Afghanistan Or Pashtunstan--A Back-to-the-Future Ending

Overshadowed by the Great Debt Ceiling Battle, the Great Downgrading, and the Miracle of the Job Free Recovery, the US has reached a very critical crossroad in Afghanistan.  In truth we haven't just reached it, we have pushed for it, rushed to it, and sought it with the eagerness of a drowning man clawing for the sky.

The US wants out of Afghanistan in the worst sort of way.  With the exception of some military people, most but not all of senior rank, the current political leadership of the US along with most of We the People want out, right now if possible, but tomorrow at the latest.  This is the ground reality regardless of President Obama's patent bromide about pressing on regardless delivered in the wake of the Chinook shoot-down and the deaths of more than two dozen men from Boat Six.

Of course, We the People, the congress, and the Clueless Guy in the Oval would like it best if the US can get out of Afghanistan with a modicum of dignity and a sufficient simulacrum of success to offset the billions of bucks spent and the hundreds of lives sacrificed on the alter of "nation-building."  Congressman Ron Paul was speaking for many besides himself at the Iowa debate when he denounced the American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan while warning against any repeat in Iran.  Heads no doubt nodded in agreement across the country as he delivered his neo-isolationist message for the umpteenth time.

One unnecessary and unjustifiable war is reaching its quite unsatisfying conclusion.  As the Iraqi excuse for a parliament dithers over whether or not to invite American "trainers" to remain in country after the last day of this year, it has become brilliantly clear that only Saddam Hussein lost to a greater extent than did the US over the course of this long, bloody exercise in regime change.

Iran has emerged as the big winner in the contest as shown by Baghdad's alignment with Tehran over the question of Syria.  This is simply the most recent, most dramatic example of the triumph of Shia faith over all other considerations in the deeply divided human terrain of Iraq.  But, far outside of international politics, in the quotidian dealings of business, it is instructive that US companies have lost out repeatedly and consistently to competitors from China, Russia, and Europe for the lucrative opportunities available in the country which was--we were assured--going to pay for the costs of liberation, rejoice in new democratic freedoms, greet American troops as the French did after D-Day, and generally rally to the American flag.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the US lost in the Iraqi gambit.  And, now, we face losing in Afghanistan as well.  No, we will not be defeated in the field by Taliban, the Haqqani network, and their Pakistani backers.  There are simply not enough lucky shots by RPGs to do that.  Rather, we will conspire in our own defeat at the hands not of Taliban alone, nor by the combination of Taliban and Pakistan but rather by the joint efforts of "our man in Kabul," Hamid Karzai, the Pakistanis, and Taliban.

Karzai wants out of the war with a fervor which surpasses even that of the US and its partners in the ISAF.  To this end he has been seeking a species of separate peace with Taliban for some time now.  He has been seeking this goal not through the public means of the Supreme Peace Jurga, a large, unwieldy and totally implausible group, but through low key, private, and ever-so-discrete conversations in the presidential palace as well as out of country locations.

The glue which would hold any peace agreement together is simply that Karzai as well as the overwhelming majority of Taliban is Pashtu speaking.  They are all good Pashtuns on the Secret Peace Bus.  As the Pakistanis understand and support the Pashtun super-tribe due to its domination of the key border areas of the FATA, there is no doubt but Islamabad is well represented on the Peace Bus as well.  This means their strategic political position in Afghanistan will be protected in full.

The ethnic Uzbeks, Tajjks, and Hazaras constituting the majority of the population in northern Afghanistan are not represented on the Karzai-Taliban-Pakistan All Pashtun Peace Express.  These are the same people who suffered the most under the rule of the Taliban and whose Northern Alliance comprised the bulk of the indigenous fighters cooperating with the American invaders ten years ago.

It is not surprising that the old Northern Alliance is silently reforming.  It is no surprise that the non-Pushtu population is rearming at a great rate of knots. Nor will it be surprising when renewed civil war greets the announcement of a peace brokered by Pushtuns for the benefit of Pushtuns.  Last of all, there will be no surprise when the US greets the peace with loud applause and the ensuing internal war with a complete and utter silence.

It is not that the Deep Thinkers around the Oval are unaware of what is taking place in Kabul.  Even if the totality of American intelligence assets was detained on matters of tactical and operational focus, the US is aware of both the ongoing Karzai effort and the probable outcome(s.)  The former head of Afghanistan's premiere intelligence service, Amrolah Saleh, has been all but shouting it from the minarets since he was forced from office last year by Karzai.

Saleh is not only very highly respected by intelligence professionals from the US, the UK, and elsewhere, he is personally honest, not at all corrupt, and, most important, committed to the notion of an Afghanistan which includes all the several ethnic groups on a basis of equality before the law as well as in politics.  He is post-tribal to a fault.  And, in Afghanistan, being post-tribal in worldview is a grave fault.

Saleh's message is simple, easy to corroborate, and very well rooted historically.  Should the Great All Pashtun Peace Express arrive at its destination, the result will be fatal for Afghanistan.  In short, Afghanistan will return to what it was the day before the first American boot hit Afghan soil.  A predominantly Pushtu, religiously predicated, and robustly violent Taliban will run the southern two thirds of the country to the advantage of Islamabad while the reconstituted Northern Alliance will fight a defensive insurgency based upon ethnic identity in the final third.

A decade or more of war, hundreds of American lives, billions of dollars to say nothing of the indescribable sufferings of the Afghans caught in the crossfire, will finally result in a back-to-the-future ending.  Worst of all, there is virtually nothing the US can do about it.

We were doomed in our efforts the moment George W. Bush and his neocon ninny crew decided to engage in nation-building in Afghanistan in lieu of a simple, straight forward punitive expedition.  In the rush to invade Iraq so as to teach the Arabs a lesson in how to elect good men which was not needed or indicated, the men of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration assured we were on a mission-impossible in Afghanistan.

Now we must reap the harvest of the seeds those intellectually challenged, ideologically driven men planted.  We can see the crop now, a government which is a broken, rotten travesty, a people demoralized and victimized by a war in which none have a direct stake, an army and police force which exists more in name than in the field, and an "ally" in Pakistan which is an adversary in all but name.  All that is needed to complete the harvest is the "success" of the Karzai-Taliban-Pakistan All Pushtun Peace Bus.

When that happens--and it is question of when not if, the US will be (including Vietnam) 0 for 3 in large scale interventionary operations.  That record is not simply pathetic, it is one of self-inflicted defeats unrivaled by any other major country in recent history.  (Even the French were only 0 for 2.)

Does this mean that Ron Paul is right?  Does it mean the US would be best served by an isolationist posture? It does imply that the US is so preposterously pathetic in its efforts at muscular nation-building that we should abandon any future efforts in that direction.  Of course, the world may not be willing to let us off so easy--and we may not be able to resist future temptations to do good.

The Geek has some thoughts on those questions.  (No shock there.)  Stay tuned.  He will be back.

The Beauty Of Asymmetrical War

Last night in his announcement of his intended draw down of American forces in Afghanistan, President Obama underscored the beauty, the appeal of asymmetrical war for those who put their strategic fortunes in its ample basket.  Stripped of its camouflage, cover, and concealment the president's words conveyed the simple appeal of asymmetrical war--it works.

Asymmetrical war worked in Afghanistan. That is obvious.  The US has lost.  And announced that defeat in the verbiage of declaring victory.  The president made all the expected genuflections before the alter of economic necessity.  He took the position that now was the time for "nation-building" here in the US.  But, under this convenient shelter, the reality remains.  The reality is blunt.  The US, We the People, the government which purports to represent us and seek to protect our national interests abroad, has lost the political will to continue the war.

This, my friends, is the goal in all asymmetrical wars.  Defeat the numerically and technologically superior enemy by progressively exhausting his political will to continue.  Taliban, the Haqqani network, even the not-quite-pathetic remnants of al-Qaeda as well as their supporters and sponsors in Pakistan have succeeded in so enervating the political will of the US that we are tossing in the sponge even as we teeter on the edge of military success.

The announcement does nothing to advance the progress of the very tentative talks with Taliban representatives.  History in both the Korean and Vietnamese wars shows that diplomacy of talking depends for progress let alone success upon the diplomacy of the gun.  The battlefield and negotiating table are connected head, shoulder, and hip.  Only the continued demonstration of political will in combat serves to convince the talkers at the table that they had best make the best deal possible as quickly as possible lest they lose everything on the bullet raked fields of battle.

Given that the only campaign of vital interest to President Obama is Campaign 2012, his decision to undercut the efforts of the past two years in Afghanistan and declare the losses of dollars (replaceable) and hundreds of lives (irreplaceable) to be written off in fact if not in rhetoric was to be expected.  He would have announced an even faster pull out, such as that demanded by his progressive base, if that move would not have simultaneously cost him potential votes among the rest of the electorate.  As it was, his decision was informed far more by the polls showing the escalating war weariness among We the People than the expert advice of the commanders on the ground.

Ten years ago the thought that the US would suffer one more defeat in an asymmetrical war was almost unthinkable.  Within the military there was a widespread belief that the phrase "no more Vietnams" meant or at least implied that the US would never again engage in an intervention or, if we did, it would be of the very limited sort typified by the operations in Kosovo.  Overall, the men in uniform thought that the so-called Powell Doctrine would prevail.  No significant military commitment absent an overwhelming force and full domestic support.

The small number of people both in and out of uniform who had spent the decades of the Eighties and Nineties studying asymmetrical war under its several different names--unconventional war, interventionary operations, limited war, counterinsurgency--were not so optimistic.  The end of the cold war had liberated a number of pressures which would result in small, nasty wars some of which would put American interests in peril.  At the same time the effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the ongoing Arab-Israeli war served to promote the growth of violent political Islam.  The net result was the conclusion that the US would be in an asymmetrical conflict with an Islamist adversary within the next ten years--and, neither the military nor the civilian government would be ready to fight that inevitable war.

The past ten years have shown, as the Geek adumbrated in yesterday's post, the power of asymmetrical war in a way both dramatic and unmistakable.  Now that the power of that sort of war has been underscored by President Obama's message of American defeat, asymmetrical conflict will be more common around the world at the same time as the US will be decreasingly willing to take up the challenge.

Now, like the coach sez, "let's get back to basics."

One basic about asymmetrical war is that it is nothing new.  Over the sanguine centuries of warfare--defined as the centrally directed, organized application of violence to a political goal by a state, a pretender to statehood or a non-state actor--asymmetrical wars have been as numerous as peer-to-peer conflicts.  Insurgencies, both offensive (revolutionary) and defensive (separatist,) have been and continue to be asymmetrical in nature.  All peacekeeping or peace imposition (stability) operations are inherently asymmetrical.  The increasing use of proxies, the growth in sponsored transnational terrorism, the rise of narco-warfare, all of these constitute sub-sets of asymmetrical wars.  All will be common in the future for reasons to be considered in later posts.

A second basic about asymmetrical war is that it is identical to conventional peer-to-peer conflicts in one essential respect.  The intent is to bring about a better state of peace by bending the enemy to your political will.  The difference, a very critical one, between the peer-to-peer war and its asymmetrical kin is found in the means of bending the enemy to your will.  The side initiating the asymmetrical conflict seeks to attack and progressively reduce the target's political will and social cohesiveness by imposing costs which are politically and economically unacceptable while remaining tolerable to the attacker.

Here is the takeaway, the nitty-gritty which was not understood ten years ago but is blindingly apparent today: The goal of al-Qaeda and similar entities was to inflict such politically and economically unacceptable costs on the US employing means which capitalized on strengths inherent to Muslims such as to compel the US to accede to a set of political demands.  Based upon the American responses to earlier attacks, the expectation that the attacks of 9/11 would be sufficient to force the US to bend to Arab political will was not lunatic in nature.

The weak and ineffective responses by the US to the series of terror strikes on American targets both overseas and domestically convinced Osama bin Laden and others (including some holding positions of authority in Pakistani agencies) that the proposed 9/11 attacks would be effective at low risk for retaliation.  While the Clinton administration was correct to have responded to the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center as a law enforcement matter, its limp wristed reactions to later attacks, Khobar Towers, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the water borne hit on the USS Cole were not only too little, too late, they were de facto admissions of impotency.  Each demonstrated the power resident in asymmetry.  It was only logical to anticipate the same sort of non-linearity when nineteen good Muslims converted commercial aircraft into manned cruise missiles.

Bin Laden and company blew it.  They had misjudged the American character.  They didn't understand the Pearl Harbor syndrome and its potency in the collective American mind.  Instead of the expected flight of easily evaded cruise missiles, the Mighty Men of the Great Sheik got a reasonable imitation of a military full court press.

Now comes one of the most, perhaps the most, thoroughly delicious ironies known to the Geek (a devoted collector of historical ironies.)  The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny administration blew their phase of the asymmetrical war as much or more than bin Laden blew his.  They failed to understand what previous leaders had discovered.  In the counter strike period of an asymmetrical war, one uses overwhelming force quickly and decisively.  The superior force must be employed so as to bring the speedy and complete destruction of the inferior.

The archaic, politically impolite but quite accurate term for this counter strike is "punitive expedition."  The goal is to demonstrate political will as well as military supremacy by obliterating the enemy who mounted the attack while "punishing" what and whomsoever supported, facilitated, or gave safe haven to the attacker.  The purpose of the exercise is not judicial in nature.

One is not interested in bringing an alleged offender before the bar of justice, but to eliminate him.  With respect to those who aid, abet, and protect the enemy, the purpose is to inflict an unacceptable level of economic, social, and political damage upon him.  The superior force uses his capacities to squash the offensive but inferior one in a manner akin to the Monty Python giant foot descending irresistibly from the clouds.

The response of the attacked but superior target is quick, brutal, and decisive.  The word "brutal" may be offensive to today's hyper-sensitive ears but in the final analysis it is a far more humane approach than would be the ineffective efforts at "nation-building" embarked upon by the clueless bunch in the Bush/Cheney White House and continued until last night by the successor Obama administration.

Afghanistan has been termed the "graveyard of empires" not because the empires lacked the means to successfully defeat and occupy the land and people of the region but rather because the "empires", British, Russian, and American, have lost their political will in the face of the rugged physical and, even more, the spiky human terrain of the place.  All, and, most particularly, the American, efforts have foundered because the invader has lacked the political will necessary or the correct strategic and operational concepts to prevail.

The takeaway here is simple.  When entering an asymmetrical war, the US must not only employ sufficient means quickly and firmly, it must limit its goals to those which can be achieved by purely military means.  These goals are few and easily defined.  Military force can topple a regime, but it cannot build one.  It can impose a peace but it cannot create stability.  It can punish a malefactor but it cannot rehabilitate one.  It can back the diplomacy of talk, but it cannot replace it.  Most importantly, military force can terminate hostilities, but it cannot resolve the underlying conflict which resulted in the outbreak of hostilities.

Whether any of us like the idea or not, there will be future challenges in the area of asymmetrical war.  The specter of transnational terror has not left the world.  Nor has the threat posed by violent political Islam.  Even if peace breaks out in Afghanistan, there are plenty of other locations where asymmetrical attacks might be planned and mounted.  There is Yemen.  There is Somalia.  There is Sudan.  There is Pakistan.  Any or all of these might become necessary targets of an American counter strike.  So also might a number of other failed or failing states.

There is more to be learned from a defeat resolutely and honestly studied than a victory celebrated.  Now that the president has announced an American defeat (or, if it makes you feel better, an incomplete success) in Afghanistan, the time has come to take a very long, very hard, and very honest look at what was done wrong--and right--in Afghanistan.  We must be prepared to do the job right the next time out, for there will be a next time regardless of the wishes of any of us.

Or, there is an alternative.  We can build a very high and very thick wall around the US and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.

The GOP And A (False) Forced Choice

Congress, more specifically the House of Representatives, and most particularly the GOP members of the House, have twisted their panties over the propriety, or, at least, the legality of the ongoing American operation in Libya.  The knot in the elephant's knickers is, of course, the War Powers Act.  The Republicans have been huffing and puffing mightily over the Obama administration's purported failure to abide by the requirements of this act, an act, it deserves reminding ourselves, the Republicans have often and loudly decried as unconstitutional.

The Nice Young Man From Chicago in no way helped his position when he declared that the US was not engaged in "hostilities" as such might be construed in the context of the War Powers Resolution.  This was an utterly preposterous notion which could only have been conceived by an academic with a potent lust for power.  The president took an unworthy stance.  By so doing he insulted the intelligence not only of the House Republicans but of Americans generally.  As an example of legal pettifoggery, the presidential assertion was on a par with the similar legalistic parsing engaged in by Bill Clinton to prove that getting one's knob polished in the environs of the Oval was not engaging in sexual activity.

Now the hypocrites in Congress are locked in a face off with the hypocrite in the Oval.  Regardless of which prevails in this imitation mano a mano exercise, the loser will be the United States.  What is at stake in this affray is the ability of the US to operate effectively on the global stage in forthcoming years.

The bent-out-of-shape Republicans in the House along with their liberal Democratic colleagues are seeking not simply the humiliation of Obama or the further clipping of the imperial presidency's extensive wingspan or seeking to economize in parlous financial times but rather the forcing of a false choice between an isolationist stance on the part of the US or the continuation of "wars of choice' as defined by the president.

The Republican "deficit hawks" along with their very strange bedfellows, progressive Democrats, are forcing a clear and ongoing limitation on the ability of presidents to wage what has been called "wars of choice."  The House leadership as well as most of the current Republican contenders for the Oval have been channeling the ghost of Robert Taft, the "Mr Republican" of sixty and more years ago.  Senator Robert Taft of Ohio defined more than any other single man the concept of isolationism.  More than other noted congressional proponents of this philosophy of total withdrawal from the political challenges of the world, Taft opposed any and all foreign "entanglements" and "adventures."  In support of his position he advanced economic arguments as well as contending without end that not only would our overseas activities end in failure, they would produce more enemies than friends.

The soi dissant conservatives on the Red side of the aisle have been making the same Taft type contentions.  Our overseas adventures whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Libya have ended in failure or will do so unless wound down speedily and completely.  Our overseas adventures have made us far more enemies than they have created friends.  And, certainly neither last nor least, our overseas adventures have been far too costly and can no longer be afforded.

The particular species of overseas adventure which has reigned supreme in the narratives of both progressive Democrat and deficit hawk Republican has been that of "wars of choice."  This is a fine term.  It gives the clear impression that presidents of both parties search the world from time to time looking for a war in which to involve ourselves.  This is a specious notion but like all truly preposterous ideas it contains a small but critical measure of truth.

Considering all of the military interventions in which the US has participated since the Reagan administration there have been some which were clearly optional in the sense the US had no critical national interests at stake in the conflict.  George H.W. Bush's humanitarian intervention in Somalia rests in the "optional" category.  So does his adventure in regime change, Operation Just Cause in Panama.  But the US response to the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait is of the "mandatory" sort.  Key US national and strategic interests were in play in that war.

Bill Clinton's expansion of the Somalian operation fell in the "war of choice" column.  The same is true with respect to the American operations in former Yugoslavia.  The US had no bull in the herd in Somalia.  The bloody implosion of what had once been the totally artificial state of Yugoslavia was of concern to Europe but not to the US, pace the recently deceased Larry Eagleburger.

The invasion of Afghanistan, if that use of force had been confined to the original mission statement, was mandatory, a justifiable exercise in retaliation to an attack on the US.  However, George W.'s  invasion of Iraq fell clearly in the "war of choice" category.  It was an ideologically driven "build it and they will come" sort which produced if not a debacle certainly a bloody and expensive tragedy for both Americans and Iraqis, people who will be dealing with the aftershocks for decades if not generations to come.

The ideologically propelled "mission leap" in Afghanistan along with the "war of choice" in Iraq are the ghosts at the political banquet now being served over Libya.  There is a delicious irony at the banquet.  That irony resides in the main course of the meal--the War Powers Resolution.

The War Powers Resolution was passed by the Democratic Party controlled Congress as a reaction to the Vietnam War which was seen by the Democrats as having been a "war of choice" waged by imperial presidents.  The Democrats who so loudly demanded limitations be placed on the president's capacity to wage war cheerfully ignored reality as they voted.  The American entrance into the Vietnamese war was seen by both the Democratic presidents (JKF and LBJ) as well as the Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress to have been "mandatory."

If anything the documents show the congressional Democrats were far more willing and eager to go to war then either JFK or LBJ.  The Democrats along with the Republicans understood our commitment to the South Vietnamese to be central to our guarantee of the global status quo during a very frigid period of the cold war. Support for the introduction of combat troops, the commencement of the air war against North Vietnam, and the central decision to escalate our forces in country were all monolithically supported by the Democratic Party.  It was only after the war seemed (incorrectly) to have devolved to an unwinnable stalemate during the administration of the detested Richard Nixon that sentiment on the Blue side shifted so as to produce the War Powers Resolution.

Now the Republicans motivated by their political calculus are willing to invoke both the War Powers Resolution and the power of the purse to limit or end the Obama policy in Libya.  Standing in opposition to the efforts of the deficit hawk Republicans and progressive Democrats to end the minimal American presence in the Libyan "war of choice" is the neocon outfit, The Foreign Policy Initiative," which authored an open letter to the House leadership imploring a rejection of the proposed strictures and urging an expansion of US efforts in the Libyan Affair.

The neocons are no more correct than are the wing clippers in the House.  The answer to the problems of "wars of choice" is to be found in a more effective means of determining the nature of US interests in play in any given potential area of intervention.  The critical difference between "mandatory" and "optional" wars is to be found in the answer to one question: What key national and strategic interests are to be served and to what degree by this proposed intervention?

Had this question been both posed and accurately answered, the US would have not invaded Iraq.  It would not have expanded the mission in Afghanistan to include the impossibility of nation-building.  And, the US would have sat out Libya as it did conflicts even more bloody elsewhere in Africa.  The "wars of choice" all share a common feature--they were driven by ideology.  True, the ideology might have been clothed attractively in American values, norms, aspirations.  The motive might have been expressed in pleasant words regarding democracy, transparency, or the evil nature of repressive regimes.  The matter of refugees might have been adduced in support as well as concealment of the underlying ideological imperatives.

There is only one reason to go to war--when there is no realistic alternative way by which a better state of peace as defined by American national and strategic interests exists.  There is one large reason not to go to war--when the motive is one of ideology, of belief, of personal or collective vision.

How to parse between the two is the only effective way to assure the US does not waste blood and treasure in pursuit of impossible dreams.  And, parsing between the two is the only way to assure that when war in the national interest is necessary, we have the way and will to do so with success.

Of course, Congress being what it is, there is no chance the Deep Thinkers in that body any more than the Great Strategists in and near the Oval will consider this matter, the only matter which genuinely counts for more than a few votes more or less in some future election.

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.

T.R,s Timeless Insight--Today More Than Ever

During the run up to American participation in World War I as Woodrow Wilson was trying  to frame a reason for our coming into this purely European civil war, former president Theodore Roosevelt--personally in favor of the US going to war--wrote to his fellow progressive Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator from Massachusetts.  TR knew a thing or two about war.  He knew even more about the American people.  This shows in his words.

"In my experience," he wrote,"the American public is not disposed to overseas wars unless there is a great cause involved or the goal is plainly clear."  While the ex-president believed there was a "great cause" to be fought in the trenches of the Western Front, he properly concluded that it was not possible yet to convey this to the great mass of We the People in a way which would assure full-fledged support.  He was right.  Even later, after Wilson had put forth his vision of the "great cause" such as to gain nearly monolithic support, it was necessary in the estimate of the administration to put into place the most draconian laws restricting free speech and assembly in the Republic's history and back these laws with a shadow army of millions of hyper-patriotic snoops.

In the aftermath of the war when the noble vision of Wilson turned to foggy and nasty reality, the American public recoiled against any involvement in the affairs of Europe and Asia.  This, the era of isolationism, made both World War II and the ensuing Cold War the next thing to inevitable.

The lesson was and is clear.  "Great causes" must be real and not the artifacts of ideology or ideals.  A goal which is "plainly clear" is far more important than the purported greatness of the cause.

The lessons to be derived from TR's insight are applicable right now as the US considers when, how, and at what speed we should/must ramp down our war in Afghanistan.  The original intent, the goal, of the invasion of Afghanistan way back in the Dark Age, was twofold: Remove by killing or capture Osama bin Laden and his fellows of al-Qaeda; punish the Taliban regime for having harbored al-Qaeda even after 9/11 and repeated diplomatic efforts to accomplish the capture of the al-Qaeda heavyweights.

The goal was "plainly clear."  And, the motive did, in the estimate of most Americans, constitute a "great cause."  Not since 7 Decemember 41 had there been such uniformity of conviction regarding both the necessity and justice of going to war.  The TR dictum had been followed, well and truly.

Almost before the first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Neocon Ninny crowd betrayed the "plainly clear" goal and undercut the credibility of the "great cause."  This was accomplished by a surprising, even shocking, set of awesomely stupid decisions driven by skewed perceptions of the requirements of political opinion both domestic and foreign.

The administration came to the conclusion that the American public or at least the left-leaning elite would support the war if and only if the American goals were enlarged to encompass the creation of a modern Western style nation-state in all its full splendor.  It was the apparent belief of the decision makers that the war would be gutted of public support without the goal of nation-building replacing the narrow, "plainly clear" one of destroying al-Qaeda and administering condign punishment upon Mullah Omar and the Taliban.

That decision as well as its predicate were both as wrong as a cat barking.

Another decision, this one powered by diplomatic considerations, made the situation immeasurably worse.  In total spite of the reasonably well developed intelligence picture which showed the long standing relation between the Pakistani military and intelligence service with Taliban and its protectorate, al-Qaeda, the administration failed to put sufficient pressure on Islamabad to seal the border or arrest fleeing Talib and al-Qaeda personnel who flooded across the border with their Pakistani hand-holders.  Nor did the US provide adequate and properly positioned forces to do the job at the border itself.  (In this context it might be recalled that credible testimony exists as to American units receiving stop orders as they closed in on critical border crossing points.)

The Afghan situation was changed quickly into a protracted multi-party insurgency in which the foreign interventionary forces had neither the numbers nor the doctrine to convert defeat into victory at least in a reasonable amount of time.  The Iraq invasion--which also fails the TR test completely as regards "great cause" and, again by self-imposed mission-leap, fails the goal being "clearly plain"--supervened to assure the situation in Afghanistan would improve only from the perspective of Taliban, the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and, of course, the Pakistanis.

Now, not quite two years into our belated effort to retrieve some semblance of success in the place, the combination of the killing of Osama bin Laden, the new focus on the deficit and government economy as well as an election only eighteen months in the offing, the debate has shifted from how-can-we-succeed to how-can-we-get-out.  There is no doubt but that We the People have lost any and all desire to keep on keeping on in Afghanistan.

The largest single reason for this widely held view is not the passage of time.  Nor is it the quite modest losses incurred by American forces.  Rather it is simply because our "cause" there is not "great" and our goal is most definitely not "plainly clear."

Rather than engage in a sterile and bitter controversy over how many troops should be withdrawn when and with what effect, the US would be better off to define what our goal is now that the icon of terror is sleeping with the fishes.  Is our goal now what it was in the beginning, the defense of the US and other civilized states by suppressing the offensive capacities of al-Qaeda along with convincing the adherents of Taliban to stop giving "Islamic hospitality" to groups which practice violent political Islam against Western targets?  Or is our goal the more expansive one of nation-building together with forceful counterinsurgency?

The first alternative is cheaper.  Counter-terrorist operations require a lower number of boots on the ground--albeit a highly skilled and specialist bunch in those boots.  The offense-defense of counter-terrorist operations allows us to ignore the nature and character of Afghan society, polity, culture, and economy.  As long as the Afghan government and its armed forces offer no hindrance to our efforts, we can overlook any and all objectionable features of the regime and its personalities.

The downside to this operational concept is the possible blowback from Americans offended by our having left the Afghan population at the "mercy" of political parties espousing political Islam.  As a number of Americans are offended deeply by the practices of some Muslim regimes, it is probable that there will be significant opposition to drawing back from the goal of seeing Afghanistan become a stable, democratic, multi-party, free enterprise state with an honest, transparent, and responsive government which includes an independent judiciary.

The other option is, quite simply, the pursuit of the totally impossible.  Even a successful counter insurgency campaign will end with negotiations, negotiations which will see Taliban and others as part of the government. The ultimate result will be women in burkas, and clerics in charge.  Perhaps not as absolutely as during the heyday of Taliban dot one, but bad by liberal Western norms and values.  But, no purely military effort can do more than kill the most highly motivated and least given to compromise among the insurgents while placing effective pressure on the others to join in the process of negotiation.  The military by itself cannot make the status quo government legitimate either functionally or existentially.  Nor can the military by itself create an atmosphere which draws the support of the uncommitted majority.  That is up to the indigenous government.

The time is here for the Obama administration to choose one of the two options.  Choose and then make the goal "plainly clear."  At the same time the administration would not be wrong to insist that there was a "great cause" underlying our efforts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That cause is no less than the critical one of protecting the country against future attack by Muslims who are motivated by the goals of violent political Islam.

Even the smaller, less costly in both lives and money alternative will not see us totally out of Afghanistan for many years.  It will also necessitate putting the real screws on Islamabad to go into North Waziristan so as to put actual pressure on the black turban guys to put down the guns and stick to preaching and stoning women.

Years ago the Geek predicted that the conflict between the civilized states and proponents of violent political Islam will last so long as to render the Cold War a short lived blip in our history.  It will still be going on when President Obama is getting social security--that is if it still exists in twenty years.

Memorial Day

The holiday we know today as Memorial Day started as a commemoration to Northern troops who were killed or died of disease during the War Between the States.  There were many to mourn.  The fatalities both North and South were massive, the largest ever experienced in relation to total population size by we Americans.

The awesome butcher's bill was the consequence not only of the size of the armies involved or the new technologies of killing developed and fielded during the war.  The greatest single cause of the body count, a body count so large as to permanently change the American way of warfighting arose from the nature of the war.  The American Civil War was a total war of national survival for each side.  The struggle was existential with a capital "E."

Since the guns fell silent over the battlefields of that war nearly one hundred fifty years ago, the US has engaged in only one war which might be described accurately as an existential affair, a total war of national survival.  That war was, of course, World War II.

Even if the Imperial Japanese government had not made entering the war easy as well as obligatory, there would have been no realistic way in which the US could have sat on its hands much longer.  It was apparent to many thoughtful people that desirable as the peace of isolation might seem, it was an impossible dream.  A world dominated by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan would have constituted a world entirely too hostile to both the defining core values of our country as well as its national interests to be long endured.

World War II may not have been as it has been termed "the good war" as no war can be said to be "good," but it was a most necessary war, a justifiable war, or, to be brutal, a least-worst option sort of war.  By the time the Japanese representatives signed the instrument of surrender in September 1945, the US had fought two existential conflicts, two wars of national survival in eighty years.

A lot of men were killed in each of these existential wars.  Only the fact that each war was existential and total provides justification for the great loss of life.  The lives of these men made and preserved the nation-state.  Without their violent deaths, the US would not have become and remained what it has been.   The modern United States, indeed, much of the modern world, has been erected on the corpses of these men.

(A point of personal privilege here.  The Geek cannot stomach terms such as "sacrifice" or "gave their lives" or "fallen," or any of the other commonly used terms in a vain attempt to cover up the brutal reality that these men were killed.  None sought out death.  Death, violent death, was inflicted upon them.  These men had done to them what they would have done to their enemy had the toss of fortune's coin only gone differently.  There ain't no way around it: War is a matter of killing or getting killed, of getting or getting got.  It cannot and should not be prettified.)

All  of the other wars we Americans have fought over the past century and a half, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Korean War, the War in Vietnam, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the myriad of skirmishes, interventions, raids, humanitarian relief missions gone awry, were not matters of national existence nor even material national interest but rather national policy.  All were limited wars in support of policy.  Arguably, most were neither necessary nor justifiable in any realistic way.

Being wars men were killed in all.  A lot of men.  Even the lowest cost of these many nasty little policy exercises saw scores of American men killed.

After the Civil War, the American view of war and how to fight it became one not of avoiding war but rather of finding ways to both fight and win which resulted in the fewest number of Americans being killed.  More than any other state, the US sought and employed technologies of killing which were most effective at the lowest risk to American lives.  The hectatombs of the War Between the States taught Americans that there is nothing heroic in getting killed.  As General George S. Patton Jr. put it, "You do not win by dying for your country.  You win by making the other sonofabitch die for his."

Even though the US has been very successful at limiting friendly deaths, the reality remains that American troops are killed in the course of limited wars in support of policy.  More importantly, these men are killed without the ultimate justification that their deaths preserved the nation from existential obliteration.

It is for this basic reason that We the People question and finally turn against the continuation of limited wars in support of policy should such not be successfully completed at a low body count in short order.  Our repugnance for "small" wars being waged for obscure reasons of state has had several equally negative ramifications for the way in which the US approaches the difficult subjects of national security interest and coercive diplomacy.

One of these is the predilection of administrations (of both parties) to oversell the war or to overstate what is at stake in the conflict or to expand the mission so as to make it more politically acceptable.  The prototype for all three courses of action was President Woodrow Wilson's framing of our entrance into World War I.  But the Wilson approach was eagerly, if even unconsciously, followed by later administrations.

The War in Vietnam was oversold and overstated.  So too was the invasion of Iraq.  The operation in Afghanistan was reprogrammed from one of a purely punitive nature to the impossible goal of "nation-building" in order to put a proper gloss on the underlying reality.  Even the most easily justified war in support of policy, the Korean "police action," fell prey to mission-creep following the invasion of Inchon when the goal changed from restoring the status quo ante to that of eliminating North Korea as a functioning state.

Another effect of addressing the American distaste for wars in support of policy is that of prevarication.  While the "Jive at Five" press briefings of the Vietnam period stand as the towering monument to this particular attempt to stave off the effects of public disenchantment, the same dynamic has been at work in every American war following World War II.  Successes have been magnified.  Difficulties have been downplayed.  Mood music intended to sooth the potentially savage beast of political disaffection has been played often and loudly.

Worst of all, the various administrations have seen it necessary to build coalitions in order to give the appearance that the US was not fighting a limited war in support of American policy and national interests but rather was acting in concert with other states in a common, preferably universally supported, cause.  By avoiding the public appearance of fighting a war by and for ourselves, the administrations have undercut the clarity of purpose, certainty of goals, and unity of effort necessary to bring the war to a quick and successful conclusion.

By yoking ourselves to coalitions which may be far more an artifact of diplomacy than an organic expression of coinciding national interests, the US both complicates the problem of pursuing critical national interests and renders the achievement of these interests less rather than more likely.  The chimera of multilateral action is sought in order to lower the political risks to an administration which seeks to wage a limited war in support of a policy which it perceives as critical to national or strategic interests of the US.

The history of limited war shows that such wars are the least likely to be successful.  That is, they are the least likely to lead to a better state of peace at the end of fighting.  In the past, these wars have been quite unlikely to provide a firm base for permanent peace in the contested area.  In largest measure this has been the consequence of failing to understand properly the linkage between diplomacy of the negotiation sort and diplomacy of the fighting variety.

More than a contest between organized bodies of armed men, a war is a contest of political wills.  Each party to a war is wagering that it has the greater political will.  Each party is putting the lives of its men at risk as a demonstration of its determination to win.  Battles are a way of upping the ante, corpses are chips pushed to the center of the table.

One of our limited wars in support of policy--the one in Korea--put this linkage in stark relief.  The most bitter as well as most pointless combats were waged over obscure terrain features of no intrinsic value while the armistice talks were in progress.  It took the Americans a while to tumble to the fact that these battles, exemplified by the one at Pork Chop Hill, were being used by the Chinese as a demonstration of their political will--and a test of ours.  The side which was willing and able to quite literally "waste" the greater number of lives was the side possessing the greater political will.

This key lesson taught by the killing of Americans on bleak hillsides in Korea during 1952 and 53 had been forgotten fifteen years later as the North Vietnamese used the same process during the Paris Peace Talks.  Nor has the US remembered these lessons today when they would be applicable to combining talking and killing in the context of Afghanistan.

To put the matter simply and in no way oversimplified, the only way in which the limited war in support of policy can achieve a better state of peace and thus begin to justify the leaving of American bones to (metaphorically) bleach in some far away place with an unpronounceable name is the proper combination of the diplomacy of talking and that of killing.  Simply declaring victory and heading home or (as in Vietnam) establishing a "date certain" and then cutting off all funding for the war neither redeems failure nor makes right the killing of American personnel.

In the total war, the existential struggle between peers, there is no substitute for victory as General MacArthur properly noted.  However, the reality in the limited war in support of policy is different.  In this kind of war, the "small" war of limited lethality, limited means, limited scope, and limited goals, there is a substitute for victory.  The substitute is the achievement of a better state of peace by demonstrating superior political will.  The means of doing this is the proper linkage between the killing kind of diplomacy and the palaver variety.

Talking does not mean--nor should it--that the shooting must stop.  Nor does the continuation of the shooting render talking either impossible or unproductive.  Now and in the future when wars will continue to be of the limited policy directed sort, the realization of the crucial nature of political will is needed along with a commitment to the capacity to talk and shoot at the same time.

Sure, it is a multitasking approach, but we Americans invented the concept so we ought to be good at it.  Why not give it a try in Afghanistan?  If we can  pull it off there we will be in very good shape for the many small wars yet to come.

Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."

There Was A Time When Wars Were To Be Won

It seems strange now, but once upon a time, long, long time ago, states went to war with the intention of winning.  By winning it was generally understood that the purpose of the war was to impose one state's political will upon another.  By so doing, it was assumed that the victorious state would create a better state of peace--from its perspective at least.

In some wars, World War II being the archetypal example, it was easy to formulate both the political goal and its necessary subordinate, a definition of victory.  Of course, this was easy to accomplish in that for most of the combatants (the US was an exception here), the conflict was existential--a total war of national survival.

But, even lesser wars--the Falkland Islands War, for example--national survival was not at stake.  Even so, the British formulated a clear, unitary political goal with a relevant definition of victory.  The venue was small, the goal limited to the ejection of the invader, and victory was understood to mean the surrender or destruction of the occupying force along with a de facto pledge by the invader not to repeat the effort--at least in the near future.

In other wars--the several Arab-Israeli affrays come to mind--the political context precludes finally and completely bending the loser to the political will and goals of the "victor."  Because the combination of size and international dynamics prevented the existentially threatened Israelis from carrying on the war until all its Arab adversaries admitted defeat and forswore future military attacks, the conflict between Arab and Israeli came quickly to resemble the indecisive, limited wars of Europe during the Eighteenth Century.  No victories, only truces, no better state of peace, only timeouts between bouts.

When looking at the history of war since the end of "The Good War," the US stands out as a driver of the new trajectory--wars without clear political goals, lacking coherent definitions of victory.  In part, this has been the necessary consequence of the American fixation upon collective security either actual, as in the cases of the Korean War and the Gulf War of 1990-91,or fabricated, as in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and, most recently, Libya.  The requirements of collective approval automatically assured hazy goals and the lack of any clear cut understanding of the meaning of victory.

To a greater extent, the American failures to establish a unitary political goal, to define victory, or even to state realistically what might constitute a better state of peace arises organically from the nature and character of domestic politics in the US.  The foundation truth here is simply that Americans are not really comfortable with the idea of interventionary warfare.  We do not cotton up to the notion of getting into someone else's war.

During the long debacle of our intervention in the wars of the Vietnamese, the responsible administrations, the several Congresses, the media and public opinion molders, all were uncertain as to what we sought in the conflict.  There was no agreement as to what our political goal might be beyond the boilerplate of "stopping Communist aggression. or "supporting democracy against armed force from without and subversion from within."  The only idea of what might constitute a better state of peace was a South Vietnam in which the noise level of armed violence was reduced to a level such that the region might not be kept awake all night.  Whether by force or negotiation, the US really did not have a clue as to what might be required of the North Vietnamese or the southern insurgents.

Without stating clearly and understandably what political dictate must be accepted by the other three combatants in the war, it was impossible for the US to establish either a goal or to define victory.  As a result, it was impossible to continue American political will as the years went by and the blood flowed.  It was also impossible to weaken the political will of the North or the southern insurgents.  Finally, the lack made the possibility of bending the Southern government to our will a chimera at best.

The same lacks characterized our invasion of Afghanistan.  Had the domestic political environment allowed it, the US could have mounted a punitive expedition aimed at killing or capturing as many Taliban and al-Qaeda figures as possible so as to destroy both entities.  A simple punitive expedition would have been explicable to other states--including Pakistan--and would have allowed diplomatic arm twisting so as to have the freedom of operation necessary.  In this approach, the challenges of (re)constructing Afghanistan post war would have been left to the Afghan people and whatever international bodies cared to assist.  There would have been no long term "nation-building" commitment by the US.

Iraq was both identical and different.  The difference resided in the inescapable fact that the US had no real reason to invade.  Leaving that non-trivial consideration aside, had the US invaded with the simple, unitary political goal of removing the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, the definition of victory as well as the task itself would have been easy to state and accomplish.  Again, the post regime removal process would have been assigned to the Iraqi people along with whosoever of the "international community" cared to assist, which might have included the US in a non-occupation role.

In Iraq and Afghanistan alike, the US had no clear, readily apprehended political goal.  There was, as a result, no definition of victory after the capture of Saddam and his major associates.  Other than in glittering generalities of no practical significance, the American administration could not state what our purpose in the country might be or how we might successfully do whatever it was we might think we should do.  Nice sounding words about democracy or rule of law or economic development do not have any real world utility. In order to bend an adversary--whether Sunni or Shiite or secular--to our political will, to our understanding of what constitutes a better state of peace, it is essential to have a narrowly focused, realistically achievable goal which can be transmitted effectively to all involved parties including the American public.

Without the goal it is not possible to define victory.  True, victory can be declared, but it cannot be achieved without the necessary predicate of a goal.  The lack of a realistic, utilitarian goal, coupled with the total absence of any understanding of what might constitute a better state of peace assured not only an unnecessarily prolonged war but one which would end in a quite unsatisfying way.

The inability to articulate a convincing explanation of what might be a better state of peace also complicated the diplomacy of constructing and keeping an alliance, including the very necessary alliance between the indigenous people, their government, and the US.  The inability to share a vision of a better state of peace, to put forth a clear political goal, to know when meaningful victory might be achieved served to worsen the frictions inherent to any alliance as well as to erode the political will of the civilian populations of the interventionary forces.  The longer the lack of a consensually understood goal exists, the more the frictions will grow while domestic opinion turns increasingly against the war.

Now there is Libya.  At the outset, a single US Marine Expeditionary Unit could have removed Gaddafi in a matter of days.  Or, as a senior British officer told Con Coughlin of the Telegraph, a single tank battalion could have done the job in twenty four hours.  Militarily, either proposition is substantially accurate.

The lack of a political goal which was agreeable to the several Western powers favoring the quick removal of the Gaddafi nuisance as well as the existence of only the most vague notions of what might be a better state of peace prevented the focused use of diplomacy and military power to the goal of abating the Gaddafi menace. While excuses might be offered regarding the need for "international community" legitimization of any use of force against the Gaddafi regime, these remain mere excuses.

The difficulties resided not with opposition from Russia or China; nor did they come from the Arab states.  Nor, realistically, was there a basis for the lack of vision in fear of outraging Muslim opinion.  The failure of the several prime Western movers to define a better state of peace or enunciate a political goal emerged from a visceral feeling of oh-no-here-we-go-again!

The bad examples of Iraq and Afghanistan--which we must remember were American adventures in very bad thinking--caused fulminating paralysis of political will in the chanceries of Paris, London, and Washington.  Fear of a rapidly blooming Gaddafi success and all that implied fought with fear of being bogged down in one more Arab/Muslim morass.  The result was worse than doing nothing.

The result was embarking on an intentionally emasculated program of half-measures.  No--make that one-eighth measures.  No objective observer reasonably well grounded in the history and culture of Libya as well as the nature and character of Brother Leader and his coterie could have concluded that the combination of a no-fly zone and civilian protection air strikes would bring favorable or rapid results.  Nor could this observer have concluded that the results would be other than prolonged and bloody stalemate.

Had the Big Three of the West--France, the UK, and the US--mutually determined that the quest for a better state of peace would result only with the removal of the Gaddafi regime, their instruments of diplomacy could have been put to work to assure the tacit acceptance of this decision by other parties both great and small.  With this necessary preliminary being accomplished in private, a joint announcement of goal--the removal of the Gaddfi regime--and definition of victory--the capture or death of the chief members of the regime--could have been made.

The mechanism of accomplishment would have been a short duration ground and air campaign.  The short term nature of the military operation could have been made clear as the first air defense suppression ordinance hit the targets.  The task of the foreign troops would have been restricted to the removal of the obnoxious regime.  The post-removal effort would have been left up to the Libyans and those of the "international community" of a mind (or national interest need) to assist.

In this scenario, the definition of a better state of peace, the political goal, and the metric of victory would have been simple, straightforward, easy to comprehend, unitary--and susceptible to accomplishment in a politically acceptable time frame and at a cost in lives which would be low--certainly for the Libyans far lower than the ongoing agony of internal war.

The public carping by the usual suspects would have taken place.  There would have been the inevitable violent demonstrations by Muslims, or at least those looking for a reason to be outraged.  Nothing new here.

Most importantly, the use of this alternative would have cleansed the West of the ongoing fear of inconclusive war.  Wars are inconclusive only when there is no real and generally acceptable goal for which the war is being fought.  Without an understandable vision of the better state of peace toward which the war is aimed, without a political goal, without a definition of victory, without the use of sufficient and situationally appropriate force, the war must be unnecessarily prolonged or inconclusive.

The hypothetical alternative outlined for Libya would not have made the conflict "a splendid little war," for no war is splendid, but it would have assured the war would have been both little and conclusive.  Even now it not too late to change war horses in mid-stream as a senior British commander has suggested.  It will take ground forces; it will now take more time and lives; it will present a messy problem for diplomats, but failure can still be redeemed.

Far more importantly, given both the situation in Libya and the rush to the exit in Afghanistan, it is now time for decision makers and military planners alike to take a very hard look at the ground truths regarding the conduct of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is long past time to reacquaint ourselves with the powerful reality of war, that it is an instrument of policy.  And, a war without a realistic, utilitarian policy behind it is simply a costly exercise in futility.

Our record in costly futility disguised as war is lengthy--Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, (perhaps) Libya.  Isn't it time to break the string?

What Else Would Anyone Expect?

The NYT seems surprised to discover from its usual unnamed sources that the Pakistani army chief of staff, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will not cooperate with US demands that his army crack down on their allies in terror.  The general is also of a mind to ramp down relations with the US to the bare minimum necessary to assure the American cash cow keeps producing its billions every year.

The reasons for Kayani's position are made clear by the paper's source(s).  They distill to internal  pressures within the armed forces of Pakistan.  As every observer of that sorry country has known for years, there are many, many members of the army's officer corps who are soulmates of the adherents of violent political Islam.  Then there are others, more secular perhaps, who take the view that the terror groups constitute a strategic asset against India.

The linkage between the two components of the officer corps is simply that Islam defines Pakistani identity, and without the forever war with India, the justification for the army as custodian of the nation and redeemer of lost land is lost.  With that loss would come the collapse of the rickety system which is the government of Pakistan.  The continued symbiosis between the instruments of state and the advocates of violent political Islam is existential for the Pakistani status quo.

The American Great Abbottabad Raid rocked both the military and the larger society.  It is impossible to overstate this.  The hypernationalistic Pakistanis took a blow in their over inflated national ego.  This consideration alone makes it necessary for the army--and its chief of staff--to cock a defiant snoot at the US. Any less would assure deligitimazation of the army and its commander.  It would even raise the credible threat of internal conflict far surpassing that already existing.

Over at the WaPo, a (relatively speaking) conservative op-ed writer bemoans the fact that the US and Pakistan have been engaged in a stereotyped dance of American warning followed by a sincere sounding Pakistani promise of decisive action which results in no real action whatsoever.  This dynamic has been repeated numerous times over the past several years.  It shows no sign of changing, Mr Ignatius sighs in conclusion..

Of course it can take no other direction.  If the game is to continue it must do so in the well worn grooves and well understood moves of the past few years.  The governing ideological, political, and mythic imperatives of the Pakistani polity and society will allow no other course of action.

It does not matter that by any set of objective considerations the US gained significant potential leverage from the Great Abbottabad Raid.  The objective realities do not outweigh the subjective ones operating on the minds of Pakistani decision makers both military and civilian.  Nor do the objective considerations count for more than a rat's feces in the estimate of the profoundly anti-American majority of the Pakistani population.

No American administration can undervalue the pervasive and deep nature of anti-American sentiment infecting the average Pakistani.  The assorted Pakistani governments over the past twenty and more years have carefully fostered the hatred and distrust of the US held by most Pakistanis.  The blame-the-US gambit has been played heavier since 9/11 and heavier even subsequent to the development of warm ties between the US and India during the second of George W. Bush's terms in office.

The government efforts at propagandizing the Pakistani population have been enhanced by the nearly universal message of hate-the-infidel-crusaders preached from the overwhelming majority of the mosques and madrasses in Pakistan.  The Pakistani identity is heavily dependent upon Islam.  With the Zia imposed program of enhanced political cohesion through Islam, it has become more so.  This means that for Pakistanis under thirty, the view of the US and its Western partners is seen through the same distorted theological lens as that of Osama bin Laden.

When this last and very important factor is added to the others, the only conclusion supported by the facts is that the US gained no leverage by the Great Abbottabad Raid and arguably lost some of its very tenuous influence to the wave of religiously exacerbated nationalism.  This means that General Kayani (and everyone else in the chain of command) can flip off the US and its demands with impunity.

The conventional wisdom in Pakistan right now is that we need them much more than they need us.  This conclusion is predicated upon the belief that without Pakistan's cooperation and assistance, we will not be able to get Taliban to the negotiating table.  Without that as cover, it will be impossible for us to withdraw forces from Afghanistan rapidly enough to assure Obama's reelection.

There is a great deal of truth to the Pakistani contention that without Islamabad the chance to ramp down our war in Afghanistan is virtually nil.  The Pakistani army and ISI do have a very great deal of influence with both Afghan Taliban and, even more, the Haqqani network.  Of course, the Paks have not yet demonstrated that they have the capacity to turn that influence into the useful result of getting both insurgent groups to agree to a power sharing deal with the Karzai regime.

Simultaneously, the movers and shakers of Islamabad are certain they can replace the US in whole or major part with China.  This is no doubt the case.  The Chinese are eager to extend their regional presence so as to place more of a squeeze on India.  They are also keen on gaining access to the mineralogical resources recently proven in Afghanistan by American geologists.  Thus, they would leap at the opportunity to enlarge their already extensive relations with Pakistan.

Two arguments are presented as to why the US has little choice but to go along with the Pakistani game.  The first is the war in Afghanistan.  The second is the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and production capacity.

The first contention is accurate at the moment.  It would be obviated by an American force reposturing.  Should we abandon the manpower and money heavy nation-building approach in favor of the special operations force predicated counter terror and counter insurgent (note the difference, counter insurgent rather than counter insurgency) one, the needs for Pakistani cooperation would be reduced to the vanishing point.

The nuclear bogyman is rather more shadow than substance.  Yes, the Fire Breathers of Islamabad have entirely too many weapons.  They have a large and expanding production base.  The stockpiles and production facilities, particularly the latter, are not perfectly secured, nor can they be.  It would do the Pakistanis well to meditate upon all the ways by which the US could neutralize both weapons stockpiles and production facilities.  True, some of the means would have the collateral effect of splattering substantial amounts of finely distributed plutonium and highly enriched uranium around quite a few square kilometers of Pakistani soil, but, such is the cost of abating an unacceptable nuisance.

Perhaps the Pakistanis have counted on President Obama continuing to be the poster boy for peace, love, flower power, and submission to the will of others.  But, in the aftermath of the Great Abbottabad Raid, they might have a few doubts about the cravenness of the current American president.

The US would be well advised to hang tough in the face of Pakistan's exercise in ego building, status quo preserving defiance.  This can be best expressed by a steep cut in the military aid to the army and an ending of all but the most essential humanitarian assistance on the civilian side.  These measures would be enhanced by the reconfiguration of American strategy and operational doctrine in Afghanistan accompanied by a quick reduction in conventional forces.

Meanwhile, in the back room, get the folks working on how to go about an exercise in unilateral and quite involuntary nuclear disarmament--of Pakistan.  And, in a gesture of friendship to the Boys of Islamabad, it might be nice to advise them to learn Chinese as the Trolls of Beijing will appreciate the effort.

A Couple Of Good Personnel Choices

President Obama--or, to err on the side of accuracy--Secretary of Defense Robert Gates deserve a strong thumbs-up for two specific decisions on personnel.  One is the move of Leon Panetta from CIA to SecDef.  The other is tabbing Marine LtGen John Allen to take over the supreme command in Afghanistan.

Panetta, like Gates, has a long and distinguished record in Washington.  More to the point, Panetta has spent the last two years immersed in the realities of the threats confronting the US now or in the near to mid-term.  It is this latter consideration which makes Panetta the only real contender to follow Gates to the Pentagon.  With his knowledge of the dark sides of the world, Panetta is best equipped to argue budget cuts which will leave the US in the best possible position to honor commitments and defend its national and strategic interests.  Panetta is prepared in all essential respects to hold an open debate on American priorities and absolute requirements as the budgetary considerations demand a shrinkage of the Pentagon's budget by at least four hundred billion dollars over the next decade.

The great fear of Gates and all other reasonably knowledgeable observers has been an across the board cut which would result in all defense capacities being hollowed out equally.  This would leave the US without sufficient capabilities in any area either to honor obligations to treaty partners or to deter and defeat threats to national interests.  It would leave the US without the muscle necessary to support diplomacy in all its myriad forms.

Gates has been in favor of an open debate, a far reaching one by necessity over the stance of American military forces.  Such a debate will be messy, unpleasant, ideological in all too many ways, and, unless undertaken with a leadership both well informed and willing to lead, inconclusive.  Panetta should be able to perform the function of debate facilitator quite well.  Given that he can combine the expertise of having run a large, complex, and sensitive agency with knowledge of the world and previous experience with both the Office of Management and Budget and the Appropriations Committee, it is hard to see any other person so well equipped to handle the delicate and highly important matter of guiding the Pentagon budget to a soft landing.

While unknown outside the Marine Corps and the small number of mavens of small wars, LtGen Allen is an excellent choice to run operations in Afghanistan during what will prove to be the make or break end stage of the war.  When the Geek encountered Allen in the context of an advanced service school many years before the man got his first star let alone his third, the Geek was quite impressed by the officer's quick and probing mind.  That the mind was far more than merely quick or probing was demonstrated by Allen's success in recruiting critical tribal leaders so as to shift Sunni tribes from leaning to the insurgents in Iraq to siding with the US.  This act was central to the development of the Awakening Councils and the Sons of Iraq, both of which proved to be very important components of the victory over the various insurgent combines.

While the tribal politics of Afghanistan are not so regimented or predictable as was the case in Iraq, there is very good reason to believe that LtGen Allen's skills in this area will serve the cause of defeating the insurgents with high efficiency.  It is also probable that General Allen will be able to establish a relationship with Hamid Karzai which more closely resembles that which existed between Stanley McChrystal than the current troubled one with David Petraeus.

It rather appears that LtGen Allen combines much of the warfighting nature of McChrystal with many of the political skills possessed by General Petraeus.  This will do much to assure the US and its allies including Afghanistan are more rather than less likely to come out on top in the war.  Potentiating this is the fact that the war in Afghanistan is now an all Marine operation at the highest levels with a Marine as CENTCOMCINC and another running the shop in Afghanistan.  This will do much to smooth any of the frictions which normally exist between major commands and theater commands.

Robert Gates has performed many outstanding services to We the People over his long career.  However, few equal let alone surpass this last day effort--choosing two perfect candidates for two very tough jobs.  The outgoing Secretary of Defense deserves more than the usual gratitude for the care with which he has prepared for his leaving office with wars in progress and a budget which must be cut without damage to the core interests of the US.

Happy Talk--But, There Is Bad News Coming

The Pentagon spin machine has released its latest Congressionally required semi-annual appraisal of the state of play in Afghanistan.  By and large it is 108 pages of happy talk, soothing mood music, a sort of happy-days-will-be-coming-soon-(maybe.)  The same tone, very upbeat, but with a slight note of caution obtains in the news release issued as a cover letter on the report.

The report spends fifty-three pages in consideration of the security situation in-country.  Much of the good news is contained in this section.  It is clear that operations over the past several months have shifted the initiative to the the ISAF/US/ANF coalition.  The insurgents despite their capacity to undertake high visibility attacks, plant IEDs, and generally give the appearance of still being in the fight have lost the initiative and seem to have lost some of their will to combat.

The Local Security Program which dates back to General McChrystal and is the descendant of the Vietnam War Combined Action Platoon Program as well as the much deprecated Regional Forces-Popular Forces ("Ruff-Puffs") has been developing with a fair degree of success even given the opposition of the Karzai government and the inherent corruption and inefficiency of the Afghan Interior Ministry.  Should this trend continue over the next six months, it bodes well for long term stability as only a credible locally based force with primary loyalty to the area it is protecting can assure Taliban and the other insurgent groups cannot and will not return after the foreigners leave.  It is clear that more external support for the development of the local forces is required.  It is equally evident that more pressure must be placed on Kabul to allow the local forces to develop and deploy.

The same applies to the Afghan Local Police.  This organization (to use the term generically and loosely only) is not only a necessary complement to the Local Security Program's Village Stability Operations, it provides the only governmental presence which is directly observable by and accountable to the local folks.  Thus it is a critical instrument of government which, if operating correctly, will go toward countering the impression of the Afghan National Police and Army as corrupt, distant, and non-responsive.  Again, Kabul has dragged its feet in allowing and encouraging the development of the Afghan Local Police due to its customary fear of losing control of the population--as if it actually ever had any such control.

The report way understates both the importance of these locally oriented efforts and the resistance to them which is presented by the central government.  This is unfortunate and raises doubts about the future ability of the Pentagon (and considering the impending change of management) the Agency to evaluate progress or lack thereof in Afghanistan.  The low balling of the local initiatives also erodes the ability of Congress to assure American dollars and manpower is put to the best possible use.

The thirty-five pages covering the development and deployment of the Afghan National Army and Police is optimistic but not overly so.  The report does note the severe problem presented by the very, very low level of basic literacy among the recruits.  It pays some attention to the chronic willingness of ANF&P personnel to desert, change sides, or "go rogue."  Overall, the attrition affecting the ANF&P represents a major challenge in meeting the ambitious goals for force size.  It may be necessary for Kabul to institute a draft of some sort which would open a very large can of very vicious political and tribal worms.

The subtext of the pages considering the procurement process for the ANF&P hints at but, unfortunately, does not state the difficulties presented by pervasive corruption.  The problem is that the corrupt actions are not simply those of locals but involve representatives of foreign firms offering both equipment and materiel.  It is easy to see the political/diplomatic considerations which demanded a heavy foot on the soft pedal.  Even if justifiable, this absence of accuracy misleads the reader, congressional, media, or private citizen.

Because of the mis-definition of the mission in Afghanistan as one of "nation-building" rather than one of punishment and deterrence, the report wanders at some length into the areas of governance and "reconstruction and development" as well as counternarcotics.  All of these areas may be of very real relevance to the Afghan population, but they are tangential at best to the US and its foreign allies.  The goal of assuring that Afghanistan does not and will never again provide a safe haven to groups practicing violent political Islam does not require the construction of a faux Western nation-state from the tribal warp and woof of the local population.

Unfortunately, the military does not question the importance of these civilian goals any more in this report than it has in previous efforts or in the decision making process regarding the nature and character of the military efforts in-country.  The underlying assumption that nation-building is central to effective counterinsurgency rides along in splendor, unquestioned, undoubted in this report.  A close reading of the sections regarding nation-building shows a surplus of fine sounding mood music, lofty words, and even loftier ambitions coupled with barely whispered lyrics concerning the sorry record of nearly unmitigated failure in all areas.

One lack is noteworthy due to its sheer obviousness.  There is not a word about religion or the role of religion in facilitating instability within the country.  Nor is there any consideration of the centrality of tribal affiliation and loyalties to the challenges of facilitating the construction of a unitary national identity and state in Afghanistan.  The leaving aside of the two most important features of individual and group self-identification so as to not consider their impact on the goals of nation-building is an inexcusable flaw in the report as it was in predecessors.  The complete absence of such key features skews the ability of any reader to accurately appreciate what can and cannot be done in-country along with what has and has not been accomplished.

A total of three, that's right, three pages was spent considering Afghanistan in its regional engagement context.  Considering that the Taliban and Haqqani network as well as the survivors of al-Qaeda would have been sent to Paradise years ago had Pakistan not been such a close and inviting ally, the failure to accurately and comprehensively consider the regional engagement aspect of the conflict is a fine example of moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

All and all this semi-annual exercise in shading reality resembles the everything-is-perfect-and-getting-better approach of the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.  One can only wonder if the denizens both in the Five Sided Wigwam and Afghanistan are deluding themselves or simply hoping to delude the rest of us--particularly the money givers on the Hill.

As if to prove the cautionary notes of impending problems and setbacks contained in the report are not only accurate but in their accuracy buttress the marginal credibility of the entire exercise, there are now two shop mutterings of Taliban major attacks coming in the next few days.  No details of course, just the vague words about casualties and ultimate Taliban failure.  It is a fine example of salvation through good timing or, to use the invisible motto over the entrance at Langley, "Thank God for coincidence."