Danny Sjursen makes the case at the American Conservative.
The piece as a whole is worth reading, but the bottom line is that the Afghan government’s own military and police are hopeless: They are losing to the Taliban. The US military, with current force levels, cannot hold most of the country. Unless the US is willing to surge again, it will lose the war.
And even if it surges, that won’t win the war, it will only delay the inevitable.
Before the Afghan war, I remember reading an interview with the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, which I’ve since been unable to find. He said, paraphrased, “You will invade. You will take the cities. We will retreat to the countryside. You will not be able to destroy us. You will eventually leave and we will win.”
It struck me as prophetic at the time, and it has played out exactly as he expected.
The US is incapable of “nation building,” serious insurgency warfare, and is bad at occupation. (This wasn’t always the case, but it is now.)
The strategy, if there was to be a war at all, should always have been to go in, accomplish limited goals, and be out within three months–six at the most.
(This is somewhat true of Iraq, where the US should have knocked over Saddam, had a proscription list, and picked its Colonel to lead the country, leaving within six months. The difference is that a Colonel might have stood a chance in Iraq, no one but the Taliban is going to rule Afghanistan without ongoing foreign support.)
The US was always going “lose” in Afghanistan if it did not limit its goals sharply. The only question is how many people will die before the US gets tired of the ulcer and leaves.
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Tom
This was clear in 06 when the rampant abuse of US Airstrikes by Warlords to settle differences with rivals who didn’t have the US ears and rampant corruption caused Taliban support to swell.
Root cause ultimately is the US Military’s inability to admit it was militarily defeated in Vietnam, which retired Marine Captain Carlton Meyer has documented here: http://g2mil.com/lost_vietnam.htm
Most especially was the air war over North Vietnam where the VPAF inflicted 18 to 1 losses in their favor on the USAF, by contrast the Nazis lost 4 aircraft for every US aircraft shot down and the bulk of US Air Losses were caused by ground fire to boot.
Ia Drang immortalized by We Were Soldiers with Mel Gibson: An American defeat with 1st Battalion retreating without doing that bayonet charge, and those NVA Soldiers went on to destroy 2nd Battalion 7th Cav at LZ Albany.
Khe Sanh: NVA Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Victory with the Marines abandoning the base after its outposts were overran and the Royal Laotian Army proved unable to eject the NVA from its borders and retreated.
The US Military is losing because it can’t learn from History or admit its failures and instead blames the political leadership.
jonst
Clear in 2006? Hell, it was clear in 1842 when the British got massacred. Dynamics are the same….any govt in Kabul that is strong enough to challenge the warlords ‘out there’ encounters the hostility of said warlords. Any govt weak enough to not threaten warlords can’t govern. The Mayor of Kabul syndrome. There will never be any ‘winners’ in Afghanistan. Including the Taliban. They will be opposed the moment they ‘win’. Get out. Get out now. Stop telling people how to run their lives. Come home and try and do a better job running your own life and govt.
John
Hubris-Nemesis. That duo been playing out since Babylon. Always seems to work out the same way.
HomoSapiensWannaBe
What Ulcer? The CONgressional-Military-Industrial Complex is doing dandy!
They get annual budget increases and frequent opportunities to blow up stuff so they can replace it at inflated prices in a system that refuses honest accounting on multiple levels. Meanwhile, the dumb US public thinks this same military is the best part of our government — at least thats what the pollsters claim and corporate media report, whether true or not.
I can’t stand going to Pro sports anymore largely because of the ridiculous worship of the Military that occurs before the game starts, which in itself, is a form of mock battle with “our” team going against “their” team.
Adam Eran
Worth remembering: The U.S. (successful) occupation of Germany and Japan included debt jubilees. The loss in Vietnam was motivated partly by the U.S.’ insistence on propping up the French colonial creditors and their local lackeys. I would bet something similar is going on in Afghanistan, too. The U.S. is propping up an oligarchy full of criminals (opium production actually declined under the Taliban).
nihil obstet
A sad difference between the Vietnam and Afghan wars is that there was active, widespread protest against the Vietnam War, while the Afghan War is merrily waged in darkness. The only thing the MIC learned from Vietnam was to stay unremittingly and expensively involved in propaganda. And never, ever, ever even imply that any American pays any sort of price for the war except for our brave heroes to whom we should be continually grateful.
bob mcmanus
Too soon to tell, after 45 years (counting USSR’s attempt) of trying. Last I heard, Afghanistan was loaded with the minerals and rare earths that are otherwise available only from China. Not sure how to develop the place, but isn’t Libya still shipping oil? Aren’t we still in Somalia? Asymmetrical wars and incompetent occupations is what the US does, and I see no reason to think we’ll change. We can weapon test there.
Speaking of China an entertaining article on repression
“in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, an area that is four times the size of Germany and shares borders with eight countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.”
Google up a worldmap and look up Afghanistan and you can see Kashgar from there. The Chinese know how to occupy, even develop, and have the manpower to do so, as in like one cop (untrained, but doesn’t matter, for like every ten Uighers. Include settlers, as China did to Tibet. I would say it’s China’s turn, but I doubt the US or ME would allow it, and if the US withdraws, I suspect China would give it a try, so it won’t happen. We will keep enough forces there to keep China out. India? Nah, relations with Pakistan makes that impossible. So China.
Also, MacKinder and Brzezinski heartland strategy, there was a recent article I can’t find.
Synoia
jonst, thanks
You are correct. The only person who did well in Afghanistan was Lord Roberts. He got the British out of there twice.
Ten Bears
It was lost before it started. History only repeats to those paying attention.
Hugh
I agree with Ian that post-9/11 we should have gone into Afghanistan, taken out as many al Qaeda bases and fighters as we could, and then left. Important to remember is that the Taliban were doing a terrible job running the country. Something like a quarter to a third of the country needed international food aid to keep from starving. And giving al Qaeda a safe haven was just plain stupid. Also the Taliban has itself remained viable largely through the ISI and more generally the Pakistani’s government support of them, especially giving a safe haven for them in the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan and more specifically in their support of the Haqqani network. It has always been a glaring example of the insanity of American policy in the region and the War on Terror globally that its two biggest “allies” in both, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, are the two biggest sponsors of terrorism.
I think that if US leaders had been smart enough to do the Iraq war right, they would have been smart enough not to do it at all.
As with Vietnam, the only argument, if you want to make it, for the long US stay in Afghanistan is the hegemonic one. Hegemons don’t have to win to accomplish their aims. In Vietnam, all the US had to do was outlast the revolutionary impulse, led by leaders like Ho Chi Minh and Mao, then allow the underlying nationalist rivalries to re-assert themselves and promote the capitalist aspirations of the next generation of leadership exhausted by the costs of communism and revolution. Returning to Afghanistan, South Asia is going to explode someday in a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. The Indians are corrupt and the Pakistanis are both corrupt and completely duplicitous. The Pakistanis are betraying us in Afghanistan and will continue to do so. But the US presence in Afghanistan places limits on Pakistan and India and delays their war and the catastrophic implosion of these two states. So while the US presence in Afghanistan with regard to Afghanistan makes no sense at all and hasn’t for at least the last 15 years, from the hegemonic view point re Pakistan and India, it does –at least for now. But not permanently. South Asia will collapse. Overpopulation, climate change, and the corruption and looting of Pakistan’s and India’s ruling classes ensure it. There will come a time when we will leave Afghanistan, possibly via a fig leaf peace process à la Vietnam, and then five to ten years after that Pakistan and India will destroy each other.
Dan
When were Americans good at occupation, other than when they had committed genocide on land they intended to settle, or used nuclear weapons?
Eric Anderson
One word:
Vizzini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmT0_hKSUrw
Tom
@Hugh
Uh the Taliban by 2001 had begun rehabilitating roads and factories, was transitioning to a professional army with a functional airforce, and trying to push Osama bin Laden out of the country. They had the bulk of the country secured and their hold up with Dostum was over the fact that he refused to disband his forces and fold them into the Emirate Army as the Taliban did not want private Armies loyal to Warlords rather than the state.
In July of 2001 they sent a delegation to the Bush Administration to negotiate handing Osama over, even offering to pay the cost of a cruise missile to kill him. They even warned the Bush Administration that Osama was up to something. Bush turned them away. Factor in the FBI and CIA infighting and turf waring, and 9/11 happens.
After 9/11, the Taliban offered to turn OBL over to the Hague and Saudis, but BUsh rejected those offers and illegally invaded the nation. The War in Afghanistan is illegal. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11 and offered to turn over OBL, but Bush just invaded in violation of international law.
As for Pakistan’s alleged support to the Taliban:
Certain elements, such as ISI support it. Others are fighting an active shooting war with it. But India is the biggest threat to them. So as long as the Taliban stays in the FATA region, Islamabad doesn’t care and unleash its Army in force. But the bulk of the Taliban support comes from Afghans and Afghan resources which makes sense given they control large swathes of the country. It is the job of Kabul to secure its borders and country, not Pakistan’s.
If the US had supported Pakistan over Kashmir in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and not dicked with them in the 80s and 90s, we wouldn’t be in this mess. As Pakistan sees it, the US was duplicitous to them for decades and now they are getting a taste of their own medicine.
John Poynton
Just like Vietnam. If the locals are corrupt and incompetent and do not have the support of the people then why are we supporting them? Leave well alone and the Taliban will fail in the longer term just as the communists did.
Steve Ruis
It was lost as soon as it began. You cannot win a war there unless you kill everyone and replace the Afghan people with a new population. We need to back self-determination. If the Afghan people are tired of the Taliban, they themselves will kick them out. Outsiders are not helping.
Willy
We’re conditioning them wrong. We should’ve given every Afghan family a TV then let good ole American-style ad prop do it’s thing. They would’ve been obsessing over blue jeans and light beers by now.
Hugh
Tom, I always enjoy your alternate histories. But your fiction would improve if you avoided obvious contradictions. For example, the Taliban had an army. If they had wanted al Qaeda eliminated and Osama bin Laden dead or arrested, they could have done it at any time, including before 9/11. Instead they gave them safe haven.
And let me get this straight, it’s OK for Pakistan to subvert the current Afghan government because its the Afghans’ responsibility to guard their borders. Isn’t this the same argument any invader could make with a weaker neighbor? Oh why yes, yes it is.