Afghanistan ApocalypseRobert Dreyfuss, The Nation: At the Brookings Institution, four analysts portrayed a bleak and terrifying vision of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan in the wake of the presidential election. All four were hawkish, reflecting a growing consensus in the Washington establishment that the Afghanistan war is only just beginning.
Their conclusions: (1) A significant escalation of the war will be necessary to avoid utter defeat. (2) Even if tens of thousands of troops are added to the US occupation, it won't be possible to determine if the US/NATO effort is succeeding until eighteen months later. (3) Even if the United States turns the tide in Afghanistan, no significant drawdown of US forces will take place until after five years have passed...
Not a single analyst questioned the goals, purpose or objectives of the Afghan war. Not one said anything about a political solution to the war, about negotiations, or about diplomacy. Not one questioned the viability of an open-ended commitment to the war. And none of them had any doubts about the strategic necessity of defeating the Taliban and its allies. Although the growing political opposition to the war was referenced in passing -- more than half of Americans say the war isn't worth fighting -- the panel seemed to believe that President Obama can and must ignore politics and push to expand the war when General McChrystal, as expected, recommends an increase in the level of US forces once again.
Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation: A key point of the Heritage Foundation presenters... is that it is critical for the White House to shore up declining political support for the war... So the White House is caught between two bad options: if it continues to gloss over problems like the fraudulent election, it will develop a Vietnam-like credibility gap as the truth becomes clear. But if Obama tells the truth, an American public already soured on a hopeless war against a vaguely defined enemy ten thousand miles away, with rising US casualties and the prospect of spending hundreds of billions of dollars, is very likely to decide that it's long past time to get out.
The four panelists... all agreed that getting out of Afghanistan would be a first-order catastrophe... Their argument was: if we leave, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and their jihadist allies will gain influence across the region... Again, as in Vietnam, all the panelists seemed content to make Vietnam-era, domino-theory arguments that the entirety of the Muslim world is at stake... It's easier to make the argument that radical Muslim extremists are energized by the US presence in Afghanistan and the concomitant jihad, and that a US withdrawal from Afghanistan would calm passions, not inflame them...
Barno's main argument was that the Taliban's strategy is to 'run out the clock' -- yes, he used a football analogy! In other words, the Taliban expect that US political support for the war will force a US withdrawal before we can 'succeed.' (I wanted to ask him if he was aware that precisely the same analogy was used in Vietnam, that the Viet Cong and Hanoi wanted to outlast the US invasion. How ironic.)
