Thinking the Unthinkable in the Aftermath of Kandahar
Thursday, 27. May 2010
The upcoming campaign for the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar will be the crucial test for the United States’ military and the Obama administration’s AfPak strategy. It will clearly be an epic military battle and a test of the intellectual movement for counterinsurgency within the military known as COIN. But, like the battle for Marja in February, will the battle for Kandahar be more about the “perceptions” of American victory than about real success? That battle featured what General Stanley McChrystal described as “government in a box,” a kind of franchisable, political “happy meal” for Afghanistan with a pre-selected government administration, mayor and police force, ready to go the minute the shooting stopped.
In the end, General McChrystal’s government in a box turned out to be more like a government in a coffin. Dead on arrival. Authors Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason likened U.S. policy in Afghanistan to nothing less than British literature’s most famous pipe dream, Alice in Wonderland. “Lewis Carroll’s ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan.”
Johnson and Mason described Marja as nothing more than a massive exercise in public relations, with one intention only; “to shore up dwindling domestic support for the war by creating the illusion of progress,” while the media gulped down the bottle labeled “drink me,” and shrank into insignificance.
But what can the world expect of American policy in the aftermath of what promises to be an even larger opium-inspired tea party in Kandahar? And what happens if the U.S. achieves a military victory, but fails to address the gaping political vacuum necessary to keep the Taliban from returning?
It remains unclear exactly what the U.S. is trying to accomplish politically in Afghanistan with a Karzai government that neither Washington nor the Afghan population appears to want. According to experts, Washington remains divided over whether to engage with the Taliban leadership or follow the Pentagon’s line of fighting while talking. The Obama administration has narrowed its military objective down to ridding Pakistan and Afghanistan of Al Qaeda and finding Osama bin Laden. But that leaves a dozen affiliated radical groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network to organize, train and expand their networks under the ponderous assumption that they can be cut from the influence of Al Qaeda and kept from them.
And what about NATO? Will a public relations victory be enough to convince an increasingly reluctant NATO to hang in for the long term? Absent from much of the public discussion is the growing schism between Washington and European capitals, with cold war hawks like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright trying desperately to breath new life into what the U.S. military’s own thinkers describe as “a discredited Cold War rule set.”
Europe and the U.S. remain deeply divided over American policy toward Afghanistan and their role in it. In September 2009, former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski issued a somber admonition at a gathering of military and foreign policy experts in Geneva warning that the U.S. was running the risk of replicating the fate of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and that if Europe left the U.S. on its own there, “that would spell the end of the alliance.”
According to its latest mission statement, written by a team headed by former U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, “NATO must win the war in Afghanistan, expand ties with Russia and even China, counter the threat posed by Iran’s missiles, and assure the security of its 28 members.”
But not everyone sees NATO’s demand for a European rededication to a cold-war-global-security-order ruled over by a diminished United States, as a desirable policy for what may lie ahead. Neither do they see a commitment to winning in Afghanistan as necessary to European security, as the political consensus for NATO’s expanded mission cracks apart.
Foreign policy commentator William Pfaff wrote on May 18, from Paris, “The United States has, since the end of the Cold War, wanted NATO to become an American military auxiliary, largely under the sway of the Pentagon, and on the whole this has happened,.. At the NATO experts’ meeting Monday, which considered proposals for what NATO should become by 2020, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked why the Europeans should pay twice for their defense. I can think of one unspeakable but not unthinkable reason why European countries might wish to defend themselves. What if it should prove one day that the threat the Europeans need to defend themselves against is of American and Israeli origin?”
Pfaff admitted that his speculation of a European vs. American/Israeli conflict is an “Hysterical geopolitical fantasy.” Yet, the very idea that Pfaff should find such a development thinkable, is something Americans must open their minds to. In fact, the U.S. military’s own thinkers are preparing for a new world in which the U.S.’s containment policy folds in upon itself.
Nathan Freier of the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute writes, “Imagine, ‘a new era of containment with the United States as the nation to be contained,’ where the principle tools and methods of war involve everything but those associated with traditional military conflict. Imagine that the sources of this ‘new era of containment’ are widespread; predicated on nonmilitary forms of political, economic, and violent action; in the main, sustainable over time; and finally, largely invulnerable to effective reversal through traditional U.S. advantages.”
Following World War II, the U.S. built a cold war containment policy that straightjacketed its communist enemies as well as American thinking. Today, the word on the street is, if the U.S. can’t find a way to rethink this policy at a major turning point in its empire, it will soon find itself contained by a straightjacket of its own making.
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.
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ZicaTanka Says:
@Fitzgerald_Gould: Do you think there’s any merit to the claims of these Afghans, reported in the Guardian recently?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/25/afghans-believe-us-funding-taliban
That the US is funding the Taliban to prolong their stay?
Goyim Says:
I an starting to think that all our donations were for Sibel to pay for trips around the globe. A month goes by before there’s even a podcast and were lucky if there’s a simple story put up every week. I am very disappointed in Boiling Frogs. I don’t see it making a difference at all and it sure as hell is a fact that no one here is trying to even pretend to care. If the best this site can do is put up a podcast every month and MAYBE a story every week then it’s no good to the truth movement or anyone else. I am sorry , but what I say is true. Enjoy your trips a little or a lot longer Sibel, but for me, I’M done waiting on you to step up and deliver. I don’t see it as me giving up on you, but rather you gave up on us. If you refuse to touch base with the people who support you and this site at least once a week, you should turn it over to someone who really gives a crap and quit pretending. I feel my donation to this place was for your personal pleasure and that’s all. Good luck to this site, I doubt much will come of it honestly, but I have hope
ZicaTanka Says:
Buck up, Goyim and summon a little patience. I’d gladly keep giving Sibel regular donations for what she’s already done. So she’s multi-tasking right now. There were times when she’d pay quite a lot of attention to individual commenters. More than I expected.
It’s been cool to watch this site develop and it has grown. Think about some of the great interviews you’ve heard. Just go visit some other active site for a while and get your fix if you need to (or start an argument with KF to pass the time). But the BFP will only get better.
I am such an ass kisser, but it’s true!
Simon Says:
Kyrgyzstan & Afghanistan: At the very least, what is playing out has huge strategic implications for military security throughout the Eurasian Heartland — from China to Russia and beyond. It therefore has staggering implications for the future of the United States in Afghanistan and Central Asia and by extension in all Eurasia. The $2.15 billion was originally announced just after Bakiyev declared he would close the US base at Manas, a decision that American dollars managed to reverse some weeks later. Clearly in Moscow’s eyes, the Russian aid and Bakiyev’s announced closing of the US base at Manas were linked.
Kyrgyzstan today plays the role of a geographical pivot. The land-locked country shares a border with China’s Xinjiang Province, a highly strategic point for Beijing. One of the smallest of the Central Asian states, it is also bordered to its north by oil-rich Kazakhstan, on the West by Uzbekistan and on the South by Tajikistan. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan overlaps the politically explosive resource-rich area known as the Ferghana Valley, a multinational ethnic and political friction zone located also in Uzbekistan and Tajikstan. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19327
Kingfisher Says:
“I an starting to think that all our donations were for Sibel to pay for trips around the globe.”
I won’t comment on the rest of your opinions, but I would like to dispel this one. Sibel and her husband operated a successful business, and are independently wealthy to the degree that it allows for frequent international travel. As such, this charge is unfounded. I also would suspect that two round-trip tickets to New Zealand cost much more than what BF has raised.
KF
Sibel Edmonds Says:
Zika Tanka & KF: Thank you. I do not use BFP donations for any personal expanses. In fact, as KF has noted, while we appreciate all donations, our funding is not enough to pay for part-time site manager, or, any investigative reporting (in 1000s to include professional journalists’ travel & time, or…My post this evening (my time here;-) will have a bit on that, but I wish this trip was solely for travel & leisure…For me and my daughter we are dealing with some medical tourism as well.
Goyim: You are not one of the ones who have supported BFP; neither a regular BFP reader. Most likely you are either one of the un-apologetic Obama supporters who have been sending me 100s of hate mails a day, or, the guys on the other side…both of which happen to be the same as far as I’m concerned…tata please.
remo Says:
did someone mention Bin Laden? again?
Obama said the fight was narrowed against ‘those folks in Afghanistan responsible for 911′ but I thought he was just kidding around while the G-men were leading the investigation WAY closer to home. Lucky Larry etc. To surprise us before the midterms. But no. We have to struggle on with this old burnt osama chestnut.
So which Osama are we talking about? the one cited by Geoff Stein in WashingtonPost last Tuesday discussing office of Technical Services making video purporting to show OBL and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys”[mother. again with the BOYS]. or the intelcenter watermark ones or kidney failure Osama…or the Osama disclaiming 911..just which Osama does Obama have in mind and what was it the war was for again??
edit_mommies Says:
Since they have synergy in a box, what initiative is expected in the art of preservation? Will synergy finally reveal who wet the bed in their early adolescence? What are we bringing into focus?
“Imagine that the sources of this ‘new era of containment’ are widespread; predicated on nonmilitary forms of political, economic, and violent action; in the main, sustainable over time; and finally, largely invulnerable to effective reversal through traditional U.S. advantages.”” – Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould
“In a conversation this week, a senior American official in Kabul said that his greatest worry was not the Taliban, or even that the Marja operation would fail. “What do I worry about?” he said, “Dependency.” That is, the fear that Afghanistan’s leaders and people will not, in the end, stand up for themselves.” – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13kabul.html
Gould-Fitzgerald Says:
ZicaTanka Says:
@Fitzgerald_Gould: Do you think there’s any merit to the claims of these Afghans, reported in the Guardian recently?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/25/afghans-believe-us-funding-taliba
That the US is funding the Taliban to prolong their stay?
Dear ZicaTanka,
RAWA Articles that deal with US paying the Taliban:
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/11/13/how-the-us-army-protects-its-trucks-and-8211-by-paying-the-taliban.html
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/11/12/new-report-reveals-us-indirectly-funding-the-taliban.html
344thBrother Says:
The War on Terra.
344thBrother Says:
“government in a coffin”
Sounds like the USA.