Here’s Fareed Zakaria on Afghanistan in 2008:
Remember that the United States and its allies have close to 100,000 troops in Afghanistan now. Keeping them there is the right commitment, one that keeps in mind the stakes, but also the costs, and most important, the other vital interests around the world to which U.S. foreign policy must also be attentive.
and here he is in his Washington Post column ten years later in 2018:
And yet, the United States cannot stay in Afghanistan forever. Our presence distorts U.S. foreign policy, tying significant resources to an area of limited national interest. It also creates an inevitable dependency for the fragile Afghan government. The United States is spending $45 billion a year on security and economic aid for Afghanistan. That’s more than double Afghanistan’s entire gross domestic product .
Other than the passage of time and an additional 2,000 American dead what has changed? Are the risks or our interests less now than they were then?
The greater question: why do people whose every prescription is wrong continue to receive some of the most valuable column inches in the United States to give bad advice?
It’s weird how élite pundits never seem to reference anything they’ve written longer ago than five minutes, but once you realize that people like Michael Reynolds and Co. have their opinions spoon-fed to them from the editorial pages of the Washington Post, their inconsistency and historical amnesia become perfectly understandable.
Different from Mr. Zakaria and I guess many pundits I think that if you can subject your war plan to cost-benefit analysis, you shouldn’t go to war.
“The greater question: why do people whose every prescription is wrong continue to receive some of the most valuable column inches in the United States to give bad advice?â€
Well that’s a good question, but I think you know the answer. It sells ads.
1) 10 years does make a difference.
2) I think people were overly impressed with the “surge”. Many people that that it could be replicated in Afghanistan. It was a real topic of debate on the Small Wars Journal as I recall.
While I think that is why he and many others supported staying in Afghanistan then and leaving now, i.e. this is not a matter of inconsistency, we know now that he and a lot of other people were wrong in 2008. Why do we give them space? Because all of the serious foreign policy people almost always advocate for war or intervention. It has been that way for a long time. Until we can tolerate having people who express anti-war opinions w/o calling them cowards or Chamberlains, that is not changing.
Steve
As to the greater question, “It’s Friday” is as good an answer as any.
What are our interests in Afghanistan? Take a look at a map. Afghanistan borders both Iran and Pakistan. Those borders are long, unfortified and porous. The great bulk of our, and Israel’s, HUMINT (human intelligence) flows through the tribal connections in the region.
Relate that to steve’s comment above:
I may be mistaken here but I think that Afghanistan didn’t border Pakistan and Iran any more ten years ago than it does now. Either
A. We aren’t as interested in that now.
B. We shouldn’t have been as interested in that then as we were–in other words our intervention in Afghanistan was an error or
C. War is being subjected to cost-benefit analysis.
If you can subject war to cost-benefit analysis, it is not a just war.
steve,
Granted, but guys like Zakaria won’t acknowledge they had different opinions in the past. We probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if he’d started with, “this is what I believed in 2008, and let me explain to you why that has changed.”
Guys like him, Boot and Kristol begin each day tabula rasa, which must be remarkably liberating.
Actually, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say the American “intellectual” élite live in a state of deliberate amnesia. It’s no wonder Americans are historically ignorant when such people control the discussion.
Dave- Already answered. At that time, it was thought the surge was successful and that it could be repeated in Afghanistan. After 10 years of trying to repeat it in Afghanistan, it has failed. 10 years of failure matters a lot no matter what countries you border. (And, no, they had not tried a surge in Afghanistan before 2008.)
Steve
“Relate that to steve’s comment above:
10 years does make a difference.”
The intelligence networks in that region have been in place since WWII. I saw traffic that pointed to stations in Iran in the early 1960s. I was in Peshawar, Pakistan during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The allegiances have changed, the strategic interests have not.
“The allegiances have changed, the strategic interests have not.”
True, but in 2008 people thought we could have a surge and “win”, leaving a pro-Western government in place.
Steve
2008 is different from 2018, but the strategic fundamentals with Afghanistan have not changed.
Steve might be right that Zakaria changed his mind. Certainly, a lot of people believed a “surge” in Afghanistan might work, despite the protests of those of us who knew better. However, it’s hard to know if he changed his mind or not because, like all pundits, introspection is largely absent from his writing.
As far as the regions importance as a center for intelligence collection and intrigue, that still exists, but it’s not nearly as important since the Cold War ended. Regardless, we don’t need troops there to collect intelligence. In fact, we can probably collect better intelligence if we didn’t have troops there. Currently, the bulk of intel resources are devoted to force protection, supporting operations, and counter-terrorism.
“However, it’s hard to know if he changed his mind or not because, like all pundits, introspection is largely absent from his writing.”
Yup. That and they almost never admit that they were wrong.
Steve
Zakaria is expressly arguing against the surge in the earlier article, which is entitled “Why We Don’t Need an Afghanistan Surge.” The piece sounds like a Bidenesque proposal of maintaining a troop garrison until a political solution is available.
PD- My take is that he thought back then that the war was still winnable. In the second article, he doesn’t seem to think that anymore. He wants a diplomatic solution so we can get out.
Steve
Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/impatient-trump-drives-u-s-push-peace-talks-afghanistan-n895636
Through any Afghan withdrawal is a couple of years out. It is likely there will be a withdrawal this year, in Syria. Pat Lang’s analysis of that civil war convinces me the US is positioning itself to leave.