The former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit says the US-led coalition has already lost the war in Afghanistan. A shake-up in military leadership won't change that.
Recent events surrounding Afghanistan shouldn’t confuse anyone, as the reality of the situation still lies in one simple statement: The US-NATO coalition has lost a war its political leaders never meant, or knew how, to win.
‘Winning’ in Afghanistan was never anything more than killing Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, as many of their fighters and civilian supporters as possible and then getting out immediately with the full knowledge that—as Mao said long ago—insurgencies always rebuild and the process might need to be repeated.
The best and most appropriate response to al-Qaeda’s September 11 raid, then, would have been a unilateral US punitive expedition that inflicted massive death and destruction on the enemy and delivered a clear warning to Islamists not to pick fights with the United States. Indeed, many Islamists expected this response, which is why they poured vitriol on bin Laden and expected the US military to set back their movement a decade, if it did not destroy it completely.
Faced with this criticism, bin Laden simply said ‘wait,’ adding (in paraphrase) that the Americans and their allies can’t stomach casualties, that they won’t use their full military power and will unite Afghans by trying to Westernize them via popular elections, installing women’s rights, dismantling tribalism, introducing secularism and establishing NGO-backed bars and whorehouses in Kabul. Bin Laden was right; it seems he is, among other things, a keen student of the West’s past nation-building operations.
Since June 1, the parade of incompetents crossing the Afghan stage is stunning: Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US President Barack Obama, Gen. David Petraeus, Afghan President Hamid Karzai—the list is long. McChrystal, saddled with a dead-end strategy devised by David Kilcullen, John Nagl and other counterinsurgency ‘experts,’ gave access to himself and his staff to Rolling Stone, long among the most anti-military US journals.
For his trouble and indiscreet words, McChrystal was fired by Obama—who, with his senior advisers, merit all the negative things said about them—and replaced by that purveyor of military snake oil, Gen. Petraeus. Even as the transitory success of the Iraq ‘surge’ is unravelling, Petraeus takes the Afghan command saying everything is okay (within a week the Pentagon’s media machine was telling Congress and Western publics that the ‘Afghan war is on track.’)
While this has played out, Hamid Karzai reportedly met with Sirajuddin Haqqani—a major Afghan insurgent leader—and prepared to surrender under the guise of creating a coalition regime. For all his failures and fabulously corrupt relatives, Karzai can easily solve the dilemma the West can’t even frame accurately: Question: What does the Taliban and its allies want? Answer: Power. So Karzai is talking to Haqqani, and probably Taliban leaders, to see if there’s a governing arrangement that will give him a role in post-NATO Afghanistan and doesn’t lead to his execution after the last NATO trooper leaves. The chance of this is near nil, however, and so Karzai and his family will have to step up the pace of their alleged thievery and get ready for an early exit that leaves the West holding the bag.
Photo Credit: ISAF Media
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Saberhagen
I’m entertained with all of your comments. Really! Just like the way people were screaming and moaning about Iraq back in 2007 or so. “The war has been lost”, “There will be civil war”, “there’s no hope at all”, the country will be torn apart. Sunni, Shia, Kurds, each will set up their own country” blah blah blah. Oh, by the way, its fun to see after all those years, sons of Adolf Hitler still wandering around and breathing out their anti-Semitic words. The only difference is now people called those morons’ ideology “conspiracy theory”. You just cant get rid all of them, there are way many fools in this world.
Jean-Pierre PAATS-WILLIAMS
Totally agree; remember, we are dealing with the Pashtuns; the tribal values will not be corrupted by outside politics easily; they play up the invaders as well as Africans played up Sovietic sweeteners; taking the sweeteners, and laughing behind the donors’ backs.
Nicholas Walmsley
The author of this article seems to be advocating genocide, so I just want to distance myself from that before I say anything else.
I agree the current strategy will not work. If we really want to change things in that part of the world, we should let them know we intend to say for 50 years at least (like Japan), and that we intend to use the mineral wealth of the region to slowly build the Afghan economy to the point where the average citizen has a standard of living similar to the average Saudi (or South Carolinian). That we intend to do a Japan, not a Vietnam. But it will cost about 25 trillion and take about 50 years. For one country. If we are lucky.
This might sound crazy, but there is another long term commodity for central asia: tourism. Get the mines going, give people a basic wage, and maybe in 20 years start upgrading to a tourism based economy. Does anyone have a vision of the future they can believe in?
Miguel
Nicholas, “if we really want to change things in that part of the world…” is probably the very reason why the US is stuck there with no prospects of winning anything resembling victory.
Why do Americans want to change that part of the world that refuses to embrace change? Why not just change yourselves? After all, there’s a big oil leak in your backyard that no one has fixed for the last 70 days, why don’t you guys fix it? Why do you guys insist on troubleshooting problems where your help is not even welcome for the last nine years?
There’s an answer to all these questions, and it can be summed up in one Greek word: HUBRIS.
Miguel
And if you are serious about doing a Japan in Afghanistan, does that mean you are also willing to drop two atomic bombs to coerce the whole country into becoming a tourist haven?
Well, unlike the Japanese in the 1940s who revered their Emperor as God, the Afghanis don’t hold the same respect for the US puppet Hamid Karzai. When Emperor Hirohito conceded defeat in WWII, his subjects conceded as well, and that prevented the kind of troubles the US-NATO forces are facing now in Afghanistan.
Tim
Thats a rather simplistic view of why the Japanese gave in at the close of the War… Of course reverance for the Emperor may have factored in on it, but the war destroyed their economy, they lost generations of the male population, and their country was in shambles. Lets not get overly orientalist on it here…
hyperbola
What a provincial American “recipe”! What makes you think Americans have any good ideas about what Afghans wnat or need in their society?
Remember that exactly in Marjah, over 50 years ago, Dwight Esienhower set up a massive USAID program to “develop” Afghanistan – it all become just more dust long ago and the present “funding” of our efforts in Afghanistan is directed more at “corporate welfare queen socialism” for “defense” companies than in any real interest in Afghans.
Time to get over the myths of our “exceptional benevolence” (remember that we have killed upwards of 140 million people in the world with our “benevolence”) and get rid of the “military imperialism” pretensions of our Pentagon and corrupt “elite”. Our founding fathers were adamant about NEVER having in America what we have now become.
Nicholas Walmsley
As if a child born in Afghanistan would not prefer a better life. It’s a sad perspective you both have that would think any person would like living like that. You should try it some time. The Taliban have made life miserable there for a very long time. It would be a great thing if we could end their reign, but unlike the author I say do it slowly with more benevolent methods. Apparently there’s a lot of mineral wealth there and I think if the US establishment are going to occupy the country they might as well use this wealth to give the average Afghani a better life. And no my mention of Japan was not about the atomic weapons (predictable direction for you to go) but a comment about the strategic approach. Basically if you want to win quickly in Afghanistan you need to go in very hard against the Taliban (author’s point) or take a very long term more benevolent approach (50 years plus). And I am not American.
Tim
I am reminded of what a captured Taliban leader told the CIA operatives that was interrogating him.
You will never defeat us.
Pointing to their wrists he said,”you have all the watches,we have all the time”.
Roger
Scheuer is just another deliberately confusing mouthpiece for the government. There was not one single Afghan involved in 911. They were Saudis. Secondly, the government has never explained way too many things about 911, that point to its complicity as well as that of Mossad agents. The obvious demolition job on Building 7 is the most spectacular evidence of this–all of which is amply documented on various academic (non-lunatic fringe) sites on 911. When will Americans understand that 911–the whole “war on terrorism” –was a red herring, and a false flag operation. We are in Afghanistan as part of a larger strategy designed to make sure we control access to all Middle East energy and mineral resources. This involves trying to outmaneuver the Russians and the Chinese. If the area were famous for asparagus and other truck crops we wouldn’t be there. We are also there, in part, thanks to Zionist ambitions to be the kingpin in the Middle East and as part of its long term strategy to regain all the territory of “greater Israel”–from the Euphrates to Egypt. But of course, Israel is a taboo subject in the US. Of all this, too many Americans, in their invincible ignorance and mental sloth, as well as their enthusiastic militarism, are largely unaware. No people on earth as a propaganda-fed. We should also call things by their right names: Afghanistan is not a “war.” It is an illegal invasion of an innocent country and population; an invasion designed to destabilize it, as part of the general destabilization strategy of US-NATO-Israel.
Nicholas Walmsley
the Saudis use Afghanistan as a base
Tim
and i believe the author pointed out they were Saudi’s….
Mo Rage
that is some magnificent, clear, intelligent and prescient writing.
If only Geo. W. Bush were a student of history.
The zeitgeist is changing. As said above, let’s declare victory and get the hell our of Afghanistan.
Mo Rage
the blog
SomeGuy
Why would anyone expect that invading someone elses country for capitalist reasons wrapped in some “humanitarian-western ways-defending” excuse can actually work, because you have bigger guns?
Well guns kill people but they don’t change the way they think, which seems to be the real war over there.
Americas downfall will be from its greed and over-confident policies, the false sense that she can “be anywhere at anytime doing anything she wants”, soon to be diluted from over expansion into a passive existence like everyone else, so that we can ALL move on, as all she is achieving is holding back the world from all moving forward.