If it were only a matter of wasted tax dollars, that would be bad enough. But our troops suffer grievous wounds or die because neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations did the basic calculations you’d do before buying shares in a mutual fund.
And no, we’re not too big to fail. Our troops can beat the Taliban every time, and we can remain in Afghanistan as long as we want, but where’s the return on our investment?
It isn’t enough to claim, as President Obama has done, that Afghanistan’s vital to our national security. It isn’t. Neither he nor his befuddled advisers can explain convincingly what the payoff will be for investing more blood and treasure.
* * *
We shouldn’t leave Afghanistan entirely. But we need to balance our investment with the potential return, maintaining a compact, lethal force to continue killing our enemies. But let’s not sacrifice more soldiers because our leaders decline to think things through.
Ralph Peters – “Blood Investments” – New York Post.
Comments 17
I’ve read Peters in the Post for a bunch of years. What the hell happened to him? It’s become almost rare for him to get through a column without throwing in a gratuitous stupidity or an ill-tempered attack.
If he keeps this idiocy up, I might learn to like him.
August 21st, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Fuster – that’s an oddly incoherent response on your part. Peters has been arguing that Afghanistan isn’t really winnable and isn’t really worth the effort we’re making and are now contemplating for quite some time now.
August 21st, 2009 at 7:30 pm
@CK MacLeod – Why would an incoherent response from me be odd?
What is odd is the nasty little attack on liberals in Peter’s piece.
What is odder is Peters ignoring our military wishing to maintain a long-term presence in Central Asia and that our presence in Afghanistan isn’t only about Afghanistan. Peters has long written about the importance of Central Asia and even set one of his military novels there.
What I found oddest was Peters contending that we haven’t been paying enough attention to Afghanistan and have instead simply sent troops.
We’ve had, to my recollection, at leastfour reviews, one overall, and three military in six months.
There has also been at least one CIA review.
August 21st, 2009 at 7:57 pm
The “liberals” – by whom you mean, I believe, the people Peters refers to as the “left” – have earned every right to be nastily attacked.
He’s in favor of maintaining some presence in Central Asia. Whatever he happens to have said about the region, which extends rather far beyond Afghanistan, and regardless of his the settings for his novels (utter red herring), his position is clear, and, as I’ve said, the one enunciated in this column hardly comes out of the blue.
That “we” have had “four reviews” and a “CIA review” means precious little politically, and doesn’t answer Peters’ questions. It’s just “trust them,” not an argument.
I’m not saying I agree with Peters, but I do see the outlines of a catastrophe, or of several different types of catastrophe, in this kind of commitment. How many 10s of thousands of US troops in Aghanistan does maintaining a “presence” in Central Asia require?
August 21st, 2009 at 8:28 pm
@CK MacLeod – When Peters says that the Obama administration “doesn’t do the basic calculations”, he’s FOS.
It’s one thing to disagree with the conclusions, and he has every right to write that. It’s another to take about Obama’s staff of Gates, Mullen, and Patraeus sending soldiers out to die while being too inattentive to the task.
That’s just BS. You tell me that you’ve ever heard of a Joint Chiefs Chairman spending as much time in theatre as Mullen has spent.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Peters doesn’t make any accusation of the kind regarding the work of “Obama’s staff” and makes no criticism of the military leaders at all. His focus throughout is on political leaders, and he indicts both the Bush and Obama administrations for having failed to make a clear strategic calculation. The issue isn’t the “task,” it’s whether the task is worth being assigned to the military in the first place.
I’m not sure we’ve had any clear indication what Petraeus or Mullen fundamentally believe about Afghanistan on a strategic level.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Come on, CK, and cut it out. Mullen isn’t over there in Afghanistan and just as often in Pakistan unless the political leaders are engaged. Gates didn’t can McKiernan because there wasn’t a strategic shift.
You just can’t say that the political leaders haven’t been engaged unless you want to ignore the review that Holbrooke and Flornoy chaired and brought Bruce Riedel in from Brookings to conduct.
That final sentence about soldiers dying because politicians don’t put in the thought is pure and utter
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vh1_ELXe6_g/SQw2AjCWAvI/AAAAAAAAADo/N_HQ3zDoij0/s400/BullShit.gif
August 21st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Cut what out? None of what you’re saying contradicts what Peters is arguing.
In the strict sense, as I understand it, McKiernan was canned because he wasn’t on board with/wasn’t the right guy to implement the theater strategy, which is different from overall strategy, set in our system by political leadership, and given to all the King’s Holbrookes and all the King’s Flornoys to implement.
Peters seems to believe that we need to keep an eye on Afghanistan and a limited presence there, but that a massive nation-building commitment is a bottomless pit. I would add that, if the electorate loses interest – as opinion polls appear to suggest it’s already doing, with a large majority in Obama’s party already declaring the war not worth it – then we’ll always be on the verge of finding an excuse to leave, and we’re merely taking and causing casualties for no larger purpose.
What do YOU see as the purpose of our commitment to Afghanistan?
August 21st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Our commitment isn’t to afghanistan as much as it’s centered around Afghanistan. Most of our effort has been aimed at bolstering Pakistan.
Our purpose will be to attempt to set up an enduring Afghanistan as an entity not controlled by the Pakistanis or Iranians, to drive Al Qaeda and the other foreign salafists from Pakistan, and to force the Pashtuns to end their rebellion.
If I’m right, and also if the effort is successful, you should be reading about militants pooling in the Stans formerly known as Soviet republics and the US propping up the Yemeni government in an attempt to keep AQ from slinking off to there.
August 21st, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Well, I might be reading about that anyway, or I might be reading about something similar, but not quite the same.
It’s not clear how putting – what’s the latest number, 60,000 going on 100,000? – large numbers of troops in Afghanistan serves the purpose of expelling radicals from Pakistan. If we end up turning tale anyway, then we just increase the propaganda value to them and allies. The problem is that we are making a huge expeditionary commitment to one of the most remote and hostile terrains on the planet, depending on the good will of numerous unreliable actors – Russia, the Stans including Pakistan – for the sake of undefined and indirect goals. When I say undefined and indirect, I don’t mean that Richard Holbrooke hasn’t defined the goals to himself. I mean that the American public hasn’t bought in on it on this level, and the opinion polls show their interest and support flagging.
It’s questionable rather US grand strategy is sustainable on this basis. It’s important to us to prevent any single power from dominating the Eurasian landmass, but impossible for us to become that power. It would be nice if they all play nice with each other, but way beyond us to make that happen.
August 21st, 2009 at 11:35 pm
CK, do you remember when Greenwald was pushing the line that Pakistan and it’s nukes were months away from falling to AQ and the Taliban? About the same time, there were stories being floated in the Iranian press about sending Iranian police into the Balochistan area of Pakistan because the Pakistanis weren’t securing law and order there.
It was about that time that certain people, ahem, were wailing about Obama going around sounding like he wanting someone to surrender to. Certain folks were agreeing with Lizardo Cheney that Obama didn’t want to defend the country, let alone defend our interests overseas.
Now, Pakistan os getting better and headed away from not only being overrun by militants but headed away from tolerating them. It’s no longer harboring hope of retaining control of Afghanistan. Iran’s not trying to expand as much as trying to stave off reformation.
So now, certain people are supporting the contention that the Obama administration doesn’t know what it’s doing in Central Asia, hasn’t done it’s homework, and is just sending troops to die.
This kind of criticism seems fair,does it, CK?
August 22nd, 2009 at 12:07 am
I can’t speak for “certain people,” fuster.
I often diverged from the Commentariat when it came to questions like Pakistan’s nukes. As I understand it, it would be extremely difficult for the bad guys in Pakistan to do anything with them even if they had their grubbly little Islamist hands on them. They’d have to kidnap and safeguard a selection of the right people and right instruments at just the right time, and also would have grab all of the weapons, which, if the experts are to be trusted, even the Pakistanis who made and own them aren’t 100% sure will work and aren’t 100% sure about how to deploy.
Peters makes his case on entirely different grounds, and most “neo cons” are toadly on board with the Bamster on this one, maybe worrying a bit that they can’t trust him, but have spoken approvingly of the overall strategy. Bamster’s problems in re Afghanistan are likely to be a lot with Bamster’s own coalition and with the American public than with Republicans, or with lone wolves like Peters or with Paleo-Con isolationists, until and unless there’s a break with the military leadership or things go far south.
August 22nd, 2009 at 12:19 am
That is, again going on my reading, the weapons aren’t even stored with all of the necessary components at the same location. The doctrine is to bring them together if and only if the country is being overrun by a foreign army, most likely India. Part of the deal with Pakistan was also, I believe, our giving them the failsafe technology to secure them against misuse, though, for political as well as military reasons, not all of the precise details are shared publically.
August 22nd, 2009 at 12:22 am
MacLeod, the argument was that they were going to get all of Pakistan. All the land, all the military, all the scientists, and all the brains to go with the weaponry. But that’s not central.
What is central, and what you’re not addressing is that everything is going pretty well to date and you’re going to have to explain it away as sheer luck if you’re going repeat Peters’ line of “they’re killing soldiers because they haven’t paid any attention” bullsquat.
August 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 am
cluck, “they” had a long way to go before they got “all” of Pakistan. Again, I can’t speak for what “certain people” may have argued, or may have seemed to you to have been arguing. Since we agree that “that”‘s not central, whatever “that” is or was, let us leave it to the side, where non-central things belong.
Peters observes approximately the same situation that you perceive, apparently, although I don’t think he assumes as much about what it portends. In my own observation, the reporting on “things” in Afghan-Pak tends to be rather schizoid and highly superficial. One month Afghanistan is falling apart, and Pakistan’s a failed state. The next month Afghanistan is hard but winnable, and Pakistan’s doing much better than expected.
Peters’ position is that we don’t need to escalate, deepening an open-ended, not widely understood commitment, in order to safeguard our interests adequately – nor does he believe that such escalation actually has a better chance of safeguarding our interests than de-escalating. Some descriptions of the full situation, including the decisive US-domestic political elements, suggest that what we are really seeing, or are about to see, amounts to an Afghanistan “surge,” with the perception that Bamster’s coalition can be held together for about a year in support of it. There have also been conflicting signals about what Bamster/Gates/Petraeus/McChrystal are really going to ask for and commit to.
You don’t have to be irrationally hostile and a thoroughgoing TGL-hater to question, as Peters does, whether much will be achieved by such an approach relative to the cost. If what we’ve been doing is all unicorns and cherry blossoms, then why do we need to escalate?, one might ask. If it hasn’t been enough, then why precisely would some escalation and, say, a yearlong pacification program, achieve much of LASTING value either for ourselves or the Af-Paks?
Over American history, we have had numerous presidents, good and bad, hands-on and hands-off, with all manner of visionary and dumb-as-dirt generals and diplomats, and with many different kinds of public attitudes toward whatever they propose. There have been a few elements of consistency: Most of what they try doesn’t work as intended, our intelligence tends to be unbelievably bad (the WMD fiasco in Iraq was more the norm than the exception), and, even when things do work out and our perceptions are good enough to let us get the job done, the situation doesn’t last for very long.
And yet our grand strategic interests remain intact, relatively unchanging, and relatively easy to secure compared to what other countries have to go through in order to secure their interests, and we do manage to get the most important things – important for us – done.
In my opinion, the Af-Pak campaign is likely to be either a fiasco or, more likely considering the professional and political stakes and the high competence of theater commanders, a success on its own terms, and not hugely significant one way or another. If it is hugely significant, it is more likely to be hugely significant in a negative way, just because that’s in the nature of democracies making big commitments of large armies in far away places.
Peters has every right and reason to question the strategy. I’d love to hear a mroe coherent answer than any I’ve heard from BO so far. If you can direct me to a clear mission statement comparable to the plan of operations that Petraeus put out pre-surge, I’d be grateful.
August 22nd, 2009 at 1:18 am
The only point that I yield to you is that you’re not likely to hear a clear mission statement.
After that, I want you to explain to me why I completely fail to understand Peters kvetch.
All I actually understand is what he’s written and that is just bs.
Even leaving the nastiness aside, he focuses on saying that we’re singlemindly concentrated on Afghanistan and the Taliban.
That’s ridiculously stupid. How can he ignore that we’ve killed about the same number of people in Pakistan in 2009 as in Afghanistan?
How can he fail to notice that we’ve spurred the Pakistanis into action and that we need the troops in Afghanistan to prevent a reverse repeat of the transborder migration that the last administration allowed to happen because we simply didn’t have enough men to prevent?
How can he say that we’re sending soldiers to die in Afghanistan senselessly and at the time say that we need to keep enough soldiers in Afghanistan to maintain a ” compact, lethal force to continue killing our enemies.”
How does he expect that to work? That sounds like what we’ve been attempting for the last few years with absolutely no success.
All he’s left with a gripe about how we’re overcommited in the area. Well, sometimes it’s good to array your forces near the people you want them to kill.
August 22nd, 2009 at 2:24 am
Such a firebreather on Afghan-Pak you are. Who’d a thunk it?
I’d say he says we’re focused on the Taliban because we’re focused on the Taliban – certainly as a matter of rhetoric, though the term is used relatively loosely sometimes, also as a matter of practicality since there’s not a whole lot of AQ available for slaughter – and on Afghanistan because that’s where our troops are deploying. “Singleminded” is your word, not his.
He’s writing in broad strokes for a broad audience, and asking very fundamental, but also abstract questions: Is the whole commitment worth it, and how can we, as citizens, even begin to answer the question when we don’t even know what the mission is supposed to achieve? When BO said we won’t even achieve “victory,” that tended to reinforce the notion that we’re just there because being there is better than not being there, and that this better-than-not-ness could go on forever as far as anyone can say for sure – or, more likely, until we get tired of the expense, at which point or soon after things will likely revert over time to some semblance of what they would have been if we had never done much more than what was achieved by around January 2002. That plus promise to blow up some more stuff if someone tried to re-build an AQ training camp or something.
Pakistan tends to come up only when we bomb some usually Taliban bigwig’s base of operations, and it causes some greater or lesser amount of controversy in Pakistan – or if and when the situation within Pakistan starts to appear dicey.
Peters is looking at an expected escalation on top of a large pre-existing commitment and calling it into question, for reasons such as those I indicated – that it risks a lot while remaining unlikely to achieve any lasting great benefit, with no clear proof that NOT doing it will make matters meaningfully worse.
You’re comfortable with the lack of a clear mission statement. Peters sees that lack to be a potentially huge problem, and reminiscent of past huge mistakes.
August 22nd, 2009 at 2:49 am