Bobble
By Mitch Berg
Afghanistan, to the lefties, has always been “the good war”.
As I noted a couple of years ago, the left really has only two templates for “good wars”:
- Vietnam – a war that was a disaster for the nation (to say nothing of millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians), but a boon to the Dems, giving them a ready-made popular movement, a unifying theme, and (at the time) immense popular traction.
- World War II – America’s last socialist war; the last war we will ever have have (God willing) that was fought by the entire country; a war that actually worked the way the New Deal was supposed to have worked, with an all-wise, all-knowing government mobilizing all of this nation’s people and means of production (via a central plan) toward a common goal.
Of course, one led to the other; World War II, fought by immense levies of draftees (backed, in the US’ case, by immense firepower and industrial and herculean ogistic capability) slamming into other such levies in epic battles, was exactly the wrong model for fighting in Vietnam; winning over the “hearts and minds” of a people indisposed to take either side without any overarching reason (i.e., their and their families’ survival) isn’t well served by carpet-bombing and “search and destroy” patrols by foreign troops who don’t want to be there, who don’t speak the language, who only want to vaporize anything that might prevent them from getting the hell out of there.
Vaporizing Germans and Japanese and going home worked in WWII,where the battle for the German and Japanese heart and mind was an entirely separate operation from the battle to destroy their governments; it worked incredibly badly in a war where we had to do a sales job as well as win a battle, since locals were all nominally part of the “friendly” government, albeit riven with guerrillas, to begin with.
All the lessons we needed to win in Vietnam – and later, Iraq – were found in the Philippines, about a century ago. Of course, the Philippines and Iraq were two wars the liberals hate.
But Afghanistan was a war that most (not all) liberals supported; even Bruce Springsteen, of all people, supported President Bush’s effort (and caught a lot of flak from, believe it or not, the left). And so with a new liberal President, they’re more or less obliged to try to win this thing.
And, as Michael Yon notes, while Iraq is swerving toward a success (that Obama seems determined to scupper), TAfghanistan is shaping up very badly at the moment:
Today we have an American President and Secretary of Defense who have essentially kicked, prodded and begged our allies to get more serious about Afghanistan, but mostly to no avail. And so 17,000 more American troops are kissing their loved ones goodbye, many of them for the last time in their lives, and heading into Afghanistan. Per capita combat deaths probably will be higher in Afghanistan this year than for any year in Iraq. The situation is very serious for the relatively few soldiers fighting there. Some are in combat every day and night.The AfPak war began more than seven years ago. It is fair to ask why are we sending more U.S. troops today. After all, we’ve had plenty of time to build an army and police. If drive-by journalists listen to some of the commanders on the ground, they might come back with reports that all is okay, and that the Afghan army is coming along nicely, and that certain writers are exaggerating. I’ve had those same briefings from commanders. Just as in 2004 Iraq, I believe that Americans and Europeans have been deceived by their governments.
Yon – a former “Green Beret” – notes what Robert Kaplan noticed in the book Imperial Grunts; we’re fighting the wrong war in Afghanistan, and ignoring the lessons of good ocunterinsurgency:
I’ve asked many key officers why we are not using our Special Forces (specifically Green Berets) in a more robust fashion to train Afghan forces. The stock answers coming from the Green Beret world – from ranking officers anyway – is that they are taking a serious role in training Afghan forces. But the words are inconsistent with my observations. The reality is that the Green Berets – the only outfit in the U.S. military who are so excellently suited to put the Afghan army into hyperdrive – are mostly operating with small groups of Afghans doing what appears to be Colorado mule deer hunts in the mountains of Afghanistan. Special Forces A-teams are particularly well suited to train large numbers of people, but are not doing so.
What we are doing is sending tens of thousands more regular troops to stomp about a country that,quite legitimately, might be getting tired of seeing us around.
Read the whole thing.
