In reviewing my thirty or forty posts on Afghanistan both here and at Outside the Beltway over the period of the last eight years or so, I noticed something interesting. There is a sort of Friedman unit in the president’s plans for withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan. In 2008 when running for the presidency Candidate Obama spoke of complete U. S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2011. More recently he’s been talking about an end to our combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 and complete withdrawal by 2020.
This post is more of a lament than a complaint. I gather that either a responsible withdrawal has proven more difficult than the president had hoped, the Afghans’ ability to field a military capable of fulfilling the role that we’ve been filling is less than he’d hoped, or withdrawing earlier was more of a hope than a plan.
It’s been mostly wishful thinking. The problem continues to be a disengagement that’s politically acceptable domestically – ie. a disengagement where the US can at least save face.
A couple of things I was wondering while reading that NY Times piece on Obama and the WOT (indefinite detention, renditions, drones, etc.), is how much of a dissembler is Obama? The piece gave numerous examples of meanings attributed to promises that were later clarified to have a far different meaning. Some of the promises (like Gitmo) appear to have been made without much thought, and then reality changes the promise. Others, like defining civilian casualties from drone attacks to not include any man 18 yrs or older, appears to be constructed for the purpose of lying. The former I don’t believe is dissembling, the latter I do.
The second question is how much is Obama driven by the desire to accomplish some goal in the WOT, and how much is just giving himself and Democrats cover from Republican attacks that he/they are weak and irresolute?
Andy, the “saving face” to which you refer doesn’t come from the grassroots, “left” or “right,” as a matter of fact. The need comes directly from the political class and the purposeful construct it creates. The grassroots would have been just fine with an exit from Iraq by 2006, even earlier, and an exit from Afghanistan many years ago.
I should add, I pretty much think the executive can and should have about as much discretion on these things, and the American people should vote for executive whose judgment they trust. But I don’t think I understand what Obama’s judgment is anymore.
Ken Hoop,
I never said anything about left or right. I’m sure the grassroots on the left would have been fine with a 2006 Iraq exit even though I’m sure they would have used it as a political bludgeon against Bush and Republicans. But the saving face issue (probably not the best term) is bigger than mere partisanship.
The Iraq surge was brilliant as a domestic political strategy. Withdrawal from Iraq became so uncontroversial that both parties are trying to get credit for it. And if Iraq goes down the tubes, we now have enough distance that the public will blame those stupid Iraqi’s who just don’t get democracy.
IMO, President Obama tried the same strategy in Afghanistan and it failed. The next Friedman Unit is 2014 and the next hope is that the Afghans will be “good enough” that withdrawal won’t be controversial and it won’t appear that we lost the will to endure or were chased out by AQ and/or the Taliban.
The talk about 2020 is just that – they are promises that Congress is unlikely to keep. As soon as we’re gone Congress will pull the plug, just as they did after Vietnam.
PD Shaw,
This might help explain the administration’s judgment a bit better.
And, as that post notes, it’s not just the administration.
Andy, here’s a tip:
The segment of the “left” which is led around by pretend “left”
DNC political class members who are, for example,
ignoring or downplaying Obama’s drone bombing barbarism,
are not good examples of the “grassroots.” But the leaders are good examples of the corrupt political class’s phony left wing.
And the corrupt political class created AQ.
andy, while I think tactical, not strategic thinking, is part of it, that link doesn’t help answer some of my questions that are more focused on what the tactical (let alone strategic) thinking is on drone attacks in Yemen, or even what was the thinking on Libya, which was categorized by the Administration as something akin to a drone attack, and thus not subject to a public policy dispute.
The Bush II Administration developed a strategy post-9/11, centered on the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists or state sponsors of terrorism. Invading Iraq made strategic sense to them (more so than Afghanistan), and the risk of destabilizing countries was higher under this strategy (thus tacit compromise with Pakistan). The Obama administration appears to be more risk adverse (to boots on the ground) and less risk adverse (to destabilizing states) for no strategic reason.
What tactical reasoning is behind drone attacks on some crazy religious dude in the deserts of Yemen? Part of me thinks Obama sees the national security threat as some guy blowing up a plan or building on his watch with conventional explosives. The other part thinks that Obama is building a list of non-civilian casualties to counter criticism that would endanger domestic objectives.
Ken,
However you choose to characterize it, it’s still a domestic political problem. The elites from both parties don’t want to “own” anything that could be perceived as a “loss” in Afghanistan. That fear of the political consequences was a big part of what kept LBJ in Vietnam even after he knew the war there couldn’t be won in the traditional sense. The small minority of “grassroots” who prioritize political consequences lower than the objective of ending our involvement is even smaller today than it was during Vietnam. They are not a big enough political force. Saving face and the national honor of the United States and the desire to avoid another “loss” like Vietnam are, IMO, why the goalposts keep moving WRT Afghanistan.
Let me put it this way, Andy. Check the results of the ABC News/Washington Post Afghan War poll of April 5-8, 2012.
A political elite which had only an average amount of tendency toward corruption could take the results, move US troops methodically and promptly out, explain why the exit now
in accord with the sentiments of the grassroots and escape without a scratch.
But we are not talking about an average tendency toward corruption, we are talking Evil Empire levels of corruption.
Thus the mere suggestion is absurd.
Ken,
Yes, people want out of Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean they want out under any and all conditions regardless of any consequences. That’s the problem with these kinds of polls. I do think, however, the balance is shifting more toward GTFO regardless attitude.
PD,
I think Zenpundit explains Libya quite well.
The strategic reasoning is driven by the fact that there are a pretty limited set of options to go after AQ in places like Yemen, Somalia and the Pakistani hinterlands. The leadership are in territory beyond the control of the government and intel-based Drones attacks are viewed as the least-bad option.
I also think your statement might have a faulty assumption – are boots on the ground more or less destabilizing that drone strikes? IMO, boots are much more destabilizing and much more risky. Drone strikes may be destabilizing to, for example, Pakistan, but how does that compare to the option of an invasion or weekly cross-border JSOC raids?
Tactically, the goal is to disrupt AQ as much as possible which is why the administration is concentrating on leadership targets. Normally, this would be a covert war against AQ using deniable proxies, but drones are easier.
I think that “boots on the ground” are more destabilizing in both a negative and positive sense. Air power, whether via bombardment as in Libya or via drone strikes as in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, cedes all control of the outcome to whoever does have boots on the ground.
That’s why I think that NATO activity against Qaddafi was imprudent, mischievous. Yes, it helped remove Qaddafi which was a Good Thing. But is what replaced Qaddafi a Good Thing? That remains at least arguably (and, believe me, the Russians and Chinese are arguing it) our responsibility and to be seen.
If we know that a terrorist organization is operating in a country with either a complicit government, or no effective government, direct action against the terrorist group is a valid option, in my opinion. And it does not place a burden on us to repair that complicit or failed state.
In other words, I don’t think, “We have no effective government,” is a defense. It’s the job of the people of that state to create a government and to have the rule of law. One of the consequences of their failure is that we may decide to Drone their resident bad guys. Fix your country and we promise we won’t be throwing missiles at your terrorists. We don’t fire Hellfires into London.
But don’t tell me you’re immune by virtue of being incompetent at self-government. That’s making us the victims of someone else’s failure.
That hearkens back to something I posted about some time ago, viz. here. There’s a swathe of what is, essentially, ungoverned territory running from the Bosphorus to the Indus and similar large expanses of territory in Central Asia, Africa, and South America. It’s something you might think the United Nations would be empowered to handle but the anti-colonialism that dominated a good deal of the world during the 20th century has, unfortunately, rendered the UN incapable of addressing the problem these ungoverned territories present. I’d estimate that a third of the membership of the UN is composed of territories that we dignify as countries but which in actuality are little more than city-states or several city-states surrounded by ungoverned territory.
Much of that territory is what Tom Barnett refers to as “the Gap”. Those areas have mostly never known government other than colonial government. It’s possible that they never will. His proposal that the U. S. be empowered to, not to put too fine a point on it, do whatever we jolly well want to keep the peace in these areas is an obvious non-starter.
I honestly don’t know what is to be done about these ungoverned territories. None of the alternatives are particularly palatable.
@andy, I think the Bush II strategic assumption (not necessarily mine) is that we are still operating in a world of states, and the problems of terrorists with WMDs or states supporting them is a state-centered problem. If you eliminate the state’s ability to control its territory, you risk worsening the problem. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we attempted to address the problem by replacing the governments, at great cost and uncertain outcomes. Whether you agree with it or not, I think that is a strategy, and one that doesn’t fit the Obama administration’s actions in Pakistan, Yeman and Libya.
And is Zenpundit simply saying that there are anti-American regimes out there and we will F**K them up if we get a chance (and they are not China or Russia), because that is in “the American Interest”?
PD,
Yes it was a strategy and it didn’t work out too well. As a result no one seriously considers invading Somalia or Yemen to get at AQ. Of course there is our “ally” Pakistan. No one with any sense seriously considers that the way to keep AQ out of those countries is through the method of nation-building, armed or otherwise. Policymakers now understand (finally) the limits of military force as it was applied in Iraq and Afghanistan. They aren’t about to engage in similar campaigns even if we had the forces, which we don’t. So instead we get JSOC and drones.
Except we’re not doing that. The areas of Pakistan we’re striking are areas where the Pakistani government doesn’t have actual control. Much of western Pakistan is still run under the same British colonial system that’s existed for more than a century. We look on a map and see territory labeled “Pakistan” and assume it’s like any country, but the reality is that most of what is Pakistan could be called colonies of Punjab.
Yemen and Somolia are even worse. There are are lot of places in the world where the recognized government doesn’t actually control all its territory. So what do you do when the enemies of America operate in those areas?
Secondly, I think you may be missing the core of Zen’s argument, which is that the Administration, and US policymakers generally, don’t look beyond the immediate. Hence we do whatever we want in Libya without considering the long-term cost of pissing off the Russians and Chinese (or we assume, stupidly, that pissing them off doesn’t matter). We’ve become used to to being able to “get our way” and do what we want, but our military, economic and political hegemony can’t last forever. Libya was, at best, a tactical victory and we can pat ourselves on the back for saving Benghazi and overthrowing a dictator, but what was the strategic benefit to the US? There wasn’t any beyond helping our Nato allies who could not do the mission without us. We probably owe them that considering how long they’ve stuck with us in Afghanistan. Perhaps that’s reason enough, but there is still a price to be paid.
Andy, unfortunately, with whom I have been very patient, is part of the problerm, not the solution.
He actually believes a healthy political class who were not imperialists but nationalists, could not bring to fruition the natural
non-interventionist impulse of the American grassroots when it is unmanipulated by mattoids and sociopaths whose lust for a world police state and Pox Americana has inflicted untold damage on that world which now ranks America and Israel as the most dangerously objectionalbe entities on the planet.
Hence because Andy believes there would be “consequences” to the Nation should it dismantle a part of the Empire while exiting
Afghanistan, he believes the citizenry, unpropagnadized by the
elite sociopaths, also fear “consequences.”
This is the same puppetry which FDR manipulated when he goaded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to convince a theretofore healthily and naturally unconvinced organic American grassroots
that we had to give half of Europe to Stalin to save it and ourselves.
Andy believes a grassroots unmanipulated by an imperialist
class which intentionally lied about Saddam’s WMDs and
which staged the Gulf of Tonkin to avoid fighting the VC on the streets of Los Angeles, naturally fears the “consequences” to the Nation (rather than the Empire) of immediate and prompt exit from Afghanistan.
Sad.
@Andy
The linked article makes the point better than I could. I was not aware that the Russian were heavily involved in Libya, but it explains a lot. I was wondering why Russia had nothing to say about the military intervention. It is about power and money.
The childish notion that countries act for any reason other than their self interest is silly. World politics is not a popularity contest. Russia and China do not need to be schooled about what they should do. That the Obama administration actually believes this nonsense is scary.
“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”
Ken,
First of all, you are confusing analysis with advocacy. I would also appreciate it if you didn’t try to be the expert on what I believe and, in addition, lecture me about what you think I believe. If you are confused or curious about what I actually think then all you have to do is ask. Thanks.
Secondly, my analysis, as simple as I can make it, is this: The elites running the country believe that we must withdrawal from Afghanistan under conditions that appear favorable to the US (ie. a face-saving withdrawal). The reason is because they fear the American people will punish them at the polls if it looks like we “cut and run” or were chased out by the Taliban or whatever. Maybe their thinking is wrong – unlike some I won’t pretend to know with certainty what goes on in their minds. But this fear of “losing” a war isn’t new and isn’t unusual. We know from the LBJ tapes, for example, that one of the reasons he stayed and escalated in Vietnam was because of that exact fear of the political consequences of withdrawal. He thought that if he appeared “soft” and left Vietnam not having “won” then he and his party would lose power. If you go back further and look at the Philippine insurgency following the Spanish-American war, you’d find there was a similar dynamic there.
Now, maybe all these political elites are wrong in their perceptions of how the public would react. That is certainly possible. But in my judgement the fear I described is what is driving their actions and explains why an Afghan withdrawal keeps getting kicked down the road.
Elites have an imperative to lead, not follow the whims of the masses. In these cases, however, the elites constructed
the inorganic world policing imperalist attitude to begin with.
The American political class elite is unsalvageable at this point.
It is comprised of rootless groups which do not regard America
as a nation but as a collection of malleable, necessarily atomized
fodder to serve as such for the finance plutocracy and its m-i complex adjunct.
A healthy elite even at this point would have no problem
calling forth the natural America First impulse of the
core-even as that elite rather than form a new party or parties hypothetically utilized both of the two party apparati in such manner as to remove all the aforementioned
LBJ-type fears from the equation.
… In these cases, however, the elites constructed
the inorganic world policing imperalist attitude to begin with.
Nonsense is best left to professionals.
“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”