The good war?

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - 7:16 PM Share

Two things that need to be said about this. The Afghan war isn't either. That is:

It isn't a good war
It isn't an Afghan war

What do I mean by that? First, I find the "good war" term offensive. I find it hard to use that word to describe anything that maims and kills innocent men, women and children. All wars have an element of evil in them. That said, this one was better than most. I thought that invading Afghanistan in late 2001 was the right thing to do, and I still do.

But I wonder what the hell we've been doing since then. The conflict in Afghanistan has kind of unfairly had the reputation of "the little war that could," in comparison to the fiasco in Iraq, seen as doing more with less. Yet the record doesn't support that. An Army War College review concluded that Gen. Tommy R. Franks' command of the initial invasion was sloppy, as was his handling of the battle of Tora Bora, from which Osama bin Laden apparently escaped.

The next big battle of the war, the "Anaconda" fight in the spring of 2002, was a haywire operation, with Special Operators deeply unhappy with their handling by conventional commanders, and the conventional guys wondering why Franks wouldn't allow them to bring artillery into the theater. (He and Rumsfeld wanted a light footprint, apparently confusing combat with ballet.) Then, in the fall of 2002, many Special Operations units were pulled out of the country in order to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, a move to which historians likely will point as a dangerous turning point in the Afghan war. Finally, the allied command structure in Afghanistan has been screwy from the start, provoking real angst with the British military, among others.

Second, this isn't really about Afghanistan. It is about Pakistan-and might in the coming weeks morph into being about the entire South Asian subcontinent. The United States could "lose" Afghanistan and not suffer greatly. But "losing" Pakistan is a far more worrisome proposition, because Pakistan has both nuclear weapons and Islamic extremists. There aren't a lot of things in the world that worry me more than that combination. And our war in Pakistan has been heating up considerably in recent months, with our Predator drone aircraft regularly whacking their leaders and their guys routinely torching our trucks and threatening our major supply line--each side playing to its own strength. The Khyber Pass road actually was reported closed last week.

Nor will we make much progress in Afghanistan, the secondary problem, until we make some progress in Pakistan, the primary and more difficult problem. This means we should be careful of any "solutions" offered to the war that don't deal with Pakistan. An Afghan-only solution is no solution at all.

So, should we call this the Afghan-Pakistani war? Or the Subcontinental War? Either would be more accurate, and that is always helpful in thinking about how to wage war.

What should we do? I dunno, but it is going to be interesting to watch General Petraeus, the new chief of Central Command, in the coming months. I suspect he will try to follow the spirit but not the letter of his approach in Iraq over the last couple of years. That is, rather than force enemies together, he will try to disaggregate them. He will do the sensible thing and follow Andrew Krepinevich's law of the conservation of enemies: Don't make any more than you need to have at any given time. In Afghanistan (where I lived from 1969 to 1971, and then visited in 1977, 2002, and 2004), the most likely approach would be to favor tribes over Islamic extremists, even while peeling off the less extreme extremists.

Of course, that great military thinker Rudyard Kipling laid out this strategy pretty precisely in his ironically titled short story "The Head of the District." And yes, decapitation of one's enemies is nothing new on Afghanistan's plains, where the women would come out to cut up what remains.

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN

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FCS258

5:02 PM ET

January 6, 2009

It is true that no war is

It is true that no war is good because young men and women on both sides die,however sometimes a war is necessary in order to defeat a foe that wishes you nothing except death.Some enemies[ mainly religious ones] can not be "talked" out of wanting to destroy your culture.To these a war is necesary.

WAGEPEACEBEACH

6:13 AM ET

January 22, 2009

Terming a foe "religious

Terming a foe "religious enemies" is a misleading device that does nothing more than create enough ambiguity on their identity to justify things like, well, war. It is a supposition that implies the claim that they are somehow not "fully human," blinded by their religiously euphoric fervor to the point of being unable to pursue rational, logical, and simply human relations. No foe wishes you nothing but death, and it is a religious fervor (that perhaps calls itself secular) which enables you to make a claim otherwise--you're engaging in mythology. I am not arguing that there are no individuals who consciously think in those terms (there are those, as there are those amongst Christians and secularists in our own society), but they are the products of a broader, more meaningful social experience and past injustice.

When you make the claim that war is necessary, based on the grounds that we are dealing here with a foe who wants nothing more than our own death, blinded by religious mysticism, you are insinuating that human options are exhausted--this enemy has no legitimate grievances. Look around this globe. Look at the black machines churning incessantly in the sand, the bases flying American colors sprawling over the deserts and hills of those nations. There are plenty legitimate grievances my friend.

War is never necessary because war is not human, it is a voluntary slip into mindless barbarism. "The forces crossed the frontier, and war began, that is, an event took place contrary to reason and to the whole of human nature." Tolstoi said it well enough.

JAMES LOS ANGELES

1:09 AM ET

January 7, 2009

Tom, thanks for being the

Tom, thanks for being the first to say it. This thing has been going on for 7 years and there doesn't seem to be a mission or a plan at all. There's no progress in building a government, and any gains that might have been made early on have been lost years ago. It's been a feckless waste with no end in sight.

BRET

3:27 AM ET

January 7, 2009

The war in Afghanistan is

The war in Afghanistan is ugly. My opinion is that even though it is not going very well, we need to stay in and build a solid infrastructure to prevent the general population from going into Chaos. This could also lead to a power vacuum. This happened with the Taliban after the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan. From my knowledge, the US didn't fund Afghanistan with building an infrastructure, which lead to problems.

With Pakistan, it's very tense. That country, I think, houses many insurgents and enemies that would fight the US. Therefore, the US needs to pray that anti terrorist government stays in place but, we are better allies with India, who aren't in the best relations with Pakistan.

Hopefully Petraus is able to find a weakness in the enemy.

UNRR

1:00 PM ET

January 7, 2009

good post

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 1/7/2009, at The Unreligious Right

FNORD

7:23 PM ET

January 7, 2009

afghan strategy

What should be done immediately is triplestrength the PRTs, and give them range patrols, so that they can do night-bivouacs here and there. But Im not sure if we wouldnt loose that...

But the larger question is how we are going to build a sound construct on top of the pile of corruption wich is our current allies. I have friends in Meymaneh, even though Dostum just left the country his cronies still remain. Its bloody frustrating from what I hear. The number of ambushes on Afghan Police is quite staggering.

But what are the solutions? Petraeus omnipotence? I think the "I dunno" pose almost all COIN folks hold on the Afghan question is a wee bit ... unbrave. So, 3 points:

1) Buy poppys. Make a factory , buy the product. Sell to medicine, have afghan women work the pill-box production line. create a working class.

2) Fire people. A lot. This is necessary. A lot of people need to be rotated, so you can fit a team together wich actually understands the terrain.

3) Engage local councils. Make yirgas, or whatever. Force-presence and kindness. What Ive seen of the US in AFghan is quite OK still. But the kinetic solution model just isnt doable there, cause they adapt. They are pretty hard fighters, and they have chechen teams from Kandahar, etc. You *really* should have the Indonesian muslim special forces in front.