Now over half of We the People surveyed apparently want the US out of Afghanistan. This is echoed throughout the European population. And, this percentage is bound to continue on its upward trend along with the number of American dead.
The support for seeing Americans die or come back home wounded--often desperately with life long and life crippling results--will be further eroded by the sick circus of the presidential election in Afghanistan. With every passing day there are more--and more credible--allegations of vote fraud on Hamid Karzai's part which put to shame the game played by Ahmedinejad. The latest involves the prevention of voting in an entire district with the Karzai gang forging nearly twenty-four thousand votes for the incumbent.
While no one expected the election to be honest, fair, and transparent, the actions of Karzai and company are rather too, too much. The massive cheating by the incumbent is completely in keeping with the massive corruption which has and continues to characterize the current Kabul regime. It is also completely compatible with the inherently friable nature of tribal politics when such are artificially projected onto a "national" scale.
The fraudulent election, the corruption, the inefficiency of the central "government" are all to be expected in a population which is deeply divided along ethno-linguistic and tribal lines. It is part and parcel of a "nation" which has been united only rarely and then because of a combination of external pressure (think invasion by foreigners) and a charismatic indigenous leader. These conditions have been met only rarely since Alexander the Great briefly touched on the Afghan consciousness.
The emergence of a central government will come if and when the self-organizing imperatives emerging from the population as a whole compel it to. Until and unless that happens, any pretense of a central government can only be installed and maintained by brute force and oodles and oodles of external financial aid. This mixture might keep up the pretense of government, but it cannot provide for the reality of one.
The brutal ground truth is simple to get a grip on. The mission of the US must be limited to the destruction of al-Qaeda and Taliban. The destruction must be so complete and so evident that no future government of Afghanistan, regardless of its commitment to Islam, will repeat the mistake of Omar and his Taliban--allowing Islamist jihadists to root themselves in the rocky soil of Afghanistan.
President Obama maintained last month before an audience of VFW members that this was the strategic goal of the US. That this goal made the effort in Afghanistan a "war of necessity." If his words were honest and remain so, he was and is right. If not, then, the US and its allies are well and truly on a treadmill to oblivion.
Gen. Stan McChrystal has changed the US tactical and operational doctrine significantly. But, from the direction of change, it may be hard for some to see the direct relation between what appears to be an enhanced "nation-building" approach and the requisite penumbra to accomplishing the strategic goal presented by the President. McChrystal's emphasis upon "clear-and-hold" as well as limiting the use of airpower and refusing combat if such would unduly put civilians at risk is both prudent and realistic--even if the end goal is simply the obliteration of the Islamist jihadist entities and as many individual jihadis as possible.
Among the many who fail to see the linkage between the McChrystal doctrine and the Obama Objective is George Will. His recent "retreat now!" op-ed in the WaPo makes that pellucid. Somehow, somewhere, Mr Will has gained the impression that General McChrystal and his troops have morphed into a collection of armed social, educational, and economic development workers who also pull triggers. Further, he seems to be under the misapprehension that successful counterinsurgency (and a successful counter-jihadist war as well) require an effective central government in full control of the territory and population of the country.
He agrees with the British historian of World War II and the Falklands Islands War, Max Hastings, that "our" Afghans are equivalent to "our" South Vietnamese forty or so years ago. By implication that means that both "our" Afghans and us are on the road to defeat. Both the linkage and the analogy are as wrong as a cat barking.
Wrong that is if President Obama was being honest, straightforward, and full of only the truth when he spoke to the VFW. (Admittedly, his track record in the honesty and being filled only with the truth is quite dubious.)
Assuming for purposes of argument that President Obama had an uncharacteristic attack of truthfulness and that he continues to labor under its after effects, there is reason to believe that General McChrystal was right, that the situation in Afghanistan is "serious but salvageable." It is also necessary that one way or another the general receives the additional troops which are so obviously necessary to achieve the redefined goal.
It is necessary for foreign troops--our troops in the main--to interpose themselves between the Islamist jihadists and the uncommitted majority. It is necessary that we fight in a way which consistently and as a matter of operational design does not kill civilians.
The uncommitted majority not surprisingly are like people everywhere. They want to be insulated from war's dark devastation. A complication emerges from the fact that while no Afghan wants to be killed by a fellow Muslim, all find dying at the hands of an "infidel" far worse. As the Geek has written before, "Muslim killed by Muslim--bad. Muslim killed by infidel--very, very bad."
This means that our people have to be placed at greater risk. It means fighting up close and personal. It means our physical presence must be real in the eyes of the population. And, presence, the sine qua non of interventionary operations, brings higher friendly casualties as surely as new boots make sore feet.
Worse, at least from the perspective of We the People, our troops have to maintain their presence over time. Persistence is the second sine qua non of success in interventionary operations. And, the longer we persist, the more friendly casualties will result.
Finally--and this is the most difficult sine qua non of all at least for Westerners in general and Americans in particular--patience is necessary. There are no phase lines in an interventionary operation whether the goal is countering an insurgency or obliterating Islamist jihadists. This kind of war does not end with an unconditional surrender. Nor does it end simply because a fatuous leader declares, "Mission accomplished!" This kind of war simply fades out. Hostilities simply taper off. The noise level subsides. The number of bodies, both friendly and hostile, simply decreases--ultimately to zero.
Hostilities end but that does not mean the conflict has been resolved. This is a major reason that countering an insurgency can be a multi war affair as the Russians are finding out one more time in the North Caucasus.
Conflict resolution is an emergent system. It is a self-organizing dynamic which must result organically from the local contestants. It will be messy, even inherently chaotic. It will not meet the expectations or policy requirements of foreign observers. But, it is the only way in which an internal political conflict finally can be resolved.
This implies something quite important for US and other policy makers. It also has an important implication for US and other troops on the ground. The soft power aspects of conducting what is at root a very, very long punitive expedition must be applied at the local level. This means the central government, the Karzai regime must be bypassed, ignored when it comes to providing local necessities whether police, medical clinics, educational systems, infrastructure development, or economic development.
By directing all--well, at least most--soft power money and advice to the locals, it is possible to both capitalize upon and facilitate the self-organizing that is critical to both providing assistance in the war against the jihadists and laying the foundation for effective conflict resolution. The locals: the tribals, the men in the villages no matter what they need, what they lack, what they must have to feel like members of a dynamic and functional community. It is these locals who we must work with--not the wallahs in Kabul. They can wait. They have no where to go.
So far the signs are that General McChrystal understands all of this. So do most of those under his command. Regardless of jihadist bombing spectaculars, the jihadists are on the defensive. As long as clear-and-hold continues, as long as we carry the fight to the black turbans, as long as we seek to gain and retain the initiative, Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the others in country have no chance of winning.
George Will is wrong. So also are the "progressives" among the Democrats of the House. So is public opinion. Provided that President Obama does not change his mind, or choose to sell out the war and all those Americans killed and injured in Afghanistan to achieve some bit or another of his Great Transformational Agenda, the situation is "serious but salvageable." The US can yet achieve its minimal strategic goal of "not losing." We can still achieve the somewhat more expansive end of obliterating the Islamist jihadists and providing a long lasting object lesson in the perils of hosting those who seek to harm us.
That is if President Obama has more brains than a lettuce and more backbone than a banana.
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