Afghanistan policy after the McChrystal scandal—The New Yorker:
The military key to counterinsurgency is protection of the population, but the difficulty in securing Marja and the delay of a promised campaign in Kandahar suggest that the majority of Afghan Pashtuns no longer want to be protected by foreign forces. The political goal of counterinsurgency is to strengthen the tie between civilians and their government, but the Afghan state is a shell hollowed out by corruption, and at its center is the erratic figure of President Karzai.
The Shrine Down the Hall: a look at some of the bedrooms America’s war dead left behind. Link.
Yes, it’s coated in a kind of diplomatic double-speak, but listen to it:
“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.
This is an eight year war and the US’s top general is saying he doesn’t think the other side can be defeated without an emergency influx of more troops.
Military planners are talking about a 50 year war in the “Arc of Instability” that stretches across the Middle East. What would a 50 year peace plan look like?
Quote: In this perspective, Iraq is only an immediate front, with Afghanistan and Pakistan the expanding fronts, in a single larger war from the Middle East to South Asia. Instead of thinking of Iraq like Vietnam, a war that was definitively ended, it is better to think of Iraq as a setback, or better a stalemate, on a larger battlefield where victory or defeat are painfully hard to define over a timespan of five decades.
Martin’s commentary: With President Change just redistributing the wars, it certainly seems like there’s long-war thinking going on behind U.S. military involvement.
Hayden says the useful comparison might not be Vietnam but the Indian Wars: long, drawn out skirmishes across a wide field with irregular fighters and shifting alligiences. Good as far as it goes, but those wars ended with colonization, with more non-natives living in the West than Native Americans.
Perhaps more meanacing is the idea of the classic British counter-insurgency wars that attempt to break the spirit of the occupied country through long drawn out conflict. This war depends on being fought outside of camera range—a U.S. officer is quoted saying: “you want to whack bad guys quietly and cover your tracks with humanitarian aid projects.” Hayden says Abu Grahib-style prison is being expanded in Afghanistan and Pakistan is just as much of a powderkeg ready to explode.
Via JohanPDX
Yes, you shoot off enough guns, fire enough rockets and drop enough bombs and you’re going to end up killing civilians and alienating the locals.
“Dozens of Afghan civilians were killed in American air raids in western Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday. But Afghan officials gave far higher death tolls, ranging from 100 to 130 or more. The continuing toll in civilian casualties has been a principle factor in turning many Afghans against the fighting against the Taliban.”
