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How To Win Afghanistan
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No need for a massive surge of U.S. ground troops—or a complete freeze, either. Leslie H. Gelb sketches out a third path: empowering Afghans to secure their own country.
In the fierce debate on Afghan policy under way in the White House, the all-or-nothing types—both liberals and conservatives—have already lost. President Obama seems to be groping for some middle approach both on overall strategy and troop increases. The danger with middle courses is that they can turn out to be just a jumble of compromises and incoherent mush. But there is a middle policy on Afghanistan that is coherent and can meet a reasonable array of American interests in South Asia and around the world. President Obama signalled his move to a middle strategy in his Tuesday meeting with Congressional leaders. He told them that he was not considering any reduction or pullout of U.S. forces, telling liberals not to get their hopes up. And he stressed that the so-called Vice President Biden option— to simply go after al-Qaeda terrorists and downplay the war against the Taliban—was not so simple. There was much more to the Biden alternative, Obama said, and indeed it looks as if the White House is trying to build that approach into an overall new strategy, one that will not call for a very large troop increase.
Seeking a middle ground will mean arming and training not only Afghan-wide security forces, but warlords and tribal leaders as well. That course will call for negotiating proposals to split Taliban from al Qaeda leaders and Taliban leaders from each other.
If you watch television news or read most newspaper stories, you would think that a battle is raging between champions of a 40,000-troop increase and opponents of any increase in ground forces at all. But judging from the tidbits emerging from the sanctum sanctorum, U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has already lost his campaign to add 40,000 new troops to the 68,000 already approved. He lost because 40,000 is far too much, given the costs and political opposition to such a big increase at home—and because he made the fatal mistake of going public last week in London to fight for his cause.
The White House was furious at his trying to corner the president. You'd never know how angry White House officials are from the mild public rebukes. National Security Adviser James Jones, himself a former four-star general and commandant of the Marines, noted that McChrystal should proceed "through the chain of command." Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged generals in general to make their recommendations "privately." Despite the mild words, the anger was palpable.
• Tina Brown: Let’s Not Abandon Afghan Women
• Stephen Holmes: Strategy in Aghanistan? What Strategy? There was no visible White House anger about the pressure from liberals and progressives to deny any troop increase at all. This administration, like its predecessors, simply ignores the pleadings of people from this end of the political spectrum when it comes to national security policy. Perhaps they shouldn't, if they remembered the tepid support of the left for Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election, which allowed Richard Nixon to win. Nonetheless, it's traditional among Democrats and Republicans alike not to pay much attention to this quarter of the foreign-policy debate.
So, the magic new troop number will be somewhere between 0 and 40,000. But all the principal players in this decision are being very circumspect about where they are trending. Even General David Petraeus, overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, is keeping his number well-hidden. The military brass are talking among themselves and trying to find a comfort zone between 20,000 and 30,000. More importantly, the generals and admirals are waiting to see whether Obama and Gates will take a strong stand on a new troop level—or leave room for the military to push them around. As for Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and Gates, they're likely to come out in the 10,000 to 20,000 range.
There is another debate going on at the same time—whether to change America's overall strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how many additional troops that would require. Again, those on either extreme of this debate are not carrying the day. The McChrystal camp—which includes many in the Pentagon as well as political conservatives—wants an all-out counter-insurgency effort. They want to have enough troops to clear and hold populated areas in Afghanistan. Further, they realize that in order to hold territory they're going to have to do—or rather the civilian side of the U.S. government will have to do—nation-building on a massive scale, i.e. fixing up the government, the economy and security forces at all levels. And that's the crucial requirement that is killing off the full counterinsurgency strategy: no one but true believers think for one moment that the United States can transform Afghanistan into a democratic, free-market paradise in three years or five or twenty. Afghanistan is not even a nation-state; it is a people, or more precisely, it's a bunch of loosely associated and rival tribes with the Pashtuns, the Taliban's tribe, comprising nearly half the total. By basing their policy on the impossible, the counterinsurgency group did itself in.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
McChrystal's Fuzzy Math
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Stalled Out All Over the World
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
At Last, An Afghan Plan
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Well, the problem was alluded to. This is a tribal country. Remember in the history books waaaay back when when Europeans come to this continent and there were Indians? Those days were modern compared to Afghanistan. We need to stop projecting our values on these people and understand that they don't know or care. To accept this "new way of life" means that you embrace all that is evil in the world: women with rights and thoughts and a society free of religious bounds. They don't want that....they are happy.
Now, on the same hand to ignore this part of the world where Al Qaeda trained for 9/11 and will do so again makes this a double edged sword. We can win, but it will take a lot of soldiers and time. We didn't erradicate the "Indian problem" overnight, not in 8 years....nor will we here.
One small point - the women there, they are not happy. But you can suppose that's a civil revolution to be had, not an international one.
Good point, when I said they, I meant the men. Women don't have a say in anything. Thanks for helping clarify. The women don't know the difference in many instances....but it's safe to say they are probably not happy.
When is the last time you discussed your assessment with an Afghan female living in Afghanistan? You are projected you ideas of female contentment on to another culture. What makes you believe that women in the U S are just bundles of joy? Per recent research, they aren't.
Geil defeats a straw man by asserting that we cannot turn Afghanistan into a democratic free market paradise. We are far from being one ourselves. But we cannot hope for any long term success in Afghanistan if the Afghans--with or without our help--do not create a central government considered legitimate by most Afghans, capable of providing essential services, and strong enough to survive on its own. Without a central government there will be continual war between tribes and warlords as in Somalia--or Scotland for that matter before the English crushed the power of the clans.
This does not mean that there can not be alliances with tribes, such as the ones made with Sunni tribes in Iraq once they realized that Al Qaeda in Iraq was even worse that the U.S. army. The danger was recognized that this partnership might not translate into loyalty to the Shiite central government; but, so far at least, it seems to have worked out alright.
The fact that Afghans bothered to vote in the last election and are angry that it was rigged shows that there is interest in and hope for a stable, efficient, legitimate government. Government good enough to be supported by the people, however imperfect it might be, is the only hope for the Afghan people.
The Afghans didn't invite us into their country. Just like the Brits and Russians, we just showed up. We can not create a Central Government among a warring tribal people in Afghanistan anymore than we could with the American Indian tribes. Why does everyone forget that we are the intruders into Afghanistan not the Taliban. The Taliban, also, is comprised of Afghanis.
I disagree. The Afghan elections demonstrate that the US should not put it eggs in one basket, however, the establishment of a central government is strictly dependent upon its ability to provide essential services. Whether this is imposed externally or develops as natural growth is irrelevent. This is strictly an issue of what such an institution can offer the citizenry. If you can develop Afghan police, fire, medical services, urban development, jobs, and a military with some degree of prosperity Afghans will create their own version of autonomy - one that we can contribute to and that views us as a strategic partner.
Here is a single eye glazing Gelb sentence, toward the end of his treatise:
"It will also require Washington to do what it has done extremely well for over 50 years-deter enemies with the threat of very strong and credible punishment and contain them by forging alliances with countries in the region that share American interests against extremism and the drug trade."
Who are the enemies we have "detered" "with the threat of very strong and credible punishment?" What countries have been "contained" by our "forging alliances with countries in the region that share American interests against extremism and the drug trade."
I do not want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Gelb, but your above article is bureaucratic drivel. What countries in the region share "American interests?" India is the only country in that region that shares American interests, and we aren't "forging" an alliance with them. India is a democracy and we do big business with them! Forged, not forging! The language of bureaucracy, and bureaucrats like yourself discourages discouse and understanding. The word "understanding comes from the Greek, and means to get beneath.
The "drug trade" from wholesale to retail represents more than ten hundred millions of dollars. A million dollars in the hands of one person is a chunk of bucks. Ten times that times ten is considerably more than any single person is going to ever spend.
I submit to you and to The Daily Beast the answer, herewith should on the front page of this internet magazine. Lives are at stake.
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is opium, father of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought on the streets of Manhattan began a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
(Gelb sloughs this issue. Heroin sold on the streets of America began as a poppy in Afghanistan!) %u2028%u2028
That 17% pure heroin bag; available on select street corners everywhere, started out poppy grown in Afghanistan. 93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on their farms! Bill Gates must marvel at their market share. Monopoly! Irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us.
(The opium heroin is behind all the shooting!)
%u2028%u2028
The heroin is smuggled throughout Europe, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, its origin is disguised so no one gets wise; from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into USA. For the cartels this wholesale heroin is billions of dollars in retail business. %u2028%u2028
(What Gelb devotes a quarter of a sentence to affects the livelihood of billion dollar drug cartels who prey on our people. gelg doesn't get this).
So the key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply, which would wipe out the trade; and choke their criminal customers from across the sea.
%u2028%u2028
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end nets millions of dollars, peanuts, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the region. Without the opium heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be crushed. The western hemisphere drug cartels would be facing recession.
In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, the opium dollar is fueling the whole war! Theirs is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.%u2028%u2028
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed. The opium / heroin smuggling trade puts food on their table!
The Taliban "leaders" have a payroll they must meet. Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge, but his military bureaucrats are misleading the war. (As is Gelb).
%u2028%u2028
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army. The Afghanis know how to fight. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. A stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opiate is illegally grown? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this plunder creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The Afghan opium is key. We own the opium and the country is ours. Free. %u2028Opium control means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.
Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making deals with the Afghani farmers we are purchasing their whole crop, for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce for the house, compliments of us.
The war momentum will immediately shift! Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up for our feast. The key to their quality of life, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to cash Afghanistan's opium crop.
Many Taliban will change colors of their turbans and disappear into the Pakistan crowds.
We need to get busy, prepare the fields, create comfortable foxholes on every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding, with a safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear, by CIA, shelling out Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us!
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to descend from their caves and come across the poppy fields instead of picking us off with roadside attacks. We are purchasing the poppy crop, negotiating fair and square how much sap each plant has. The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to attack, the only way they can survive, by offing our troops dug in the poppy fields. When they step on the yellow brick road to battle we can drone them out of business from above.
The extra virgin first milking is scheduled to begin tomorrow. Our enemies know that. The farmers are already paid. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with a brush cutter, just like that. At dawn, we chop up every poppy and spread the soil to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose billions of dollars in sales. Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously united against this plan. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts, with a helping hand from us. We must also purchase their whole marijuana crop and bring each harvest to America for medicinal purposes. Afghani marijuana is the most potent, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the local terrorist war. The above poppy strategy will accomplish that! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute their murderous plans. Once was enough! We cannot allow that.
Submit this to The Daily Beast editors.
michaelslevinson.com
This is the solution, pure and simple. Why is it not being pursued?
just checked your site: cuckoo. still I agree whole-heartedly with your Afghan strategy.
Nothing "cookoo" there, dummy! My mother's comment sets you back on your heels. Try out the videos. Try out some of the essays linked in red at the top of the page. I'm glad you agree with my Afghanistan strategy. So much is at stake. (I apologize for calling you a dummy)
michaelslevinson dot commie
Ritarita
Or Mauiboy-
U.S. Pharmaceuticals
Could buy the poppies
From the Afghan farmers
And neutralize a highly
Problematic situation
While starving the Taliban
Of funds.
| 1:35 pm, Sep 6, 2009
Big pharma gets their opium for manufacturing heroin which is then re refined into the weaker morphine, etc from Turkey.
michaelslevinson.com
Unrealistic: Pakastani Intelligence operatives manage the Afghan opium trade for the Taliban. The region is too volitale for your approach to work. Better to repurpose the land.
Only Afghans can deal with other Afghans in the long run--and we don't have to look too closely at how they do it. Afghanistan isn't a nice little middle class democracy like Denmark, after all, and probably never will be. Both the British and the Russians regularly recruited these tribal people as soldiers, and they were bad news on the battlefield.
Given our decrepit political and economic condition, we have to find low cost ways of doing these things. Let's face it, as long as Americans aren't being hurt and killed, most of the public, Congress and the media won't even notice what's happening. The lives of other are just not as valuable in their eyes, and that's the hard truth.
When dealing with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a low publicity environment is beneficial for all kinds of reasons.
I was a soldier. This guy is an idiot or more likely spouting propaganda. Like we didn't have a similar plan when we went in. We just didn't have the resources. The Taliban are not stupid. They adapt. They destroy any developments we build as soon as we leave and kill anyone who helped us. They do this because we don't have enough troops to hold ground. Uninformed highly credentialed people like this make by blood boil. Obviously he doesn't really give a crap about whether or not my buddies get blown to bits for nothing. He is a political animal playing personal self interest by boosting Obama.
We had a small window of good will when we went in. 6 months to a year. We wasted that by deploying insufficient forces to get the majority of fighting over quickly. We started the mowing the grass policy of routinely going in and blowing stuff up and killing people. This did not win us many friends as civvies always got in the crossfire.Now it will be harder and more expensive. Either admit you don't have the resolve and stop getting my buddies killed or get the job done properly.
BTW Afghanistan has roughly 30 million people and has very rugged terrain. 68,000 troops. Is that a joke? 1 counterinsurgent per 441. Our own COIN manuals state 1 to 50. The Iraq surge worked because troop levels hit 1 troop to 55. WE WOULD NEED 472,000 MORE TROOPS JUST TO REACH IRAQ TROOP LEVELS. In that light 40,000 is a very modest request. But why bother. It's not enough to get the job done.
Leslie:
This is the worst type of disrespect of the troops you can have. Giving us an impossible job and getting us killed for nothing. Screw you Sir.
This is suppose to be a NATO mission and we currently have over 100,000 combined troops in Afghanistan and far more contractors than U S soldiers and since McChrystal took over the Taliban is kicking our *ss.
We cannot cut and run, though. It is impossible. The other side would use this as base to attack the West, so we will just have to find people on the local and regional level to provide security--and back them up as best we can.
We cannot just leave there and watch it become a failed state run by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
And you are probably right that it's not enough to get the job done EVERYWHERE, all at once, but going step-by-step, moving slowly and patiently, it could be done from one locality to another. It will just take more time.
What is there to win in Afghanistan?
It has been listed as the second worst place on Earth to live.
It may have some pluses related to strategy/geography, but to think you can train people that are possibly used to being brutalized and being brutal, the same way you can train people who haven't been brutalized, is missing a big point and probable reason why countries pull out, sooner or later, or alternatively go bankrupt trying to win, in a country where many people have nothing to lose.
The pull out after they have gone bankrupt. We weren't invited in Afghanistan and the Taliban isn't a international threat. We need to go after Al Qaeda but pretending we are going to stablize Afghanistan is just pretending.
The problem with politics and passion, is politics and passion. And of course we are not fooling the Taliban at all, their weapon is not just military based, I think they really believe in what they are doing, and we appear to not be. Sort of like Vietnam I think, without the human casualties, but I think the financial casualty will dawn on us, after the money has been spent. Possibly they will print more money, dissolving value, making it harder for commodity related currencies to export their manufactured goods...but
was a soldier. This guy is an idiot or more likely spouting propaganda. Like we didn't have a similar plan when we went in. We just didn't have the resources. The Taliban are not stupid. They adapt. They destroy any developments we build as soon as we leave and kill anyone who helped us. They do this because we don't have enough troops to hold ground. Uninformed highly credentialed people like this make by blood boil. Obviously he doesn't really give a crap about whether or not my buddies get blown to bits for nothing. He is a political animal playing personal self interest by boosting Obama.
We had a small window of good will when we went in. 6 months to a year. We wasted that by deploying insufficient forces to get the majority of fighting over quickly. We started the mowing the grass policy of routinely going in and blowing stuff up and killing people. This did not win us many friends as civvies always got in the crossfire.Now it will be harder and more expensive. Either admit you don't have the resolve and stop getting my buddies killed or get the job done properly.
BTW Afghanistan has roughly 30 million people and has very rugged terrain. 68,000 troops. Is that a joke? 1 counterinsurgent per 441. Our own COIN manuals state 1 to 50. The Iraq surge worked because troop levels hit 1 troop to 55. WE WOULD NEED 472,000 MORE TROOPS JUST TO REACH IRAQ TROOP LEVELS. In that light 40,000 is a very modest request. But why bother. It's not enough to get the job done.
Leslie:
This is the worst type of disrespect of the troops you can have. Giving us an impossible job and getting us killed for nothing.
Don't delete this comment again. I'm a vet and deserve a little respect.
Gelb makes an erroneous assumption: that the American voter has not evolved since the Humphrey- Nixon election of over 40 years ago. Communications have provided the public with more information. We can no longer afford to keep our military presence in Afghanistan nor can we afford to "invest" in the Afghani government or military to do the job themselves. Why do some people see our military made up of expendable numbers rather than precious human lives?
More people died in Juarez, Mexico in the past year than U.S. casualties in Afghanistan in 8 years. Every death is a tragedy, but as the old poet said, "it is good and fitting to die for your country". None of our troop in Afghanistan, with the possible exception of Pat Tilman, has been blown to bits for nothing.
If you're talking about dulce et decorum est pro patria mori you'll note that was said by someone very much alive. If you want a true perspective read Wilfred Owen's( a veteran of the trenches from the war to end all wars) poem of that title.If every death is a tragedy- I presume including those from misdirected drone strikes-then Tillman's death was no more significant than any of those in Juarez.The main question IMO is why was there not an overarching strategy in place before the first American boot hit Afghani soil? The bushes pere et fils seem to be good at that witness Bush the elders dispatch of troops on some nebulous mission to Somalia just before he left office. And as in that case someone else gets to clean up the mess.
You'll also note that Horace died in bed after having admitted that he survived his military service by throwing away his shield and fleeing battle.
Thank you.
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