A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

First order of business is to let you know that I was recently offered a new writing gig. Yay for me, right? I will be a music writer for Omaha.net which is a new website that focuses on everything Omaha (I guess the name would have implied that). I just submitted my first piece which is basically a preview of all of the great concerts coming to the Metro area this month. I was "discovered" through this here site. So, I guess after five years, something good did actually come from this.

In other news, I made sure to tune in to President Obama's speech last night at West Pointe. In all honesty, I don't know what to think. I am very torn on this issue. After 9/11, I fully supported former President Bush's initial invasion into Afghanistan. I wanted (and still do) for us to find Osama Bin Laden and kill him. It looks like we almost did at the end of '01 in Tora Bora, but Bush's military leadership outsourced the job to Afghans, who screwed it up. That seems like the last time we, as a nation, were fully committed to catching and killing those responsible for planning 9/11. I never supported the Iraq War. Even in 2002-03, I could tell that the case being made for Iraq was bogus. It's true. We took our eye off the ball with respect to Bin Laden and Al Qeada, and got too wrapped up in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, had no WMD, and posed no threat to us. I will never forgive George W. Bush for his failure in this regard. He promised we would get Bin Laden, and then he completely forgot his name. Instead, thousands of American soldiers were killed or wounded for a war that ultimately ended up benefiting Iran and Exxon. We didn't even get cheap gas out of the deal!

All of that is my long winded way of getting to the present time and the current president. After more than seven years of virtual neglect by the Bush Administration, most senior Al Qeada leaders have escaped into neighboring Pakistan. All throughout the last eight years, myself and many others on the liberal side have argued for a re-commitment to Afghanistan, and to finish the job that was neglected by the last administration. But now that we know that Al Qeada is no longer in Afghanistan, I'm not entirely sure why we need to keep adding troops to that theater.

Last Spring, President Obama sent some 20,000 more troops to the country which gave that war the highest number of American forces ever. Now, with the Iraq War finally coming to a close, the president has decided to send an additional 30,000 to Afghanistan. Why, exactly? The Afghan people have little invested in their current government. President Karzai's administration is rife with corruption, and large portions of the country are not under his control. Are the Afghan people really going to step up and join the army to fight for a government that steals elections, sells drugs, and hasn't been able to get its act together after many years in office? I doubt it. The Afghans are not Iraqis. Iraq had a functioning civil government and a national military before we came along. They understood the concept, and felt personally invested in their future as a nation. A casual glance at Afghan history will tell you that is not nearly the case there. Most folks there consider themselves to be a member of their tribe as opposed to a citizen of a nation.

So, if training up a national Afghan military is less than likely to yield the results we want, the Afghan government is hopeless, and Al Qeada has escaped, what are all of these additional troops going to do? How will any US strategic goal be met? How will our national security be enhanced?

On the other hand, there is Pakistan. This is the kind of place that could keep a person up at night if they really considered how dangerous the country is. Like Afghanistan, there are large portions of the nation that are not under government control. There is a radical element inside Pakistan's military and intelligence communities, and the government has made numerous deals with the militants who are sheltering Bin Laden. But, unlike Afghanistan, there are nuclear weapons in Pakistan. That is the scary part. Those nukes cannot ever get into the hands of Al Qeada or others who would use them for terrorist acts. But we can't just invade Pakistan. We've already bullshitted our way into one war, so the same tactic of making up a false premise to invade would not work.

Let's not kid ourselves. We have been actively engaged in military operations inside Pakistan for a long time. It started under President Bush, but has been escalated by President Obama. Only these operations are done by the CIA, which has its own air force, its own weapons, its own mission, and is accountable to practically no one. Perhaps the CIA is achieving some measure of success. Who knows. We don't really admit to what's going on there, so we really have no idea.

If I understood the president last night, he was essentially arguing that we need to secure Afghanistan and get them a military. This, in turn, will force the Pakistanis to re-double their efforts at fighting the Taliban and Al Qeada inside their country. This is necessary because if the Pakistanis don't do this, their government could be overthrown by those extremist elements, and then we would have the nightmare scenario: a jihadi state with nuclear weapons. At least, I think that's what he was saying.

The problem, for me, is that I still don't see why we need so many additional troops. After they all arrive, we will have over 100,000 American soldiers there, plus NATO troops, plus over 100,000 contractors. All of this is necessary to push the (very weak) Pakistani government to take care of its own problem?! I mean, they don't even have the will or ability to expel Bin Laden from the country. 9/11 was conducted by 19 guys, and planned by another dozen or so. Much of the plot was hatched in an apartment in Germany. Having a million soldiers in Germany would not have prevented their plotting, nor would having a million soldiers in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Unlike what the Bushies have been saying for the last eight years, fighting terrorism is not best handled militarily. It is an intelligence and law enforcement issue; and almost all of our success in fighting terrorism has come from human intelligence and not from planting an army in a country and inviting terrorists to come in and attack. I think we can all agree on that now.

The one thing I did like was that President Obama gave this effort a time frame. As much as the right likes to say this is a bad idea, let's be honest, until President Bush finally relented and gave a date certain for the US leaving, the insurgents kept on fighting and killing us, and the government did little to nothing to work out its differences. Now that a period has been put on the end of that sentence, the Iraqi government is finally making some political progress, and life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people. The Iraqis understood that we were not there for colonization or occupation. The Afghans need to understand this as well.

In this case, I think we need to make sure that Karzai and our own military leaders understand this war will not go on forever. President Obama inherited a shitty situation, a neglected problem, a burnt out NATO, and emboldened Taliban, and angry allies. For the military to insist that more of the same will somehow yield better results seems counter intuitive. The military will always ask for more troops and more time. That goes without saying. And as long as Karzai has the American military at his disposal, he has little incentive to reform his government and make the necessary alliances with tribal leaders. If both Mr. Karzai and the military brass know that they must get results by a certain time or it's game over, they both have a stronger incentive to actually do what needs to be done, rather than stall and delay.

Despite what one might hear on Fox News, the president essentially took Gen McChrystal's recommendation entirely. While military leaders under the last president were allowed an indefinite time to accomplish a vague goal; under this president, the military has been given a time frame and clearly defined goals. They must achieve success. The country cannot afford to keep kicking the can down the road for another decade.

So, while I am torn as to why we need to escalate the war after so much time has passed, I have confidence in President Obama. Obama has confidence in McChrystal, so I guess I do, too. I certainly hope everything goes the way we are planning, but I am far from certain. Will we end up leaving in 2011 or 2012 with the situation essentially the same as it was in 2002 or 2003? After all the fighting in Vietnam after 1969, we ended up signing the same peace deal proposed by LBJ in 1968! Yet how many US soldiers died from 69-73? How many Vietnamese? I don't want to see this same thing happen again.