[Peace-discuss] Way off Bacevich, on AOTA

[C. G. Estabrook]

Ron Szoke and I disagreed about this article on "AWARE on the Air" today.  I 
think this Boston Glob(e) columnist is as far off base as the hapless Red Sox, 
from the very first line.

Of course Afghanistan "seriously matters to the United States"!  It is 
geographically central to the cynosure of US foreign policy for two generations, 
viz. that the US must control Mideast energy supplies.  The real resistance to 
US control of the region now comes from AfPak (more Pak than Af, it's true) as 
it once long ago came from Egypt.

The only debate in Washington is how best now to effectuate that policy, which 
no one in the administration disagrees with. No one (who matters) is saying that 
the US should withdraw (troops, mercenaries, corporations et al.) from the 
Middle East.  The argument is about tactics (e.g., where to send the troops), 
not strategy.

I admired General David Shoup, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient and 
Marine Corps commandant 1960–1963. In May 1966, he evaluated the escalating war 
in Vietnam with words that apply today:

"I believe if we had, and would, keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers 
out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, 
they will arrive at a solution of their own. That they design and want. That 
they fight and work for -- and not the American style, which they don't want. 
Not one crammed down their throats by the Americans."

========

	Published on Monday, October 12, 2009 by The Boston Globe
	Afghanistan - The Proxy War
	by Andrew J. Bacevich

No serious person thinks that Afghanistan - remote, impoverished, barely 
qualifying as a nation-state - seriously matters to the United States. Yet with 
the war in its ninth year, the passions raised by the debate over how to proceed 
there are serious indeed. Afghanistan elicits such passions because people 
understand that in rendering his decision on Afghanistan, President Obama will 
declare himself on several much larger issues. In this sense, Afghanistan is a 
classic proxy war, with the main protagonists here in the United States.

The question of the moment, framed by the prowar camp, goes like this: Will the 
president approve the Afghanistan strategy proposed by his handpicked commander 
General Stanley McChrystal? Or will he reject that plan and accept defeat, 
thereby inviting the recurrence of 9/11 on an even larger scale? Yet within this 
camp the appeal of the McChrystal plan lies less in its intrinsic merits, which 
are exceedingly dubious, than in its implications.

If the president approves the McChrystal plan he will implicitly:

■ Anoint counterinsurgency - protracted campaigns of armed nation-building - as 
the new American way of war.

■ Embrace George W. Bush's concept of open-ended war as the essential response 
to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has jettisoned the label 
"global war on terror'').

■ Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for exercising 
American global leadership, as has been the case for decades.

Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals 
of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, 
configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to 
intervene on a global basis. The McChrystal plan modestly updates these 
fundamentals to account for the lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and 
sensitivity nudging aside advanced technology as the signature of American 
military power, for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert 
change. Its purpose - despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq - is to 
preserve the status quo.

Hawks understand this. That's why they are intent on framing the debate so 
narrowly - it's either give McChrystal what he wants or accept abject defeat. 
It's also why they insist that Obama needs to decide immediately.

Yet people in the antiwar camp also understand the stakes. Obama ran for the 
presidency promising change. The doves sense correctly that Obama's decision on 
Afghanistan may well determine how much - if any - substantive change is in the 
offing.

If the president assents to McChrystal's request, he will void his promise of 
change at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan 
war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will 
consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps 
thousands more American combat deaths - costs that the hawks are loath to 
acknowledge.

As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces 
in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. 
Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young 
Americans already do. That "keeping Americans safe'' obliges the United States 
to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become 
utterly uncontroversial.

If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama's presidency - as 
Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did for Lyndon Johnson, and as Korea 
did for Harry Truman - the inevitable effect will be to compromise the prospects 
of reform more broadly.

At home and abroad, the president who advertised himself as an agent of change 
will instead have inadvertently erected barriers to change. As for the American 
people, they will be left to foot the bill.

This is a pivotal moment in US history. Americans owe it to themselves to be 
clear about what is at issue. That issue relates only tangentially relates to Al 
Qaeda, the Taliban, or the well-being of the Afghan people. The real question is 
whether "change'' remains possible.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston 
University. His new book "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War'' is 
forthcoming.