Ending the Forever Stupidity

There's just no way this isn't a positive development:

The departure from Bagram follows President Biden’s decision in April to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September, ending what he and other critics have called a “forever war.” As the Taliban launched a bloody offensive and encircled numerous provincial capitals, defense leaders last month briefly considered slowing the military’s departure from the air base, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The Biden administration ultimately decided to continue the withdrawal.

The end of a significant military presence will be bad for many Afghans.  There's no point in pretending otherwise.  But, ultimately, America can't fix Afghanistan, and there is no reason to continue failing at the task, which never should have been undertaken in the first place.  America should have withdrawn long ago, but didn't due mostly to internal reasons.

A sure sign of a failing state is the inability to adapt to new information.  I am cheered by Biden's willingness to adapt.

Already there has been a dramatic reduction of drone attacks and other types of airstrikes, which once reached thousands a year. “The [United States] appears to be in a holding pattern in most conflict theaters that it still has a presence in—with no reported strikes in Yemen, Libya, Pakistan, or Somalia since Biden took office. U.S. strikes are continuing in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—though at historically low rates,” said Chris Woods of the London-based Airwars monitoring organization, considered perhaps the most reliable tracker of U.S. airstrikes around the world.

Even in the early 2000s it was clear drone strikes were overused, and again in retrospect it was bad policy to use them outside of the immediate theater of battle.

The White House team is also seeking a broader reorientation toward what the president has called “the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20,” including climate change, the threat from China, COVID-19-type pandemics, and America’s economic and social problems at home.

Finally, some foreign policy that makes sense.  There will be pushback from the usual suspects - the DoD, the MIC, the Blob, warmongers, deeply concerned centrists, and Repuke opportunists.  But if Biden continues to push foreign policy in the directions outlined, American will be better off in the short term and long term.

We Had to Destroy the Village, Redux

Obviously, I'm not on the ground so I don't know what exactly led the US forces in Afghanistan to blow up an entire village.  But from here, without context but with some perspective, it sure does look like outright lunacy.  If it were the first and last village where such a thing occurred, then I could just chalk it up to the general madness of war itself, and move on.  But I think that the Pashtun nationalists, whether they call themselves the Taliban or something else, have inadvertently invented a significant new tactic.  I don't see how the US doesn't get charged with the responsibility of clearing a village that the militants have booby-trapped.  Typical villagers certainly don't have the ability to make a location safe.  The Afghan central government doesn't have the ability, either, and training Afghans to do the job will take years.  That leaves the US with the responsibility.  But the US military certainly isn't going to risk soldiers' lives on manually disarming each and every device.  So that leaves the mass destruction method, which works but tends to leave people homeless.  And thus, I believe, the villagers will end up being mad at both sides, which won't help the US effort one bit.

We need to GTFO of central Asia.

After Action Report

President Obama responded in an acceptable manner to McChrystal's inappropriate behavior by having him step down as leader of foreign forces in Afghanistan. I say "acceptable" because McChrystal deserved a more severe punishment. But I suspect Obama didn't want to offend too many people in the military, which would have happened if he had been harsher.

Replacing McChrystal with Petraeus was a savvy move on Obama's part. If counter-insurgency is the appropriate military strategy in Afghanistan, then selecting the general who knows the most about it was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the strategy in Afghanistan is wrong, so choosing Petraeus won't make much of a difference in the outcome. The savvy part of the choice comes from Petraeus' credibility in official Washington, which means that Obama more-or-less pre-empted any Republican complaints about the change of command. They'll complain a bit anyway, but it won't get any traction in the mainstream press.

Unlike a few people (in comments around the web), I'm not disappointed that the change in command wasn't accompanied by an immediate change in policy. Such a massive course change would have looked desperate and ill-considered. Besides, if Obama is going to change his mind about the overall mission in Afghanistan, McChrystal's snit wasn't the kind of event that would prompt a re-evaluation. I don't know what would prompt a re-evaluation. But whatever it is, I hope Obama comes across it soon.

Unfriendly Fire

This mind-boggling article in Rolling Stone is the hot topic of the day, for good reason. If it's accurate (it's a bit gossipy, so I regard it as accurate but not quite the full picture) then McChyrstal and his command really have lost their minds. One of the reasons America has lasted so long as a democracy is that the military has never developed the mentality that it is a source of authority separate from the elected government. This is not to say that individual generals haven't stuck their noses into the political arena at various times, just that it hasn't been done by the military as a whole. In order to remind the military of it's place, McChrystal needs to be beaten down. Hard.

It's one thing for the military to question the goals of an assignment given to it by the civilian government, though that needs to be done through the hierarchy. But it's entirely different when a military officer mocks elected officials and others civilians. It's simply not acceptable. Individual officers serve at the whim of the president, though that official should (and does) usually defer to the military's promotion system. The top generals are different, however, and Obama should not hesitate to remove McChrystal from responsibility for an ongoing conflict.

Looking at that Movement

Unsurprisingly, the security situation Afghanistan hasn't changed much since my previous post on the situation there.   Last fall, after a long period of (what appeared to be) serious consideration, Obama chose to escalate the conflict.  The decision did not translate into immediate troop movements, however. American forces have ramped up slowly, with the goal being to have all the troops in place for a summer offensive in Kandahar.  That action is taking place now.  But it has been re-branded as a ... well, I don't know what to call it now.  I think the Obama administration just doesn't want the word "offensive" floating about any more.  Nameless or not, it is taking place, and more people are dying.

Recovering economist Atrios likes to ask the question, "What are they doing there again?"  I have no idea what the DoD or White House thinks, but it seems pretty clear to me that the ultimate goal should be to keep al-Qaeda or any other international terrorist group from operating out of Afghanistan.  The strategy - which I believe wasn't articulated until some time after the invasion in late 2001 - has been to create a friendly, pro-Western democratic state.  A lot of the time, however, it seemed like creating a democracy was the goal.  Either way, I think it is fair to say that the strategy-cum-objective has failed.  After 104 months, the central government exercises full control over less than half of the country, and only does so with the backing of the U.S. military. Afghans have gone to the polls several times, but latest presidential election was marred by accusations of fraud, and in all likelihood, fraud.  The Kabul-based government, in addition to being unpopular, is also deeply corrupt.  That is a huge problem, because there are few things that hinder both democracy and economic development more than corruption.

So what now?  I think the goal should remain the same, but the strategy radically changed.  Instead of trying to defeat groups like the Taliban on the ground with US military forces, the US needs to reach an understanding with them.  The deal should include two conditions.  One should be that if a group allows al-Qaeda or something like it to operate in its territory, the US will come after the leaders of the group.  The other condition should be that a group will receive aid as long as it doesn't attempt to destabilize or conquer any other group.  In return, the US will GTFO.

To back up both the threat and the promise, the US will need to maintain at least one base in Afghanistan, probably in the north near Mazar-e-Sharif.  That base would support drones, training, and aid distribution.  The aid should be in the forms of both cash and stuff.  Stuff would be things like construction equipment, steel beams and rebar, transportation equipment, telecommunications equipment, water and sewage equipment, medical supplies, and so on.  Cash, naturally, will flow where it is least useful in the deeply corrupt country.  But it greases palms, so distributing some will have to be done.  Stuff is less mobile, and perhaps the Afghans will put it to good use.  Training would be limited to the national defense and police forces because ultimately, the US would still benefit from an a strong central government in Afghanistan.  But it should be up to the Afghans to go about creating it.

Shit or Get Off the Pot

That's where we're at with Afghanistan. Here's the background: the security situation is getting worse, the Afghan government is a farce, Bin Laden is still not captured, neither Pakistan nor India will stop meddling, American citizens are tired of war, America's public discourse is juvenile, the President has boxed himself into a rhetorical corner, and the federal government is broke. But the only two options being discussed are more troops (shit), or altering strategy with the current level of troops (continue to sit). A third, withdrawing (get off), was preemptively dismissed. And that was a big mistake.

What (most) Americans don't understand is that their country is operating in imperial overreach territory. Literally. Afghanistan eats invaders for breakfast. Which is truly amazing - or entirely unsurprising - because there is no such thing as Afghanistan. As Alan Grayson put it, it's simply an empty place on a map. It's a label applied to an area not covered other labels, ones that more-or-less corresponded with a political entity.

I admit that, way back when, I was supportive of the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was there, the Taliban was medieval, and the US did sort of abandon the country once the proxy war with the Soviet Union ended. When Bush started transferring resources to Iraq I worried that the moment for lasting change in Afghanistan - tenuous though it was - would be lost. And it has been.

Now, after six years of tragic stupidity in Iraq, the nation's somewhat bleary focus is back on Afghanistan. But the context has changed. In 2001 there was not a monumental hole in the federal government's finances. It was before the country had muddled through another 7 years of inaction on energy, global warming, health care, infrastructure, education, and a host of other issues. And it was before every segment of the private economy - except the ultra-rich - drowned themselves in debt. The federal budget deficit for FY09 is likely to reach a whopping 10% of GDP. Gross federal, state, and local debt is approaching 100% of GDP. All of which is by way of saying: the US can't afford to shit. Even if the economy were to recover robustly (unlikely), there would still be large structural budget deficit that needs to be resolved. Something will have to give - taxes, spending, or both.

At the risk of sounding like a DFH, I feel our attempt to police the world should be the first spending item to be scaled back. Too many people have come to conflate their own self-image with the country's ability to bomb foreigners. Yet, at home, we treat each other like dirt, forcing people to go to extraordinary lengths to get health care. The mis-allocation is unsustainable.

Thus I believe the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The people of the non-country shouldn't be abandoned like they were at the end of the 1980s. But instead of attempting to impose security, we should send aid in two forms. One should be cash, distributed at all levels of government and to NGOs. The other should be equipment and supplies - construction equipment, steel beams and rebar, transportation equipment, telecommunications equipment, water and sewage equipment, and medical supplies. We should let the Afghans (Pashtuns, Tajikis, Hazarai, etc.) build their own country as they see fit. Or not. $10B between the two streams per year should be enough, considering that the country's current GDP is estimated to be $20B or $30B per year. It would be a bargain compared to the $65B that has been allocated directly to operations in Afghanistan for 2009.