The president finally leads the war effort

Posted By Kori Schake Friday, March 16, 2012 - 10:56 AM Share

It's been an alarming few weeks for the Afghan war: American servicemembers videotaped disrespecting Afghan corpses, coalition forces assassinated by Afghan National Security Forces, American servicemembers burning Qurans provoking deadly Afghan riots, an American shamefully killing Afghan civilians, and President Karzai demanding Coalition forces be confined to bases. Given all these events, Americans can be forgiven for doubting we are making any progress in the war effort, or that the mission in Afghanistan is worth what we are paying for it in lives, effort, and money.

Which makes it all the more meritorious that President Obama and his national security team have not used these events to rush for the exits.  It is easy to imagine the president reprising his Iraq end game: summoning a stentorian tone and explaining that we can't want this more than Afghans do, that the time has come to give Afghans the opportunity to determine their own future, etc. Thankfully, he did not. Because the mission in Afghanistan really does matter, and difficult as it is, remains worth the effort.

The United States and its allies went to war in Afghanistan not simply to retaliate for an attack on our own country, but to ensure the territory of Afghanistan ceased to be a terrorist training ground and operating base. Our military operations have forced al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist organizations to focus on their survival, which diminishes their attention to plotting, training for, and conducting attacks. There should be no doubt that the objectives of these groups remain deadly and directed at us.

There should also be no doubt that simply killing bad guys is an inadequate strategy.  Without a positive program for governance in Afghanistan, the territory will remain an attractive locale for terrorists to organize and operate. The nature of this threat is that it migrates to ungoverned spaces, and a quarantine strategy won't be good enough -- the crises of governance and adaptation to global modernity that feed this threat will continue to produce networks of killers.

Moreover, it is difficult to see how coalition forces can continue to pressure terrorists inside Pakistan if we write off Afghanistan. From where would we collect intelligence and base the forces and weapons we use in counter-terrorist strikes? How would we convincingly portray ourselves as different from what we are fighting? This war is ultimately won by delegitimizing our enemies, and that requires persuading the broader society that we can and will protect them, can and will help them improve the governance of their society -- not just forcing compliance. 

Counterinsurgency is extraordinarily difficult and costly. It requires an extraordinary level of discipline and discriminating intelligence all the way down the line, even of the most junior soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. Even when we prove good at it, as we did in Iraq and are in Afghanistan, progress is slow and setbacks are numerous. We make this difficult task much more difficult by too little civilian power (why is the military running the anti-corruption task force?) and imposition of politically-expedient deadlines unconnected to achievement of our objectives. But alternative strategies are also deeply problematic, with costs and vulnerabilities often underestimated.

The corruption and unreliability of President Karzai is another significant impediment to achieving our goals in Afghanistan. But agreeing to his proposal for an end to Coalition military operations would actually hand him the country. It is instructive that other Afghan leaders object strongly to the proposal; they see the progress we are making. What is working in Afghanistan is the patient construction of capable local and regional governance by Coalition forces and Afghans working together. That is a threat to Karzai's power; it is also a threat to the Taliban, which is why they embarked on a campaign of assassinating Afghan officials and seek to sow distrust between the Coalition and Afghan National Security Forces.

Which is why sticking with our strategy for Afghanistan through 2014 is so important. The 2014 elections in Afghanistan have the potential to institutionalize power in a country that has known little constraint, usher forth a new generation of Afghan leaders and coincide with Afghan security forces coming on line in numbers and proficiency to take over the work we are now doing. If we walk away before then -- or settle for just securing polling places rather than affecting the political ecosystem by our involvement -- we should expect Afghanistan to return to worse than how we found it in 2001. Our enemies will be emboldened, our friends will be punished, and our credibility will be deeply suspect.

Part of the reason the American public is inclined to question the war effort is that the president has put so little effort into defending it. But when given the opportunity to walk away from it, President Obama made clear this week that he intends to continue taking the fight to the Taliban, training Afghan National Security Forces so they can do the work Coalition forces are now doing, handing over those operations to Afghans with us in a supporting role to stabilize the transition, and remaining in some numbers in Afghanistan even after 2014. In recommitting himself to the agreed NATO strategy and its timeline, the president is finally leading the war effort.

President Obama deserves our praise and support for keeping a strategic perspective on what needs doing in Afghanistan, even with the buffeting of damaging events in the last couple of weeks.

Getty Images

EXPLORE:CENTRAL ASIA, AFGHANISTAN
 

LITTLEMANTATE

5:42 PM ET

March 16, 2012

Will the ever-shifting goal posts be moved in 2014?

If things remain so objectively bad that our government can't spin the situation?

"The 2014 elections in Afghanistan have the potential to institutionalize power in a country that has known little constraint, usher forth a new generation of Afghan leaders and coincide with Afghan security forces coming on line in numbers and proficiency to take over the work we are now doing."

So it seems Afghanistan will dramatically change over the course of 2 years, is there something the rest of us don't know? A major shift in leadership of our client state in the works?

Nice to see the fetishization of democracy is still alive and well. Elections will fix everything and if they don't, it just shows the US didn't throw enough money down the black hole that is Afghanistan.

 

MARTY MARTEL

7:07 PM ET

March 16, 2012

Lead all he wants, writing is on the wall

President Obama can lead Afghan war effort all he wants, US has neither the resources nor the desire to take on the enemy safely ensconced in Pakistan under the protection of Pakistani government.

The whole reason why Afghan war is still continuing, is Pakistani State’s support and shelter of Taliban insurgency.

Former Pentagon official Gen (rtd) Jack Keane said at a discussion on Afghanistan organized by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank on June 30, 2011: "The truth is, the (Pakistani) ISI aids and abets the sanctuaries in Pakistan that the Afghan (Taliban) operate out of. They provide training for them, they provide resources for them and they provide intelligence for them. From those sanctuaries, every single day Afghan fighters come into Afghanistan and kill and maim us (US/NATO troops)". General Keane also added that “There are two ammonium nitrate factories in Pakistan. 80 per cent of the explosive devices that are used to kill our soldiers, kill Afghan security forces and kill Afghan people come from Pakistan."

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.

Ambassador Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own State Department and U. S. government.

Adm Mullen told the foreign news media on 1/13/2011 about America’s primary ally in America’s fight against terrorism, that: “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.”

Pakistan’s current attention is focused fully on Afghanistan. All terror activity is concentrated there with the single objective of making life difficult for the ISAF. American patience with Pakistan may be wearing thin but the harsh reality is that Pakistan doesn’t care. It knows that with the presidential election in the US drawing near, President Obama can’t escalate the war in Afghanistan. He will simply not be able to justify an increase in body bags to America. More crucially, Pakistan is convinced that America won’t be able to take it on militarily. The Pakistani Army has been so richly equipped and trained by the US that its soldiers may prove to be an equal match for any military force.

Whether the world likes it or not, Pakistani governorship of Afghanistan is more or less a given.

 

KUNINO

2:04 PM ET

March 17, 2012

Routine Schake jibber-jabber

And jibber-jabber somewhat betrayed by the person who wrote the irrelevant and misleading headline. The president has been leading the war effort in Afghanistan, much to the dismay and dislike of senior military officers who transparently detest the idea that mere presidents should regard themselves as military commanders in chief.

Equating al-Qaeda and the Taliban as Schake does shows a basic and careless lack of interest in issues at hand. Al-Qaeda was established to cause America as much harm as possible in as many nations as possible; the Taliban was the government of Afghanistan, and post-9/11 promptly and publicly announced that it stood alongside the United States in the search for justice arising from that atrocity. Now it fights to restore an Afghan idea of who should run its country.

Schake also overlooks the number-one US military issue in Afghanistan, which for years has been how well or ill the training of Afghan self-defense forces is going these days. He seems contemptuous of any success there might be, while not caring to research any signs of how the training matches the announced war aims of the American and Afghan governments. Ignoring that is folly.

It seems reasonable to assume that American employees with bags of cash have started moving through those Panjwai villages, handing out financial compensation for the atrocity that devastated homes there last weekend. High-souled folks in the United States orate about the mystical value of a human life. The army has documents that offer official estimates of that value and hand out cash in light with that to cool things down. While at the same time assailing the Karzai government as corrupt. Take a moment to think about having some foreigners come to your home and hand you money for the unreasonable and savage loss of your own toddler. Doesn't restore much reason to the event, does it.

 

MIZAH

10:08 PM ET

March 17, 2012

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AFGHANGOOD

8:00 AM ET

March 18, 2012

Interesting...

It has been a tough 2 months for this war effort, but I still don't see what the endgame is in this all? A stable and democratic Afghanistan? Somehow, I don't see how there is any reasonable plan to get to that goal, given the current tratjectory we've been on.

 

MAXIMB

8:22 PM ET

March 22, 2012

No Bob that makes you a cry

No Bob that makes you a cry baby Liberal who has poo-poo in his Diaper! Obama is on his way to change it for you! If you can see Mexico you might want to trot back home! Just wait for your clean Diaper!.

"Is rio orange war always comparateur forfait mobile inevitable ?"
MaximB

 

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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