Can we find clarity in the Afghan strategy debate?

American Thinker ^ | September 13, 2009 | Col. Tom Snodgrass

[neverdem]

President Obama has consistently declared Afghanistan "the good war" that is "a war of necessity" which is "fundamental to the defense of our people," although recently Obama also stated that "victory" was not necessarily the goal in Afghanistan. In an amazing declaration of historical ignorance, Obama explained "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur." How we win without "victory" is but one conundrum the US military leadership must solve to execute the president's policy.

In view of the president's ambivalence, it is small wonder that there is confusion, consternation, and disagreement from the commander in the field, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to pundits like George Will, Frederick W. Kagan, and Thomas L. Friedman, to name but a few of the wide range of commentators jumping into the Afghan strategy verbal fray. But fortunately the debate has now expanded and cuts across the left-right divide, as liberals and conservatives line up on both sides of the question of strategy in Afghanistan.

The very complex problem of Afghanistan may be broken down into these issues as derived from statements by the Obama administration:

1) Taliban re-conquest must be prevented so that Afghanistan will be denied to al Qaeda as a base of future operations;

2) to achieve such denial, tribally ruled Afghanistan must be built into a modern state with a democratically elected representative government;

3) this "nation building" will entail robust US counterinsurgency to protect the population from Taliban intimidation and control until the Afghan government can independently maintain civil law and order;

4) while conducting counterinsurgency guaranteeing representative government, US forces must also train and equip Afghani military and police to enforce law and order; and

5) simultaneously with pacifying Afghanistan, US forces must also assist the Pakistanis in subduing the Taliban and al Qaeda who are threatening both the Pak and Afghan governments from regions on the Pak border adjacent to Afghanistan.

However, there are persuasive history-based doubts that:

1) the religiously motivated Taliban can be effectively and indefinitely denied power in this 7^th century Islamic culture;

2) that Afghanistan can be lifted from tribal warlordism to a representative democracy;

3) that corrupt Afghani warlords can honestly and successfully administer a regime of law and order that will ensure the loyalty of a very ethnically diverse population;

4) that any Afghani military and police forces we can develop will be sufficient to maintain law and order in a forbidding land consisting of 251,772 square miles of mountains and deserts (about the size of Texas) with a population of 33 million; and

5) that the geographically adjacent corrupt Pak government can prevail over the primal Islamic forces embodied in the Taliban and al Qaeda that are demanding Shariah "justice" for Pakistan.

Additionally, even the most enthusiastic counterinsurgency advocate will admit that a successful counterinsurgency campaign requires seven to ten years, or longer. Are President Obama and the American people prepared to commit to such a lengthy conflict with the associated high costs in US blood and treasure? These are the primary issues that the Obama administration, the US military, the media punditry, and the US electorate wrestle with and attempt to clarify in their various policy declarations, plans, editorials, commentaries, and bumper stickers.

In all of these complex and interrelated issues there is one that is never addressed. Conspicuously missing is the most fundamental and important consideration in determining a viable strategy in the post-9/11 world of Islamic Jihad, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere. It is an honest appraisal of the relationship between the US and a Shariah-inspired Islam. Islamic governments like those of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are considered "allies" by the White House, State Department, Congress, Pentagon, and American public, but their "interests" widely diverge from ours with regard to Shariah and its ever present call for Jihad.

It must be recognized and acknowledged by Americans that all governments of Islamic countries, secular and sectarian, cannot divorce themselves from the religious Jihadist aspect ever-present in their societies. The yearly surveys showing large majorities in these countries favoring strict Shariah is but one piece of the evidentiary puzzle. Almost without exception, to a greater or lesser extent, the governments of Islamic nations, irrespective of their official ties to Islam, find themselves in a confrontation with a discontented Jihadist element in their respective populations. In order to preserve their iron grip on the national treasury and the security forces, these governments (examples: our "allies" Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), either directly or through surrogates in the royal or landed aristocracy, direct and support the Jihadist hostility toward kafirs, unbelievers in Islam, that are most often represented as Israel and the US; although Britain and India are also frequent Islamic terrorist targets. Even Turkey, founded 86-years-ago as a secular state to free the Turks from their repressive Ottoman Muslim past, has recently come under increasing Shariah-Islamic influence. The unavoidable conclusion is that radical Islam (understood as Shariah-Islam), often manifesting itself in Islamic Jihad, is a fact of life in all of our dealings and endeavors in the Islamic world. This omnipresent jihad aspect of Islam is the element that must be added to the debate over our Afghan strategy to supply the much needed clarity.

So how does this reality factor into the military strategic equation? Primarily it means that no Islamic government can ever be truly counted on to affirmatively eradicate Jihadist violence against US interests. This in and of itself suggests at the very least that the objective of nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool's errand simply or so remote as to make it foolish. It also means that the likelihood that any Islamic government would be prepared to reject Shariah and embrace Western values is suspect at best. It is noteworthy, as mentioned above, that Ataturk and the Kemalists are losing ground in Turkey and this is true in "moderate" Indonesia and Malaysia. Jordan has been trying to move toward real representative government since King Hussein in the 1990s. Every advance is met by three steps backward because the Shariah-faithful Muslim brotherhood types gain ground in every election freely contested. Furthermore, it would mean that, while it may be to our tactical advantage to temporarily ally with Islamic governments, it would be blood and money wasted to invest in trying to change an Islamic society. Consequently and most importantly, it would mean that, while denying Afghanistan to al Qaeda as an operational base and assisting the Pak government in defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda within Pakistan are vital national priorities, the delusion that these Islamic societies can be "Westernized" must be re-thought. Our emphasis must be on kinetic operations to destroy this generation of Jihadists and on psycho-social operations that intensify kinetic results.

The American illusion that we can ever fight "a war to end all wars" is just that, an illusion. Shariah-driven Islam has been waging Jihad against the West for 1300+ years, why would we expect it to stop because we manage to facilitate democratic elections that empower corrupt Islamic leaders like Nouri al-Maliki or Hamid Karzai? We are just going to have to "shoot the closest bear" one at a time and reconcile our thinking that Jihad will reappear periodically like Haley's Comet.

Col. Thomas Snodgrass, USAF (retired) is Director of Military Affairs for the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE) and an adjunct professor of history at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, AZ, campus.

[Islaminaction]

Democracy with Muslims does not change their religious views towards non-Muslims and the US is more Sharia complacent than before 911. We are losing this war

[givemELL]

The current administration is influenced by the Muslim Brotherhoods’ CAIR representative in the WH. The US would be better served if Col. Snodgrass were there in her place. It is also clear why he, or someone like him, is not present as a current Presidential advisor.

[Kevmo]

Here's what I wrote on the subject of Iran, Iraq & Afghanistan a while back.

To: NormsRevenge
We SHOULD withdraw from Iraq — via Tehran.

Here’s how I think we should “pull out of Iraq.” Add one more front to the scenario below, which would be a classic amphibious beach landing from the south in Iran, and it becomes a “strategic withdrawal” from Iraq. And I think the guy who would pull it off is Duncan Hunter.

How to Stand Up to Iran

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1...osts?page=36#36
Posted by Kevmo to TomasUSMC
On News/Activism 03/28/2007 7:11:08 PM PDT • 36 of 36

Split Iraq up and get out
***The bold military move would be to mobilize FROM Iraq into Iran through Kurdistan and then sweep downward, meeting up with the forces that we pull FROM Afghanistan in a 2-pronged offensive. We would be destroying nuke facilities and building concrete fences along geo-political lines, separating warring tribes physically. At the end, we take our boys into Kurdistan, set up a couple of big military bases and stay awhile. We could invite the French, Swiss, Italians, Mozambiqans, Argentinians, Koreans, whoever is willing to be the police forces for the regions that we move through, and if the area gets too hot for these peacekeeper weenies we send in military units. Basically, it would be learning the lesson of Iraq and applying it.

15 rules for understanding the Middle East
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774248/posts

Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas — like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.

Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.

Let’s say my scenario above is what happens. Would that military mobilization qualify as a “withdrawal” from Iraq as well as Afghanistan? Then, when we’re all done and we set up bases in Kurdistan, it wouldn’t really be Iraq, would it? It would be Kurdistan.

.
.

I have posted in the past that I think the key to the strategy in the middle east is to start with an independent Kurdistan. If we engaged Iran in such a manner we might earn back the support of these windvane politicians and wussie voters who don’t mind seeing a quick & victorious fight but hate seeing endless police action battles that don’t secure a country.

I thought it would be cool for us to set up security for the Kurds on their southern border with Iraq, rewarding them for their bravery in defying Saddam Hussein. We put in some military bases there for, say, 20 years as part of the occupation of Iraq in their transition to democracy. We guarantee the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan as long as they don’t engage with Turkey. But that doesn’t say anything about engaging with Iranian Kurdistan. Within those 20 years the Kurds could have a secure and independent nation with expanding borders into Iran. After we close down the US bases, Kurdistan is on her own. But at least Kurdistan would be an independent nation with about half its territory carved out of Persia. If Turkey doesn’t relinquish her claim on Turkish Kurdistan after that, it isn’t our problem, it’s 2 of our allies fighting each other, one for independence and the other for regional primacy. I support democratic independence over a bullying arrogant minority.

The kurds are the closest thing we have to friends in that area. They fought against Saddam (got nerve-gassed), they’re fighting against Iran, they squabble with our so-called ally Turkey (who didn’t allow Americans to operate in the north of Iraq this time around).

It’s time for them to have their own country. They deserve it. They carve Kurdistan out of northern Iraq, northern Iran, and try to achieve some kind of autonomy in eastern Turkey. If Turkey gets angry, we let them know that there are consequences to turning your back on your “friend” when they need you. If the Turks want trouble, they can invade the Iraqi or Persian state of Kurdistan and kill americans to make their point. It wouldn’t be a wise move for them, they’d get their backsides handed to them and have eastern Turkey carved out of their country as a result.

If such an act of betrayal to an ally means they get a thorn in their side, I would be happy with it. It’s time for people who call themselves our allies to put up or shut up. The Kurds have been putting up and deserve to be rewarded with an autonomous and sovereign Kurdistan, borne out of the blood of their own patriots.

Should Turkey decide to make trouble with their Kurdish population, we would stay out of it, other than to guarantee sovereignty in the formerly Iranian and Iraqi portions of Kurdistan. When one of our allies wants to fight another of our allies, it’s a messy situation. If Turkey goes “into the war on Iran’s side” then they ain’t really our allies and that’s the end of that.

I agree that it’s hard on troops and their families. We won the war 4 years ago. This aftermath is the nation builders and peacekeeper weenies realizing that they need to understand things like the “15 rules for understanding the Middle East”

This was the strategic error that GWB committed. It was another brilliant military campaign but the followup should have been 4X as big. All those countries that don’t agree with sending troups to fight a war should have been willing to send in policemen and nurses to set up infrastructure and repair the country.

What do you think we should do with Iraq?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1752311/posts

Posted by Kevmo to Blue Scourge
On News/Activism 12/12/2006 9:17:33 AM PST • 23 of 105

My original contention was that we should have approached the reluctant “allies” like the French to send in Police forces for the occupation after battle, since they were so unwilling to engage in the fighting. It was easy to see that we’d need as many folks in police and nurse’s uniforms as we would in US Army unitorms in order to establish a democracy in the middle east. But, since we didn’t follow that line of approach, we now have a civil war on our hands. If we were to set our sights again on the police/nurse approach, we might still be able to pull this one off. I think we won the war in Iraq; we just haven’t won the peace.

I also think we should simply divide the country. The Kurds deserve their own country, they’ve proven to be good allies. We could work with them to carve out a section of Iraq, set their sights on carving some territory out of Iran, and then when they’re done with that, we can help “negotiate” with our other “allies”, the Turks, to secure Kurdish autonomy in what presently eastern Turkey.

That leaves the Sunnis and Shiites to divide up what’s left. We would occupy the areas between the two warring factions. Also, the UN/US should occupy the oil-producing regions and parcel out the revenue according to whatever plan they come up with. That gives all the sides something to argue about rather than shooting at us.



38 posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 3:55:19 PM by Kevmo (We need to get away from the Kennedy Wing of the Republican Party ~Duncan Hunter)

[Islaminaction]

Opps...compliant.

[neverdem]

The bold military move would be to mobilize FROM Iraq into Iran through Kurdistan and then sweep downward, meeting up with the forces that we pull FROM Afghanistan in a 2-pronged offensive.

Tactically, it's a winner. Logistically, it's a nightmare. IMHO, that would be Sherman's March to the Sea times ten. How would they be resupplied, by air?

Unfortunately, Kurdistan is another landlocked logistical nightmare surronded by states hostile to an independent Kurdistan.

[element92]

thanks for posting that.
........................................
I agree with a lot of those rules,
but not rule 15
Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.
..................................
wrong, these people are tribal,
what they want is for their tribe
to be on the winning side.
only the losers want democracy

[Jabba the Nutt]

De-fund the Taliban, re-legalize drugs.

When is drug prohibtion going to become to expensive to our national security, to our loss of freedom, to expanding corruption, to increasing the crime rate?

[Jabba the Nutt]

"The American illusion that we can ever fight "a war to end all wars" is just that, an illusion. Shariah-driven Islam has been waging Jihad against the West for 1300+ years, why would we expect it to stop because we manage to facilitate democratic elections that empower corrupt Islamic leaders like Nouri al-Maliki or Hamid Karzai?"

Maybe Ann Coulter had a point? "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

[a_Turk]

>> Ataturk and the Kemalists are losing ground in Turkey

The islamists in Turkey were strongly supportd by the Bush administration and their leader “Fethullah Gulen” lives in the USA. He is touted as an islamic scholar and intellectual by many elements of your system unbalanced by the lack of any criticism whatsoever.

Between the EU (pressured Turkey to lift the ban on the burka, granted asylum to terrorists who fled Turkey and let them operate there, pressured Turkey to abolish the death penalty, etc, etc) and the US (supported islamists in Turkey, allowed the PKK to raise money in the USA, sheltered the PKK in northern Iraq, etc, etc, etc) Turkey and her secular political sector is left abandoned and weakened.

[a_Turk]

>> corrupt Pak government

Which administration was it that let down Musharraf, a strong secular military leader, one who was a Kemalist, who idolized Ataturk?

[Kevmo]

Tactically, it’s a winner. Logistically, it’s a nightmare.
***From what I can tell, the supply lines would be the same ones we have now, only extended. When the 3rd front opens up, there would be a new supply line, directly from the Persian Gulf.

IMHO, that would be Sherman’s March to the Sea times ten.
***IIRC, Sherman’s March was successful.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1837619/posts

The U.S. Civil War in four minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e06jNDhYo2I ^
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 11:08:21 PM by World_Events

How would they be resupplied, by air?
***And sea, and land. Just as they are resupplied now. And also similar to Sherman’s March, the supply line initial starting point is thoroughly covered, the challenge comes from extended lines due to victory. If we allow the supply sergeants to run wars, we’ll never make it out of the fort.

Unfortunately, Kurdistan is another landlocked logistical nightmare surronded by states hostile to an independent Kurdistan.
***If it’s so necessary to establish logistics, we trade western land mass for a sliver of access to the Black Sea between Hopa and Rize. Or we could go even bolder and establish a sliver of sea access to the mediterannean through Syria. And since the states that surround Kurdistan are hostile to its independence, we establish garrisons that patrol the border zones. If one of those states goes on the offensive, they end up killing Americans in the buffer zones, triggering military consequences against such states.

[Kevmo]

I agree with a lot of those rules, but not Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.
..................................
wrong, these people are tribal,
what they want is for their tribe
to be on the winning side.
only the losers want democracy
***It looks like the rule still applies: They want tribal dominance more than we want them to have tribal dominance. Kurds want independence more than anyone else wants them to have it.

[neverdem]

De-fund the Taliban, re-legalize drugs.

When is drug prohibtion going to become to expensive to our national security, to our loss of freedom, to expanding corruption, to increasing the crime rate?

There's no argument from me. It's a question of how. Raw, natural substances should be legal. Making them illegal helped to drive the concentration and refinement of the psychoactive compounds. Instead of just marijuana, we have hashish, cocaine instead of just coca leaves and heroin instead of just raw opium. Making the natural substances legal would have the added benefit of discouraging intravenous drug abuse besides defunding large amounts of income from terrorists and organized crime.

The war on some drugs makes even less sense when the state demands that their schools supervise or require that children take drugs with black box warnings in the same breath that the kids can't take an Advil at school on pain of strip searching until this recent Supreme Court decision.

[neverdem]

Maybe Ann Coulter had a point? "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

IMHO, a renewal of the Crusades is not practical. A quarantine around the Islamic Umma might be. Violent jihadis and those who promote violence will have to be terminated with extreme prejudice.

[neverdem]

I can’t defend the indefensible.

[neverdem]

Iran would have to make overt acts of war before any such campaign would be considered. I don’t see it happening.

[neverdem]

The war Obama is bound to lose I hope not. God help us!

Would Obama Really Fight the War? More troops only make sense if we think he’s trying to win. Is he?

FBI Partners With Jihad Groups

Democracy under attack - by the U.S.A.

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[Billthedrill]

(1) Taliban re-conquest must be prevented so that Afghanistan will be denied to al Qaeda as a base of future operations.

Thus far I agree with the Colonel. That is, in fact, the only realistic strategic objective on the table here; the rest is more means to an end. Should we be involved in "nation-building" in Afghanistan? Not no but hell no, let them build their own or not if they prefer it that way. BUT - nation-building as a means to prevent the Taliban from returning and turning the country into an armed terrorist camp once more? It's certainly an option.

Are there other options? Bribery is one of them - the Russians have used it for years, but it's only a temporary solution. Placing a Strong Man in charge and making sure he stays "our sonofabitch"? It's worked in the past but it, too, is only temporary given the cyclical nature of tribal power alignments.

There may be no permanent solution in Afghanistan, at least insofar as disengagement with an expectation to being left in peace ourselves goes. We're stuck in a nice long war that the Islamists declared quite some time ago and they have proven impossible to ignore. We certainly could withdraw and make it clear to the Afghanistan government, whoever that turns out to be, that sheltering our enemies is an act of war and any new camps will be attacked no matter where they are. We do have the means to do that...but do we have the will?

The real risk is that inward-directed, domestic policy obsessed internationalists such as permeate the current administration may simply decide that the Islamists can be ignored, their expansionism dismissed, their depredations blamed on a convenient whipping boy such as George Bush. That got us the WTC atrocity. But there absolutely are people of influence (columnist Robert Scheer to name only one) who feel either that those 3000 innocents killed were a price we can afford, or are actually morally obligated to pay as a sort of baksheesh or apology for past foreign policy sins. That might be you tumbling out of the top of a burning skyscraper and impacting the pavement below, and they're all for it. They cannot be allowed to make strategic decisions, and that's precisely what they're attempting to do.

And so we are at war. It's likely to be a long one, longer still if we ignore it. Our enemies are empowered by an oil dependence the current administration shows no signs of genuinely wishing to ameliorate short of turning the lights out. Our allies do appear to feel they can ignore the whole thing, especially if they aren't the target of the moment, uneasy about the possibility that they'll be swarmed under demographically but unable or unwilling to do anything about it. That's where we are. IMHO, of course.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!