Withdrawing from Afghanistan: Obama vs. the GOP, part II

Posted By Paul Miller Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - 4:04 PM Share

President Obama's decision on the Afghan withdrawal was classic Obama. He split the difference between two coherent positions -- 1) withdraw as little as possible to maximize the chance of success versus 2) withdraw as much as possible to maximize political gain -- and came up with a middle-of-the-road muddle. It's clear that Obama and his advisors approach these decisions as politicians, not strategists.

But even then, the decision didn't make a whole lot of sense. The biggest political risk Obama faces is losing Afghanistan just in time for next year's election: I see no good reason not to keep as many forces in country as possible, just for self-interested political reasons, let alone what's best for U.S. security. Peter Feaver and Max Boot, among others, have had insightful analyses of the decision and its tangled rationales.

Generally, Obama's speech was of a piece with his Afghanistan policy as a whole: It could have been a lot worse, but he certainly missed easy opportunities to make it better. He was right to emphasize that "In part because of our military effort, we have reason to believe that progress can be made," a point that most of official Washington seems to disbelieve. Obama was right to link the Afghanistan war with prospects for stability in Pakistan. But he failed to make a strong case, or even show much abiding concern, for why the United States should remain committed to stability in South Asia. He continues in his mistaken approach of viewing South Asia exclusively through a counterterrorism lens, when much more is at stake.

UPDATE: In my last post I reviewed the Republican presidential candidates' positions on Afghanistan. Here is a good summary of most of the candidates' reactions to the speech, which tracks pretty well with my last post. Pawlenty has clarified his position, which is that we should minimize the withdrawal and heed Petraeus's advice. Bachmann, whose statement is available in a Weekly Standard brief interview, concurred: "We've got to stay the course, and we've got to finish the job … we are making great progress … I do trust General Petraeus." Not bad, though I'd like to see some acknowledgment of the major difficulties with the Afghan government, the attendant failures of our civilian assistance effort, and the need for a tougher line with Kabul. Bachmann and Pawlenty give the impression that they believe our recent successes, which are indeed real and significant, are also unqualified, across the board, and robust. They are not (yet).

On a related note, our friends over at the Compass have a great piece on Jon Hunstman's foreign policy.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
 

MUSE

4:26 PM ET

June 29, 2011

war is not fun anymore!

Cost of US wars since 9/11? At least $3.7 trillion, study finds
224,000 people have died directly from warfare and 7.8 million people have been displaced.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43573008/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

 

MARTY MARTEL

4:07 AM ET

June 30, 2011

Pakistani and American perfidy

The seeds of the ‘current Afghan tragedy’ were sowed in Washington when Bush administration decided to allow Musharraf to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz in November, 2001. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan (now relocated to Karachi by Pakistani ISI to protect them from possible US drone attacks) and Haqqani network (HQN) in North Waziristan from where Mullah Omar’s QST and Haqqani’s HQN have been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Duplicitous Pakistan has poor U. S. over the barrel of a gun. US can NOT use its aid leverage to force Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist groups who kill US/NATO troops in Afghanistan day in and day out because US needs Pakistan’s help in ferrying supplies to those very US/NATO troops.

Adm Mullen had following to say about America’s primary ally in its fight against terrorism, to the foreign news media on 1/13/2011: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it [Pakistan] is the epicenter of terrorism in the world right now. It is absolutely critical that the safe havens in Pakistan get shut down. We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without that. It’s not just Haqqani Network anymore, or Al Qaeda or TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan), the Afghan Taliban, or LeT (Lashkar-e-Tayyeba), it’s all of them working together.”

And previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan, wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly sponsoring four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

However US has been deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

American soldiers are dieing in Afghanistan because of their own government’s misguided policies. For deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections, US deserves to be duped by Pakistan.

At this stage in the game, as far as the US is concerned, the war on terror is over; feeble clarifications by the State Department, that the larger war on Al Qaeda shall continue, are inconsequential. Pakistan knows that by skillfully holding out till now, it is close to getting its proxy regime in place in Kabul. If it is able to sell the idea of an Islamabad-friendly Government as being of strategic utility to Washington, there’s no reason why the Americans should object to that. Pakistani and American interests, both short-term and medium-term, converge at this point; a broke America cannot afford to look at long-term interests, not at this moment.

And thereby hangs a tale — of Pakistani and American perfidy. The US has been, and shall remain, mindful of the “paranoia of Pakistan”; Islamabad’s sensitivities, its faux victimhood, will always take precedence over Afghanistan in Washington.

Obama administration is already asking Pakistan to provide access to Afghan Taliban leaders safely ensconced under Pakistani ISI's protection. A facade of peace deal will be reached with Afghan Taliban leaders chosen by Pakistan and as dictated by Pakistan. US will begin its drawdown and finally exit the theatre of a war it is desperate not to be seen as having lost, not so much to the Taliban and Al Qaeda as to the wily Generals of Rawalpindi who have proved to be smarter than the Americans.

That facade of peace will crumble within few years after the departure of US troops and Pakistan will bring Afghanistan under its suzerainty with reimposition of Taliban rule just as it did in 1996 as Uncle Sam helplessly will look the other way.

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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