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The Graveyard Of Empires

By blueness

General David Petraeus, the dude John McCain said during the 2008 presidential campaign we should all regard as a sure-as-shootin' infallible oracle on all things military, has, according to the Washington Post, pronounced Afghanistan "the graveyard of empires," and more or less counseled the Obama administration that it cannot hope to "win" in that region.

In addition to more combat troops, Petraeus called for "a surge in civilian capacity" to help rebuild villages, train local police forces, tackle corruption in the Afghan government and reduce the country's thriving opium trade. He also suggested that the odds of success were low, given that foreign military powers have historically met with defeat in Afghanistan.

         

"Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of empires," he said. "We cannot take that history lightly."

Sunday Obama's people pronounced Afghanistan "much tougher than Iraq," with some "hinting that it could take years to turn around."

Petraeus decreed that the war in Afghanistan "has deteriorated markedly in the past two years," warning of a "downward spiral of security."

The White House is conducting a strategic review of the war in Afghanistan and says it will unveil the results before NATO holds a 60th-anniversary summit in early April.

Richard Holbrooke, the State Department's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said "I've never seen anything remotely resembling the mess we've inherited."

As but one example, Holbrooke, like Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George I (and ignored steadily throughout the reign of George II):

cited a fumbled attempt by the United Nations last year to name Paddy Ashdown, a British diplomat, as the overseer of international aid projects in Afghanistan. Ashdown's appointment was torpedoed by [George II presidential puppet Hamad] Karzai, who saw it as an infringement on Afghanistan's sovereignty.

Holbrooke replied that the Obama administration would revisit the idea of a development czar with Afghan officials. "The Paddy Ashdown fiasco--and there's no other word for it--really set back the international community."

Last week, in an open letter to Holbrooke published in the Times of London, Ashdown expressed some sympathy for "poor President Karzai" and said NATO members were chasing different goals in Afghanistan, depending on where their forces operate.

"The British think Afghanistan is Helmand, the Canadians think it's Kandahar, the Dutch think it's Uruzgan, the Germans think it's the Panjshir valley and the U.S. thinks it's chasing Osama bin Laden." He added, "Someone needs to bash heads together out there and if anyone can, you can."

Got that? All those many white people, over there in Afghanistan, running around with guns, can't, according to this guy, even agree on what or where or why Afghanistan is.

Meanwhile some anonymous Obama person has told the UK's Guardian that we don't even have to have a democracy in Afghanistan anymore, just so long as hearts, minds (oy! deja vu), and stomachs are satisfied: :

Washington's emphasis on Afghanistan was shifting to "being much more realistic", [he said,] adding: "It doesn't need to be a democracy, just secure."

"The new policy will be not just winning hearts and minds, but winning hearts, minds, and stomachs," said another senior diplomat working in Kabul. "It's realistic. Realism is good."

Absolutely, realism is good. And so here is real realism:

Twenty years ago this month, the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan after a disastrous war that lasted nine years, seven weeks and three days. Barring military and political miracles, the United States will stay longer in Afghanistan than the Soviets did. Considerably longer.

Present U.S. plans to reinforce troops fighting a war that is, by most accounts, going badly, provide for up to 30,000 additional soldiers to be deployed over the next 12 to 18 months. By that time, the U.S. presence will almost have matched the Soviets' stay and will exceed it by the end of 2010.

And if U.S. history is any guide, politicians running for the 2012 presidential election will describe the Afghan war as Barack Obama's war because he switched emphasis and carried out a campaign pledge to draw down troops in Iraq and bolster U.S. forces in Afghanistan, now 36,000 strong.

Obama critics will complain about the Afghan war's cost--probably around $70 billion a year--and demand an accounting on what it has achieved and when it will end. So far, nobody is venturing forecasts beyond "it will be long."

General David Petraeus, the man credited with turning the tide of the war in Iraq, has spoken of Afghanistan as "the longest campaign of the long war." Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicts "a long and difficult fight."

By an ironic twist of history, Gates was instrumental in getting Soviet troops out of Afghanistan when he was deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. supplied anti-Soviet fighters with cash, weapons and intelligence.

Now Gates is involved in getting more American troops into Afghanistan and it is not difficult to imagine that eventually the United States will face the same agonizing decisions the Soviets faced in the end.

The Taliban have recovered and are steadily extending their influence with a permanent presence in more than 70 percent of Afghanistan, up from 54 percent a year ago, according to the International Council on Security and Development, a think tank based in London which closely monitors the war. NATO officials dispute that percentage but there's no dispute that three out of four main highways into Kabul, the capital, are being harassed by the Taliban.

It is a situation that lends itself to General Petraeus's oft-repeated dictum: "You can't kill or capture your way out of a complex insurgency. The challenge iis how to reduce substantially the number of those who have to be killed or captured."

That's a task made more difficult by the fact that Taliban and al Qaeda elements can count on sanctuaries across the border with Pakistan and hot-pursuit U.S. air strikes into Pakistan carry the risk of destabilizing the fragile government there--the government of a nuclear-armed state.

Another complicating factor: Afghans don't like outsiders to interfere in their affairs as successive invaders, from Alexander the Great to the British and later the Soviets, learned at great cost. In his memoir, Gates hails the departure of the Soviets as a great victory and adds: "Afghanistan was at last free of the foreign invader."

That's not how the Taliban see it, 20 years later.

(Recent grumbling from me about Afghanistan here. Unitary Moonbat's essential illuminating trudge through Afghanistan's "graveyard of empire" history here.)

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).