[Peace-discuss] Afghanistan is now Obama’s war

Sun Aug 30 20:55:56 CDT 2009

[This is from the Financial Times.  I usually don't think much of Crook's 
columns, and I surely don't think "Obama is trying to do the right thing," but I 
do hope "he will surely regret making this war his own." Crook almost recognizes 
that the primary use of the healthcare debate has been to distract the US public 
from the war, and he sees that Obama's "rationale for the war is unconvincing" 
without giving a good account of why the war is so important to the Obama 
administration. (But few others in his business will admit that they know the 
answer to that.)  His own account of the purpose of the war has at best some 
grains of truth.  But he comes closer that most in MSM to what the USG is up to, 
even though there's much more to be said. --CGE]

	Afghanistan is now Obama’s war
	By Clive Crook
	Published: August 30 2009

Except for a pause to honour Senator Edward Kennedy, healthcare reform has 
dominated US news and comment for weeks. It is seen as the make-or-break 
challenge for Barack Obama’s administration. Yet soon it may look unimportant in 
comparison with an issue that the US public has barely seemed to notice: the war 
in Afghanistan.

Casualties there are mounting – this has been the deadliest month for US forces 
since the fighting began in 2001. The losses have attracted less attention in 
the US than British losses have in Britain, and pressure on the administration 
to pull out has been mild. But this will change. When it does, Mr Obama will 
longingly recall those carefree months debating healthcare.

Quietly, public opinion has already turned against the war. According to a 
recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 51 per cent now say the war is not worth 
fighting. Among Democrats, seven out of 10 say that.

A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 32 per cent agree with sending 
more troops – something the army is expected to request imminently. To the 
question “What do you think will eventually happen?” came a response to thrill 
every Taliban fighter: 65 per cent said “The United States will withdraw without 
winning” and only 35 per cent “The United States will win”.

The issue has not yet come to the boil but Mr Obama’s position is as difficult 
as it could possibly be. This is now his war. He asserted ownership again only 
recently, calling the conflict for the hundredth time “a necessary war”, unlike 
his predecessor’s supposedly needless “war of choice” in Iraq.

Yet Mr Obama’s war, necessary or not, will be hard to win, and impossible 
without greater expense of lives and money. Withdrawal, meanwhile, involves 
great dangers of its own. To complete the president’s quandary, his rationale 
for the war is unconvincing and, as the polls confirm, his strongest opposition 
comes from his own party.

The Afghanistan war is necessary, says Mr Obama, to deny al-Qaeda a sanctuary. 
But analysts point out that al-Qaeda’s leadership is no longer there: it has 
moved to Pakistan. The ungoverned areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan are anyway 
not the only such regions in the world. Why put 68,000 troops in Afghanistan and 
leave other plausible terrorist havens, such as Somalia, to their own devices?

There are better reasons to fight this war – but they are more complicated than 
“fighting al-Qaeda” and harder to sell to a sceptical public. The first is that 
a Taliban victory might destabilise Pakistan, by strengthening that country’s 
own jihadists. Since Pakistan has nuclear weapons, this is an extremely 
dangerous prospect. The other is that letting the Taliban succeed in Afghanistan 
would abandon people the US and its allies have promised to defend. That may not 
be a dangerous prospect for the west, but it sure is a revolting one.

Admittedly, the case is not clear-cut: both of these rationales are disputable. 
Some argue that fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan inflames anti-western 
sentiment in Pakistan so much that it aids the insurgency there more than a 
withdrawal would. As for the Afghans we have promised to defend, what happens if 
the Afghans themselves want the US to leave?

The longer the US and its allies are there, the less popular they will become. 
With too few troops to achieve security on the ground, the enemy must be 
attacked by air – which means civilian casualties. Foreign soldiers and 
civilians whose first concern is their own security are not apt to win hearts 
and minds. Meanwhile, the US has underwritten a flawed election and in due 
course will be seen as standing behind a new government of doubtful legitimacy. 
None of these arguments is easy to dismiss.

In short, Afghanistan is a war of choice, and a finely balanced choice at that. 
Given the risks of withdrawal, I think Mr Obama is right not to quit just yet – 
but to improve his chances of success he must bring his ends and means into 
closer alignment.

A rule of thumb for counter-insurgency operations is that you need one soldier 
for every 50 inhabitants. For Afghanistan, this gets you to well over 500,000 
troops even before you start taking account of the terrain. That number is 
unthinkable. Counter-insurgency is never quick even when it succeeds, and the US 
is impatient.

Gilles Dorronsoro of the Carnegie Endowment argued on this page on August 17 
that limited US public support for the war was the key constraint – and that the 
mission’s goals must be narrowed accordingly. The latest polls, and reports that 
Mr Obama’s generals are being urged to rein back their request for more troops 
even before they have finished their assessment, suggest Mr Dorronsoro is right. 
His recommendation is to shore up the government, control strategic cities and 
roads, and secure buffer zones around them. Elsewhere, cede control to the other 
side and use force for defensive operations only.

These more limited goals would still be costly to achieve, and selling this 
strategy to the US public would still be difficult. Congress might not be much 
help either. Mr Obama and the Republicans have fallen out bitterly over 
healthcare and economic policy; the president cannot rely on their help on 
Afghanistan. Worse, unlike George W. Bush, he cannot count on his own party. Mr 
Obama is trying to do the right thing, but he will surely regret making this war 
his own.

clive.crook at gmail.com

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d636d14e-9594-11de-90e0-00144feabdc0.html