Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Afghanistan

Why I’m Against Current Wars—and Most Foreseeable Wars, Too

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On January 12, 2011

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No, I’m not against all wars.  But I’m against the Afghan war, the “secret” war in Yemen, the occupation of Iraq, and any war with Iran under any circumstances I can imagine.

Why? Because:

  1. They are moronic (in the sense that they cannot be “won” and I oppose unwinnable wars);
  2. The US is in steep decline in an economic/industrial sense and needs to spend its money on other things.

As noted, I’m not opposed to all wars.  Hell I even supported the Afghan war up to the point where it became clear that it was destabilizing Pakistan, polls of Afghans indicated they wanted us out, and it become obvious it couldn’t be “won” in any meaningful sense.

Anyone who supports the current wars is not someone I have much time for, I’m afraid.  I regard them as fundamentally stupid wars and significantly immoral to boot, plus on pragmatic terms I believe they are doing more harm than good to the US, not just economically, but in terms of real security and in terms of the erosion of civil liberties.  States at permanent war cannot and do not maintain their liberties.  Permanent occupations are particularly corrupting and badly damage the real war fighting capacity of the armies doing them (see Army, Israeli).

Anyone who’s in favour of imperial wars and permanent war can’t really be on the left in any meaningful fashion, because the cost of permanent war is:

  • every domestic priority that left wingers claim to care about
  • plus the gutting of civil liberties in the core.

To a liberal, military spending is a necessary evil, and as such you do only as much as is necessary to:

  • actually defend the country. (I.e., hardly any.  Who is going to invade the US?)
  • hold open necessary trade lanes. (I.e., the navy would be smaller than it is now and differently organized, but it would be the primary US military arm.)

And that’s about it.  Every dollar spent on the military is not spent on actual economically productive activity. Yes, there are some exceptions, but there are other ways to do R&D spending, and more and more military R&D is not applicable to civilian matters.

(I’m sure Vladimir Putin laughs himself sick every night that the US pays him off to help America stay in Afghanistan.  The irony must be one of the great joys of his life.)

In terms of dependence on foreign commodities, the progressive solution is to move the energy basis of the US economy off of oil and onto a basis which is much more domestically available (and built).  That way you don’t need to be able to knock around middle eastern nations.

While many lefties wouldn’t agree with me, I would also move to mandatory service, everyone serving 2 to 4 years.  Most wouldn’t serve in the military, but every male and any woman who wants it would get military training. A militarily trained population tends to concentrate the minds of politicians and other elites and I also believe that the military should be much more representative of the population as a whole, for a variety of reasons.

What do you do with all those people in national service?  Rebuild the country: teach them skills and put them to work on broadband, infrastructure of various kinds, refitting all buildings for energy efficiency, etc…  Why?  Well, because that makes the country more secure and safer by reducing dependence on foreign oil, etc… (Well, that’s one reason.)

In my opinion anyone who’s for the current war is delusional or attached to the military industrial complex and willing to betray their country’s real interests for money.  The US cannot afford war.  Period. To be for war right now is to be for the ruin of America.

Actually Afghanistan is a war of choice

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On July 3, 2010

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Michael Steele’s comments on Afghanistan remind me of my favorite definition of a gaffe: “saying the truth in the worst way possible.”

To whit, Steele said that Afghanistan is a war of Obama’s choosing, and that everyone who’s occupied Afghanistan has come to grief over it.  Now one can quibble a bit over the details of who came to grief and who didn’t, but basically he’s right.  Afghanistan went badly for the Russians and the British, most recently.  There’s a reason Afghanistan is called the “graveyard of Empires” and if the US isn’t careful it’ll be the graveyard of the US empire.

Likewise, yes, this is a war of choice for Obama.  He could have done his review, said “hey, there are almost no al-Q’aeda fighters in Afghanistan anymore, so we won, let’s go home.”  He could have said “fighting in Afghanistan is seriously destabilizing Pakistan, which is far more important than Afghanistan, so let’s go home.”  He could have said “yes, if we leave, some al-Q’aeda camps might spring up but we can always bomb them and anyway there are plenty of failed states where al-Q’aeda can set up camps and we can’t occupy all of them.”

The point is that continuing in Afghanistan was a choice.  Obama could have chosen otherwise.  Not being in Afghanistan will not create an existential threat to the US.

So yeah, Steele was right.  Of course, being the RNC chairman, Steele isn’t allowed to say things that make sense and contradict Republican warmongering.

Now here’s a truth that Steele didn’t tell.  Obama has to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has.  The economy is in bad shape, and it needs that stimulus.  Since he can’t get a new large stimulus through Congress that means he MUST keep the Afghan war going if he doesn’t want an economic disaster, which would then lead to an electoral disaster.

This is the sad truth of America: the only acceptable form of Keynesian spending is military Keynesianism. Instead of hiring tens of thousands of teachers, building a high speed rail network across the country, refitting every building to be energy efficient and doing a massive solar and wind build-out to reduce dependence on oil, well, the US would rather turn Afghans and Pakistanis into a fine red mist.

That fine red mist is what’s keeping the American economy from going under entirely.  And so, even if it’s the wrong thing to do, even if it’s the graveyard of America’s Empire, the war will continue.

The Modern American Way

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On February 22, 2010

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Let’s talk about the American way in the context of the assassination strategy used against the Taliban, for the last 8 years.

First, a simple fact: this strategy hasn’t worked worth a damn against the Taliban. They’re winning, the US is losing.

The argument for it would be that killing leaders messes up the Taliban. This is marginally true at best.  Loss of a leader may cause a slight delay and occasional fights within the Taliban, but it doesn’t stop them from getting stronger and continuing to win.

Americans think that good leaders are hard to come by because modern America produces bad leaders regularly, and rarely produces even marginally competent leaders.

Or, to be more accurate, average leaders are not sufficient to make anything in America work because America is set up to force people to do the wrong thing and people who care about doing the right thing are systematically kept out and forced out if they make it in.

The Taliban doesn’t need brilliant leaders, all it needs is leaders able to execute its strategy, and its’ strategy is simple enough that your average leader can implement it, whereas the US strategy couldn’t be executed by a Napoleon.

Killing leaders at the cost of bombing weddings and funerals and killing civilians does not work in the context of counter-insurgency unless your strategy is scorched earth, which the US’s is not. There is also an opportunity cost to anys treategy.

This is the same strategy the Israelis have used for decades against the Palestinians and Hezbollah

You’ll notice that the problem has not gone away.

Americans think leaders matter far more than they actually do. In the context of an actual ideological movement with substantial popular support, there’s always another one. And, in fact, he’s somewhat more likely to be competent than whoever he replaced.

Take a look at the evolution of Hezbollah’s leadership to see how this works. The leadership keeps getting more competent, not less competent, as does the organization. The Israelis act as a nice Darwinian force, making sure the most able wind up on top and that strategies which don’t work end, because the people executing them die. Likewise the Taliban is more deadly now than it was 2 years ago, 2 years ago it was more deadly than 2 years before that, and so forth.

The war should have ended years ago, and the assassination strategy is not producing results.

But by all means, keep trying a strategy which hasn’t worked for 8 years. It’s the American way, if at first, second, third, fourth, tenth a strategy doesn’t work—do it harder. Doesn’t matter whether it’s taxes, warmaking, healthcare or anything else: the easy stupid way is always the right way, even after it hasn’t worked, over and over again.

Wonderful.

The assassination question

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On February 16, 2010

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Would it be ok for the Taliban, which is at war with the US, who invaded their country, to bomb a wedding or funeral the President, a cabinet minister or other US leader was at, even if that meant many innocent civilian casualties?

The President’s Afghanistan Speech

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On December 1, 2009

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Actually, pretty good (at least the written form).  Of course, I think he’s just throwing good money and lives after bad, but so be it.  The strategy is clear “surge, get some temporary gains, call it a victory, get the hell out”.  Same as Iraq.

In a larger sense, same as the overall economic/financial strategy.  Throw money at it, without any real intention of fixing fundamentals.

Pakistani Taliban Move to Within 60 Miles Of Islamabad

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On April 12, 2009

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Image by takebackpackistan

Image by takebackpackistan

I’ve been saying for years that the two pieces on the game board that matter to those who want a Caliphate are Pakistan, because of its nukes, and Saudi Arabia because of its oil.   The realpolitik problem with the Afghani war is that it’s destabilizing Pakistan so much – Afghanistan falling to fundamentalists really doesn’t matter that much, Pakistan doing so changes world geopolitics significantly.

The Taliban came to within 60 miles of Islamabad last week. What’s also interesting about this is that it wasn’t the military that fought them, it was a the police and a militia called up by the elders.  Now, the timing of this is such that the military had a day to get to the district, and didn’t bother, which given it’s 60 miles from the capital of Pakistan, they certainly could have.

Isn’t that… interesting.  And while the accounts of the fight are somewhat ambiguous, it doesn’t sound to me like the Taliban were forced to leave.

Is the military deliberately deciding to let the Taliban continue to put pressure on the civilian government?  One does wonder, doesn’t one?  Or is morale too uncertain to risk against the Taliban?  Or are they so overstretched they can’t get a company 60 miles from the capital?  Or does the “truce” mean that they’ve decided to comletely write off the entire north and let the Taliban take it over unopposed, even when the citizens don’t want it? Whichever it is, it isn’t good.

Lots of folks assume that the Pakistani military is more than capable of crushing the Taliban whenever it wants. I don’t know if that’s true, but I suspect that as long as attacks on the Taliban are seen as doing America’s work against their own countrymen, that the military is going to be both reluctant and somewhat crippled in doing so.

Furthermore, as Steve Hynd notes, in the areas it rules, the Taliban is a more effective government than the Pakistani government ever was.  It is able to solve long standing problems Islamabad could not.

Escalating in Afghanistan is going to turn into the biggest mistake Obama makes in the foreign sphere.  Not only is it a bleeding ulcer robbing America of troops and treasure it cannot afford to lose at this time, it may well lead to the fall of Pakistan.

Notes:

(Go to the The Long War Journal and look at this map of Taliban control of Pakistan to get a visual picture of how much territory the central government has lost control of.)

Piece modified to reflect JPD’s corrections. Thanks Dave.

I’ll be traveling to Victoria and Vancouver from Tuesday through Saturday this week.   Since my laptop is on the fritz that means posting will be light, though there will be at least a couple pieces.

News Flash for Fox News: Canada Doesn’t Need the US For Security

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On March 22, 2009

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Royal Canadian Regiment In Afghanistan

Royal Canadian Regiment In Afghanistan

Canadian Lieutenant General Leslie Andrew Leslie recently noted that after Canada’s deployment in Afghanistan ends in 2011, Canada’s military may need a year to recover.  The reason, as Ellen points out, is because Canada has been suffering 4 times the casualty rate of American troops in Afghanistan, because Canada’s in one of the most dangerous provinces.

Of course, Fox panelist Benson then mocked Canadians:

“I didn’t even know that they were in the war,” Benson said, adding he thought Canada was where someone went to avoid fighting.

No, Fox and the Republican party is where people go who avoid fighting.  None of the panelists on the show appear to have ever served in the military.

Then Fox pundits made the suggestion that Canada leaches on the US for security:

“Would Canada be able to get away with this if they didn’t share a border with the most powerful country in the universe?”

Here’s a fact for Fox.  There is only one country in the world which threatens Canada’s security in any meaningful way.  Only one country in the world which might be able to successfully invade Canada: that’s the US.

Canada doesn’t need the US to save it from anyone but the US.  Sort of like protection money: “Such a nice country you have there.  Be a shame if anything any happened to it.”

Which is more or less what one panelist meant when he said:

“Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country?” Gutfeld asked panelist Doug Benson.

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