Maybe The Baby Doesn't Want To Be Adopted

The Mustache of Understanding has some decent things to say about Afghanistan, but they boil down to "if we are going to engage in nation-building we'd better have a pretty good government to work with. The assumption being that some nation-building projects can work, which befits the neocon-in-sheep's-clothing that is Tom Friedman.

But Afghanistan is so corrupt, so desperate, with our partner so ineffectual, that even the Mustache cannot abide by engaging in a decade-long experiment to bring them freeance and peeance. But Friedman comes to no conclusion, however, instead offering the evasive technique of calling for "debate."

That is the raw clay for our state-building. It may still be worth doing, but one thing I know for sure, it must be debated anew. This is a much bigger undertaking than we originally signed up for. Before we adopt a new baby — Afghanistan — we need to have a new national discussion about this project: what it will cost, how much time it could take, what U.S. interests make it compelling, and, most of all, who is going to oversee this policy?

I feel a vast and rising ambivalence about this in the American public today, and adopting a baby you are ambivalent about is a prescription for disaster.

The missing ingredient to Friedman's calculation is the desires of the Afghan people themselves. But when has he ever concerned himself with what the lower orders want?

...It is significant, as James Joyner says, that Tom Friedman appears to have given up on the war. But he just can't bring himself to say it's not worth fighting.

All Of A Sudden, 25 Years In Afghanistan?

The US military has begun essentially its first large-scale mission in Afghanistan in many years, an effort to retake Helmand province from Taliban insurgents and remain in the area to "clear, hold and build".

Almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley in southwestern Afghanistan early Thursday morning to try to take back the region from Taliban fighters whose control of poppy harvests and opium smuggling in Helmand provides major financing for the Afghan insurgency.

The Marine Expeditionary Brigade leading the operation represents a large number of the 21,000 additional troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year amid rising violence and the Taliban’s increasing domination in much of the country. The operation is described as the first major push in southern Afghanistan by the newly bolstered American force [...]

The Marines say their new mission, called Operation Khanjar, will include more troops and resources than ever before, as well as a commitment by the troops to live and patrol near population centers to ensure that residents are protected. More than 600 Afghan soldiers and police officers are also involved.

“What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert, and the fact that where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces,” the Marine commander in Helmand Province, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, said in a statement released after the operation began.

Whatever you think of this strategy, it should be mentioned that it's different from the stated goal of the President from back in March, which was more a decapitation strategy to capture and kill Taliban and deny Al Qaeda safe havens. This is a counter-insurgency strategy to "drink lots of tea," "eat lots of goat", and win the hearts and minds of the population. I understand how denying the Taliban freedom to operate in Helmand and denying them safe havens dovetail. But this sounds a lot like nation-building to me:

“Our focus is not the Taliban,” Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet.”

I keep hearing that economic development is the key to success in Afghanistan, and not the military. But a COIN strategy in this fractured country that has practically never known a central government seems really flimsy. Especially when the civilian surge hasn't materialized, meaning that troops are being turned into psychologists and economic development experts.

Counter-insurgency operations are long-term and take large numbers of troops. Shouldn't we have a public debate about such a change in strategy rather than springing it on the public without discussion? I don't want to keep adding troops into a black hole, and the White House has appeared to draw the line on that, but their new strategy cuts against that policy. It's another version of war on the cheap to make it politically palatable.

Meanwhile, a Marine has been captured by the Taliban, and let's hope he can be returned safely.

Open-Ended Commitment

American military commanders like to tamp down expectations and prep the battlefield for a long commitment, but this stretches it a bit:

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said Monday it will be years before coalition forces can make a complete handoff to Afghan security forces, despite the arrival of thousands of new troops beginning this month and signs of diplomatic progress.

Army Gen. David McKiernan told newspaper executives gathered at The Associated Press annual meeting that militant havens across the border in Pakistan remain a challenge. And while he said that the Afghan army is now leading 60 percent of missions in Afghanistan, Afghan police lag in their ability to provide security [...]

"What we want to do is make a significant impact on the foundation of security ... and continue to move toward developing sufficient Afghan capacity and specifically, their army, their police, so at some point we can get to a tipping point where they lead the security in this country," he said.

"You're going to ask me when is that tipping point. I can't say, but I think it is a matter of years away," he said in a live satellite interview from Kabul.

What McKiernan describes above, frankly, is nation-building. That is a COMPLETELY separate issue from denying and dismantling safe havens for militant extremists. You can argue that the local forces being stood up here will eventually take that role, but the size of the security forces scheduled for Afghanistan, a poor country, would cost more than their total budget to maintain. We could easily move into a strategic overwatch position, using intelligence capabilities and law enforcement, to disrupt those safe havens (which occur throughout the world and not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and contain the threat. But instead, we use military means, which may be creating more terrorists than we destroy.

Even as the Obama administration launches new drone attacks into Pakistan's remote tribal areas, concerns are growing among U.S. intelligence and military officials that the strikes are bolstering the Islamic insurgency by prompting Islamist radicals to disperse into the country's heartland.

Al Qaida, Taliban and other militants who've been relocating to Pakistan's overcrowded and impoverished cities may be harder to find and stop from staging terrorist attacks, the officials said.

Moreover, they said, the strikes by the missile-firing drones are a recruiting boon for extremists because of the unintended civilian casualties that have prompted widespread anger against the U.S.

"Putting these guys on the run forces a lot of good things to happen," said a senior U.S. defense official who requested anonymity because the drone operations, run by the CIA and the Air Force, are top-secret. "It gives you more targeting opportunities. The downside is that you get a much more dispersed target set and they go to places where we are not operating."

U.S. drone attacks "may have hurt more than they have helped," said a U.S. military official who's been deeply involved in counterterrorism operations. The official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, called the drone operations a "recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban."

Ultimately, this is why Americans are wary of Afghanistan. We have a defined goal to start and then it morphs into building security forces and protecting the central government until we are intimately entangled in the lives of millions of people half a continent away. Obama supposedly refined the mission, but the top commander is spouting the same rhetoric of entanglement. Seemingly our wars get longer with each successive generation, and no more decisive, either. The troop morale seems to still be high, but of course that's more a function of people wanting to protect their buddies in the unit than a sense of mission.

It disturbs me that we are already beginning to see signs of mission creep.