Still in the war zone: A soldier from the 36th Infantry Regiment, on alert Friday just after an IED blew near his strongpoint in Kandahar Province. (Reuters)
Going to Afghanistan after 9/11 was a necessity; staying there in force was a mistake — and dragging out our failure is a travesty.
We invaded to smash al Qaeda and punish the Taliban for hosting them. Mission accomplished. Within six months. The correct military action would have been to remove our conventional-force presence while the jihadi bodies were still warm.
Instead, ideologues safe at home declared that we had to nation-build where there was no nation. Or “we’d have to go back.”
Going back would have been an eff of a lot cheaper.
And while we tied our forces down to worthless Afghan real estate, al Qaeda just went elsewhere. (Rule No. 1: When fighting a mobile enemy, stay mobile.)
Then we politicized our commitment. Hating George W. Bush with the bigotry only a simpering faculty can muster, American liberals damned the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. No matter that, had Bill Clinton done the deed, they’d have heralded him as the greatest liberator since Abraham Lincoln.
But impending elections required the left to play up national security. So the fool’s errand in Afghanistan — turning savages into apprentice Americans — became their “good war” by default.
Running for office, Barack Obama promised to “fix Afghanistan” after Bush’s “neglect.” Elected, Obama found himself trapped in a commitment that looked like a loser, but one he had to appear to honor. So we got a surge that was on the meter before it began.
As military strategy, it was nuts. Politically, it split the difference brilliantly.
And our troops continued to be killed and maimed (1,793 killed in action and almost 18,000 wounded in action to date) for a mission the new president didn’t believe in.
Ironically, his surge was backed by an unholy clot of conservative think-tank wonks to whom war was all theory; of generals bent on self-glorification; of the groupies who praised those generals in print, and of politicians unable to accept that they’d called Afghanistan wrong.
They all were willing to fight to the last private.
But the simple fact the wise men missed was that killing terrorists works, while trying to buy the love of their fan base doesn’t.
Now President Obama — a breathtaking politician — congratulates himself for ending the surge he ordered and ending the war he expanded. He found a mess, sent young Americans to die without making a difference, and managed to duck the blame — while leaving the conservatives who backed his troop surge hanging. The guy is good.
Just not at strategy. A recent report by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF — the multinational headquarters in Kabul) states that Afghanistan is worse off than it was pre-surge. And the report cites the hard numbers.
If there had been some slight chance of a positive outcome, it collapsed when Obama allowed Hamid Karzai to steal Afghanistan’s first “free and fair” presidential election.
Afghans may be uneducated, but they’re not stupid: They saw at one glance that all our blather about rule-of-law democracy was donkey dung. We let “our man in Kabul” grab the country as his kingdom, then backed him with our troops. (And he didn’t turn out to be “our guy,” after all.)
As you read this, our troops are still bleeding to keep the erratic, treacherous Karzai in power. And we lie to ourselves that the Taliban — stronger now than it was when Obama took office — has no popular support.
But it’s Karzai who lacks support. Taliban grunts will die for their cause, while “our” Afghans won’t die for Karzai — even after we’ve spent a decade cajoling them.
Local morale, not American money, is going to decide this conflict. People get the government they’ll fight for.
Meanwhile our strangely silent left has yet to complain that three-quarters of our Afghanistan casualties occurred under Obama. Remember the left’s shrill outrage over casualties in the Bush years?
The joke is that Obama didn’t intend to fight. His actions were for domestic political purposes. So he gladly embraced a politically correct counterinsurgency doctrine concocted by a P.T. Barnum in battle dress. (The doctrine had scored a fake win in Iraq — which is now Iran’s bitch.)
The New York Times ate it up.
The make-nice doctrine denied that Islam played any role in Islamist terrorism (which didn’t exist, anyway). The keys to success would be massive aid and “respect for Afghan culture” (presumably, the abuse of women, rampant corruption and cruelty). We imposed suicidal rules of engagement on our troops in the field — as if they were the threat. And we failed: Afghans still refuse to want what we think they should want.
But careerist generals played along, blaming our troops when anything went wrong. Think-tank Napoleons declared that their theories hadn’t been given sufficient time and resources. The fawning journalists wrote books explaining why the generals who did the most damage were geniuses. And embarrassed politicians won’t cut their losses but demand to “stay the course.”
And the troops? Who carried out a cynical, hopeless policy in good faith? When they get home, they can get in line for food stamps.
We’re no longer trying to save Afghanistan. It’s about saving reputations inside the Beltway.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and former enlisted man.