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USA Edition | Today Is Tuesday, March 9, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Tuesday, March 9, 2010 |
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Must All The World Think And Behave As We?
We can’t anymore save Afghanistan from its 13th century culture than we can teach Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sing rap.
“The 30,000 additional troops that I’m announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 — the fastest possible pace — so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They’ll increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.”President Barack Obama, December 1, 2009
Whether or not one agrees with Obama administration policy on Afghanistan, you have to give the President credit for thoroughly examining the goals, issues and risks before deciding to surge American troops. There is some reason to believe that Mr. Obama’s military review may have been the most careful, thorough and comprehensive analysis of any ongoing wartime strategy. Only time will tell if the strategy proposed by General Stanley McChrystal, and modified by the White House, will achieve the goals set out by the President.
History Tells Us
The essence of the ‘this time is different’ syndrome is simple. It is rooted in the firmly held belief that financial crises are things that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen to us, here and now. We are doing things better, we are smarter, we have learned from past mistakes. The old rules of valuation no longer apply.
Kenneth Rogoff
Harvard Economist & Historian
There is a sense today, as has always been the case when what America wants and what it can achieve are vastly different, that history is not entirely reliable — because this time it’s different.
Lyndon Johnson lost his presidency by waging a war ( Vietnam ) based on failed assumptions, unreliable operational information, overly optimistic assessments by military commanders, and a sense that military might can fix any problem. President Johnson was driven to escalate, as it appears Mr. Obama has been as well, by a powerful military-industrial complex.
Johnson’s presidency was destroyed by incremental decision-making in both Congress and The White House. The outcome for Mr. Obama, while not yet known, rests entirely upon his shoulders, for neither he, nor President Johnson, started the wars that became theirs by assumption and subsequent decision to escalate.
Both presidents believed they were doing the right thing. Both presidents sought to protect their nation. Both chose to take on a war for which they asked little or nothing of their countrymen, or their political base.
It’s not that they don’t know what happened in prior military conflicts, for they surely have their facts straight. Yet, for whatever reason, this administration, like those gone before, believes that today’s problems, situations and outcomes are entirely new. This way of thinking is sometimes described as the this time is different syndrome, in which all events are considered as new and unique when in reality they are all too often reoccurrences of prior events.
President Obama made clear, after reviewing the matter, that in his view comparisons between Vietnam and Afghanistan do not apply. On this he said,
First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we’re better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. I believe this argument depends on a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now — and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance — would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.
Second, there are those who acknowledge that we can’t leave Afghanistan in its current state, but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we already have. But this would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions there. It would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan security forces and give them the space to take over.
What we do know is that the Afghanistan surge will cost the lives of young Americans thrust into a vexatious struggle. If the President’s goals are met, if the Karzai government becomes a respectable and responsible partner, and if we eradicate the Taliban and/or al Qaeda in Afghanistan the price will not have been too high. At least to those of us who were not called upon to sacrifice, or die, or to lose one of our children or spouses in battle.
But we cannot help but conclude that history is more reliable than White House announcements when it comes to evaluating the probability of American military success in places where there are no front lines, no clear, black-and-white goals, no national consensus to persevere. History tells us that our desire to change and modernize Afghanistan is little different from our desire to democratize Vietnam, or Somalia, or even Haiti. What we want for people, as exemplary as that might be, does not mean they are either ready or capable of attaining goals, governance or social behaviors they do not know and do not seek for themselves.
In his address to the nation, President Obama said that he had decided to escalate American military operations in Afghanistan. What he has decided as our Commander In Chief, and what we have chosen to commit to as a nation, is to politically stabilize an Afghan nation that has never been politically cohesive or stable. If our aspirations for the Afghans are good, as they clearly are measured against our way of thought and values, they are not shared by a people who have never been a nation, or literate, or any of the things we so badly want for them. On this our president said,
“This review is now complete. And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.”
The mission, the President told us, is national security. No rational American should expect less from his or her president — for our national security, safety and freedoms can never be left to chance. To make clear his intentions, the President assured West Point’s Corps Of Cadets,
“I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity. We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region.”
Those of us who were not part of the strategic review leading to the President’s decision to send more troops do not, and cannot, know the degree of risk about which the President spoke. Until, or unless there is probative evidence that the risks cited by the President are overstated, as it was with the Weapons of Mass Destruction risks that took this nation to war in Iraq, we must support his decision.
Support does not require that we not question it, nor that we not wonder at why we, you and me, are not more involved in waging this war and making it successful. We live in a nation where bankers can destroy our financial system and go unchallenged, where professional athletes can earn immense fortunes, where politicians can sell their knowledge to lobbyists for multi-million dollar pay days, but where the least education, least advantaged, and those too young to have a political voice are expected to give their service and risk their lives so that the rest of us can be free of any burden.
What if we asked our bankers, or their children, to go fight for us in Afghanistan?
Or me, or you?
We are troubled, not by the President’s decision to surge troops, but by the uneven sharing of burden here at home. We are a nation at war on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet we remain a nation largely unmobilized, unaffected, uncaring and immensely ill-informed. The risks and burdens that follow from the President’s decision are unfairly distributed in our society. Those to whom he spoke at West Point are committed. And so are a million or more Americans serving their country in the military.
How is it that a great nation that handsomely rewards its professional athletes, entertainers, bankers and lobbyists asks not what any of us might do for our country?
You’re not. I’m not. Why is that?
Does it trouble you? It should.
We demand of our least entitled youth, and ordinary Americans who choose to serve their nation through National Guard commitments, a level of patriotism beyond what we ask of ourselves. How can our President conclude that cleansing Afghanistan and Pakistan of Taliban and al Qaeda is necessary to our national security without each of us being impacted, or inconvenienced, or at least asked to pay for it?
Is it okay with you that the least amongst us is made to fight for our freedoms, safety and complacency while the rest of us do nothing, make no commitment, suffer no consequences, and attend no funerals for our children or loved ones?
It’s not alright with me.
If we are a nation at risk, as our President has decided, why does it not matter to all of us?
Can our President reasonably expect his fellow countrymen to accept the notion that this nation is in clear and present danger when he assesses that danger so insignificant that it warrants no national mobilization, no citizen involvement, no burden sharing or draft? If you and I are not impacted, what of those who will serve and die in Afghanistan, whether American or other Allied service personnel?
Absent our active participation will those we send into harm’s way be able to change the course of middle eastern history in the next 18 months?
The reality offered by history suggests strongly that absent a national consensus, our mission in Afghanistan is fraught with risk. For there is a central truth that cannot be denied by our weapons, strategies, or the lives of our sons or daughters:
We can’t anymore save Afghanistan from its 13th century culture than we can teach Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sing rap.
