Cranking Up A (Too) Rapid Pull Out From Afghanistan

Reportedly the Obama administration is ginning up a public relations effort oriented at justifying a very rapid withdrawal of significant combat forces from Afghanistan.  Jerking out a giant posse of grunts from the Land Of Karzai will not only meet with widespread approval within the war weary American public, it will be greeted with hosannas on the part of Obama's base, particularly the congressional contingent where a very other worldly congresswoman has demanded that fifty thousand trigger pullers be brought back to CONUS ASAP.

The thought of a faster withdrawal will not only fit with the recently revealed conversations between the US and representatives of Mullah Omar but also with the latest expression of distaste for the presence of the "foreign forces" delivered by Hamid Karzai.  The US should be talking with Taliban.  The participation of this group in a comprehensive peace agreement is fundamental.  Given that Mullah Omar has long repented of his ill-advised extension of "Muslim hospitality" to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, there is strong reason to conclude that the old leadership of the group is ready to exchange the politics of the AK-47 for a less robust means of acquiring and exercising power.

Karzai is comfortable with Taliban as he and they share language and cultural ties as well as religion.  Taliban without the al-Qaeda dimension is no threat to Pushtu dominance.  The other ethnic and cultural groups which make up the Afghan mosaic are not so sure.  And, considering the memories of Taliban's repressive regime, there is no reason for women to support any role for Taliban in the future.  However, it is probable that Mullah Omar and his generational colleagues learned some key lessons in the limits of theocracy and may well be less objectionable in their attitudes and actions regarding women, education, and popular culture.  In any event, the US is well advised to abandon the hopelessly misguided Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny notion of creating a modern Western style nation-state in Afghanistan.

The necessity of a political solution including Taliban is recognized and has been so for years by all observers well oriented in time and place.  The administration's new add-on in justifying a rapid and steep draw down in US combat forces centers on the effectiveness to date of our efforts to destroy al-Qaeda's organizational integrity and efficiency.  There is no doubt but the Predator strikes in the FATA along with special forces operations including but not limited to the Great Abbottabad Raid have severely degraded al-Qaeda's upper and mid-level management.  The organization has been disrupted severely.

This does not mean al-Qaeda no longer exists.  It does.  Nor does it mean that al-Qaeda no longer represents a threat to the US or other civilized states.  It does.  Rather, the point of the administration's argument is simply that al-Qaeda in Afghanistan no longer is central to the panoply of threats presented by assorted advocates of violent political Islam.  This is true.

It is also far less relevant than the administration would have any of us believe.

There are two ramifications of an overly rapid, overly steep withdrawal which the administration does not credit.  The first is the recuperative power of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan given the ready availability of support from Pakistan and the unwillingness of the Pakistani military or intelligence service to block that support.  The second is the power of history.

The US must not cut and run in a way which will allow the advocates of violent political Islam and their supporters or apologists to write a narrative in which the centerpiece is the assertion that the Mighty Warriors of the One True Faith defeated the infidel crusaders.  It was the willingness and ability of Osama bin Laden and others to claim victory over the Soviet forces which provided the original legitimacy for al-Qaeda and other similar groups--including the Taliban of Mullah Omar.

The Islamist version of history is not only specious, it is a total fabrication giving credit to Arab fighters which was and is totally undeserved.  Insofar as anyone defeated the Red Army, it was the Afghans--and the support they received from the US.  Afghan courage, blood, and endurance along with American technology defeated the Soviets--as much as they were defeated by external pressures.  The down and dirty truth was that the Soviets were not defeated.  They simply gave up.  This loss of political will was the made-in-the-Kremlin equivalent of the American self-inflicted defeat in Vietnam.  In a very real sense, the Afghan fighters simply had to keep on fighting, refuse to admit defeat until the Soviets packed it in.  This, of course, is the basic cause of any insurgent's success right on back to the patriot "victory" in the American War of Independence.

The Arab hijacking of reality in the according-to-Osama interpretation of history was a work of fiction which prevailed simply because nobody challenged it at the time.  The cause driven bin Laden invented a tale and kept telling it to all who would listen until one fine day it was taken, at least in the Arabian Peninsula, as the gospel truth.  The tale-telling sheik told his tale of faith and fighting so well and so often that the money and recruits flowed in.  Osama's version of history may not have been a Big Lie as Dr Goebbels understood the term, but it turned out to be a Great Lie, the greatest lie of the last decades of the Twentieth Century.

The bin Laden approach to creative fiction as history recommends itself to any and all advocates of violent political Islam today--and into the future.  If the American forces are withdrawn hastily and in too great a number, the next bin Laden will claim that the infidels were militarily defeated by the Holy Fighters Of The Koran.

It will not be a true and accurate history to be sure.  That does not and will not matter.  It will be the history that many Muslims will want to believe.  It will be history as they deeply wish it to have been.  There is no Islamic concept of history as we in the West understand the concept.  Rather, all history is in Muslim eyes a record of great men doing great deeds on behalf of the faith and in the pure name of the faith.  Thus the defeat of the infidel crusaders by the followers of Islam, the followers of the "martyred" Great and Learned Osama bin Laden will be believed eagerly and fervently by many future recruits to the cause of violent political Islam.

This powerful ground truth is not and will not be accepted by the Deep Thinkers in and around the Oval.  Yet it exists as a reality, a reality as potent and long lasting in effect as the American deficit and the war weariness of We the People.  In the contest between a work of fiction, a myth on the one hand, and mere facts, mind numbing statistics, the aggregate of countless after action reports, the first will defeat the second--particularly when the myth meets the needs of people who perceive themselves to have been exploited, marginalized, trivialized even though they are the members of a community promised global dominance by the deity and his prophet.

Wars are ultimately won and lost not on the physical battlefield but on the ineffable terrain of the human mind. It is this foundation truth that gave the Osama bin Laden fictional history of how the Arab true believers defeated the Red Army its power and persistence.  It is this foundation truth which will give some future myth maker vast potency when he creates the fiction holding the infidel Americans were defeated by the blood, courage, and conviction of the Men of Islam.

Contrary to a prevalent American belief, history does matter.  It matters far, far more than money and elections--even the reelection of Barack Obama.

It's (Long Past) Time To Rewrite The (Muslim) Narrative

The single most important event in Twentieth Century history other than the Bolshevik Revolution was the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the coming to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his theocratic regime.  A second chain of events which reinforced powerfully the impact of the Iranian Islamic Revolution also started in 1979.  In that year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to keep its Marxist-Leninist client government in power.

Even before the American diplomatic personnel kidnapped and held prisoner by "students" in Iran (which group included a young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) were released and long, long before the Red Army kicked the dust of Afghanistan from its combat boots, a specifically Muslim narrative emerged concerning, first, the deposing of the Shah and, later, the "defeat" of the Soviet forces.  The twin, interlocking narratives have been and continue to be key in understanding the seemingly sudden rise of violent political Islam.  Certainly the Muslim narratives are critical in propelling the belief in the invincibility of Islam which pervades the Islamic societies and the states they control today.

Stripped to its essential, the core narrative for the Islamic "victories" in Iran and Afghanistan is simply this: The power of pure faith so filled and inspired the fighters for Muslim verities that not even the well armed, well trained, well supplied military of the Shah, even with the support of the US and other Western countries, could withstand the assault.  In Afghanistan it was also the power of faith which assured that a small number of fighters unafraid of death and sure of Allah's favor would defeat the enormous forces of the atheistic Soviets.

This narrative has captured the Muslim world almost to the last man.  Beyond that, it has been accepted in slightly modified form by many people in the West, particularly among the uncritical adherents of moral equivalence and cultural relativism.  By virtue of repetition in a context remarkably free of critical analysis or historical understanding, the Muslim narrative has gained remarkable traction and endurance.

The narrative is quite appealing to Muslims.  It is almost as appealing to those who "blame America first" and those of similar mind.  It is utterly, totally, absolutely specious, as wrong as a cat barking, as disconnected from reality as the ravings of a frank schizophrenic.

Because the narrative is so important in the development and growth of violent political Islam--and its non-violent but equally injurious conjoined twin--it must be both understood and challenged.  While exposing the counterfactual nature of the Islamist narrative will not change any Muslim minds, there is another reason for no longer allowing it to have a get out of jail free card.  By demonstrating the baseless nature of the narrative by underscoring the actual reasons the Shah fell and the Red Army finally compelled to withdraw, it may be possible for more Americans and their counterparts in other civilized states to resist the encroachments and threats of expansionist political Islam more effectively in the years to come.

There is only one reason the Shah was tossed from the Peacock Throne.  The context may have been rich in variables, filled with justifications, replete with motives, but when night falls there was and is only one proximate reason the Ayatollah bested the Shah.

The reason is to be found, not in Tehran nor in Paris nor in Qom; rather, the eyes must focus on Washington, DC.  Specifically one has to consider the Oval Office and the man sitting behind the only desk in the room.  The man was Jimmy Carter.  It was his evaluation of the Shah, the Ayatollah, the probable consequences of seeing the Shah gone and someone else coming to power which decided the direction of history for decades, perhaps generations, to come.

For many years now, the role played by a single person in the tipping points of history has been deprecated by historians.  Starting in Europe in the aftermath of World War II and spreading to the US during the Sixties, historical inquiry refocused from the role of high profile individuals (the "Great Men" interpretation) to the part played by the historically inarticulate "mass."  Individuals were seen as important only insofar as they gave focus and identity to the "masses."

With that as intellectual background, it is not surprising that Western, even American, historians have been eager to grant credit to the Ayatollah while deprecating the part played by Jimmy Carter.  The Ayatollah was seen as giving a face and an identity to the desires of the Iranian "masses" while Carter was simply an American president.  As a result there was no immediate push back to the rapidly blooming Muslim narrative.

Comes now, a bit of a push back.  Jimmy Carter may still see himself as having been ill-served by the American intelligence, diplomatic, and military communities.  In part he was.  The intelligence regarding the precarious relationship between the Shah's posterior and the Peacock Throne was misleading where it was not flatly wrong.  The US Embassy in Tehran was no more perceptive.  Nor was the US military assistance group.

Even if Mr Carter had received more accurate appreciations and a better, more comprehensive evaluation of the probable consequences of a clerical takeover, there is little reason to believe he would have acted any differently.  President Carter had a deep dislike for the Shah.

In part this dislike was justifiable in terms of the Carter priority given (for the first time in American foreign relations) on human rights.  The Shah's regime had no regard for human rights if having such would interfere with internal stability.  Savak, the Iranian internal security service, rivaled KGB or the SD at their worst.  Other instruments of state including the army were no better.  As an exponent of human rights, the Shah was below zero.

Beyond the dislike which could be justified easily with the preeminence accorded human rights by Jimmy Carter, there was a deep personal dislike.  Personalities do count in foreign relations even if the fact is not acknowledged by one or the other individual.

As a result, the American president was not loath to see a regime change in Tehran.  Given the Shah's record including his imperviousness to American advice, the change would have to come from within and thus would be more likely than not to be revolutionary in nature--in all senses of the word.

The main opponent to the Shah was a cleric, a senior and highly respected one at that.  Mr Carter was a man of deep faith.  He was preconditioned to see men of the cloth, regardless of the details of confession, as being of the better sort: high minded, lofty thinking, just, loving peace not war, men exhibiting all the virtues and few if any of the vices to which humans are heir.

Given the nature of the contest--total--and the nature of the two opponents, it was simple for Mr Carter to determine which side he was on.  American support for the Shah was withdrawn.  The outcome from that point on was predetermined.  The rapidly aging and quite ill Shah understood that without complete US support he could not let his army off the leash.  He also knew that without overwhelming force, his hold on power was measured in microseconds.  His political will evaporated with the loss of American support and he cashed in his chips.

Because Carter was a good Christian man he compounded his surrender of national interest by extending a humanitarian hand to the homeless and very sick Shah.  This act infuriated the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries from the Ayatollah on down as they wanted to slit the Shah's throat, stone him, hang him, and then get tough with the guy.  Thus ensued the "hostage crisis" and the long lived implications of that humiliating episode which, of course, features prominently in the Muslim narrative under the heading of Allah Punishes The Great Satan.

In a sense President Carter had a failure of political will.  He failed to properly appreciate US national and strategic interests at the time or into the future.  He failed to consider the needs of the state over time against his personal predilections, preferences, and prejudices.  He failed to set aside the personal in order to consider properly just what was at stake in the Iranian context.

In short, Mr Carter paved our collective road to hell with the asphalt of his personal convictions and understanding.  No amount of ex post facto explanations or excuses or finger pointing can erase that fact.

Nor can the Muslim narrative be right.  It was not the power of Islamic faith which toppled the Shah.  Nor did Allah show an interest in Iranian politics when the Ayatollah triumphed.  Both resulted from a man far removed from the position of deity: Jimmy Carter.

It may not be intellectually fashionable to assign such a great responsibility--the crucial decisions which forged a world historical moment--but that is the real deal.  It is no comfort to Americans to acknowledge that their own president formed the face of the new great enemy--the Iranian theocracy.  It is not bracing for the advocates of political Islam to face the reality that their faith had nothing to do with the triumph of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

The boisterous confidence of the adherents of political Islam both violent and non-violent is based on a very, very big lie.  The real deal is simply the American president blinked.  Had he stood firm, there is little doubt that the son or grandson of the Shah would be on the Peacock Throne presiding over a constitutional monarchy not unlike that in Jordan today.

The actualities in Afghanistan during the years following the Soviet invasion are at a great distance from the Muslim narrative.  The specious view peddled by, among others, Osama bin Ladin, gives no credit to the intense tribal and provincial drives at work within the Afghan population during the years of anti-Soviet war.  Nor does it give credit to the enormous amount of American aid which flowed directly and, later, through the Pakistanis to the anti-Soviet groups.  No reference is made, for example, to the game changing nature of the US provided Stinger shoulder fired antiaircraft missiles.

Most importantly, the Muslim narrative gives no credit to the most important single factor determining the Soviet defeat.  That was the collapse of political will within the Soviet leadership.  The Afghan fighters did not win nearly so much as the Soviets admitted defeat.

This, of course, is typical in all unsuccessful counterinsurgency campaigns.  During the American War of Independence, it was not the patriots who "won."  Rather it was the realization by the British elite and as a consequence the government that the game just was not worth the expense.  The American rebels maintained their political will and the British lost theirs.  So it was in Afghanistan as well.

The Soviet loss of political will in Afghanistan was part of the general collapse of faith which infected the geriatric ruling class and drifted downward in the ranks until their successors caught the same disease.  In understanding the Soviets in Afghanistan, it is essential to recognize that it was not Allah who triumphed but rather the god of Marxism-Leninism which failed.

For different reasons the civilian leadership of Russia and the command structure of the Russian Army have been content to let the Muslim narrative pass unchallenged.  The Army has taken the same position as the German Army after World War I or the US Army following the Vietnam debacle--the civilians stabbed us in the back.

The civilian leadership has adopted a different interpretation, one that is closer to the facts.  Civilian historians in recent years have argued that the Communists were responsible for the defeat; the Communists gave up, loss heart.  In tandem, it is contended that the same outcome would not happen today as it is now good Russian nationalists running things--and nationalists cannot lose faith in the Motherland and her people.

The facts comprising the dynamics of both the Iranian regime change and the self-inflicted Soviet failure are simple, straight forward and so easy to grasp that even a Congressional staffer can get a grip on them.  The facts are on the side of the civilized states and plumb against the myth makers of political Islam.  Considering that the struggle between the civilized states and their Islamist opponents is one of political will, it is important, essential even, that the realities be put forth.  This can benefit the civilized states; it only can harm the adherents of political Islam.

Get a grip on it, Mahmoud.  Allah had nothing to do with it.

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