It sounds as though President Obama’s Tuesday evening address was not well received by German journalist Gabor Steingart, who remarks on the Der Spiegel site: “Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America’s new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric — and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught…. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly…. The American president doesn’t need any opponents at the moment. He’s already got himself.”
Stephen Walt, who with his colleague John Mearsheimer wrote this controversial book, has addressed a sensitive question in an article posted on the Foreign Policy website Monday. Walt asks: “How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims?” He states that he has attempted to make his estimates conservative, but he finds that the United States has inflicted more casualties than it has suffered, by a factor of about 30. To make his point, he cites the remark of a British journalist: “If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world … it should stop killing Muslims.”
I get his point, but I wish he had addressed criticism along the following lines, with which he is surely familiar, from a critic who suggests that internecine violence among Muslims is the bigger issue: “There isn’t a day goes by without the brutal slaughter of Muslims in both [Iraq and Afghanistan] by al-Qaida or the Taliban. And that’s not just because most (though not all) civilians in both countries happen to be of the Islamic faith. The terrorists do not pause before deliberately blowing up the mosques and religious processions of those whose Muslim beliefs they deem insufficiently devout. Most of those now being tortured and raped and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran are Muslim. All the women being scarred with acid and threatened with murder for the crime of going to school in Pakistan are Muslim. Many of those killed in London, Madrid, and New York were Muslim, and almost all the victims callously destroyed in similar atrocities in Istanbul, Cairo, Casablanca, and Algiers in the recent past were Muslim, too…. When did the U.S. Army ever do what the jihadists do every day: deliberately murder Muslim civilians and brag on video about the fact?”
In an interview with Politico, former Vice President Dick Cheney answered, “I basically don’t,” when asked whether the Bush administration bore any responsibility for current conditions in Afghanistan.
Daniel Drezner, in his blog for Foreign Policy, isn’t buying it. “I dare any Cheney supporter to make the argument that Afghanistan was hunky-dory until January 20, 2009, at which point things went to hell in a handbasket.”
It appears that President Obama will announce his Afghanistan decision in a nationwide television address December 1.
McClatchy is reporting that Obama will monitor the situation, leaving himself the option to withdraw if it looks as though the situation is culminating in a dead end. An unnamed U. S .defense official says: “We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that’s it.”
The Obama administration’s review of strategy options in Afghanistan is being drawn out because the president wants a policy with an “exit strategy” instead of an open-ended commitment, reports Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal. “The goal is for American troops to reverse the rise of Taliban strength in the short term, buying time for Afghan President Hamid Karzai to build up security and police forces that can take over while American forces phase out…. This summer’s Afghan presidential election, marred by evidence of corruption, threw a big wrench in the works because it suggested President Karzai wasn’t taking steps to gain the legitimacy needed to take over his own security portfolio.”
The military does not like to be too explicit about a withdrawal timetable or “exit strategy,” since this may serve only to give the enemy an idea of how long it needs to hold out. Arguably, however, something similar was achieved with the “surge” in Iraq, Seib suggests. In Iraq, “the military trend lines at the outset of the surge were turning south and the leader the U.S. had to work with, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was seen as a weak reed on which to lean. That changed over about a year’s time. Maybe, just maybe, Iraq showed it is possible to see an entrance and exit ramp at the same time.”
The United States lacks leverage with much-criticized Afghan president Hamid Karzai, argues Helene Cooper in a news analysis for the New York Times. The ultimate leverage would be the threat of a complete American withdrawal from the country, but that is not credible, according to former U. S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann: “The argument that we could pull out of Afghanistan if Karzai doesn’t do what we say is stupid. We couldn’t get the Pakistanis to fight if we leave Afghanistan; we couldn’t accomplish what we’ve set out to do. And Karzai knows that.”
In London on Friday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an “unusually harsh” broadside against Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the New York Times reports. “Sadly, the government of Afghanistan had become a byword for corruption…. And I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption.”
Alissa J. Rubin reports from Afghanistan for the New York Times that Afghans are becoming wary of the presence of the U. S. military. “If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here…. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.”
According to one shopkeeper, “Instead of increasing foreign troops, it’s better to equip the Afghan National Army and the Afghan police…. The local army are known in the villages, and they are more useful than foreign troops.” Rubin reports that this is a view “that was shared by almost everyone interviewed.”
Gordon Goldstein, author of Lessons in Disaster, a tract that, according to reports, is being read throughout the White House, speaks to Germany’s Der Spiegel about President Obama’s review of the alternatives in Afghanistan.
Why is another review being conducted, after the results of a “comprehensive review” were announced in March? “Six months ago, Obama appointed a new field commander in Afghanistan and put a new emphasis on implementing a counterinsurgency strategy. Since then, however, the internal security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. The addition of 21,000 troops to the command of General Stanley McChrystal there has not had a visible impact in terms of pacifying the country. We are suffering the highest number of US casualties in the eight years of this war. And thousands of more troops have been requested. For there reasons, the president is absolutely right to re-evaluate the strategy and its realistic prospects for success.”
In the overnight press review I noted that the lead story in most of Thursday morning’s London papers it involves the massacre of five British soldiers by a rogue Afghan policeman in Helmand province: “Killed by the enemy within,” reads the front page of the Independent.
Nevertheless, the paper, which leans at least slightly to the left, is not ready to bail out on Afghanistan yet. This morning, the editors argue in a leading article that, while the case for withdrawal has grown stronger, it “is not yet overwhelming; not least because no convincing alternative strategy for protecting Western security interests in the region has been put forward. We need to consider the consequences of letting the Afghan government face the growing Taliban insurgency without Western military assistance. There is a significant risk that the Taliban would return to power. And such an ideologically driven regime might well decide to host al-Qa’ida once again…. Those advocating Western military withdrawal from Afghanistan need to do more than simply urge a rush for the exit. They need to provide a realistic replacement strategy for protecting Britain’s national security and promoting stability in this most dangerous of regions.”
Other writers for the same paper are less sanguine. Patrick Cockburn offers the following analysis this morning: “Afghan leaders have long been notorious for concealing their true loyalties and changing sides. But the potential political consequences are very serious. The US and British strategy to build up the Afghan security forces to as many as 400,000 may prove impossible because the state is too weak and too poor and commands the loyalty of too few Afghans…. The shaky loyalty of the Afghan police and, to a lesser extent, the army to their own government undermines US and British plans to hold the line against the Taliban while a strong local security force is built up…. Even so, the reputation of the army among ordinary Afghans is much better than that of the police…. More senior policemen can make money through aiding drug smugglers.”
Readers may find this morning’s “Explainer” feature in online magazine Slate to be disturbing. Christopher Beam asks: “How do we make sure Afghan police officers aren’t Taliban?” Answer: “We trust the Afghan government….”