors are saying the same things they were saying a decade agora if it were some new, brilliant idea.
Mr Schuler,
One a completely unrelated topic, completely inappropriate to August in Florida, do you have any recommendations for books about the Iditarod? A grandparent of one of my daughter’s friends recommended Gary Paulson’s book Winderdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod a while back, and I finally got around to reading it. I enjoyed it quite a bit and wondered if there were any other good books on the topic. I figured I’d pop in and ask you about the matter, as you are the one subject area expert I know on this topic! As a bonus, bananas came up in my Twitter feed today, and I thought of you and he Gros Michels again.
So here I am asking about that esoteric topic.
Regards,
Icepick (…)
Saw someone recommend The Cruelest Miles in one of your earlier posts, so I’ve requested that from my library. Good books to read in Florida in the summer.
If you go to war you should go in to win, and as quickly and bloodlessly as possible. The best possible outcome of a war is a clear winner and a clear loser. Holding actions and counterinsurgency campaigns just give the opposing side hope of victory and thus the motivation to fight on endlessly. The absolute crushing of Nazi Germany and its allies has led to the longest period of peace that Europe has ever experienced, whereas the Armistice of the Great War simply led to the Second World War, because the German people simply couldn’t accept that they had been beaten.
Winterdance is good. We have a lot of books about the Iditarod as it works out. Sled Dog Trails by Mary Shields (first woman to complete the Iditarod). My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue.
On the fictional side, Murder on the Iditarod Trail by Sue Henry is passable.
Another of Paulsen’s books, My Life in Dog Years is good, too.
Nice to see you’re still around and kicking Icepick. Hopefully, Florida is treating you well. We moved out and settled in Colorado – worse taxes but better weather, fewer bugs and a landscape that includes a z axis.
“abandon the country in haste”
Countries that did not attack us or any of our allies:
Afghanistan, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Yemen.
Other countries that have not attacked us or any of our allies:
China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela.
All of our recent wars were free choices, and none of them is really over. Not one of them was in any way forced or required. Afghanistan offered to negotiate regarding the terrorist camps, and was rejected. Sudan offered to arrest Osama bin Laden, and was rejected.
Somalia was a UN project, but the children and grandchildren of Aidid are still running his show, and we still have some Special Forces operating in country. That’s 27 years and counting.
Our corrupt and incompetent Ruling Class are aggressive imperialists. There is no end to their wars of conquest. At some point they will attack a power than can hurt us badly.
I would add that there has never been an explicit authorization of counter-insurgency activities in Afghanistan or anywhere else. It’s at least arguable that counter-terrorism had authorization but not counter-insurgency.
IMO the present war against Yemen was fomented by our use of drones against enemies of the Yemeni government. It’s a pretty easy sell. A host government identifies somebody they don’t like, tells us they’re Al Qaeda, and ka-boom. Our human intelligence in the Middle East and North Africa is something between poor and non-existent. We just take the host country’s word for it.
Thanks for the book recommendations, Dave. I’ll give a couple of them a try, as I seem to be on an adventure kick again, reading-wise.
…
Andy, still out here, mind completely fractured by Twitter. In 2018 I started trying to rebuild my consciousness by forcing myself to read books. Last summer & fall was WWI. Then a bunch of pulps. Now, adventure in the great outdoors!
Glad to hear you like Colorado. I’m probably stuck in Florida until it is submerged in the rising oceans. Keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, lads!