Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Ken Sweeney ·
Feb 28, 2011 at 5:22pm
From the New York Times on Friday, February 25:
- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim.
Since our chief war leader does not believe in fighting these wars (or at a minimum, is against future wars in the same region), the news media has forgotten about them, and the public is oblivious, the United States should immediately begin withdrawing from these battle theaters into secure enclaves in select locations in the region.
Afghanistan is a tribal backwater similar to Sudan, and will remain that way for the next 50 years. Pakistan was a basket case before we invaded Afghanistan. Iraq has reached a point where they can take care of themselves with the US forces as “backup.” Time to bring the troops home, save lives and reduce the budget deficit. What does Ricochet think?
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
It seems you are misrepresenting Gates when you say "our chief war leader does not believe in fighting these wars" and imply he means Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not what he said.
Gates supports our current policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He helped make those policies.
Oct '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Nickolas: It seems you are misrepresenting Gates when you say "our chief war leader does not believe in fighting these wars" and imply he means Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not what he said.
Gates supports our current policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He helped make those policies. · Feb 28 at 1:23pm
OK "Lost his enthusiasm for these wars" in a passive-aggressive manner. This speech was shocking to me. I am surprised others are not responding.
National Review has blogs set up for the economy (Exchequer), Egypt (Egypt Watch), Obamacare (Critical Condition), the courts (Bench Memos), global warming (Planet Gore), and education (Phi Beta Cons). They have NOTHING on 2 active battle theaters covering the war on terror.
May '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Hear, hear! Iraq was, in my opinion, a catastrophic squandering of scarce resources and what could have been a prudent campaign in Afghanistan has turned into a babysitter undertaking..
Jan '11
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
The two military lessons I thought were absolutely clear from world history:
1. Don't invade Russia in winter.
2. Don't invade Afghanistan. (Unless you can time-travel back to a pre-Islamic period.)
Jul '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
We should have left Afghanistan as a smoking wasteland of rubble in 2002.
And I would be perfectly comfortable if Saddam Hussein was still enjoying the luxuries of his various palaces.
Oct '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Kenneth: We should have left Afghanistan as a smoking wasteland of rubble in 2002.
And I would be perfectly comfortable if Saddam Hussein was still enjoying the luxuries of his various palaces. · Feb 28 at 3:30pm
I supported both wars initially. And believe that the Iraq war had the potential for a much better outcome. Looking at the situation today, Afghanistan just isn't worth it. And it is frustrating when I see zero dialogue on the conservative side (Ron Paul=outlier) about the current state of our international adventurism.
Oct '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Nickolas: It seems you are misrepresenting Gates when you say "our chief war leader does not believe in fighting these wars" and imply he means Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not what he said.
Gates supports our current policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He helped make those policies. · Feb 28 at 1:23pm
Nickolas--your criticism was fair. I edited the original post.
"Since our chief war leader does not believe in fighting these wars (or at a minimum, is against future wars in the same region),
Jul '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Ken Sweeney
Kenneth: We should have left Afghanistan as a smoking wasteland of rubble in 2002.
And I would be perfectly comfortable if Saddam Hussein was still enjoying the luxuries of his various palaces. · Feb 28 at 3:30pm
And it is frustrating when I see zero dialogue on the conservative side (Ron Paul=outlier) about the current state of our international adventurism. · Feb 28 at 4:44pm
Actually, there has been quite a lot of dialogue on the Right. The late William F. Buckley, George Will and Tony Blankley, among others, have called for withdrawal and derided the notion of nation-building.
I think that the relative lack of clamor for withdrawal amongst conservatives can be explained by the fact that we choose not to demoralize our troops.
May '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
I lack the knowledge needed to form an intelligent opinion on this question. But I want to throw in a point from a talk I heard John Bolton give. Even we agree that the whole idea of nation building in Afghanistan was a fool's errand, we can't forget that Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal and a very unstable society with a large and violent jihadist element. That gives us a very serious interest in the region.
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
I have always been skeptical about the Afghan war. Initially, in 2001, I was too skeptical. Kenneth is right that our policy should have been to butcher and bolt. I was and am more sanguine about Iraq -- which, given its location and resources, matters a lot more. But, of course, the jury is still out on that one.
Whether, having gone in as we have, we should simply pull out of Afghanistan -- there might be a considerable price for that. I am willing, for a time at least, to wait and see. But I doubt that it will work. I asked a former student who was in combat there what it was like. "Time of Christ" was his reply.
Dec '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
If the war if Afghanistan fails, then it's not just Afghanistan but the Afghanistan-Pakistan bloc that falls to fundamentalism. There will necessarily follow a nuclear war, and not necessarily between India and Pakistan only -- especially if Pakistan allows one of its warheads to be smuggled to Al-Qaeda or another terrorist organization for a strike on a Western target in Europe or North America. (And there's also the problem that A.Q. Khan is still sitting comfortably in Pakistan, and is fully capable of transmitting his know-how in nuclear device manufacture to Venezuela, Brazil and a host of other regimes worldwide.)
The question in that eventuality becomes: who has the nerve required to kill 28 million Afghans and 170 million Pakistanis?
May '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
I fully support our troops, but think it's time to bring them home. Put them on our border.
Oct '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
When Afghanistan was dominated by the Taliban in 2001, that did not immediately destablize Pakistan as you indicate.
There is nothing preventing nukes being smuggled out of Pakistan today. Some rogue faction could bride a military officer and get it done. Having Marines in the neighboring country does not prevent your scenario.
Edited on Feb 28, 2011 at 5:59pmJul '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Stuart Creque:
The question in that eventuality becomes: who has the nerve required to kill 28 million Afghans and 170 million Pakistanis? · Feb 28 at 5:37pm
Oooo...oooo...ooo...Me! Me!
In a heartbeat.
Edited on Feb 28, 2011 at 6:37pmJul '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
"Butcher and bolt"? Gosh, I'm feeling another man-crush comin' on.
May '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Kenneth
"Butcher and bolt"? Gosh, I'm feeling another man-crush comin' on. · Feb 28 at 6:36pm
More rubble less trouble.
Dec '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
In some ways we did bolt Afghanistan, leaving it to NATO. By sometime in 2002 Afghanistan ostensibly became a NATO led effort, with our NATO allies providing most of the troop needs. NATO failed miserably. Many of our NATO allies failed to provide sufficient troops.
France and Germany in particular never provided more than a few thousand troops and their rules of engagement were restricted to training and defense only. They were not permitted to be involved in offensive operations in any way.
IIRC, the NATO commander began screaming for more troops around 2005-2006. Few additional troops were provided by our NATO allies.
As the tide began to turn in Iraq in 2006-2007 Afghanistan began to heat up once again. The Taliban began using some of the same tactics used in Iraq, such as IEDs. Some think the regional jihadists started shifting their resources, including funding, to the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater as they increasingly viewed Iraq as a lost cause.
Edited on Feb 28, 2011 at 7:04pmJul '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
Just watch Restrepo - which should have won the Oscar for Best Documentary - and then ask yourself it Afghanistan is worth the price.
Jul '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
The original Afghanistan approach, send special forces, bribe tribal leaders prone to oppose the Taliban, and target bin Ladin, I thought had some merit. That plan failed and failure was not an option, so we escalated. A lot. And still failed. Nation building became a distraction from the inability to get bin Laden. Building a liberal democracy in a land where the government murders Christians and apostates, providing modern communications, computer, and network technology, financing instruments, direct grants, and so on just took murderous bigotry and game it a clock tower and automatic weapons.
They told us on 9/11 we needed to learn who they were and what that meant. We have.
In 1979 an American Islamist recruiter laid out for me the plan, as he saw it and in broad strokes, to bring Sharia to America and supplant our Constitution. In the 90s, I found the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood plan for North America on the web, following the same lines. The same broad plan Claire shared with us recently.
At this juncture, in these two countries, if we leave we likely have furthered that plan, and if we stay we choose empire over republic and become unapologetic colonizers.
Dec '10
Re: Leave Afghanistan ASAP
I doubt anyone wanted to pull out of Afghanistan as fast as reasonably possible as Obama did. After many months of waffling and looking for a way out he could not find one that was acceptable. In his book Woodward reported that even those in Obama's administration who were against sending more troops were not in favor of leaving or significantly drawing down any time soon.
I suspect the potential consequences of leaving and the associated odds of very bad things happening have a lot to do with it. I suspect it's not as simple as just leaving and going home, thinking we can wash our hands of the region and the problems there.