Afghanistan: Be Careful What You Wish For

Few voices in the mainstream media -- and even in the liberal blogosphere -- have tackled this subject, partly because of long arguing for shifting troops to this "good war" from the "bad war" in Iraq.

Be Careful What You Wish For: Is the U.S. Heading -- And Ready -- For a Long War in Afghanistan?
By Greg Mitchell - E & P
NEW YORK (August 07, 2008)

That U.S. casualties had finally hit the 500 mark in Afghanistan drew wide press attention today, including coverage on the front page of The New York Times. Every so often now, the media notes that the ongoing American death toll in that country now eclipses the grim tally in Iraq. So the war in Afghanistan, long overlooked, is now getting more notice. Polls show that the American people are growing increasingly concerned, and pessimistic about that conflict.

But does that mean the U.S., finally starting (perhaps) to dig out of Iraq, should now commit to another open-ended war, even for a good cause, not so far away?

Nearly everyone in the media, and on the political stage, say, this is the "good war." Liberals, including a certain senator named Obama, have long made political points on Iraq by stating that it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time - when we should have kept our eye on the ball in Afghanistan (and adjoining areas of Pakistan). Hell, I have made that argument myself, and it is not wrong.


We should have done that. And if we had, no doubt the situation in Afghanistan would be a lot better today, as would the overall "war on terror."

But we didn't, and now we are desperately trying to play catch up. So the overwhelming sentiment from American leaders, including Obama and many of his supporters, is: Take troops out of Iraq and move them (and maybe even more of them, as John McCain argues) right over to Afghanistan.

Obama has even said "we must win" there. But it's the same question we have faced in Iraq: What does he define as "winning"? How much are we willing to expend (in lives lost and money) at a time of a severe budget crunch and overstretched military? Shouldn't the native forces -- and NATO -- be doing more? And what about Pakistan? And so on. We've been fighting there even longer than in Iraq, if that seems possible. Now do want to jump out of a frying pan into that fire in an open-ended way?

Few voices in the mainstream media - and even in the liberal blogosphere - have tackled this subject, partly because of long arguing for the need to fight the "good war" as opposed to the "bad war." But now some very respected commentators - with impeccable pro-military credentials - are starting to sound off on the dangers.

Joseph L. Galloway, the legendary war reporter -- recently retired from Knight Ridder - has written a column for McClatchy Newspapers ringing an alarm about Afghanistan, based largely on a recent paper written by Gen. Barry McCaffrey for use at West Point after his tour of the war zone. Spencer Ackerman, a former Iraq embed, covers this report, and quotes other military and former CIA officials in a piece at The Washington Independent today at:

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/

Earlier this week, Michael Miner at the Chicago Reader blogged in this vein, and quoted Thomas Friedman in a recent New York Times column: "The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want....Obama needs to ask himself honestly: 'Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?'"

E&P often runs columns by Joe Galloway. Here we will reprint his latest below in its entirety.
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by Joseph L. Galloway

There's military slang that seemingly applies to the situation on the ground in Afghanistan today. The operative acronym is FUBAR - Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition. That first letter doesn't really stand for "Fouled," and the R sometimes stands for Repair.

One of the sharper military analysts I know has just returned from a tour of that sorrowful nation, which has been at war continuously since the Soviet Army invaded it in late 1979.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who retired from the U.S. Army with four stars and a chest full of combat medals including two Distinguished Service Crosses, says we can't shoot our way out of Afghanistan, and the two or three or more American combat brigades proposed by the two putative nominees for president are irrelevant.

McCaffrey predicts that 2009 will be the year of decision as the Taliban and a greatly enhanced presence of "foreign fighters" try to sever roads and halt road construction to strangle and isolate the capital, Kabul and attack NATO units that are hamstrung by restrictions and rules of engagement dictated by their home governments.

More ominously, the general says, we can expect a Taliban drive to erase Afghanistan's border with Pakistan in the wild frontier provinces of Pakistan that have provided sanctuary for Taliban and al Qaida leaders and fighters since Osama bin Laden escaped there in 2001.

The general says that despite the two presidential candidates' sound bites, a few more combat brigades from "our rapidly unraveling Army" won't make much difference in Afghanistan.

Military means, he writes, won't be enough to counter terror created by resurgent Taliban forces; we can't win with a war of attrition; and the economic and political support from the international community is inadequate.

"This is a struggle for the hearts of the people, and good governance, and the creation of Afghan security forces," McCaffrey writes. He says the main theater of war is in frontier regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the combatants are tribes, religious groups, criminals and drug lords.

It'll take a quarter-century of nation-building, road and bridge building, the building of a better-trained and better-armed Afghan National Police and National Army and the eradication of a huge opium farming industry to achieve a good outcome in Afghanistan, McCaffrey wrote in his report to leaders at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

We can't afford to fail in Afghanistan, the general says, but he doesn't address the question of whether we can afford to succeed there, either.

McCaffrey writes that the situation in Afghanistan is dire, and is going to get a lot worse in the 24 months ahead. The country is in abject misery - 68 percent of the population has never known peace; average life expectancy is 44 years; maternal mortality is the second-highest in the world; terrorist violence and attacks are up 34 percent this year; 2.8 million Afghans are refugees in their own country; unemployment is 40 percent and rising; some 41 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty; the only agricultural success story is a $4 billion opium crop producing a huge amount of heroin, and the government at province and district level is largely dysfunctional and corrupt.

The battle will only be won, McCaffrey says, when there's a real Afghan police presence in all of the country's 34 provinces and 398 districts; when the Afghan National Army is expanded from 80,000 troops today to 200,000 troops; when we deploy five U.S. combat engineer battalions with a brigade of Army Stryker forces for security to begin a five-year road building program that also trains Afghan Army engineer units and employs Afghan contractors and workers.

Without NATO, we're lost in Afghanistan, he writes. But NATO's level of commitment and engagement in Afghanistan is woefully inadequate - European troops are restricted by their political leaders at home, risk-averse in a dangerous environment and almost totally unequipped with the tools needed for an effective counter-insurgency campaign - helicopters, intelligence, logistics, engineers, civil affairs and special operations units, precision munitions, medical support and cash to prime local economic efforts.

As for neighboring Pakistan and bellicose American threats to cross the border and mount more attacks on insurgents there, McCaffrey says this would be a "political disaster" that would imperil any Pakistan support for our campaign and likely result in Pakistan's weak civilian government shutting off American supply routes into Afghanistan.

Our efforts in Afghanistan, inadequate though they may be, now cost $34 billion each year and clearly this would have to be substantially increased if the fixes McCaffrey prescribes are to be implemented.

As good as the American ground troops operating in Afghanistan are - many are on their third or fourth combat deployments there or in Iraq - McCaffrey says our military is under-resourced and too small for the national strategy we've been pursuing.

The general concludes his report by writing: "This is a generational war to build an Afghan state and prevent the creation of a lawless, extremist region which will host and sustain enduring threats to the vital national security interests of the United States and our key allies."

This ought to be a wake-up call for all Americans, and for John McCain and Barack Obama. Now there's a sound bite for them.
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* Galloway wrote the introduction to the new book by E&P Editor Greg Mitchell, "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq."