Courage

I've thought for a long time that to pull out of Afghanistan would require an act of political courage that we've never seen before, that I can recall, and that we'll never see in such a polarized country. Bob Herbert agrees, it seems:

Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

I think he's right that it's a shared blame. But I think the dynamic is more like this: constant bombardment by the panoply of RWS™ and disgusting inability of liberals to mount an effective response, along with the selfish need of most Americans to equate patriotism with war while avoiding really thinking about it -- much less paying for it -- makes for paralysis. Because overcoming such a charged political climate requires selfless courage; and the screamers know it well, and use it to their advantage.

About this I'm as certain as I am about tomorrow's sunrise: were we to pull out of Afghanistan, there'd be an unprecedented and coördinated barrage of invective from the RWS™, and when the next and inevitable attack on our soil occurs, President Obama would, at minimum be accused of murder. Or worse.

We're wasting lives in Afghanistan, and unending amounts of treasure. In doing so, we're making ourselves less safe, diverting that money from the home front, where it can surely be put to better use. Iraq, on which the jury is still most decidedly out, was, at one time, an actual country. Afghanistan is tribes spread about in the roughest terrain on earth, beholden to no government; and it has been so for centuries. I can't see what would change it; not even were we to send in a million troops and a few more trillions of dollars. If they won't pacify themselves, it'll never happen. They've never been a country.

Nor, were we able magically to turn Afghanistan into a western democracy, or even a pro-western whatever, would we be eliminating terrorist threats. They can come from anywhere, including, as we've seen, within our own borders. Armies can't stop it. Armies fight armies.

It's not worth it. It hasn't been worth it, ever since Bush decided to leave Afghanistan in favor of the debacle known as Iraq. If ever there was a chance to get it right -- and, frankly, I doubt there ever was -- it was then. Now, we're killing ourselves.

I wonder if, deep down somewhere, Barack Obama knows that. In the writings I've read since the McChrystal episode, it seems there's always been a strong contingent in his administration that opposed the "surge" and wanted to find a way out. But, as a war hero once asked, "How do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?" He's in too deep. Perhaps he thinks of the families of those that have died, those living with deep wounds mental and physical, and hates to tell them it was all for nothing. To tell us what we need to hear, that we lost our chance to prevail in Afghanistan when we left it for Iraq, that we've given them more than nine years to find a way and they haven't, that terrorism knows no country and that our wars have done nothing to lessen the threat but rather has raised it by recruitment and by diversion of resources -- to tell us that, to say it was a mistake by Bush to leave and a mistake by him to go back would take enormous and probably impossible political courage.

If Barack Obama doesn't have that unprecedented courage, no politician does; and, sadly, none likely ever will.

[Update: Here's an article by a person of much more credibility than I, of the same opinion about the outcome.]

Not Good

Hard to be optimistic about Afghanistan. Says, only in part, a report from our own government:

DOD and the State Department have experienced a myriad of problems in carrying out this training. For the Afghan Army, problems include attrition rates of about 20%, deficiencies in leadership, frequent absenteeism that can reduce units to 50% of their strength, limited logistical capabilities, and questionable behavior. For the police, training has been hampered by illiteracy, corruption, and the targeting and killing of police recruits and police by insurgents.

Summarizing an April Senate hearing on Afghan police training, the CRS report cites the following problems, which have also been widely noted elsewhere:

* Difficulties in coordinating DOD, State Department, and NATO coalition training;

* Persistent problems in relying on private contractors including poor performance and bad behavior, unauthorized use of firearms and inadequate vetting, and shortages of contractor personnel; and

* Lack of sufficient personnel to manage contracts and insufficient contract oversight including invalid invoices as well as inadequate performance.

Plus, our enemies have never lost there, and, it seems likely, never will. Because of this:

As for the Americans, they won his bitter enmity. By Zaeef’s account—which aligns with those of numerous other prisoners who fell into U.S. hands in the wars that followed September 11th—he was treated barbarically: stripped naked, beaten, interrogated endlessly to no purpose, always kept isolated and ignorant of his situation, made to endure years of physical and mental torture in a condition of legal blackout. In a way, even worse than the loss of his rights is the sheer gratuitous ugliness of his treatment at the hands of American soldiers: “Every day all prisoners were lined up outside and made to stand in the sun. There were about twenty tents that held eight hundred prisoners. Not all soldiers were the same, but some would command us to stand there for half-an-hour before they took the attendance register and almost two hours afterwards. No one was allowed to sit down or stand in the shade, no matter what his condition.” Zaeef adds: “May Allah punish those soldiers!”

In Zaeef’s telling, He surely will.

The Americans have won the hatred of all Afghans, he concludes, and will lose the war as the Soviets lost theirs: the whole world is turning away from the U.S. and coming to see the justice of the Islamic cause. Like any religious revolutionary, Zaeef is certain that history and faith will soon rhyme. His entire story is saturated in righteousness; all the hardships he endures are redeemed by the solidarity of the faithful, whose superiority to non-Muslims is taken for granted. Zaeef doesn’t even pay lip service to the notion of equal rights for all: the only outrage is what’s done to Muslims, because they are Muslims and better than the rest of humanity. This world view is founded on such chauvinism that Americans, with our automatic assumptions about equality, might fail to notice it. “My Life with the Taliban” shows that, while all wars are foolish, some wars are not a matter of mere misunderstanding—that beneath the superficial differences of clothing and facial hair lie more profound differences that can’t be reconciled.

I can't judge the only legitimate rationale for continuing our war there: the extent to which there's a risk of Pakistan nukes falling into al Queda hands, and the extent to which our presence reduces that risk. I don't know. But no matter the worth, it seems a doomed mission: the more so for a country that tries hard to avoid civilian casualties, fighting an enemy for whom causing civilian casualties is their most effective tool. Even considering the Pakistan situation, it approaches inarguable obviousness that the resources we're expending there could be put to much better and more clearly effective use at home. If it's true -- and I think it is obviously so -- that we can't prevent terrorism with armies -- then it follows that our best defense is bolstering the home front. Along with, of course, selective military strikes when intelligence demands it. I think continuing the war is Obama's biggest mistake, by far.

Nor does this article, discussing the war from the point of a recently disembeded reporter, do anything to dispel a sense of pessimism:

.... Yon's outlook is bleak. "Even if the President commits more forces [next year], they will not be effective until 2012. By that time, more allies likely will have peeled off, requiring us to commit even more forces to cover down. We lost crucial time in building the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army and so forth, and today we are paying the price. This is not to mention that the Afghan government is sorry at best and criminal at worst."

He concludes, "The trajectory of this war leaves a sick feeling in my stomach. It's as if I've watched a space shuttle liftoff while sitting at launch control, with full knowledge that it will abort to the Indian Ocean. We are trying to reach orbit with insufficient fuel."

Presently, Michael Yon continues to cover the situation in Thailand. As long as General McChrystal is in charge, his days as an embedded reporter are finished, though he intends to return to Afghanistan independently in the near future.

I also know that were President Obama to make the clear case for withdrawal, the RWS™ would pillory him relentlessly. On the other hand, so what? They already are.

Unconvinced

I thought President Obama's speech at West Point was well-constructed, and well-delivered. It had the needed tone of seriousness, and conveyed the clear impression that he'd thought deeply about his decision. He outlined the history of our involvement, and made a case for the importance of staying involved. If it's true that a sign of a good contract is that both parties think they got screwed (that's what "they" say, although I could never figure out why it wouldn't also be true if both parties thought they got a great deal), then maybe the fact that no one seems to like it means he came to the best possible solution to an unsolvable and impossible situation.

I wish he'd gone the other way.

The threat of terrorism is real. Al Queda and similar groups, and crazy people (like the one at Fort Hood) influenced by them, represent very real dangers. The question is to what extent we can lower the threat with armies. And the answer, I'm pretty darn sure, is: we can't. Haven't. Won't. The corollary question is to what extent we can change the nature of a country like Afghanistan with soldiers or, for that matter, with good works and intentions. To the first part, the answer is the same as above; to the second, given decades of time and trillions of dollars, the answer is maybe there's an outside chance. At impossible cost.

A few guys living in caves have caused our country to burn trillions of dollars and thousands of lives -- not to mention lives not ended but forever altered. There's something terribly sad that, after all these centuries, the decisions of a few men, whether made in caves of limestone or marble, continue to cause soldiers to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, believing in their mission, perhaps, but understanding it not at all. And that, in the two current wars, the most hawkish voices arise from the gullets of those least familiar with war, least willing to wage it themselves. Five-Deferment Cheney, not a single one of whose utterances about Iraq proved true, is still given credence and air time. Kristol, Goldberg, Hannity -- none of those guys ever served, though they all were of an age that they could have, when it started. I did serve, I received wounds; and although my experience in Vietnam was far less traumatic than those of many (MOST) others, I think I know a little bit about what war is and what it does. I have a friend, much more conservative than I, who spent his year saving and restoring bodies blown apart. He hates war, too.

But really, that's not the point. War happens, and until humans evolve way further (assuming there's time left in which to do it), it must. The point is that fighting terrorism is not like fighting an invading army. Terrorism isn't a place. It doesn't need caves or countries. Is it reasonable to think that if we filled every hole in the mountains in Af/Pak, terrorism would go away? Can plots be plotted only there? Does calumny come only from caverns?

President Obama said he's willing to be a one-term president if that's what it takes to get health care reform. Would he make the same stand in the response to terrorism? If so, he'd deserve his Peace Prize. Because it might be only he that could do it. It'd be lost on the remaining Republicans (as opposed to true conservatives) and the RWS™. Supporters of Sarah would maintain their current and constant apoplexy, and reason would flow past them like amnion in Texas.

I suppose we can build nations. Arguably, we did in Japan and Germany after WWII. Vanquished, the citizenry of those countries bought in, or, at least, acquiesced. It remains to be seen what we did in Iraq. Whatever we did, was the cost worth it, in terms of our national interest? What argument is there to be made for "saving" Iraq, that can't be made for so many other failed states on the planet? Humanitarian concerns are -- no sarcasm intended -- laudable. In a split-second decision, I might risk drowning to save a kid; but is it a national paradigm? Do we destroy ourselves to rescue others? And that's the issue: is enough at stake to risk more lives and treasure and, possibly, our very existence as a nation? Of that, I'm not convinced. More specifically, even if we turn Afghanistan into Las Vegas East (okay, how about Cleveland?), will we have improved our own security? The President says yes. I'm not convinced. And, absent that "buy in" by Afghanis, nothing lasting will happen.

Also unknowable is how many more terrorists we will create in the fight. Nidal Hasan, it's said, is one. Without doubt, there are many more.

The speech we need to hear is the one that explains what it really takes to respond rationally to the threat of terrorism: the one that says you can't kill crazy; armies can't find and eliminate cells in all parts of the planet. We need to hear the speech that says we protect ourselves best by police work and intelligence gathering, and by regaining our position of respect in the world. By enlisting others, based on their view of us, to reject and to help find those who would do us harm. By changing the paradigm. And by addressing our own problems at home, not the least of which is a broken health care system that's killing, for lack of access, more people every month than died on 9/11, and has been doing so for decades.

I don't doubt that concerns for Pakistan, where the nukes are, are at the heart of Obama's decision. Nor do I claim to have the sort of knowledge needed to assess the risk of those nukes falling into terrorist hands, and to what extent the outcome in Afghanistan affects that risk. I'll admit, therefore, that I'm just talking into the wind. But I wish, when people are sent off to fight for something, to die and be maimed in the name of some executive decision made -- as always -- by those not actually doing the fighting, that it could be crystal clear that there's no alternative. That was, I'd say, the case in WWII. Maybe in Korea. Not, most assuredly, in Vietnam; Grenada; Iraq. Afghanistan? Probably, at first. Now, after eight years of inattention by F-D Cheney?

There's a pretty interesting report in the NYT about the decision-making process. I'm glad it was as deliberative and careful as it was; it seems the antithesis of what we know of (Bush's non-inquiry into) Cheney's decision to invade Iraq. And yet, by definition, if it took that much soul-searching, it's far from a dead certain choice among the options. So why not take the one in which fewer soldiers have to be destroyed? Why not make the case that in a war unlike any other, old tactics no longer apply, that we need to think outside the ammo box?

I think I know what would happen if he did: the RWS™ and those who find their paranoia and shallowness convincing (which seems to be an ever-increasing number) will rend the country apart. If we can't have a conversation about health care reform, the need for which is obvious, without deceitful demagoguery and cynical slime, we sure as hell can't have one about terrorism. The time when our political system can handle such a thing is long and irrevocably gone.

[For a somewhat contrary opinion, or, at least, an article that sheds some light on the strategy which makes it sound plausible, read this.]