Yesterday I posted my response to The Daily Demarche’s question “What if we had never invaded Iraq?” It seems apparent to me that the only credible scenario under which we would not have invaded Iraq is if we had been otherwise occupied and the most conceivable speculative cirmcumstances under which that might have happened are if we had invaded Afghanistan with a large-scale Desert Storm-scale force.
This isn’t that far-fatched. I’ve heard it suggested by John Kerry (if I understand what he was saying correctly) and other prominent politicians so it’s clearly a mainstream position and I suspect it was probably suggested to President Bush at one time or another.
I’m convinced that such a course of action would have been a thorough-going disaster and that’s what prompted my “What if…” post.
But not everyone agrees with me. Eric of Total Information Awareness in his own speculative response to Dr. Demarche’s question diametrically opposed my scenario.
In an email to Peter Rice whose observations on Afghanistan tallied closely with my own I wrote the following:
I’m afraid that Eric hasn’t considered some basics:
- Where do you stage a massive invasion force for Afghanistan?
- How do the Afghans react to such an invasion?
- How do you apprehend Osama bin Laden or high-ranking Taliban without entering Pakistan?
- Could Pakistan survive this kind of invasion next door?
- What would the neighbors think?
Peter was good enough to answer my email and, with his permission and a little cosmetic reformatting, this is what he had to say in a fantastic note:
Let me start off with a bit about me. I am retired from the US Foreign
Service (the diplomatic service of the US Dept. of State), my last post was New
Delhi, India, and I served four years as an officer on active duty in the US Amy,
of which one was in Vietnam. I have not been to Afghanistan, but have been
to Kashmir twice. I have read a lot about the British period in India, from
1600 to 1947. On one flight over Afghanistan was during a clear day and I got
to see much of it, and what I saw was lots of tan mountains and valleys with a
few spots of green (vegetation) and very tiny spots of blue (water).As to the questions above, a few comments:
- Where do you stage a massive invasion force for Afghanistan?
Only in the surrounding
countries. But the roads are very bad in Afghanistan so it is very difficult to
get the logistic support in and the bigger the invasion force, the more
support is needed. There are just two passes from Pakistan and they are easy to cut or delay support. The Red Army had great problems supporting their
approximate 200,000 troops in Afghanistan.- How do the Afghans react to such an invasion?
They love to fight and they hate outsiders, be they
outside of Afghanistan or outside of their tribe or their language group, etc.- How do you apprehend Osama bin Laden or high-ranking Taliban without entering Pakistan?
Firstly, lots of efforts and lots
of luck to locate these folks (and knowledge of Arabic and the various
languages of Afghanistan) is required. Secondly, immediate sharing of information
about the location of OBL et al with those who can get them. Thirdly,
SAS/special forces/CIA teams that can quickly and with little notice grab OBL et al,
be it in Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan.- Could Pakistan survive this kind of invasion next door?
The Pakistani masses know that their country is
run by the elite, and that the elite of the elite are the commissioned
officers of the Pakistani Army (the Navy & Air Force are less relevant). What these
commissioned officers think is very important, and they are VERY dissimilar
from the Pakistani masses. The commissioned officers are based on the Indian
Army model (the Indian Army was split in August 1947 and the Indian and
Pakistani armies for the most part are very similar) with English being the language
of the Army (ditto for the Navy and Air Force) and most having grown up
speaking English and thinking in many regards like an Englishman (of 1947). If these
officers oppose an American invasion, then the Pakistani Govt. would oppose
it. These officers believe that their prime directive is to protect Pakistan
from invaders, mainly the Indians. If we were to invade Afghanistan via
Pakistan with the permission of the Pakistani Army, there ought to be few problems
with the masses and the Muslim leaders. And the few problems would be resolved
by having the police be a bit strong armed with those causing problems.- What would the neighbors think?
The Indians want anything that causes
problems for Pakistan and for Muslims. The Iranians would not be pleased, in
particular as American forces (in strength) approached the Iranian border, and
much the same for the former USSR republics.I believe that the biggest problems were the USA to have used massive force
to invade Afghanistan would be two:
- Logistics, and the ease of Afghans and others to cut the supply lines.
- The love of fighting and the hatred of outsiders by the Afghans, and that
this would be directed at a large American force.I believe what we have is about all that we could have in Afghanistan,
several thousand troops (many NATO) in and around Kabul (protecting the Afghan
Govt.), troops at a small number of other locations for logistic support and
aircraft (attack and transport), and a very small number of SAS/special forces/CIA
personnel who work with Afghan forces to seek out and attack al Qaeda and
Taliban forces in Afghanistan.I chat from time to time with a retiree from the CIA who does some contract
work with the CIA. He returned recently from several months in Afghanistan.
He was part of a review group that traveled extensively in Afghanistan and he
said that almost all of the roads were like the very worst test tracks one
could think of, often FAR worse. Such bad roads greatly limit the ability to
support any large military force and for it to maneuver.
I want to thank Peter Rice for his great contribution to the discussion and hope you find it as interesting as I have.
In order to be fair to my point though, I never suggested that we invade Afghanistan with a “massive force” on the scale of Desert Storm, or even in the 200,000 range. I think you are reading between the lines too much, or responding to popular suggestions that were not necessarily my own. I certainly never advocated penetrating into Pakistan. Here is the offending paragraph:
Thankfully, due to the lack of competition from Iraq, the Bush administration was able to maintain a robust military and intelligence detail trained squarely on Afghanistan, which also monopolized the bulk of the money, resources, and other nation building assets in our arsenal. Although the road was bumpy, and the process resulted in many setbacks, the Taliban was nearly eradicated, opium production was severely curtailed, the war lords were brought to the table (sometimes forcibly), President Karzai’s influence extended well beyond Kabul, and Afghan’s had a cause for hope and optimism beyond any Afghan’s recollection. In addition, rumors abounded that Bin Laden perished either in the fierce siege of Tora Bora, or the related flanking maneuvers undertaken at the Pakistani border by a large US military presence that was never diverted to Iraq.
I think my version of a “robust” presence and “large military presence” would fall far short of Desert Storms count, or the 200,000 number the Soviets went with. My main problem is, as described in James Fallows’ article in the Atlantic entitled Bush’s Lost Year, that we withdrew many valuable intelligence and other assets from Afghanistan and put them into Iraq. Fallows got these arguments from career specialists as well, with credentials similar to Mr. Rice’s.
As an unrelated matter, I think the link above was to a different post of mine. The “What If” post is here:
http://tianews.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-might-have-been.html
And thanks for the link.