In 1841 just before Christmas Sir William Hay Macnaghten, Her
Majesty’s Envoy and Minister of the Government of India, was shot
and knifed to death while seeking to negotiate with the son of the
Afghan leader, Dost Mohammed. The British envoy’s remains were
paraded about Kabul’s bazaar — in parts. In 1997 Taliban fighters
seized the former Soviet-backed leader Najibullah. As happened to
Macnaghten, Najibullah’s body was cut into many pieces that were
then displayed on poles in the bazaar. That was only fifteen years
ago. Not much changes in Afghanistan.
In 1979 terrorists kidnapped American Ambassador Adolph Dubs. He
was killed in an unsuccessful Russian-led rescue attempt
specifically objected to by the American authorities. At least his
body wasn’t mutilated. It is estimated that from 1979-‘89 close to
one million Afghan civilians were killed in the war with the
Soviets. Is there any sign that President Barack Obama or the
Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has any awareness
of these historic moments and that which has occurred in between?
It might be easy to ignore the dusty history of William
Macnaghten’s death, but 1997 is not that long ago nor are the
numerous public assassinations (such as Hamid Karzai’s
half-brother, Wali Karzai, and the key U.S. contact, former
President Burhanuddin Rabbani) that have followed in retribution
for the death of Osama bin Laden since May 2011.
And this is aside from the current calculation of 2,000 U.S.
military deaths in Afghanistan. Should these not be a bit fresher
in the minds of those who ultimately command or seek to command the
80,000 American military personnel still in Afghanistan? Nothing at
all regarding American involvement in Afghanistan is part of the
discussion during the current election campaign.
How exactly does Washington’s leadership expect to extract our
forces from a country that shows little sign of basically altering
a tribally-dominated governmental structure? Waiting until 2014 was
simply a political timetable constructed by President Obama to
create a justification for his final “surge” of men and materiel
that supposedly was deemed adequate to suppress the Taliban enemy
forces while building up a new Afghan Army. In the Obama strategy
these new Afghan troops would be loyal to some imagined democratic
process introduced by that great democrat, President Hamid Karzai.
What part of a near totally corrupt Afghan government and
governmental system does Washington — both Democrat and Republican
— not understand?
America’s part-time allies, Pakistan, told us back in 2004 that
military victory, as the United States usually envisioned it — was
just not possible. They said then what they had said before — that
a partial and temporary political victory might be possible, but no
“European” force could dominate the tribes of Afghanistan for
anything more than a short while. The bearer of the historically
proven advice was their then head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the American-trained
and highly respected Chief of Army Staff today.
As the military brass and their political bosses like to say,
the United States has the greatest fighting force in the world
today. All that is true, but it is also true that the men and women
who make up that force hate to lose. America is a highly
competitive nation. Our volunteer military goes anywhere in the
world and fights to keep enemies away from our shores. These
warriors need to know they are doing a job that will help their
country. That knowledge is being lost in Afghanistan.
The politicians are unable to figure a way to get out. The
foreign terrorists, al Qaeda, have been driven out, but the
indigenous Islamic radicals, the Taliban, who protected them,
remain. In Washington each succeeding civilian leadership is afraid
they will be blamed for pulling out of a commitment. The result is
that they have continued to send troops into battle to beat the
enemy, the Taliban, and the troops succeed. The trouble is that the
war the American troops are fighting is not the war the enemy is
fighting. The U.S. forces win the battles and yet the war is never
won. Nor can it be without occupying the entire country and
building a new nation — which in reality is not our business. It
is the responsibility of America’s civilian leadership to recognize
this and withdraw our military from such situations.
The reason for going into Afghanistan was to destroy the support
base for the organization that was responsible for the attack on
9/11 and planned similar destruction against Western civilization
wherever it could. What’s happened is that the physical side of
that war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan has succeeded.
Unfortunately the various sites for strategic development of
jihad have grown elsewhere. The war has shifted locations
and character of personnel.
As in Vietnam where U.S. troops won the battles but Washington
lost the war because it never really understood the scope of the
North Vietnamese Communist commitment, Afghanistan’s tribal culture
and in-bred ability to absorb the punishment of war survives all
battles. Our intelligence analysts have been saying this all along.
Wars of choice (such as Afghanistan) are won if the political goals
are attainable. The battles of these wars must be fought and won
with concomitant political results. When it becomes apparent that
the battle victories are not aiding in gaining the desired
political result, it is time to withdraw from the field. This is
the case now in Afghanistan.
There is no need to hold to the 2014 timetable unless there is
an intent to maintain a heavy troop presence to provide a secure
forward base in western Afghanistan in expectation of assisting an
Israeli attack on Iran. Is this what is really behind the Obama
strategy?
