Neck Deep In The Really, Really Big Muddy

For those of you who are not old enough to connect with the title of this post the reference is to a song done by Pete Seeger on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour which metaphorically dealt with the war in Vietnam. The US was busily and obviously losing the war at the time.

The title of Seeger's song was "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy."

Now we are neck deep in the really, really big muddy.

Compared to Iraq or even South Vietnam the war we are fighting and quite evidently not winning in Afghanistan is one tough mother. Arguably it is the toughest war we have ever fought.

Several factors are conspiring to make the war even more difficult for us to win--or, as the minimal policy outcome, not lose. Some of these are self-evident.

There is the continuing slow-motion stability campaign in Iraq which is not being made any easier in its endgame phase by the attitudes and orientation of the current Iraqi Government.

The Shiite dominated government may well blow its chance to integrate the Sunni based Sons of Iraq and Awakening Councils into the political and governmental life of the nation. Baghdad may not be able to reconcile its differences with the Kurds over Kirkuk and the surrounding oil rich region. Neither of these purely domestic and long standing contretemps may be solved satisfactorily. Both carry the potential to result in the energetic disassembly of Iraq.

Iran looms over both Iraq and Afghanistan. A malign shadow. The shadow of Iran is far, far darker over its neighbors than it is over Israel. A mere atom bomb or two will not change that reality.

However, the way in which the US deals with Iran can either lighten the shadow or deepen it to the most evil shade of black. At the moment nothing the US is doing or apparently intends to do is moving matters to the grey side of black.

The final, self-evident complication for our efforts in Afghanistan is Pakistan. The Pakistanis have been energetic of late. Piling up bodies (or at least claiming to do so.)

Whether or not the beefy military operations in FATA have been killing or otherwise discommoding Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, one thing is sure. These operations have been generating refugees at an impressive rate of knots. By some estimates somewhere around a quarter of a million people have either ended up in the same type of standard issue squalid refugee camps which have been for so long a centerpiece of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As has been demonstrated not only in the Palestinian conflict but over a century ago in the American equivalent of these camps, the "Indian" Reservations, dumps of helpless, hopeless human wreckage make excellent breeding grounds of revanchism, revenge and people eager to kill.

It is not unfair to predict that the Pakistani government and military (to say nothing of others in the world, such as the Americans) may be buying many years of a very bad future unless the FATA operations as well as those in the borderland of Afghanistan can be brought to a quick and successful conclusion so that the refugees can be resettled in their own homes and land.

The Geek does not conclude that this desirable eventuality is likely.

Thus, both short-and long-term, the chronically instable conditions of life on the Pakistan-Afghanistan boarder is a profound complication for the American effort at counterinsurgency, stability enhancement and nation-building in Afghanistan.

Other impediments to the US achieving its minimum necessary policy goal of not-losing in Afghanistan are not so self-evident. One is the demonstrated capacity of al-Qaeda and other trans-national groups to engage in horizontal escalation.

Across Northwest Africa the Islamist insurgents have been whoopin' it up. While life in Morocco or Algeria or Tunisia has not become either as noisy or endangered as in Somalia and Sudan, the slope is both slippery and steep.

When looking at the Horn of Africa, one cannot ignore the sealanes. While the Jolly Pirates of Puntland may be seen as simply simple fisherfolk thrown out of their accustomed work by violence (and, some may actually fall in this category), the direct material linkage between the rewards of piracy and the money needs of Islamist groups cannot be ignored or belittled.

The seizure of the tank and weapons laden Ukrainian ro-ro has brought the situation in the Red Sea and adjacent waters into the global consciousness. The UN is finally and, as usual, belatedly considering a resolution against piracy. Several EU states with France in the lead have entered into discussions aimed at forming an anti-piracy patrol. Yemen has called upon the Red Sea littoral states to join with it in anti-piracy operations.

Of course, the US has six ships "surrounding" the hostage ship and its crew, "monitoring" instead of dealing effectively with the "situation."

And, the Russians are coming.

Perhaps the Russians, as has been their way in domestic hostage dramas, will shoot first and talk later regardless of the presumably negative effects upon the crew members. The Geek must confess a regard for the Russian predilection for muscular and decisive handling of terrorist (or pirate) activities.

The cost in the short-term may be high.

But, when dealing with pirates or their land based peers, the goal must be the long term reduction of rewards coupled with the long term increase of perceived risks. The short title for this is "deterrence."

Deterrence can work against asymmetrical threats provided the obvious costs are unacceptably high and the benefits microscopic at best.

The reality of deterrence in facing asymmetrical threats is some people must die. Some of those who die will be non-combatants such as the captive crew members.

This is another complication for American realization of the minimum acceptable goal in Afghanistan. US decision makers are often easily scared by a single question as they contemplate potential actions which may have the collateral result of civilian casualties.

The question?

"How will this look in the Washington Post?"

The US (and the EU) are at least knee deep in High Minded People. The League of the High Minded, laudable as their sentiments might be, quiver and quaver at the thought of a single unarmed dead body. They shake and shudder at contemplating the idea that a single civilian dwelling might be turned into rubble by American shot and shell.

The High Minded are unable to accept that a limited number of corpses today may very well prevent the potential of a large number of human beings being turned into a sanitation problem in the future. The High Minded are constitutionally unequipped to understand that it is far better to kill a few now to save many in the days and years to come.

While it is impossible to kill one's way to victory in counterinsurgency or any stability oriented military operation, it is nevertheless necessary to kill those black hats who need killing. And, it is an unfortunate truism that no matter how careful a force might be with the arms at its disposal, some blameless folks will be killed.

The Geek has been arguing for decades that constraining the lethality of operations is necessary. Not for moral reasons. Not for the reasons of proportionality adduced by contemporary Just War theoreticians.

No.

The Geek is an advocate for constrained lethality warfare for one simple reason. Pragmatism. At some point in every war for one or both sides, the dead dictate policy. The dead drive the war onward to ever greater death and destruction.

The thought, "We cannot allow those who have died to have died in vain," clouds the minds of many, or all, on one side or both.

In Afghanistan, the dead may very well be driving the efforts of Taliban and its ilk.

That, my friends, is the complication from hell.