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(photo by Marco Vossen)
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Reuters (via TPM) today that it will be at least another week — in other words, after Thanksgiving — before President Obama announces his new strategy for Afghanistan (not to be confused, of course, with his previous new strategy from earlier this year).
Meanwhile, though, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wasn’t waiting to reiterate her assessment of the situation (also Reuters via TPM):
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is an “unworthy partner” who does not deserve a big boost either in U.S. troops or civilian aid, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
Pelosi, a skeptic on sending more troops to Afghanistan, also said in an interview with National Public Radio aired on Friday that there was not strong support among her fellow Democrats in Congress for “any big ramp-up of troops” to oppose resurgent Taliban forces.
She told NPR she had asked fellow Democrats to give President Barack Obama room to decide his Afghan strategy, which is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. Once Obama, also a Democrat, announces his decision, lawmakers would “not be shy” about responding, she said.
“The president of Afghanistan has proven to be an unworthy partner. We cannot fund a mission where we don’t have a reliable partner and where whatever civilian investments we want to make, which are so necessary, will be diverted for a corrupt purpose,” Pelosi told NPR News’ Morning Edition.
“How can we ask the American people to pay a big price in lives and limbs and also in dollars if we don’t have a connection to a reliable partner?”
Pelosi’s comments are right on target. Karzai is exactly what many observers feared Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was — a corrupt, incompetent leader who would use past American rhetoric (and a general reluctance to admit defeat) to hold U.S. troops hostage indefinitely to prop up his failing regime.
As it turned out, Maliki may be crooked and inept, but at least he had the wherewithal (and was sufficiently distrustful of U.S. motives) to sign an agreement to gradually ease us out of the picture. Karzai hasn’t been nearly as generous, leaving Obama trapped in what has become an unwinnable war on behalf of a resented foreign occupation — as described vividly by recently resigned diplomat Matthew Hoh, as well as leaked cables by U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry.
Apparently, the remaining pipe dream on the hawks’ side is that if we can just scrape up another 40,000 troops, we can somehow put the clamps on the Karzai government’s corruption and restore public trust in what we’re doing. Which, I suppose, would be great if we had the 40,000 troops to spare, if the leap from sending the troops to winning hearts and minds wasn’t so heavily based on wishful thinking, and if it wasn’t already so late in the game.
The hardest thing for many hawks to accept about Iraq was that after several years of missteps (including the initial decision to invade), there was no mission left that could be accomplished, and no opportunity for a do-over. Obama’s long pause as he ponders Afghanistan suggests that he’s struggling with the same realization there as well.
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Ah the stalemate, I’m going to assume the U.S. is the rook and queen, and Afghanistan is the wily king that managed to goad the clearly superior tactical ability of its opponent into a strategic draw.
Amateurs. :-)
Obama has an opportunity to put this Afghan conundrum squarely on the Repukes back, with a two stage approach: 1. State the US will not squander further treasure or lives to a corrupt regime. Unless and until true reform and cleanup of the endemic corruption (in Afghanistan, not here) takes place within X months, troop levels will be drawn down to levels that support logistics for Special Forces operating along the Af/Pak border to restrict Taliban, et al. easy movement 2. Should #1 above be met, and if the Occupation of Afghanistan is truly desired by Congress, Obama would then request Congress reinstate the draft. The new draft would add women and severely limit exemptions. The draft would include a public service option of some ilk, CCC, Peace Corp, etc., but the Military needs would be filled first.
Put up or STFU Congress.
What’s next for Karzai, coup or assassination, or both? It’s the U.S. way.
[modnote: please no references to assassinations]
Even when it’s the U.S. govt that carries them out? How could we ever discuss U.S. foreign policy if the a-word can’t be mentioned?
Swopa,
Tell us, what would you do in Afghanistan?
The McClatchy Nukes and Spooks blog , written by some of the only mainstream journalists who have a clue on defense issues, says it looks like Obama is going to escalate, and that recent shifts in tone are preparing the ground. Key quote: Robert Gates said
They also talk about Hillary Clinton trying to polish up Karzai and talking about all the great anti-corruption measures he’s going to take.
That’ll postpone the inevitable for another year.
I knew this was going to be a problem when Obama decided to get his tough guy credibility by declaring Afghanistan to be the “good” war.
It’s not, and it’s not winnable; it’s a morass if not considered amongst the global problem.
What needs to be done, but won’t, is that we need to get out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, and tell Israel to back off, and let the Palestinians have a free state.
That would suck all the oxygen out of the Islamic fire against the US. The Islamic regimes would then have no boogeyman to point to, and would have to deal with their own dis-satisfied people.
Whatever the choice, the Republics are against it.
This is a no win situation for the President, but I do believe he will be viewed better in the long run if he has the backbone to withdraw. The sooner the better.
No draft.
What Obama’s doing — stall. ;-)
The point of my post is that there are no good options.
Apparently the European press has be speculating about a 10-city strategy in which NATO and US troops would be concentrated in major cities. The largest 10 cities in Afghanistan are (2006, Afghanistan government data):
Of these, Jalalabad and Khost are on the Pakistani border, and Kandahar and Lashkar Gah are in provinces that are deemed to be Taliban strongholds.
If this is indeed the direction of thinking there are a number of options that can be evolved as the situation changes.
Whether we stay or go, one of the first steps is to pull troops back into the cities from the countryside. This has a temporary advantage in not provoking civilians by attacking rural villages with armed drones. And makes the situation in the countryside totally a relationship between villages and whatever anti-occupation troops are there.
By concentrating troops–100,000 (assuming no additional troops) in 10 cities means 5000-12,000 in each city. With a defensive posture of standing down except when called upon by the local government, it is possible to begin to stabilize the cities even as troop prepare to depart. The logistics of moving additional troops into these cities means that there would be a delay of some time (calculate the number of troop transports that it would take to fly in 40,000 troops plus materiel and figure out the flight interval to unload, refuel, and return; the same problem exists for leaving).
Assuming that troops enter the country at Bagram, moving them to the cities will create its own set of logistical and security problems. (Going out the same problems exist in movement to Bagram.) Those create additional delays.
Notice in this that the relationships are mostly with the provincial governments; Karzai is relevant to some and irrelevant to others of the provinces. Now shift to looking at the politics of this as to leaving. Unless the Taliban take control of a provincial government and allow the US to stay in the city, they are not at the political table. But the established provincial leaders, who have some sort of authority if not legitimacy are and we are not affecting their power vis-a-vis Kabul. If they can make a deal within X amount of time, we can leave. And if they can’t make a deal in the same amount of time, we leave anyway. It works as long as the US does not prejudge what that deal must be. (Do you think that the national security mavens in the US can restrain themselves from meddling long enough for us to get out?)
So does McChrystal and NATO need additional troops? The key question is what exactly will they be doing. Reading between the lines about Obama’s dissatisfaction with the options presented, the military has not answered this question adequately (surprise, surprise–no more “just trust us”). Where will they come from? Accelerated drawdown from Iraq? The Sunni vice-president just threw a monkey wrench into the plans for a January election. Yet more deployments without adequate recovery time? Notice the articles about suicide rates among soldiers in the US and in Afghanistan. A draft? Not likely, not wise in the long term; just increases the number of troops that the military thinks they can deploy. It doesn’t seem that McChrystal and company have answered this question either.
So now it comes to the additional funding. Obama has insisted that we all be fiscal scolds about the deficit. How is he proposing that we pay for this additional deployment? LBJ imposed a 10% war surtax during Vietnam. The Bush tax cuts could be sunsetted earlier than planned. Not that it is likely, but a surcharge on imported oil might recapture a miniscule amount of what has actually been a subsidy for the oil companies. Cuts in security contracts with our private mercenaries? This is where progressives in Congress, if they have a developing spine, can ask some very tough questions.
What to do about Karzai? Consider him the mayor of Kabul and treat him like other local leaders, excepting the symbolic deference to a head of state. Don’t funnel money through him. Let the other provincial leaders get a shot at the graft (no, make any aid direct action by local contractors supervised closely by AID staff, or shed the illusion of development assistance entirely).
And figure to say before July that we will be out one way or the other by March 2011.
As with a lot of things, the devil is in the details. I guess a few generals got told that a three-page slide presentation is not sufficient.
Are you serious?
How about negotiating with the Quetta Shura and winning their separation from the al-Qaeda-allied Pakistani Taliban? How about supporting attempts to convene a loya jirga? How about withdrawing troops (and mercenaries)?
Simply bemoaning corruption isn’t going to convince the Obama administration to not escalate and ultimately withdraw. We need to show there are serious, viable alternatives, alternatives that are clearly superior to the status quo as well as escalation. There is a mission left to be accomplished, and it’s stopping the violence that is caused by our occupation and ending the recruitment boon that our occupation is for the Taliban.
I like the Maliki reference, but I think you downplay the agency of Maliki. He didn’t just sign the SOFA. He played a strong hand and forced the Bush administration to agree to withdraw (Bush obviously didn’t want to). Karzai has the ability to do the same, although I’m not sure that he will.
Well, okay, to be a little less flip, I should have said that I wasn’t confident enough of my Afghanistan knowledge to prescribe any surefire solutions.
I’m on firmer ground when it comes to Maliki, fortunately. Although I didn’t mention it in this post, I was pointing out Maliki’s agency (and seriousness) about a withdrawal agreement as far back as May 2008 (see this post for an overview). In fact, I don’t know of any observer who backed the idea of Maliki being serious about a U.S. withdrawal earlier or more strongly than I did. I was just trying — for once — not to venture into “I told you so” territory. ;-)
Withdraw.
Haha, I can dig some flippancy. And congrats, you were clearly ahead of the curve on Maliki. In fact, I’m not sure the curve has caught up to you yet.
I’m interested in the possibility of Karzai doing the same. Maybe if Pelosi et al keep shitting all over him he’ll negotiate a withdrawal out of spite.
The question which will drive that, I would think, is, “How does Karzai stay in power if the U.S. leaves?”
In Maliki’s case, the withdrawal agreement happened as part of a long-term plan by Sistani & the rest of the Shiite power structure to hijack U.S. promises of post-invasion democracy. Once they pushed Chalabi/Allawi to the side in 2003-05, the SOFA was merely the other shoe finally dropping.
As part of that plan, it seems like they had substantial Iranian help in training a military force that wasn’t entirely dependent on the U.S. And perhaps most importantly, Sistani apparently served as a moral backstop who wouldn’t allow Maliki to sign a SOFA that didn’t end the occupation on a specific date.
Karzai is more or less analogous to Chalabi/Allawi, and without (to my knowledge) the independent power structure that allowed and/or forced Maliki to take a hard line on the SOFA.
A loya jirga put Karzai in power for the first term. A loya jirga could do it again. So who is it that convenes a loya jirga? That person or group is the counterpart of Sistani.
As I state above, the 10-city strategy rumored to be in play (was this McChrystal’s idea) has political implications, one of which is to make US success (and withdrawal) depend less on what happens to Karzai but without pulling the rug from under Karzai. We respect him in the jurisdiction he actually controls.
Maneuvering the politics of the region and the provincial leaders to permit US withdrawal is a Holbrooke job, not a McChrystal job. Surely that is one of the things that Sec. Clinton is asserting. That process coould move in the direction of whatever it takes to get a working consensus of the country’s leadership
to ask us to leavenegotiate a Status of Forces Agreement. Most likely that would also prompt a loya jirga. The US need not have a presence at the loya jirga, like we did in 2001; in fact, not being there or maneuvering the contents of decisions behind the scenes would make it possible to encourage the participation of the “Taliban” leaders.That is really the part that cannot be duplicated in Afghanistan, unless that training force is Pakistani. Wait, the Northern Alliance and Iran wouldn’t like that. And you can’t successfully train troops within three spheres of influence like was done in post World War II Germany, or can you? It’s a real stretch that would require a joint command, which would really be a negotiating session to defuse rumors and deal with provocative actions. But you inevitably have the equivalent of a protectorate in each zone. What diplomatic mechanisms would make this work?
Nice breakdown of the Iraq situation, makes a lot of sense. It is quite different from the domestic politics of Afghanistan.
What if instead of negotiating with us Karzai negotiates with the Taliban (and probably comes to some power-sharing agreement)? Tom Hayden’s op-ed from a couple days ago suggests that it might be in Karzai’s electoral interests to negotiate with the Taliban, as he ran as the pro-negotiation candidate (although I guess he could keep winning via fraud). If he successfully negotiated, it would render moot whatever rationale we had for keeping our forces there, especially if the Quetta Shura Taliban forces promised to deny haven to al-Qaeda.
Look for Obama to stall even more UNTIL AFTER he receives his Nobel Peace Prize which I believe is in December. It’s going to look bad for both him AND the clueless, lutefisk eating Norwegian politicians who decided back in February that he deserved the Peace Prize (they seem to have missed the fact that Obama CAMPAIGNED to enlarge the war in Afghanistan).
Obama is starting to get smoked out by time and circumstances on Afghanistan and a lot of other issues: jobs-unemployment for instance even as his pathetic position on health “insurance reform” has revealed him to be the DLCer he really is.
Once Obama escalates in Afghanistan, look for him to drop big time in the polls as people realize he’s an empty suit.
Wrong Swopa.
The good option is to withdraw but Obama has painted HIMSELF into a corner. He was the guy who campaigned on escalating the war in Afghanistan (little realizing that radicals would just move into Pakistan further destabiliing that country and little realizing the history of failed empire builders like the Brits and the USSR in Afghanistan). So the “problem” is really of Obama’s own making, not something thrust on him. Obama is an expansionist, Empire driven Democrat with there not being a dimes worth of difference between him and W on foreign policy. Recall that Obama has KEPT ON W’s Defense Secretary and PROMOTED most of W’s generals.
Well these so-called skeptics said the same exact thing about the Iraq surge, and not surprisingly(we are talking about Granny McBotox here) they were wrong.