Whither to Afghanistan?

George Will’s recent column, “In Afghanistan, Knowing When to Stop” September 1, 2009 has drawn quite a lot of heat from fellow conservatives, such as Bill Kristol, who wrote: “Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat." With very little NATO support our troops slog on there, in a rather hopeless attempt at nation-building. According to Will, “The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.” After all, we won the war there, what else could we be doing? Will wonders: “Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one.” As David Harsanyi has said, in support of Will, “Or is victory achieved when we finally usher this primitive tribal culture, with its violent warlords and religious extremism, from the eighth century all the way to modernity? If so, we're on course for a centuries-long enterprise of nation building and baby-sitting, not a war. The war was won in 2002.” Haven’t we learned anything from the failed Soviet attempt to control this tribal culture on some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable? Will wasn’t the first conservative to raise the issue of whether or not we had overstayed our rationale for being in Afghanistan. Diana West wrote in, “Let Afghanistan Go,” on April 23, 2009:

This is not to suggest that there is no war or enemies to fight, . . . there most certainly are. But sinking all possible men, materiel and bureaucracy into Afghanistan, as the Obama people and most conservatives favor, to try to bring a corrupt Islamic culture into working modernity while simultaneously fighting Taliban and wading deep into treacherous Pakistani wars is no way to victory -- at least not to U.S. victory. On the contrary, it is the best way to bleed and further degrade U.S. military capabilities. Indeed, if I were a jihad chieftain, I couldn't imagine a better strategy than to entrap tens of thousands of America's very best young men in an open-ended war of mortal hide-and-seek in the North West Frontier.

West, by the way is an outspoken critic about the dangers of Islamic jihad, so she’s definitely not a pacifist or defeatist. West interview retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely who said: "There's nothing to win there. . . . What do you get for it? What's the return? Well, the return's all negative for the United States." Vallely went on to recommend a strategy of the using

"the maximum use of unconventional forces," such as Navy SEALS and other special forces, who can be deployed as needed from what are known in military parlance as "lily pads" -- outposts or jumping-off points in friendly countries (Israel, Northern Kurdistan, India, Philippines, Italy, Djibouti ... ) and from U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups.’ Such strike groups generally include eight to 10 vessels "with more fire power," the general noted, "than most nations." These lily pads become "bases we can launch from any time we want to," eliminating the need for massive land bases such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, by now a small city of 20,000 American personnel who continuously need to be supplied and secured at enormous expense.

"There's no permanent force," the general said. "That's the beauty of it." We watch, we wait and when U.S. interests are threatened, "we basically use our strike forces to take them out, target by target." This would work whether the threat came from Al Qaeda, Pakistani nukes or anything else.

He continued: "This idea that we're going to go in and bring democracy to these tribal cultures isn't going to work. If we have a problem with terrorist countries, like Iran, it's a lot cheaper to go in and hit them and get back out."

In other words, don't give up the battle; just give up the nation-building. "It's up to somebody else to build nations," the general said. "Not us."

While, like most Americans, I was in favor to invading Afghanistan after 9/11, it might be time to reassess our strategy there, and in the rest of the Middle East. American capabilities have been badly wounded by the financial collapse and we don’t seem to be learning from history: Most great empires (including reluctant empires like the USA) collapse after overextending themselves militarily, like Rome and Great Britain, and by living off past productivity and going into debt. While I thought the Iraq War was a strategic mistake, things change. Iraq seems like a more feasible location for any hubris of nation-building. Maybe we should focus where there’s at least a slim chance of a pay off.

The escalating cost of interventionism

With the situation worsening in Afghanistan and western governments finding it increasing difficult to integrate increasing numbers of refugees, the West's invite the world, invade the world strategy is proving to be increasing costly for western taxpayers.

It's now becoming a tiresome trend for example, that every time a western power intervenes in a non-western country, a wave of refugees will leave that country and head for the West.

Since the first Vietmanese refugees arrived in Australia and the US in the early 1970s, western citizens have been discovering that not only do they have to pay for the military and reconstruction costs associated with getting involved in dubious foreign wars, but they also have to pay for the social and economic costs of relocating the resulting refugees.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if most of the West's wars were necessary and were supported by the majority of the population, but in most of these foreign adventures there has been no direct threat to the West and there's also been considerable opposition at home.

The first Gulf war may have been necessary to smash Sadam Hussein's tank army, and therefore his ability to invade his neighbors and monopolise Middle Eastern oil, but neither Gulf War II, or the extended intervention in Afghanistan, were of vital interest to western citizens.

As the domestic counter-terrorist operations in the US and UK clearly demonstrated, it's much easier to combat terrorism on home territory than on ground of the terrorist's choosing.

Since US and UK security forces smartened up their act following 9/11, far fewer people have been killed in terrorist attacks on home soil than in military encounters in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the British and American forces have lost over 3,500 personnel - and that's not even taking into account the enormously greater financial cost of keeping large expediency forces out in the field for years on end.

Unfortunately, financial considerations don't appear to be of much concern to the military planners in the US government.

Billions of dollars have been spent developing smart bombs and cruise missiles that can accurately take out specific targets from a distance. Such weapons would have ideal for taking out the suspected weapons facilities in Iraq or punishing the Taleban leadership in Afghanistan without having to actually invade either country. But just as these smart weapons were finally being perfected, the neocons did a u-turn and decided that the good old-fashioned "troops on the ground" approach was the best way to go.

Previous limited intervention proponents like Eisenhower wouldn't have been impressed.

The precedent for getting involved in unnecessary foreign entanglements was set in the 1960s in Vietnam, where the Americans mistaken Vietmanese nationalism for Marxist internationalism at a time when the countries attention should have focused on the looming economic challenge from Japan.

The involvement in Vietnam also resulted in the great sacrifices made in the Korean War largely redundant. The US and Britain had already made their views on international communism clear in their costly, but eventually successful campaign to push the Chinese back to the 49th parallel. Following this powerful statement of intent against international communism, there was no need to send in large numbers of US troops to a country which had no intention of letting itself become a staging ground for Chinese and Russian advances into South-East Asia. And even if Vietnam had been intend on spreading international communism further East, the best place to make a stand against it would have been in defence of staunchly anti-communist Thailand.

Thanks to the United Nations, the fallout from western intervention in foreign wars is also shared by countries that aren't even involved in the conflicts in question, with neutral Sweden and New Zealand for example, having to accept UN dictated refugee quotas from Iraq.

Currently there is a distinct possibility of US intervention in Somalia with the wave of pirate attacks on shipping in the Indian Ocean. If the US does go in, then the West can look forward to dealing with yet another wave of unwanted, difficult to assimilate refugees.