The Long Crisis

Posts Tagged ‘Obama’s war’

In the summer of 2009, reporter and brave man Ben Anderson traveled to the Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan to document the first military campaign ordered by President Obama. Anderson provides an inside view of what life is like for Echo Company’s U.S. Marines – including getting ambushed by the Taliban and hit by a roadside bomb.

As you will quickly see from the video the new Obama plan of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghanistan people have about as much of a chance for success as the hearts and minds campaign of presidents Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam War.

In their effort to defeat the Taliban the Marines are shown kicking down doors, engaged in endless patrols through the dreary Afghanistan villages, living in harsh conditions, and discussing among themselves and to the video crew how Americans care so little about their efforts in the Afghanistan war zone.

The argument that president Obama gives for the enormously expensive US effort in Afghanistan is in my opinion, pure bullshit. As you will see in the video present Obama states that the mission of the US in Afghanistan is to deny Al Qaeda and the Taliban access to training camps and safe haven areas where they could plot future terrorist activities against the United States homeland. This really makes no sense at all as our own intelligence services estimates that there are no more than 100 Al Qaeda operatives within Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has much more of a presence in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and even the Philippines, then they have in Afghanistan. As for the Taliban they have wisely changed tactics and are now using suicide bombers, IED’s, and low intensity pop shots at the coalition forces rather than meeting those forces head on. In Afghanistan we are fighting a resourceful and clever enemy on their own turf. The Taliban will not give up. They will fight a low intensity assymmetrical form of warfare for as long as it takes to exhaust our patience and resources.

As one Taliban commander said several years ago “you have the watch but we have the time”. The Taliban know full well that even at the new troop levels that president Obama has committed to Afghanistan,100,000 troops are not nearly enough man power to control a country as large as Afghanistan, especially when you are fighting skillful determined warriors who have a long history of being involved in conflict.

So the question is, why are we really in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, the honest answer would seem to be the same as the reason that we stayed in Vietnam for so many difficult years. And we all know how well that worked out. And that answer is, in simple terms, to save face.

Yes, I know that president Obama, Defense Secretary Gates, the various generals in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps all say that we must win the war in Afghanistan in order to provide security to the United States. Their argument is much the same as during the Vietnam era when all sorts of predictions that losing the war would bring disaster to the United States all proved to be wrong. The true disaster was for the United States to involve itself in a land war in Asia to begin with. President Eisenhower was absolutely correct in warning against our involvement in a land war in Asia.

Now president Obama has chosen to escalate a war in one of the poorest nations on earth that is even more remote from the United States and with more rugged geography than Vietnam. Keeping our troops supplied in that country is difficult and extremely expensive. There are no seaports in landlocked Afghanistan. Our military has to be supplied by airlift and by truck convoys from neighboring Pakistan through dangerous and treacherous mountain passes.

I really cannot buy the position that the very security of the United States is dependent upon our success in Afghanistan. To escalate the war there is to give Al Qaeda and the Taliban the gift that just keeps on giving. Osama bin Laden’s stated plan from well before the 9/11 attack was to bankrupt the United States. Whether bin Laden is dead or alive really makes no difference. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already costing the United States in excess of $1 trillion, at a time when economic conditions are already poor and deteriorating, the escalation of the war is to fulfill bin Laden’s wildest dream.

Just watch the US Marines in action in the video. Note the profound cultural differences between the Marines and the Afghanistan people. Who can believe that the US will stay and defend the Afghans, whom they consider rag heads and a primitive people, as public opinion within the US becomes even more negative and the US economy continues to flounder. Team Obama is truly crazy if they think that by escalating the war and causing even more civilian deaths we are ever going to win the hearts and minds of these tribal people.

As the reporter Ben Anderson states near the end of the video the only reason that we are still in Afghanistan is to save face. No American president wants to be known as a president who lost a war. American hubris and arrogance lives within the psyche of president Obama. President Obama is likely betting his second term in office upon the results of his war escalation. Unless there is an amazing improvement in the Afghanistan war and the US economy well before the 2012 elections, president Obama will be a one term president.

In the meantime, pity the United States Marines who will bear the brunt of the escalation in fighting. While the Marines are a superb offensive military force they are not well suited for the type of low intensity asymmetrical IED and suicide bomber warfare that they will experience in Afghanistan. All of our military will pay a high price for the face-saving effort and do-gooder notions that president Obama and his team of so-called experts are determined to carry out with flawed strategy and tactics in Afghanistan.

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The Afghanistan War is not going well. After nearly nine years of conflict the Taliban are growing stronger and now control as much as 70% of the countryside. The following video, “Obama’s War”, is an on the ground presentation of some of the harsh conditions faced by US Marines in combat operations as well as interviews of Americans, Afghans, and Pakistanis, both military and civilians, looked to for advice by President Obama.

The following is from the excellent PBS coverage of the war and explains some of the difficult and outrageously expensive issues and options that are now on Obama’s plate.
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In Obama’s War, veteran correspondent Martin Smith travels across Afghanistan and Pakistan to see first-hand how the president’s new strategy is taking shape, delivering vivid, on-the-ground reporting from this eight-year-old war’s many fronts. Through interviews with top generals, diplomats and government officials, Smith also reports the internal debates over President Obama’s grand attempt to combat terrorism at its roots.

“What we found on the ground was a huge exercise in nation building,” says Smith. “The concept’s become a bit of a dirty word, but that’s what this is. We started with the goal of eliminating Al Qaeda, and now we’ve wound up with the immense task of re-engineering two nations.”
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I warn you. After watching the video it is hard to see for the United States any good way out of a highly complicated conflict involving Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, NATO, and US interests in the region. Whatever action decided upon by President Obama is sure to unleash a round of protest and criticism that will endanger Obama’s opportunity for a second term in office.

Nation building under the best of circumstances is a difficult task. If even a lite version of nation building in Afghanistan, one of the poorest, most backward, and tribal nations on earth, is one of the US’s objectives in “winning” the war the task will be almost impossible to complete in any of our lifetimes, if ever.

Then there is the unpleasant fact that even if we do somehow prevail by defeating the Taliban and denying access to al-Qaeda of operating bases in Afghanistan there is even a greater problem with al-Qaeda and an extreme Islamic fundamentalist movement in Pakistan. With anti American sentiment already running high in Pakistan, a nation of about 180,000,000 citizens, any American boots on the ground campaign in Pakistan would be complete madness and could escalate out of control with dire consequences.

For the United States and President Obama I fear that there really is no good way out of a complicated conflict. Watch the video and then see how you feel.

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I’ve always thought that the War in Afghanistan is nuts. I also think that a good understanding of Afghanistan and its centuries old traditional tribal organizational structure and culture has been and is still sorely lacking by our generals and top level government officials.

Sure, America had the right to go after those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. But to invade Afghanistan with a conventional military force was a stupid way to go about it. To take on the Taliban was like taking on a hotel owner because one of its guests, the US CIA trained and funded Osama bin Laden, who helped us fight our proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, turned on us and committed a horrific crime. What a case of blowback.

Surely, the powerful US, with its teams of highly trained special forces and Navy Seal teams could have gotten the revenge job done in a smart, fairly low cost way. If only at the time we had a President with a fully functioning brain we wouldn’t still be in Afghanistan eight years after 9/11 and have Osama bin Laden still unaccounted for.

Then to make matters much worse we took our eye off Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and invaded a country whose leader had been one of our big Mid Eastern buddies for eight years during the Iraq – Iran War but whom we didn’t like very much when he wouldn’t dance to our tune. What a gift to Osama. His plan all along was to bleed the US dry and he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been wildly expensive misguided endeavors for the US both in blood and treasure.

President Obama has a considerably higher amount of brain power than George W. Bush but yet he immediately made the Afghanistan War his to lose by escalating the conflict rather than seeking to find an honorable way out. So instead of finding ways to defuse the conflict the US, under Obama’s orders, has stepped up combat activity with the predictable result. US military deaths for the month of August, 2009 are the highest of the entire war and the trend looks to be for more bad news.

Is it the old American hubris trap that Obama has fallen into? And why has he continued with the misguided Bush policy of authorizing the launch of destabilizing drone air missile attacks into Pakistan? US long distance “warriors” are probably killing or wounding ten innocent Pakistani civilians for every al Queda suspect taken out. And in a country where revenge is a matter of honor many more anti-American militants are being created than destroyed.

The missile attacks are political poison to the democratically elected government in Pakistan and are complicating an already complicated situation. Our own missiles may have the unintended consequences of bringing down the Pakistan government. One that may well be replaced by truly crazy and violent fundamental extremists who do hate the US.

But all of this is not just my opinion. Watch the above video. The video brings you three former high-ranking CIA agents explaining why there is no “victory” to be won in Afghanistan. Unless he is very lucky President Obama’s War is going to cost him his reelection chances.

It is a stupid war for the US to be engaged in. Our war against Osama bin Laden has been transformed into a war against the Taliban. Since the Taliban were created and still have the support of important segments of the Pakistani military and are mostly local Afghanis, and the puppet Karzai government is increasingly corrupt and ineffective, we are involved in a war that is so complicated with local nuances that we don’t even understand the forces we are dealing with. In fact, I suspect that we are being played by corrupt Afghani officials and warlords who place profit far above serving their country.

Is pushing the US vision and version of oil pipelines across the far reaches of Afghanistan so important to us that we are willing to engage in a perpetual war across the entire Af-Pak region? Is Obama so quickly under the control of special interest groups who are war profiteers? I only ask the questions. I have no facts to back up my worse fears. I do know that high ranking CIA agents think that the War in Afghanistan can not be won. Which begs the question. If the war can not be won what in the world are we hoping to accomplish in Afghanistan?

Oh yes. I understand that our generals still think that the war can be won. But then they think that of every war they are engaged in or they would not be generals. I very well remember General Westmoreland and his always optimistic statements about winning the Vietnam War. All that was required was more time and more troops. History records that the general was a bit too optimistic as generals often are.

The arguments made for the escalation of the war by the Obama administration sound as contrived and frankly nuts to me as those made by Bush and his band of fuzzy thinkers or the predictions of Presidents Johnson and Nixon about the “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam. What do you think? Is there any hope left that the US can win a war in far away remote and rugged Afghanistan?

And if we do “win” what have we won? The right to build a nation that is currently one of the poorest and most corrupt in the world? Do we really think we can manage that task when four years after Hurricane Katrina we have been unable to even restore New Orleans, an important American city. Hubris and the inability to admit mistakes carries a high price.

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