Afghanistan

Wow. Here it is November 6 and we still have no idea where the Obama Administration is going on Afghanistan. All I want for Christmas is a decision!

No matter what the president decides, I'll come away worried by his handling of the process. What can you do in 10 weeks than you can't do in four? I don't think he and the people around him understand the costs of the Big Dither of 2009 -- in the trust of Afghans, in the support of Americans, in the confidence of other nations. Spencer Ackerman has just offered up a good, if CNAS-centric, analysis of the state of the debate.

I am still an Obama fan, though less than I was 90 days ago. I am still glad he is president, and I'll take him over Bush any day. Biden may be a wanker, but he isn't Cheney. I just hope Obama gives a great speech explaining his approach and brings along the American people with him.  

Photo: PETE SOUZA/The White House via Getty Images

John McCreary of NightWatch fame answers my question of yesterday about what the Saudi bombing in Yemen (and the Israeli arms interception near Cyprus) might mean:

The significance is that Saudi Arabia is now engaged in counter-insurgency operations.  Tallying the score in the Middle East-south Asian region during the past five years, a Shiite government is in Baghdad, replacing a secular government, but violence is down for now. 

The Taliban in Afghanistan now operate in more than 220 of the 400 districts in Afghanistan, compared to fewer than 30 five years ago. A new Pakistani Taliban movement has sustained insurgency in the Pakistan border regions and spread terror east of the Indus River boundary and threatened to carry it to India.

Iran and North Korea have continued to proliferate weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. Lebanon has no government. Most Central Asian states have returned to the Russian fold. Western China has become less stable and more unpredictable. Yemen is fighting a low level civil war that has now required Saudi Arabian air force assistance. Iran continues to send arms to its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. New Iranian made rockets now held by Hamas in Gaza can reach Tel Aviv, and maybe Dimona. Iran's nuclear program continues to expand.

The tally does not look like progress towards stability."

garlandcannon/Flickr

And that means you start chewing on your fingernails, too:

... the U.S. strategy rests on an undemocratic, corrupt and weak central government, a president who cheated his way into office in an election held under American supervision, an election that even the government of Afghanistan concedes was stolen. The script couldn't have been improved if Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar had put himself to the task.

Can this get any worse?

What I'm hearing today from some of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan is: uh-oh. . . . For the Taliban, Karzai's assumption of a second presidential term validates their argument that the U.S.-backed government in Kabul is terminally corrupt and must be overthrown; re-energized, they will recruit and fight harder."

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Two of the most influential columnists on foreign affairs are Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and David Ignatius of the Washington Post. Both are centrist middle-aged white men writing for major newspapers. Both also are successful authors, though the Rousseauian Friedman produces optimistic non-fiction works, while the more Hobbesian Ignatius writes dark thrillers about intelligence. Also, I think Friedman tends to be influenced a bit more by diplomats, while Ignatius seems a bit more plugged into the worlds of intelligence and the military.

These very similar writers have come to very different conclusions on what President Obama should do in Afghanistan. Friedman says cut your losses, while Ignatius says put in more troops.

Friedman thinks the United States can't do much right in the Middle East, so shouldn't try:

We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.

I base this conclusion on three principles. First, when I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world - all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face - all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it.

Friedman, oddly to me, thinks that Iraq is more important than Afghanistan and Pakistan. I disagree, but this may be in part because he lived in Lebanon and Israel, while I lived in Afghanistan. I think the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan threatens the United States far more than anything in Iraq does. That is, I think Pakistan is deteriorating quickly and has weapons of mass destruction and Islamic extremists who are gaining ground, while Iraq is only deteriorating slowly, has no WMD (remember, Tom?) and its few Islamic extremists are on their heels.

"Iraq matters," he states flatly. He doesn't say why. I disagree with Friedman a lot on Iraq-he was wrong about the invasion, he doesn't understand the dynamics of what happened in 2006-08, and he still thinks "a decent outcome there really could positively impact the whole Arab-Muslim world." That veers mighty close to Wolfowitizian dreams of swamp draining.

Ignatius does better. First, he's on the ground, in Kandahar, and that always helps in commentary. He thinks more troops could help protect the people and "buy enough time for the country's army and government to fight their own battles" against the Taliban and their allies.

Good as far as it goes. I wish Ignatius also had written about the need to have U.S. troops protect the people from the brutality and abuses of Afghan soldiers and police. The need for more U.S. forces isn't just about insurgents. The predatory behavior of some of them has driven Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. Having American units partnered with Afghan forces won't stop such abuses, but it will lessen them. For example, I am told there currently are five checkpoints between Spin Boldak and Kandahar, with official shakedowns of truck drivers at each. Such corruption is a tax on the stomachs of poor Afghans. Get rid of the unnecessary checkpoints, and have Americans around the other ones, and fewer Afghans will go hungry.

Final score: Ignatius 1, Friedman 0.

Meanwhile, my worry is that Abdullah drops out of the runoff in the next few days, leaving us with little but a half-rotten Karzai. More on this on Christiane Amanpour's CNN show this coming Sunday at 2 pm Eastern.    

The "lede" of this Reuters article on President Obama's trip to Dover Air Force Base last night made my skin crawl:

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Delaware -- President Barack Obama saw first hand the human cost of the Afghanistan war as he welcomed home on Thursday 18 soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Afghanistan this week.

Obama, flying in his Marine One presidential helicopter, landed shortly after midnight in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home of the United States' largest military mortuary and main point of entry for U.S. service members killed abroad.

No, the president didn't see the human cost of war. He saw some coffins and a quiet ceremony -- that is, a small and sanitary portion of the toll. The human cost of war is far messier. It is blasted lives and unanswered questions. It is broken hearts and minds. It is widows raising children alone, and children who won't know their fathers. It is mothers outliving their sons. It is as painful as life can be.

I know I am probably overreacting to deadline journalism reaching for the closest cliché at hand. But rushed writing doesn't have to be sloppy writing, especially when the stakes are this high.

This is not a knock on Obama, whose quiet trip to Dover and private visit with the families of the dead strikes me as an appropriate gesture on his part.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

My book researcher, Kyle Flynn, a two-tour vet of Afghanistan (with extra points for duty in Oruzgan, the Pashtun answer to Arkansas) and now a graduate student at Georgetown University, offers this interesting analysis of three reasons for the likely timing of the White House decision on how to proceed in Afghanistan:

1. President Obama wanted to see if Pakistan was going to take seriously its operation in South Waziristan, which it advertised publicly for the last six weeks.
2. Nov. 7 upcoming run-off elections in Afghanistan (COIN, credible partner, host-nation, blah, blah, blah)
3. Last but most importantly: Nov. 3, gubernatorial elections in both Virginia and New Jersey. The latter of which is my reasoning why the decision was delayed this long. Corzine is in the fight of his life and Obama is going to piss people off either way. Important special elections also in California and New York.

Kyle concludes: "Let's bet the decision comes early next week after the domestic political issues are settled."

Mario Tama/Getty Images

This New York Times article saying that Afghan President Karzai's brother is on the CIA's payroll strikes me as tantamount to declaring open season on him.

I have a friend who insists that President Obama is actually being very strategic about handling Afghanistan, and points toward the pressures brought on the Karzai family. If so, this story is another brick in the wall. 

Department of Defense

A veteran infantryman with much time in the Middle East, and other wars, writes in with the following suggestions.

Life is getting rough. He begins with how to target Karzai's relatives: 

Putting and adequate number of troops into Afghanistan is only a start. Listed below are some proposed adjustments ...

STRATEGIC ADJUSTMENTS

A Day of the Long Knives. We have a tremendous amount of leverage left in Afghanistan; there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the Karzai family will be to back running a chain of kabob joints in suburban Maryland without the support of the US government. What disappoints the Afghan people is that we have not used this leverage to insist on better governance. We can, and must, do better by them if we hope for a successful outcome against the Taliban and their criminal enablers.

We, not the Karzai government, should pick out the fifty most corrupt members of the Afghan government and insist on their replacement. The people who replace them should have a U.S. or NATO nation advisor assigned to spend the first three months with the new appointee cleaning up the mess. At least ten of the fifty should be members of the extended Karzai family in order to show that no-one is beyond the reach of the government clean up. The message behind this should be clear to the rest of the government; "you could be next!"

Where would we get the fifty advisors given the slow ability of the civilian arms of the U.S. government to provide the "civilian surge" long called for in Afghanistan? There are several options. We could use American civil affairs officers; there are plenty of them in Iraq and Afghanistan manning increasingly bloated staffs. Another source of manpower could come from cleaning out the attaché offices at the Embassy and sending them out to field until the civilian surge catches up in recruiting qualified civilians. A third source might be Iraq where there are Provincial Reconstruction Teams that are wrapping up their missions. The State Department could transfer them on a voluntary basis if it puts its mind to it. The bottom line is to send the message that we are prepared make heads roll in the Kabul government, and to do this on a three month rotating basis until we see results.

Until the kleptocrats in Kabul and the provinces have the fear of Allah put in them, there will be no reason for the Afghan people to assume that a reformed Taliban is not a viable alternative. That brings us to the provinces.

Reform in the Provinces. As a start, the top levels of the governments of the five worst governed provinces in Iraq should be replaced. Again, this should be our call, not Karzai's. For at least a month, the replacement officials on the provincial governance team should be paired with their advisors from the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) at an offsite location and receive solid governance training. It is hard to train people under fire. The loss of what passes for current governance in the target provinces for a month or so can be more than offset by the enhancements of bringing a trained and functional governance team on line after offsite training. This approach should be repeated province by province as new PRTs become available. Again, the American and NATO training cadre should have absolute power to replace those trainees who fail to grasp the concept. This calls for the extreme in tough love.

(Read on)