THE BIG A (messy and long in both form and content,be warned)

We as a country are facing a tremendous amount of challenges. The headlines during the past year have been dominated by health care, the economy, unemployment rates and a host of other things. The the Iraq war has significantly impacted the news cycle during the last eight years. But, there is one subject of prime importance that I feel has not gotten its due attention from the American press or the American people: the war in Afghanistan.

This is one of the biggest situations that President Obama has been stuck with. Having said that, there are some issues with how I think the President has handled this situation so far. To put it more directly, I think there is a high probability that Obama will “F” THIS UP.

Before I discuss my criticism of Mr. Obama, I feel it necessary to remind everyone that THIS IS GEORGE BUSH’S FREAKIN’ MISTAKE!!!!! On September 12, 2001 most of the world was on our side. Even people who are normally unsympathetic to America sympathized with our plight (or at the very least said they did). Most western societies recognized the danger of global terrorism and religious fanaticism. Most of the world was on our side. The response of the Bush administration to this action was to put 28,000 troops into Afghanistan. This seemed sensible to many because a lot of the organizational structure of the terrorist organization that attacked us was in Afghanistan. A year later we decide that a place that had nothing to do with al Qaeda or 9-11 was the next theater to wage the war on terror. The Bush administration decided that Iraq, not Afghanistan, was a place that we should commit 250,000 troops. WE PUT 10 TIMES AS MANY TROOPS IN THE PLACE THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11!!!!

At the same time, the Bush administration blew off the UN and most of its allies and fostered a “go it alone” mentality. To the rest of the world, this invasion was the final straw in a relationship with America that had already been strained. From all of this, several negative affects developed with regard to our situation in Afghanistan.

First, the invasion of Iraq diverted our focus away from Afghanistan. One could make the argument that if we put 10X as many troops in Afghanistan we would have increased our chances of finding Osama bin Laden. We would not have had to outsource efforts to catch Bin Laden to Afghan troops with less training and who may have been less loyal. I would contend that this diversion of resources into Iraq also effected the troop levels of our allies. If we would have committed close to 300,000 troops, our allies conceivably would have committed more. At the start of the Iraq invasion, 9,200 troops were committed by England. England also committed 45,000 troops to Iraq. It is logical to assume that if we weren’t planning to invade Iraq we could have had many more allied troops in Afghanistan.

The political consequences were two-fold. First, a war that most of the world did not agree with strained our relationship with most of our allies. The fact that we were willing to go to war with Iraq without a consensus kept us from asking for help in Afghanistan. If we would have gone to war with 400,000 troops (US + England + other allies) and had reasonable success, we could have gone back to our allies (the ones who did not contribute troops) and asked them to help rebuild Afghanistan. Maybe they would not have sent troops, but they could have done other things to help the effort. Instead, we pissed away what ever good will was left in Western Europe when we invaded Iraq making our traditional allies less willing and less able to help us in Afghanistan.

The second political consequence of Iraq was that it gave Al Qaeda some sense of legitimacy in the moderate Muslim world. On September 11th, most Muslim governments denounced Al Qaeda's actions. I am of the opinion that in every group of people there are minorities on the extremes whose course cannot be changed. Most people lie in the middle. In my mind (these numbers are not legitimate), 20% of the Muslim world will always hate America and 20% will love the good things American idealism can achieve. The 60% in the middle just want to live their lives and really don’t care about us. They can be won over by our good efforts, and they can be disillusioned by our bad efforts, or the deleterious efforts of others. By waging a war that was so unpopular, it allows Al Qaeda to go to the 60% of Muslims in the middle and say “look at all the evil that America is doing in Iraq.” When America is unable to initially secure the infrastructure and meet the needs of the average Iraqi, it allows Al Qaeda to make a good argument to the moderate Muslim world. Abu Ghraib, Blackwater and outsourcing torture also give legitimacy to the Al Qaeda position. This is an argument that they would have had trouble making if we were only fighting in Afghanistan with a more legitimate coalition.

It also gave Al Qaeda a second front. If you are fighting a guerrilla war against a superior enemy, you want as many fronts as possible so that you can move your troops from one place to another. By fighting the Allies in two places, Al Qaeda is able to use its inherent flexibility to put up more of a fight where it matters – consider the surge in Iraq. Most Republicans say that this is a wonderful thing and Iraq is a better place because of this effort. I disagree. Let’s assume that terrorists have televisions and that they are not stupid. If you put more troops in Iraq, they are going to leave Iraq and go to Afghanistan. If you put more troops in Afghanistan, they are going move to Pakistan. When we put troops in Pakistan, the terrorist are going to go back to Iraq. Are we prepared to go into Yemen and Somalia and fight Al Qaeda when they move again? The more fronts we operate on, the easier it will be for Al Qaeda to wage war against us.

Now it is EIGHT YEARS LATER. The war has been underfunded and neglected for EIGHT YEARS. For EIGHT YEARS the Bush administration has let this situation go into the CRAPPER while they put most of their efforts into Iraq. Now, after EIGHT YEARS of a crap strategy and criminal neglect, the Obama administration has to try to fix this mess.

There are several things that the Obama administration is doing that I think are good. First this administration seems to realize that you cannot deal with Afghanistan without dealing with Pakistan, so to link both of these together is sound. This administration is also doing a better job of realizing that Afghanistan did not attack us on 9/11, Al Qaeda did. The Taliban is a group that is indigenous to Afghanistan who sometimes has the same agenda as Al Qaeda. This administration is doing a much better job of defining who exactly the enemy is. I also think that the administration is wise to consider what strategy they are going to use and not just to throw more money and troops at the problem. History may have shown us that the “shoot from the hip Texas” approach doesn’t always work. I think this administration also gets that this is a war of ideas as much as it is a war of resource. In a war of ideas, popular opinion and what third parties think of you, MATTER. We are not fighting a state or a country or a flag or a group of people, but rather, we are competing for the minds of people. Convincing people that your way is best cannot (at least in the long term) be done with military might. I think that is something this administration understands. I must point out that I believe both this administration and the previous one both love this country.

There are several strategic options that the white house is considering. I fundamentally differ with the administration in the sense that I only see to options even worth considering. Having said that I think the Obama administration is operating on many flawed assumptions.

The first thing that I am not sure that this administration realizes is that Iraq is not Afghanistan. There is a prevailing assumption that the strategy that seems to have succeeded in Iraq will work in Afghanistan. In my opinion there are several factors that make these two theaters not comparable.

At the start of Operation Dessert Storm in August of 1990, Iraq was one of the most advanced countries in the Mid East. They had some of the best technology and they had one of the highest standards of living in the region as well as the second largest military. They did have a ruthless dictator running these things, but they also had some of the best infrastructure in the Muslim world. Years of economic sanctions left many of these state of the art facilities without being upgraded. Afghanistan was at war with the Russians all through the 80s. There was no reconstruction effort, and no economic recovery. Iraq had a functioning central government. Granted it was run by an evil dictator, but it was a functioning government. Afghanistan has a government that is not centralized. The central government exerts very little authority on the outlying sections of the country. Even if you did install a central government in Afghanistan, it would not have any immediate influence in the outlying provinces. The mountainous terrain is another major difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. This terrain further isolates the outlying provinces. The indigenous population also has a tactical advantage. The mountains provide cover for a small guerrilla force and at the same time make it difficult for a large army to supply itself.

The strategy behind the surge was to put extra troops into Baghdad and secure the city. Securing the people of Baghdad would give time for the political forces in Iraq to be effective. This surge in theory also had the effect of making it harder for terrorist groups to operate. This strategy will not work in Afghanistan because the terrorists are not in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, but rather in the outlying areas. Securing Kabul will not help the political element because Afghanistan never has had a central government. Kabul has little if any effect of on the lives of the people in the distant areas.

Another strategy tried in Iraq was to buy off some of the less radical elements. I think this will only be moderately effective in Afghanistan because that country is a lot more tribal than Iraq. People in Afghanistan view tribal and local affiliations more importantly then being Afghan. I know that is a gross generalization and I have never been there, but it appears that this approach would involve buying more people than in Iraq. For this strategy to work, the US is going to have to get in bed with some pretty horrible people. We are going to have to cut deals with drug dealers and less radical elements of the Taliban to control the provinces. The most glaring thing about the political part of this war is that the government that we are dealing with is completely corrupt. They have no ability to control most of the population, which lives in villages. Recent events even bring into question if this government is actually legitimate. If we are going to be successful, we need an Afghan government that we can work with. This government is far from that.

A counter terrorism strategy will not work because most of the terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan, they are in Pakistan. A counter insurgency strategy will not work because the population is not in the cities but in villages. In many villages the Taliban is the government. So who are you protecting the native population from? What are the ramifications if you are at war with the people providing civil service to the population?

I see two options going forward in Afghanistan. Option one is that we commit this country’s full military and industrial might to Afghanistan. We send upwards of 200,000 troops to Afghanistan. We use all of our resources to ensure the men and women that we put in harms way have everything they need to have success. We commit our selves to completely building (rebuilding would imply that it was there when we started) Afghanistan’s infrastructure. We build new schools, new roads, and we commit all of our know how into making Afghanistan successful. We fight their war on drugs and destroy all the poppy fields. We use our resources to stimulate their economy. We build Afghanistan’s police, fire, military and civil service departments. We totally commit this country’s resources to fixing the mess that we have made in Afghanistan. We commit our troops and our treasure for the next 10 years to make sure Afghanistan is fixed. If we are not willing as a country to commit 250,000 troops and one trillion dollars during the next 10 years then the second option is to GET OUT NOW!!!!!!!!!!

This second option will no doubt devastate Afghanistan. This will be a failure of the United States. The resulting bloodshed will be OUR FAULT. We will be ignoring a moral obligation to make the world a better place. We as a county will have to put abandoning Afghanistan on a long list of immoral acts done by our country. How moral is it to keep putting American forces into a war that we know we ultimately will loose? It is wrong of us to send troops to fight without giving them what they need for a chance at victory. It is wrong to send troops into a situation where their best efforts will result in a corrupt government, more poor people and not really making us any safer. The bravest and maybe the hardest thing we could do as a country is to admit that we are in over our heads.

In the late 60s, America continued to pump hundreds of thousands of troops into Vietnam even though the outcome was already decided. How can we with any conscience continue to spend money and lives in Afghanistan if we cannot define a successful strategy? It is wrong for us as a country to ask people to go on three and four tours of duty without even defining what success is. We should not blame the military for fighting a war that we asked them to fight. We should blame ourselves. If we continue on a strategy without having a higher expectation of success then that is the most immoral thing we as a country can do.

The other argument against leaving is that the security of America will worsen. I argue that every year that we are in Afghanistan and we are failing, that will give the anti-American argument more legitimacy. Every innocent civilian killed in Afghanistan is another example that al Qaeda can use to recruit the native population against us. Everyone that has a mother/father/sister/brother/wife/husband that is killed is a potential recruit for al Qaeda. Every accidental death on the news or YouTube is instantly turned into an al Qaeda propaganda video. Even if we mean well, even if our soldiers do everything right, there is the potential for the enemy to twist our best efforts to their advantage. Everyday that we are unsuccessful in Afghanistan we will be reminding the world of our past mistakes and will undermine all of the good that we are trying to do. We undermine all of our efforts to spread democracy every second that we use our military to prop up a phony, corrupt government that has no legitimacy. Every minute that we are in a protracted war with no realistic chance of success we are less secure as a country, not more.

There are many who would say that we have not yet put in our best effort and we should give it one more shot before we leave. Eight years ago this invasion may have been successful. If we had not let the situation deteriorate it is very possible that Afghanistan would be an American success story and a win for democracy. It is conceivable that if we had not FREAKED UP the last eight years, our troops would be coming home right now and Afghanistan would be a wonderful example of the problems we can fix as a planet if we work together. The reality is this is now a disaster. Once you see this situation for the mess that it is, there are only two clear options. I get the sense that the White House will not pick either one of them.

Our prestige as a country will be damaged, but how much more damage will we do by staying in a protracted war? It is a very uncomfortable thing to admit a mistake whether it is us personally, or collectively as a society. However, I do believe that once you realize you are wrong that you correct your course of action. I hope I am wrong. I hope 20 years from now Afghanistan is a stable democracy. I hope it is a progressive country. I hope the Taliban is defeated. I hope in the process that al Qaeda is dismantled. I hope women can go to school without acid being thrown in their face. I hope the government in Afghanistan does all it can to provide a high quality of life for its citizens. I am not like Rush Limbaugh. I do not hope that Obama fails or the American military fails. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that some middle ground can be reached where we can empower the many good people in Afghanistan to fix their own problems. I hope when this is all over that the world will be a better place because of our efforts, not in spite of them.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson won a landslide presidential victory. He came into office with the highest approval rating in history. He had a huge social agenda. His presidency was predicted to be transformative. The Vietnam War completely derailed his presidency. In three years his approval rating was in the toilet and he couldn’t even run for a second term because we were in such a pickle. American has a lot of problems that need fixing. I believe it is going to take all of this country’s resolve to fix our problems. I hope our current president truly makes his presidency transformative and does not step on the same landmines that his predecessor did.