Michael Steele is Right
A number of Democrats and “liberal” pundits are smugly attacking GOP chairman Michael Steele for telling the “inconvenient truth” about Afghanistan:
“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”…
“It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan.”
Steele is exactly right. As they so annoyingly say on CNN, let’s “break it down.”
“this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in”
To be clear: in SteeleSpeak, “United States” means the Pentagon, not the American people. Under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon did invade Afghanistan, but only with limited goals: 1) destroying Al Qaeda and 2) ”regime change,” removing the Taliban from power in Kabul. As Wikipedia summarizes:
The stated aim of the invasion was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda members to be put on trial, to destroy the whole organization of Al-Qaeda, and to remove the Taliban regime which supported and gave safe harbor to Al-Qaeda.
Rumsfeld never intended to destroy the Taliban altogether, just remove it from power in Kabul and substitute a pro-U.S. regime. Rumsfeld began attacks on October 7 and drove the Taliban out of Kabul one month later on November 12. Most of the remaining Taliban surrendered on November 25-26.
At that point, “regime change” was complete. It was never a “war” in any meaningful sense, since the Taliban never stood a chance against U.S. airpower and artillery. Rumsfeld’s mission was accomplished, and he quickly began planning the true war of “Bush’s choosing”- Iraq – which of course had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
By December 2001, Afghanistan became a “nation-building” exercise of exactly the kind that George Bush campaigned vociferously against, but no one in Washington noticed. And so it remained until President Obama went through a lengthy review and decided to “escalate” U.S. forces from 40K to 100K with the vague goal of “stopping the Taliban’s momentum,” whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean.
“It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan.”
Obama did exactly that during the 2008 campaign – and it’s exactly what John Kerry did four years earlier.
Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan.”
The Pentagon isn’t stupid, and they study the lessons of the past – including the defeats of the British and Soviet “land wars” in Afghanistan.
And the Pentagon spends trillions on “conventional” and “unconventional” war strategies that it can use instead of old-fashioned “land wars.” That’s what Steele means by “other ways to engage.”
What exactly are they?
The first is called “counter-terrorism” – killing terrorists – as opposed to “counter-insurgency” (COIN), which is just a conservatively-correct euphemism for “nation-building.”
The cheapest form of counter-terrorism is drone missile strikes, where targeting relies on cameras in the drones. Unfortunately those cameras often mistake wedding parties for terrorist gatherings, resulting in bloody massacres that undermine Afghan and allied support for the pointless U.S. occupation.
The next step up in counter-terrorism is “special forces” – boots on the ground – who theoretically collect human intelligence from locals so their targeting of terrorists is more precise, resulting in fewer wedding party massacres.
The problem with “boots on the ground” is the heads and hearts attached to them, which die when hit with bullets, which in turn produce casualty reports in U.S. newspapers, which undermines U.S. public support for the pointless U.S. occupation.
Apart from “counter-terrorism,” the “other way to engage” in Afghanistan is through regional diplomacy. That means working out a deal among all interested parties so all the fighting stops.
The inconvenient truth for the U.S. is that we simply cannot afford $100 billion per year forever in a futile effort to “stop the Taliban’s momentum.” Sooner or later we will need to find “other ways to engage,” as Michael Steele said.
So Michael Steele is right. And the sooner we begin a serious discussion of those “other ways to engage,” the sooner we will find a way to bring our troops safely home and end the pointless, disasatrous, unaffordable occupation of Afghanistan.
Update 1: Michael Steele’s truth was way too inconvenient for the GOP and the Pentagon, so his spokesman Doug Heye chose to cower behind the skirts of “the troops” so he could play the “blame game” against President Obama and the Democratic Congress.
The Chairman clearly supports our troops but believes that success of the war effort in Afghanistan requires the ongoing support of the American people.
The responsibility for building and maintaining that strategy falls squarely on the shoulders of the President. Like so many Americans, Chairman Steele wants to hear an explanation from President Obama on what his strategy is for winning the war in Afghanistan. The Petraeus hearings were an opportunity – a missed opportunity – to do that. Instead, all we hear from the President is criticism of his predecessor for doing exactly the same thing.
At the same time, Congress must stop playing politics with the war and provide the funding our troops need to win and come home.
Apparently no one told Heye that every House Republican voted against funding the troops both in 2009 and again yesterday.
Tags: Steele, Right, Michael