Afghanistan: Where Empire Goes to Die by Michael Scheuer

An excerpt:

Tenet, by the way, chose senior officers to manage the Washington end of the post-9/11 CIA Afghan effort who had little and, more often, no Afghan experience; most were specialists in Africa, Europe, or Latin America and ignorant of the Muslim world. The damage these neophytes did was limited only because a dozen or so superb CIA Afghan/al-Qaeda specialists were deployed on the ground and ran the Afghan show themselves. For those brave men and women, it surely was a case of lions in the field being led by asses in Washington. (I recount this tragic-comic story in my Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq.)

So what did airpower, a few thousand U.S. personnel, and many millions of dollars buy America? Well, Mr. Tenet’s plan bought control of the Afghan cities—which each foreign invader of Afghanistan since 300 BCE has easily won—while allowing the Taleban, al-Qaeda, and their allies to flee to the Afghan mountains, Pakistan, and elsewhere to prepare to fight another day. Ignoring not only CIA’s experience, but also that of the British and Soviet attempts to defeat an Afghan foe and occupy the country, the United States by mid-2002 found itself controlling the major Afghan cities, protecting Karzai’s puppet regime that ruled no farther that Kabul’s environs, and facing an undefeated and rebuilding Islamist insurgency based beyond its reach in a Pakistani safe haven. These factors were dominant by late-2002 and have steadily worsened. Today, the Taleban al-Qaeda, their allies, and an increasing flow of non-Afghan Muslim fighters from across the Islamic world have seized the initiative from a too-small-for-Afghanistan—which is bigger than Texas—U.S.-led military coalition made up of American, British, Canadian, and Australian fighters and a large number of pseudo-military European well-diggers, medical inoculators, police trainers and school-house builders.

In sum, the Bush administration’s use of the Tenet plan has enabled the West’s defeat in Afghanistan and the return of an Islamist regime to Kabul.

Could it have been different?

Historically speaking the answer to that question is a firm “Yes.” There have been two foreign military operations that have worked in Afghanistan. The first was led by Alexander the Great in 329 BC, and his army faced many of the same problems now confronting the U.S.-led coalition: hit-and-run attacks, intense tribalism, the Afghans’ seemingly innate talent for insurgent warfare, impenetrable terrain, xenophobia, and the enemy’s determination not to stand and fight to the finish. Alexander solved his quandary by applying a combination of annihilating military action whenever possible with a process of planting communities of Greek colonists in Afghanistan. (The book to read on Alexander’s Afghan campaign is Frank L. Holt’s Into the Land of Bones.)

Because the U.S. political elite refuses to use to the utmost its taxpayer-funded weapons of savagery, and because not many American or NATO-country citizens would be excited about relocating to Afghanistan, Alexander’s model simply isn’t applicable.

My $.02.

The Soviets tried the annihilating approach—1 million killed, 5 million fleeing to Pakistan. As Wikipedia put it, "In the 1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan."

I agree with the NYT op-ed of a few weeks ago. For various reasons Afghanistan is becoming the "right" war. Having decided that the surge in Iraq worked, Republicans want to extend the model. And having decided the surge didn't work, but wary of looking like softies, Democrats are lining up to push an Afghan surge.

But while keeping the Taliban from real victory in Afghanistan is not going to be hard, giving Karzai a real victory will be nearly impossible. The fact is, although Karzai doesn't control much, the rest is not controlled by the Taliban. And it's not going to be, so long as we are accommodative about different powers in the country--warlordism is not some special Afghani disease, but the normal case, unfortunately. We need to see moderate support for the central government, support for infrastructure, denial of terrorist camps and Taliban control over southern cities as a sufficient goal. Do that for a while and the country may get better in various ways. That would be a change!

Afghanistan was a great object lesson for countries that would harbor terrorist enemies of the United States. But it's huge, rugged, poor as dirt and nearly ungovernable. Nor is it central to anyone. Baghdad is arguably the center of Islamic civilization. Whether you think it possible or not, victory for democracy there would resonate everywhere in the region. Unless the US makes Afghanistan central—and loses—nobody in the Middle East will care what happens there.

I think you're oversimplifying a few things Tim. On the surge--rather than use 'it worked' or 'it didn't work'--I would say it made things better particularly for our troops and particularly to get some movement in the right direction from the Iraqi govt. However the typical (not Ron Paul) republican viewpoint seems to replace the failure behind the 'mission accomplished' rhetoric with 'the surge worked' rhetoric. To say as McCain does that he was right about the surge neglects the fact that he was wrong about invading Iraq in the first place, wrong about WMD, wrong about following Bush 2 all the way down the line and his bellicose comments throughout his campaign leads me to believe he would rather use force than diplomacy.

However bad Saddam was he became for the present administration the stand-in for Osama's crimes. Osama's people are still running around and no real justice for the 9-11 victims is possible until they are in fact brought to justice. It's been almost 7 years and IMO anyone looking at this objectively would say american foreign policy over that time has been an abysmal failure.

I wasn't making a claim either way about whether the surge worked, I was trying to thumbnail the rhetorical path that's leading both parties to commit to unrealistic goals in Afghanistan. Republicans see it as an extension of the plan that worked in Iraq. Democrats see it as an alternative, "right" war to replace the one that was wrong and didn't work.

I certainly think keeping Afghanistan free from fixed terrorist bases and interrupting them—terrorists "of global reach" not Pashtuns who hate non-Pashtuns—generally is a good idea. But if we're talking about hunting Bin Laden, trying to secure towns all over Afghanistan is the wrong way to do it. We need good intelligence and rapid, ready deployment of commandos who—like as not—will be going into Pakistan anyway.

This is more a response to the subject line than to the quote, but I once heard the observation that naval empires have substantially shorter lifetimes than land-based empires. If it wasn't a screw up in Afghanistan, it would have been soemthing else, no matter who's in the White House.

What would it say if by March 31, 2009 OBL is in American custody? Obviously the Republicans don't think it would be such a good thing, after all they've had seven years to get him. Why do you suppose they haven't? Do they need him for something? Of course they could frog-march him down Pennsylvania Ave as an October surprise. It would be like RR sending Carter out of the country on Inauguration Day, 1980 to welcome the Embassy captives back from Iran. What a coincidence they were released on that day! They were released on the same day RR was sworn in. Boy, those Iranians sure were afraid of what RR might do to them. Why he might sell them banned military parts in exchange for money to support the criminals running around the jungles of Latin America or something. After all, even when the law specifically prohibits something, it's only effective if the President says so, right. Isn't that what we mean when we talk about being a nation of laws? the President gets to decide?

Republicans make me sick!

I can fully see the Republicans saving OBL for the moment of maximum impact.

Now THAT would be a cynical ploy!