Friday, October 9, 2009

A Case for Withdrawal: Police, Not War

Wars are like swimming pools with very high sides and no ladder. It’s easy to jump in, but nearly impossible to climb out. People watch you flounder – some even enjoy the spectacle – but few are eager to come to your aid.

The author, Robert Olmstead[1] wrote this: “When men go to war, war wins.”

Which brings us to Afghanistan.

Our response to 9/11 was natural and characteristically American; simultaneously honorable, shortsighted, and hubristic; and certainly blind to the traps we were setting for ourselves. On the whole, our response felt right at the time. With our national pride bruised, and without much thought, we committed billions of dollars and thousands of lives … to do exactly what?

Belatedly, after eight frustrating years, that question is just starting to be addressed in earnest.

What brought us to Afghanistan was our pursuit of al Qaeda. With the rout of its hosts, the Taliban, the war quickly morphed into a permanent war against the Taliban with the justification to deny Al Qaeda safe haven.

Al Qaeda is not the Taliban. Al Qaeda is an amorphous organization born of powerlessness and resentment. Like the Whac-A-Mole game, it can pop up anywhere, anytime; and it has. They retreated from Afghanistan into the mountainous region of Pakistan in the early years of the war, leaving us behind to become mired in a war to which few of us gave much thought, shadowed as it was by our invasion of Iraq. In the meantime, inspired by Bin Laden’s dramatic successes, dozens of terrorist cells sprang up across the globe. Al Qaeda is not a state, it is a state-of-mind that has infected young radicals in the UK, Germany, Spain, Pakistan, and Indonesia, and finds especially fertile ground in failed states like Somalia. Our efforts have served to swell their ranks.

If Al Qaeda pulled up stakes and moved on, why did we remain behind? There are only two reasons; to save face and out of a sense of obligation. Consequently, we now “own” Afghanistan’s problems.

One can predict the arguments against withdrawal from Afghanistan. We’ve heard them all before. Soldiers’ lives ‘lost in vain’; we can’t let the (Afghan) people down, again; we can win if we just send more troops; if we fail, the Afghans will retreat back into tribalism and oppression; an emboldened Taliban, now with world ambitions, would return to power, and al Qaeda would return with them. And the opposition would quickly play the blame game – “Obama lost the Afghan war.”

The longer we stay the harder withdrawal becomes. Every day there are stories of millennium-old tribal practices that shock our western sensibilities. Women required to wear burqas and forced to remain in their homes; girls denied even a rudimentary education; young boys enslaved as dancers – or worse – for the pleasure of senior tribal leaders; acid thrown in the faces of schoolgirls and their teachers. Even its climate and poverty can seem like an affront. Brutal and distressing as these stories are, they only serve to strengthen our resolve to stay, reinforcing the illusion that we can actually affect a cultural transformation and cure Afghans of its poverty and these brutal practices. But, by introducing a perplexing moral dimension, these stories serve to make our retreat all the more difficult – even dishonorable in our own eyes. Hence, quagmire and confusion. In war, we end up taking ownership of conditions that have existed for centuries; conditions we could not have imagined beforehand.

What should our response to 9/11 have been? In my view, renewed, sustained vigilance –tighten our border, airports and ports; improve our internal police effectiveness and information sharing; foster international cooperation to hunt down and disrupt Al Qaeda cells; all with a careful eye to preserving our own liberties.

If our response had been ‘vigilance’, it could have been quietly tailored to adapt rapidly to changes in Al Qaeda’s tactics; with the mobility to follow the enemy wherever it went. There would have been the added advantage of not arousing international enmity, which only has served Al Qaeda’s interests, flooding them with willing recruits and suicide bombers from all over the globe. Remember the outpouring of international support we enjoyed after 9/11? Think about how much easier it would have been to attract and maintain international cooperation then, than it is now. We squandered that good will and the opportunity that went with it.

But it’s not too late. A highly adaptive, international police action is where our strategy needs to be redirected.

I have read General McChrystal's report. His analysis of conditions there is first-rate. But General McChrystal has been handed a limited writ; the war in Afghanistan. He has not been asked to solve the myriad problems beyond its boarders; just win the war in Afghanistan, whatever that means. So, of course, he will present a “new” strategy and ask for more troops. But what size force would he need, and for how long? 50, 100, 200 thousand? Some estimates put the number at over 420,000 for an indeterminate number of years. Clearly, even if we instituted a draft, that will never happen.

Ultimately, McCrystal’s capture-and-hold strategy, one whose primary objective is to protect the population, is not a military strategy; its goal is the political and cultural transformation of Afghanistan; in short, nation building. What would it take to capture the hearts and minds of a proud and ancient people; to win their trust and admiration; to achieve political and cultural transformation; and to transform Afghanistan into a stable democracy and reliable ally? That’s the goal to which such a strategy aspires. What are the odds that this strategy has any better chance of success than would a Taliban brigade plunked down in the heart of Texas?

If the enemy were the Taliban and our national security truly depended on its defeat – if that were possible – General McChrystal’s strategy might make sense, and we should give him everything he asks for, and more, including mobilizing the entire country.

But the enemy is al Qaeda, and they have left the field of battle.

As a nation, we need to think beyond Afghanistan’s borders, and, with the help of our allies, pursue Al Qaeda, wherever they pop up.

Where to go from here? If our initial response should have been, at its heart, an internationally coordinated police action, why isn’t that the right strategy now? (In fact, as we believe, al Qaeda is weakened to the point that even Muslim’s are starting to fight back against its excesses, wouldn’t it be easier now?) How do we get from where we are, quagmire, to where we need to be; renewed, sustained vigilance?

Of course, by their very nature, quagmires cannot be ignored. We’re stuck in this one and no one’s there to throw us a lifeline. However, if, as part of NATO, we declare our intention to extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan and adopt a completely new strategy – and if we encouraged other nations to share equally in this decision – we could start to extricate ourselves tomorrow.

Yes, we need to train – and fund – Afghan police and armed forces. That will be the price of our folly. But those costs can be shared and, if adequately funded, successful. If the Taliban and its allies can spend what is estimated to be $300 a month to enlist an Afghan peasant to its side, why can’t we do better? At $500 dollars a month, we could fund a force of 600,000 Afghan police and armed forces for $3.6 billion a year. Considering what we’re spending now, that would be a bargain. Yes, there are other costs, but in time, the Afghans themselves should be able pick up the tab and keep al Qaeda at bay.

What do the Afghans need more, training or funding? They’ve already proven they know how to fight; they’re just fighting on the wrong side.

If we don’t adopt a new strategy soon, while the international and domestic climate is receptive, we will never be able to extricate ourselves; and that would be our ruin. In comparison, we will end up looking back fondly on Vietnam as “that quaint little war”.

Once we’re committed to war, there’s everything to learn and no easy way out. After eight long years, I hope the lesson is that we need to be sure we know why we’re there, and why we remain. President Obama needs the political will to ask tough questions and seek answers that run counter to those interests vested in the answer left to him by the Bush administration – an answer that was really no answer at all.

[1] The historical novel “Coal Black Horse”

Monday, October 5, 2009

A Cowboy Once

I wore a cowboy hat once

with a string cinched tightly round my chin, Gene Autry style,

And chaps, and silver pistols in black Hopalong Cassidy holsters.

I hid behind a fence ‘til the milk truck came, driven by Black Bart,

Who wrestles the drums of milk into the truck

from the transfer stage at the edge of our farm

where dairy farmers left the day’s milk

too early even for this five-year old cowboy.

And I level the silver pistols and “bang bang!” I said (we weren’t allowed caps back then),

And quickly, well-rehearsed, Bart returns fire,

finger-barrel pointing, thumb-hammer clicking off the rounds, one by one, “bang bang!”

sending me scurrying for cover, sometimes wounded, sometimes not –

even a five year old cowboy know the rules demand you fall dead once in a while –

taking your turn as mortal cowboy,

and like Gabby Hayes, dying in Roy Roger’s arms, like this…[slump]

only to appear again firing “bang bang” the very next day.


Today’s guns fire real 9mm caliber ammo

and gun-child’s mind’s eye sees clearly the projectile

twisting down a finely rifled barrel at explosive, ballistic speeds,

but in slow motion as in a hundred Matrix-like movies, for dramatic effect,

splitting the air and tearing one jagged hole, never to be closed,

in a pulsing chest or perhaps a forehead of a young merchant –

or perhaps a father or teacher or teen-aged mother –

and brings to life the fantasy that renders death effortless,

so cool and casual,

with less feeling than a thousand TV deaths

that never show the families torn apart forever –grieving forever, sad, forever, forever betrayed.


Is rage and fantasy in both our hearts?

Are we separated only by time –Cowboy and Gun-child?


Sunday, October 4, 2009

Welcome to Synaptia

This is a blog of random thought, book & movie reviews, poems, stories, cartoons and short essays. It is probably the closest thing I'll ever have to a journal or dairy. The idea of recording everything I do, every day would make for pretty dull reading. My hope is that it will be a useful way of developing and holding onto my thoughts about what's going on in the world. This is all I have to say right now.