Afghanistan=Vietnam II

What’s
Wrong Today:


The
front page of today’s New York Times carries an article about the possibility
of a full
troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: 


Increasingly
frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is
giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States
forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no American
troops there after next year, according to American and European officials.


The Zero Option
means that the US would not leave any troops in Afghanistan after 2014. That
has not been the plan. We have been negotiating with Afghan officials about
leaving a small “residual force” in-country. The exact numbers had not been
fixed, but what was most often floated was between 10,000 and 14,000 troops. Currently,
the 63,000 American troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to be reduced to 34,000
by February 2014. In the past, the White House has said the vast majority of
troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.


The US
relationship with Mr. Karzai reached a new low after an effort by the US to
begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar. In June, the Wrongologist reported
that the US might begin talks with the Taliban:


After 12 years of
war, senior US officials now say direct talks with the Taliban are scheduled to
begin within the next few days. The news came as President Obama wound up a
meeting with French President Hollande at the G-8 summit in Northern
Ireland.  The possibility exists that direct talks with the Taliban may
begin in the next few days.


Mr. Karzai promptly
repudiated the talks with the Taliban and ended negotiations with the United
States over the long-term security deal that we require in order to keep
American forces in Afghanistan after 2014. Mr. Karzai said the negotiations
would not resume until the Taliban met directly with the Afghan government,
essentially making the United States
responsible for persuading the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government.


Karzai’s
big issue in the long term security deal was his insistence that the US guarantee
Afghanistan’s security. These guarantees, if agreed, could compel the US to
attack Taliban havens in Pakistan after 2014, when the Obama administration has
said it hoped to dial back the CIA’s covert drone war there.


All of
this was bad enough, but what started Mr. Obama down the path of the Zero
Option was personal. From the NYT:


A videoconference
between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly,
according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr.
Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to
negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan,
leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.


Mr.
Obama responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost propping
up Mr. Karzai’s government.


But according
to the NYT, there’s more:

Meeting with
foreign ambassadors recently, Mr. Karzai mused that the West was to blame for
the rise of radical Islam. That was not a message that the envoys, whose
countries have lost thousands of people in Afghanistan and spent billions of
dollars fighting the Taliban, were happy to hear.



You
don’t have to be a fan of Mr. Karzai to know that there is some truth in his
comments. The ambassadors didn’t welcome it, because the truth hurts.

There
are similarities between our experience in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. In both
cases, our partner was a government riddled with corruption. Both were the
longest wars in American history, testing the patience of the American people
even if more domestic attention was paid to Vietnam.


In
each case, peace talks were pursued but the end result was a slow extrication
resulting in more deaths and without prospects for changing the outcome.


So,
should we be glad to leave early or sad to leave early?


The
Wrongologist watched back-to-back episodes of “Operation Afghanistan” on NatGeo
last night. It was two hours depicting US troops walking around and through
barren plains and poppy fields of Helmand Province, looking for Taliban to kill.


Our troops are undoubtedly brave, but their mission, as depicted, serves as a
metaphor about all that is wrong about our presence there: Little or no interaction with Afghan civilians, a heavy reliance on
air and armored power to flush out enemy fighters and, at the end of the day
(or days) nothing that anyone could describe as progress. The best result was
that no American was killed or wounded.


The overwhelming takeaway from the program was that no matter how many Taliban
were killed, we would not control the province, or the country as a whole. It
was hard not to conclude that our mission is futile.


It
is beyond time to leave Afghanistan to its own devices. That may sound cold, hard
and cruel. And it is for those Afghanis who may have benefited from greater
freedoms, women, children and peace-loving men.


But
there are limits to what a great power can do for some and against others.


Afghanistan
is an ancient culture. One in which Afghani fathers still sell their maiden
daughters to buy TV sets or cars. It has seen centuries of war. Afghanistan
needs more centuries to emerge from its traumas and its dominant Islamic ways
under the best of conditions.


And
at that point, what will it look like?


Let’s
load the planes tomorrow.  Start the airlift out. And yes, let’s end the
shipment of caskets from Afghanistan to Dover over another war that should
never have been fought in the first place. THAT is an accomplishment we can all
be proud of, well maybe, except for Sen. John McCain.  


On
our way out the door, we should meet with the Taliban. We should make the following
point: Should you support radical, disruptive Islam inside or outside your
borders, you will see more drones than you see in your worst dreams, and we
will focus on killing only your leaders.

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