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What Obama Doesn't Know About Afghanistan
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After deciding to send 17,000 troops to Afghanistan this month, President Obama will announce his new strategy this week. Dan Rather, who has been reporting from Afghanistan for nearly 30 years, says America still doesn’t get it.
There’s been a lot of news concerning Afghanistan since President Obama took office, from the president’s decision to increase the U.S. force there by 17,000, to reports he is considering an outreach to moderate elements of the Taliban and being advised to carry out missile strikes in and around the Pakistan city of Quetta. Now there is word that President Obama will, within days, announce a new set of diplomatic and military tactics for the war he promised to put front and center.
As the president contemplates his options in Afghanistan, let us hope he realizes that the first thing to know about that country is that there are no experts. History, from centuries past up to recent experience, shows that those who claim the most knowledge and voice the strongest opinions about Afghanistan often know the least.
Whatever you think you know about Afghanistan is in direct inverse proportion to how often you have been there. The more you go there, the more you know how much you don’t know
This pattern of frequently-in-error-but-never-in-doubt about one of the more complex places on earth extends, unfortunately, to a lot of the people currently claiming expertise and offering the president advice. They are well-intentioned but have little real knowledge—much less wisdom—about Afghanistan. So it has been through the ages, especially among Westerners.
Your reporter has been in Afghanistan a fair amount over the past 29 years, beginning in 1980 just after the Soviets invaded and continuing through recent years. Perhaps the biggest lesson of these journalistic efforts has been: Whatever you think you know about Afghanistan is in direct inverse proportion to how often you have been there. The more you go there, the more you know how much you don’t know.
With this and history’s lessons in mind, the following thoughts are offered, for whatever they may be worth:
1.In pursuing this war, the U.S. needs to go big and go long or go home. To succeed within the parameters we have laid out for ourselves in Afghanistan will take a much longer military commitment and the spending of a lot more money over greater time than most people have been led to believe. Consider, for example, a report in the New York Times that even members of President Obama’s national-security team were taken aback by the projected cost of expanding the Afghan army.
Making a strong and enduring commitment in blood and money may be worth it—what we have done in and for South Korea, where we have been engaged militarily and financially for more than 60 years, is one starting point for consideration. But we can have no illusions, and we have not yet had a candid and meaningful national debate about what it may take to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. We have not thoughtfully considered, as a nation, whether we want to do this and whether we can do it even if we choose to.
2.Military power cannot win in Afghanistan, however one defines “win.” Military power can buy time, and it is essential for providing short- and medium-term security while helping to build up Afghanistan’s own security forces, but so-called soft power is the most important factor that outsiders such as the U.S. can bring to bear in that country. We must not underestimate the importance of helping to establish and imbed the rule of law, of building (and protecting) schools, of improving health care and access to water for personal use and agriculture—among many other civil society and infrastructure improvements.
Diplomacy is of paramount importance. No peace can succeed in Afghanistan without at least some cooperation from neighboring Pakistan, India, Iran, China, and Russia, along with the central Asia republics bordering southern Russia and Afghanistan. Each of those countries stands to gain from a peaceful, stable Afghanistan. Their cooperation will not be gained easily or quickly, but the sooner it is secured, the better the chances.
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Dan Rather is anchor and managing editor of HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports, which this week, beginning Tuesday night, is airing and investigative report on the problem of private prisons. For 24 years, he served as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. His books include The American Dream, Deadlines and Datelines, The Camera Never Blinks, and The Palace Guard.
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Dan Rather is anchor and managing editor of HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports, which this week, beginning Tuesday night, is airing and investigative report on the problem of private prisons. For 24 years, he served as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. His books include The American Dream, Deadlines and Datelines, The Camera Never Blinks, and The Palace Guard.
There are few others I would trust as much on this issue as Dan Rather and his points lay out the case effectively--so effectively in fact that it leaves but only one question for the American people: After six years of Iraq, does any sane American believe we have the collective will, blood, and treasure (which is no longer such a vague term) to carry out Dan's major points? The obvious answer is a resounding NO--we don't have the resolve, desire, nor financial ability. And please don't tell us this is about our security any longer--terrorist attacks can be just as easily planned in a London apartment building as in a cave in Afghanistan.
Mr Rather knows more about Afghanistan than most politicians but talks about the Afghan people as one people.There are many Sects that seem to have been fighting each other for hundreds of years only to be united by a common foreign enemy.In the words of one old Afghan fighter "You Americans have all the nice watches but we have all the time" There is no winning.
Actually, I think many people understand this. (And I've never been there... but I know people who have.) And that is why we are, how does one say politely... "scared crapless" in the sense that we will be stuck in another form of a Vietnam-like conflict that will cost billions and thousands of American lives. (And require decades of involvement.) Afghanistan is a grave yard of civilizations. That is not a slander, it's an opinion based on it's history. It's in the middle of a volatile region that, I don't think we can stabilize... even with help.
Barack Obama is without doubt the smartest leader on the planet & honestly the smartest ever. Having said that this move is astounding to me. The "ONLY" reason I can find that makes any sense about sending more troops is as a wedge in order to help push the bad guys into a position of talking. That so called country that in fact has never been one country but a group of small kingdoms run by little kings. This so called country is nothing more then a line set in the sand & mountains buy the UK & has never meant anything to the people who live there. NO one in the past nor will anyone in the future control these people who really still live in the land as they did a few thousand years ago except for guns & drug growing. Barack Obama needs to first declare victory. (Not form an aircraft carrier please) Then arrange to buy every poppy that is produced (And Destroy it) then force the Arab oil sucking countries to spend a hundred billion or so helping the people out & OH, lets not forget, "GET THE HELL OUT". After the above the Saudi's or other Arab Nation needs to take out all the Nukes in Pakistan as well as the factories that build them & then & then we "GET THE HELL OUT". Lastly the same Arab Nations that got the Nukes out of Pakistan need to get the Nuke's out of Iran... Bottom line is we need to tell the oil sucking Arab Nations that if they want us to continue to protect their countries then they need to find a way to do the above or they can wind up like Sadam on the end of a rope.
Granted, President Obama has not officially announced his Afghanistan policy but what pieces of it have surfaced and the way he often speaks of it in public suggest that he shares a great deal of ideas about it in this piece from Dan Rather. I applaud that.
This is a good piece of work by Mr. Rather. Think of him what you may but I've always appreciated him most when he performs well what he sees as his first love: reporting. And this report logically and historically brings him to his opinions about current and future policy there and the questions he raises. I think his appreciation of Afghanistan's history is crucial. It doesn't easily follow western logic. Without question, he has been on the news trail there for a long time.
I think I can answer the biggest one. No, there isn't and will not be any American appetite for large scale military involvement in Afghanistan. When our economy gets moving again, I think enough Americans will support the costs of building the Afghan security forces as well as economic system when viewed in terms of our national security now that the proper focus on dealing with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, not Iraq has sanely returned. Thank you.
"Theirs is an ancient society, with a rich history and culture. Afghanistan survived as a nation long before America was founded. Afghans have their own wisdom, which in some important ways differs from ours-or at least has different emphasis. We badly need to become knowledgeable about Afghan culture, learn from it, and respect it."
Baloney! It is not a "nation" and has never been one. Dan, can you give me one example of something you have learned about that culture that makes you respect it, or that we should learn from it?
buy the entire opium crops to produce morphine and get out and leave these people to their own devices
Meanwhile Obama increases missile strikes in Pakistan.
Another Vietnam will kill us. Dan Rather, of all people, should know this. He should also know that rightwingers only know "go big and go long."
The circumstances that created Dan's ouster have not gone away. He, and we, are needed at home.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/03/23/chatterjee/
Education, education, education is the answer. It is the only way out of fundamentalist Islam and the only way to help Afghans out of poverty. We must first win the people's favor if we want to ever really win. I hope Obama has read 3 Cups of Tea about Greg Mortenson's mission to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan--you want peace and success there? That's the way.
How about "What Dan Rather Doesn't Know About Faking Documents"? That would be more interesting. I'm surprised that Dan can take time away from whining and suing former employers to write sh-t like this.
I like Dan, I think he is a great reporter and he certainly knows Afghanistan better than most. That being said, if he is right then we might as well pack it up and go home. For what Dan calls for to be done in Afghanistan we can't even accomplish in our own country. The underlying text here is that what would need to happen won't happen. I'd go into more detail but I'm tired and going to bed.
I have been to Afghanistan, and Dan is right on almost every point. True, there will be no military solution; rather, military support is required to create the stable conditions where education and diplomacy can blossom. But he is wrong about opium production, and this problem must be decoupled from nation-building. America's obsessive "war" against drugs has inflated drug prices and forced the supply chain into the arms of organized crime. Just like with the failure of prohibition, the industry will not be crushed. Far better to adopt a pragmatic approach: legalise narcotics, breaking the indistry's bond with crime, and control the market through taxation, regulation and education.
"In pursuing this war"...What war?
"we have not yet had a candid and meaningful national debate about what it may take to achieve our goals in Afghanistan"...What goals?
I smell the stench of Israel.
German's Face Grim Reality
But, German politicians and media see the grim reality, (2K) Two-thousand, Afghan civilians have died, and more are going to die soon, in Afghanistan's near future, as the "Empire" diplomats and "Military Industrial Complex" are working overtime to create the next Afghanistan military campaign, with the introduction of yet another Combat Division of (17K) Seventeen- Thousand more "Empire" troops into it's Afghanistan Campaign, ending any chance and helping to shatter beyond hope, all efforts which could have been achieved for a defendable stability in Afghanistan of western interests within the "Islamic Crescent. The "Empire" views the Afghanistan war as a good war and the one that should have been waged during the last (7) seven years instead of the "bad" and unnecessary war fought in Iraq. The Taliban (Students) are the "bad guy's", they have challenged the power of the "Empire" and for that reason must be made an example to others that such pride full arrogance will not be tolerated, and the deaths of (650) Six-hundred-fifty, "Empire" and European (NATO) troops must be avenged.
The graveyard of empires.
I trust Dan Rather's understanding of the situation, but I disagree with him that President Obama isn't aware of the same issues that Mr. Rather presents here. Pakistan, India, and China are not mentioned, but they all are part and parcel of the Afganistan problem and solution. If Afghanistan can be civilized, I have confidence that President O is the one to do it.
It seems to me, the only reason why Afghanistan is a target, is possibly to do with the poppy climate, what other reason could there be? Russia and the states can't really fight the kind of gorilla warfare these people appear to be good at and why does this country keep getting picked on if it wasn't for the opium potential.
What other industry can they develop, if everything they do keeps getting bombed, (for their own good of course).
The Taliban is probably able to thrive due to the lack of anything else that is structured, sort of like the Kuk Klux Klan was able to do, when times were really bad, and is sort of ignored when times are ok, and when no scapegoats are needed.
There is an objective I am sure we will never be told about. That is the problem with these wars, they are talked about like a football game, though football appears to have much clearer rules, and the actual winner is obvious.
Thank you.
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