Swordsmyth
07-03-2017, 02:51 AM
The window during which President Donald Trump can extricate U.S. forces from the mess in Afghanistan and blame his predecessors for the calamity is rapidly closing. A few more weeks, another surge, and he will be the third president to be saddled with this war; it will become his. The move to allow the military to determine (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/should-the-secretary-defense-or-the-president-set-troop-21263) how many more troops to send to Afghanistan would have been a wise one—let the professionals make such tactical decisions—if it reflected the president’s decision to stay the course. Such a decision would follow a review of the war involving not just the Pentagon, but also the intelligence community, the State Department and the staff of the National Security Council, among others. However, that is not the way this president makes decisions. He just left it to the Pentagon to sort out.
The Pentagon has its own agenda. It does not want to admit to having lost another war. It cannot wash its hands of what is happening in Afghanistan and blame its predecessors the way Trump can. At the same time, the Pentagon knows damn well that even when there were twenty times as many troops in Afghanistan as there are now, we did not win the war. The Pentagon seems set on just limping along (http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/the-new-normal-sending-troops-afghanistan-forgetting-they-20912), which seems better than admitting defeat. No wonder none of the generals refers to winning the war in Afghanistan; they use phrases such as, “creating stability” (Gen. Allen) and a V-Day for the War in Afghanistan “may never be marked on a calendar.” Retired Gen. David Petraeus expects us to fight in Afghanistan—for generations, adding “we have been in Korea for 65-plus years…”
Whatever drives the Pentagon to hold the course in Afghanistan, the reasons given for the surge do not pass the smile test. To argue that the Afghan forces need more training and advice after sixteen years raises the obvious question: why would one more year make a difference? Gen. Petraeus argues (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/petraeus-went-afghanistan-reason-need-stay/) that the United States should continue its mission in Afghanistan “to ensure that [it] is not once again a sanctuary for al-Qaida or other transnational extremists, the way it was when the 9/11 attacks were planned there.” The argument that if we do not fight them there, we will have to fight them here is so threadbare it hardly conceals the hollowness of the argument.
First of all, the Taliban (which we organized and armed to fight the USSR (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-the-soviet-defeat-afghanistan-tells-us-about-syria-17733)) are not a transnational terrorist but a local insurgency. The terrorists who attacked the U.S. homeland in 2001 were not Taliban but Al Qaeda. True, the Taliban hosted them, but they were, for the most part, Saudis whom the Afghans considered foreigners. They did treat them as guests, in line with the very high value the Afghans put on hospitality. The Taliban paid a very heavy price for this mistake. There is no reason in the world to expect that they would seek to repeat it. They are fighting the United States because they want to run their country, not ours.
More at: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/time-say-goodbye-afghanistan-21387
The Pentagon has its own agenda. It does not want to admit to having lost another war. It cannot wash its hands of what is happening in Afghanistan and blame its predecessors the way Trump can. At the same time, the Pentagon knows damn well that even when there were twenty times as many troops in Afghanistan as there are now, we did not win the war. The Pentagon seems set on just limping along (http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/the-new-normal-sending-troops-afghanistan-forgetting-they-20912), which seems better than admitting defeat. No wonder none of the generals refers to winning the war in Afghanistan; they use phrases such as, “creating stability” (Gen. Allen) and a V-Day for the War in Afghanistan “may never be marked on a calendar.” Retired Gen. David Petraeus expects us to fight in Afghanistan—for generations, adding “we have been in Korea for 65-plus years…”
Whatever drives the Pentagon to hold the course in Afghanistan, the reasons given for the surge do not pass the smile test. To argue that the Afghan forces need more training and advice after sixteen years raises the obvious question: why would one more year make a difference? Gen. Petraeus argues (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/petraeus-went-afghanistan-reason-need-stay/) that the United States should continue its mission in Afghanistan “to ensure that [it] is not once again a sanctuary for al-Qaida or other transnational extremists, the way it was when the 9/11 attacks were planned there.” The argument that if we do not fight them there, we will have to fight them here is so threadbare it hardly conceals the hollowness of the argument.
First of all, the Taliban (which we organized and armed to fight the USSR (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-the-soviet-defeat-afghanistan-tells-us-about-syria-17733)) are not a transnational terrorist but a local insurgency. The terrorists who attacked the U.S. homeland in 2001 were not Taliban but Al Qaeda. True, the Taliban hosted them, but they were, for the most part, Saudis whom the Afghans considered foreigners. They did treat them as guests, in line with the very high value the Afghans put on hospitality. The Taliban paid a very heavy price for this mistake. There is no reason in the world to expect that they would seek to repeat it. They are fighting the United States because they want to run their country, not ours.
More at: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/time-say-goodbye-afghanistan-21387