Why We Fight*
Joshua Foust on Apr 06 2008 at 12:09 pm | Filed under: Foreign affairs
Posted first on Registan.net, where there is lots of other commentary on Central Asia and the Caucasus. There is also an intense discussion in the comments section. Click the Registan.net link above to view those comments..
Benjamin Friedman, of the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, thinks we shouldn’t “pull an Iraq” in Afghanistan. By that he means the West shouldn’t think the one thing Afghanistan is missing is more troops. It seems a compelling argument, and is certainly worth considering, except he seems to get some things almost comically wrong:
When it comes to military occupations, Iraq reveals that bigger isn’t always better. The heavy United States troop presence at the start of the occupation helped spark the insurgency.
It’s a strange argument to make: I haven’t read a single critique of the Iraq occupation, liberal or conservative, that has argued the U.S. had too many troops in Baghdad after the removal of the Ba’athist regime. In fact, one of the most scathing critiques of the American occupation has related to the lack of manpower to prevent the widespread looting and rioting—a situation to which then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld simply replied, “Stuff happens.”
It is a tough sell to claim Iraq proves more troops won’t help Afghanistan, as the addition of more troops in Baghdad actually has played a role in reducing the level of violence in the country. The failure of the surge is a political one, not a military one—the Iraqi government itself has failed to make any political progress once the violence ebbed a bit. There is, of course, a much bigger story behind Iraq, but Friedman doesn’t give the situation the seriousness it deserves, and doesn’t apply it to Afghanistan.
Indeed, Friedman seems driven more by the libertarian instinct toward isolationism—”One of the Bush administration’s rare achievements is the modesty of US presence and ambitions in Afghanistan”—than a practical consideration of the many reasons it made sense to invade Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. His conception of the problem a chaotic and/or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is just off.
Defending American interests in Afghanistan requires nothing more than ensuring the absence of a haven for international terrorists and making an example of those who provide one. Those two reasonable goals justified the war in Afghanistan, unlike the Iraq war.
If the latter goal should fail, US forces can target terrorist camps and supporters through raids and airstrikes guided by intelligence, even if Taliban militias gain power in some regions. Those missions do not require a huge force structure, or that Afghanistan become a modern nation, a democratic one, or even stable.
This is the Bill Clinton approach to combatting terrorism. Much as Bush’s foreign policy deserves strong criticism for its laziness of conception and poor planning, the idea of sweeping aside the Taliban and rebuilding the country was a good one—even if it has since been starved of funding and security.
But questioning the fundamental assumptions behind the war in Afghanistan is healthy. So why do we fight there? What are the stakes?
Much as it is pleasing to say the U.S. is there for freedom, democracy, liberalism, human rights, and so on, that is no reason to militarily occupy a country. And much as the American public makes pretty noise about horrid situations in places like Darfur, there is no public support for invading to help other people. We want to end suffering, but we don’t want to sacrifice to do it. Fine, it is a simple fact that cannot be changed.
So, why Afghanistan? More specifically, why are combat troops necessary in Afghanistan?
The simple answer is that nothing else can do the job. In the discussion on PRTs, I linked to a study of PRT performance (pdf) by Marcus Gauster, which noted that the reason PRTs became such a feature of aid and development in the country was the poor security situation. Indeed, the volatility of Afghanistan that makes aid and development so difficult is what necessitates the presence of a large security force—and the areas where those forces have been inadequate are precisely the areas that have seen the largest rise in violence and Taliban influence.
In fact, the lack of an appropriate military and police in Afghanistan is a big reason it is currently teetering on the brink—and if it falls off, then those havens for terrorism that Friedman so wants to defend with a withdrawal would come right back into existence.
The biggest problem facing Afghanistan is not too much security, but too little, and of the wrong kind. The military units in play now need to be redistributed to the violent regions of the South and Southeast; at the same time a huge influx of funding and personnel must be sent into police training and anti-corruption measures. What little is in Afghanistan is being misused, and critical resources are being diverted to counterproductive measures like opium eradication rather than the sustainable (though much less glamorous) work of building up societal institutions that will eventually stabilize the country.
In other words, it isn’t that Afghanistan is too much like Iraq; but rather that it is different enough to where those lessons have a much better chance of working.
Update: Kip posts more on a point I try to drive home more and more—the failure in Afghanistan is structural, and it is international. For once, it does not appear to be conceptual. We say all the right things. We just don’t do them.
*The title of a 2005 documentary about the American military-industrial complex, as well as a series of propaganda films about why the U.S. must fight in World War II.
Sphere: Related Content17 Responses to “Why We Fight*”
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To some extent the low troop levels in Iraq were seen as an attempt to make it clear that we *weren’t* occupiers. I thought that was Rumsfield’s “thing”. While I haven’t heard anyone claim we should have had even fewer people there, I have from time to time over the last 5 years tried to explain why the *idea* wasn’t a terribly bad one, even if it didn’t work so well.
Those opposing the Iraq war and the administration, of course, always argued we should have had many many more troops than we did, until we had the surge and then the arguments shifted to the opposite, that more troops wasn’t better after all. But that’s how that goes.
that has argued the U.S. had too many troops in Baghdad after the removal of the Ba’athist regime.
Democrat strategist wannabes didn’t see a point in helping clear up the fog of war. Republican strategists, real or imagined, didn’t see a point in talking about “might have beens”. By the time the US had gotten to Baghdad, the US Army already had too many troops. It was too late to do anything about it one way or another. So people tried to fix it, but without a loyal opposition, not much good came out. It wasn’t until Petraeus started getting his ideas to Bush and Cheney that a loyal opposition to the then current administration plans came about.
Going on the wayback machine:
If the US had fewer troops going in, they would have been forced to take it slower, move slower, act less arrogant, acquire more help from the locals, and all in all act like Special Forces bandits instead of Army enforcers with big hammers.
That would have induced a faster rate of counter-insurgency learning than trying to learn COIN while being the occupiers.
The army commanders in charge of Baghdad were trying to plug a 50 meter hole with a hankerchief when they said they were going for a “light footprint”. You can’t go for a light footprint once you have already stamped your tanks on the face of Iraq, people. That’s just called playing games. The Iraqi people recognized you as the occupiers and thus the “new power” in town. So you had better act like the new power and put your foot down on looters and criminals via executions and public trials. But no, Americans didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t America’s place, people thought. We weren’t occupiers, we were just… visiting: yeah, that’s the thing, just visitors, tourists really.
That’s why US troops stood around in Baghdad and watched as riots occurred and looters looted and criminals went wild crazy on civilians. Cause the high command said “we weren’t occupiers”. Yeah, you were.
To some extent the low troop levels in Iraq were seen as an attempt to make it clear that we *weren’t* occupiers. I thought that was Rumsfield’s “thing”.
Rumsfield’s thing was Afghanistan and Special Forces. He didn’t get that. He had to compromise with the Joint Chiefs, who I take it wanted to relive the Gulf War over again. After all, for some of them it would have been their last chance to see combat in the army before retirement. And of course, they planned operations according to this. Rumsfield prefered less troops but his integrity demanded that he listen to the generals, else there would have been no explanation for why the US Army refused the help of Shia and Kurds, even when they were celebrating here in the US, while Special Forces used primarily Afghan indigs for the heavy footwork in Afghanistan. I take it that Rummy listened to the Army when he didn’t listen to the SF for Iraq because the Army had no idea how to mobilize into Afghanistan on such a short notice. The CIA field chiefs and the SF, however, did. They were smaller forces and thus more mobile. So Rummy heard a plan and the “I can do it with less troops” and gave that plan to the Prez and Prez did a snapshot decision to invade Afghanistan. Iraq took so long that Rummy got plenty of “ideas” from the regular Army. And things went the way they did just because Bush listened to Blair, leading to that little fiasco at the UN. There’s something essentially wrong about having your entire nation’s strategy and fate decided by some foreigner in a country that was already sliding down the pit into shariah hell.
So, Rummy got more than he wanted but the bigger hammer generals like Shinseki got far less than they wanted as well. A compromise was made, Synova. And we all know how great that works in war, right?
But that’s how that goes.
Indeed, that’s how domestic insurgencies go. Whatever works to gain power becomes justified.
Much as it is pleasing to say the U.S. is there for freedom, democracy, liberalism, human rights, and so on, that is no reason to militarily occupy a country.
Tell that to the black former slaves living in the South after the North pulled federal troops out of the South. Unfortunately, you can’t, cause they got lynched afterwards.
We want to end suffering, but we don’t want to sacrifice to do it.
America’s at the mall, we aren’t being asked to sacrifice much of anything. Or maybe being asked to sacrifice tax money that could be spent on welfare, energy subsidies, and education is the sacrifice people aren’t willing to do.
The military units in play now need to be redistributed to the violent regions of the South and Southeast;
Convince Germany and the other NATO “allies” to do that and I’m sure the people fighting down South would welcome the additional troops.
the Iraqi government itself has failed to make any political progress once the violence ebbed a bit.
The Democrats have made great political progress the last few decades and have eroded many Constitutional protections as a result. The state of a nation is not based upon “political progress”, it is based upon solid political foundations and how many cracks are present in the foundation.
A claim that the Iraqi government has failed to make any political progress is a claim is not necessarily a negative thing regardless of any wishful thinking justifying that it is.
“progress” is just an euphemism for “when do we increase our budgets”. No nation has ever “progressed” politically. They have just went around in circles, balancing the powers, and compromising. That’s what politics are designed to do. The citizens are the ones that have to improve their nation. The government can only make a solid foundation and get out of the way, sometimes taking a direct hand but mostly allowing actual competent people to do the job. It wasn’t the Shia central government that stabilized Al Anbar. It was the Sunnis of Al Anbar and us. Thus it cannot be said that the Shia government “progressed” anywhere politically with regards to the Sunnis. They just sat around and let people who knew their stuff do their stuff. Which is what government is supposed to be doing. Which is why the political foundation between Shia and Sunni are now better than ever.
This expectation that some “government” or “high command” will suddenly and magically come in and make things “progress” is pretty fantastic all in all. It just doesn’t happen that way.
Synova, I think that’s a bit unfair. The CATO Institute has consistently argued we have too many troops in Iraq, because they think one is too many. They are basically isolationists (and in 2002 were arguing we should be invading Somalia rather than Iraq). It’s not really a partisan argument, they just don’t believe the government is capable of ever doing anything good or moral, ever.
As for the bit about “progress,” that is not at all how it’s normally used in Iraq. When people criticize the government for a lack of “progress” it has to do with continuing to implement some sort of reconciliation between the various factions, political progress toward codifying regular elections, and so on. It is not as shallow as you imply it is.
That we shouldn’t be there is a different argument made by different people.
I was mostly referring to those who had begun with criticisms that we had way too few and then changed their tune to oppose the surge as a context for my recollection that the idea of going in light in order to maintain the idea that we weren’t there to occupy (and thus avoiding upsetting locals) wasn’t an unheard idea.
Gotcha. I think we’re talking apples and oranges, then. This is specifically about Afghanistan, and about questioning whether or not we should be there.
Well there’s your problem. “Even if it didn’t work out so well”. I see you have quite a hill to climb. Yes, poor Johnny plunged to his death because his chute didn’t open, but the idea of jumping out of an airplane, isn’t a terribly bad one… even if it didn’t work out.
You probably will continue to have great difficulty explaining that logic in the future. Because it “didn’t work out”, ergo it was a “bad idea”.
I’ve heard the same argument from leftists regarding communism or socialism. They told me that, “Hey, it’s a good idea… it works in theory… even though it didn’t work out.”
To which I replied, “Hey, it didn’t work out… it’s not a good idea… even in theory.”
And I would also hear the same arguments from the Left that I now hear from the hawks. That it was a good idea… that it would have worked out… only if the politicians weren’t corrupt, incompetent, or both. And it still is the same problem isn’t it? That your politicians who you’ve trusted with this risky plunge, are far more likely to be corrupt, incompetent, or both.
I’ve argued since the start that this conflict needed way more troops than was envisioned by the so-called enlightened. I realize that I’m just a lowly working stiff puking uninformed opinions on an obscure political website, but even I knew from my amateur studies of warfare and my localized experiences in human nature, that if you were not to go in and put your boot down with overwhelming force, that the occupied will find a way to disrupt your agenda, however noble, and make your tasks to be seemingly overwhelming.
To the people who put an almost divine faith in the now proven flawed prosecutors of this risky plunge, the fact that this “good idea” didn’t work out, should be a cold hard slap in the face.
And the petty pride that that prevents some from feeling the sting of their misguided fealty should be quietly stowed.
But then of course, if you’re anything like me… stowing your pride is easier said than done.
Cheers.
Pogue,
Wise words my friend, wise words. You of course make a coherent argument, so your pride should feel no wound. Compelling, but possibly wrong.
I too felt we needed more troops, and a very different approach. However, that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea, though I think it was. Many have, and quite well, argued that we were too heavy handed, used too much force. I don’t think they are right, but not because it couldn’t work. That way in some circumstances might work, and it might even work better, but the probability is decidedly against you.
Overwhelming force in an occupation is the surest way to accomplish one’s goals. It does have drawbacks however, and if that had failed I promise you many a smart argument would have surfaced, with much the same use of evidence as you use here, that it was a bad idea and we should have quickly moved to turn over power and allow them to “work things out.” An argument we read here on this site on a regular basis now, if not then. That it is our presence which keeps the situation unstable, rather than our absence. Sometimes, and prospectively one cannot be sure, they are right.
However much your argument appeals to my vanity, since I share it, humility should have us acknowledge that quite possibly such an approach would have worked even worse, even if we think it unlikely. In fact, lots of things were not inevitable, nor even a matter of our policy. A good deal of it is merely the vagaries of fortune. A person who lived, or died, who might have made a difference. A choice here and a choice there, and things take a very different course. We wish to feel we can look back and say “what went wrong,” but if it were true humanity would be in a much different state than it is. We in fact really don’t know.
Since we don’t know which course is the most likely to succeed in a specific instance, either prospectively or even after the fact (since the reasons why are always less clear than we generally believe) that is why the more generally true approach of more force makes sense. Not because other paths cannot succeed. Communism cannot succeed at its goals, that is a very different matter and thus your comparison is unhelpful.
The administration made a poor choice in my opinion in following the advice of Rumsfeld and planning a short war with a quick withdrawal. Made all the more painful when things started to go sour when they found they couldn’t stomach what Rumsfeld could, smashing Iraq’s regime and after that feeling it was their problem. Perfectly legitimate view, just not one I nor many others believe is in our best interests or humane.
So why? Once again we have to be able, without any ability to know how things turn out, go back to that time. Obviously, we humans are not well suited to such a task. However, I will take a stab at it, and I believe it was my view at the time.
The administration wanted to answer its critics from the start, and thus was susceptible to the beliefs of those who felt a “light” footprint was best, without really examining the rationale behind their beliefs. Real differences in views about our goals were either not seen, ignored or papered over. We were liberators, not conquerors. So “smart bombs” and “surgical” operations were emphasized over the nuts and bolts of occupation.
This was politically understandable, if unwise. Their critics were not going to be mollified, anymore than they were by finding out the hanging chads would have swung the election to Bush anyway. Throw in a military that wanted to do anything it could to avoid a long occupation, no more open ended commitments ala Vietnam, and ironically wound up once they found that the administration wasn’t willing to leave if the quick method didn’t work, having ensured the occupation was probably lengthened. These, along with other similar political, social and psychological forces make a poor stew for decision making, we shouldn’t be surprised where they lead.
These temptations are completely understandable, and pretty much to be expected. The same problem plagued Clinton as well. See Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans and many more.
So, stow your pride, it isn’t as hard as you think. It is easier to not take it out in the first place. When it comes to foreign policy we are all pretty damned ignorant, the experts have certainly proved that for centuries. If luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and essentially every President I can think of, can make misjudgments of similar magnitude then we should probably accept it of ourselves as well.
Joshua,
Why not? It is for me.
The question for me (and all people who claim to care one whit for their fellow man) isn’t whether those are reasons, but are they sufficient? We must decide if the occupation is wise, but those are certainly perfectly legitimate reasons to consider such an action. For those very reasons we should consider doing so in Darfur.
It may be an easy choice to reject such an action on prudential or other grounds, but it deserves consideration on just those very grounds. Maybe we should reject all but one in a thousand such opportunities on prudential grounds, but the reason for doing it is quite compelling even if they are outweighed by reasons for not doing so.
Lance, I was speaking from a political, public-policy perspective. We invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan for primarily security reasons, even if humanitarian ones were a part of the package. The gist of Colin Powell’s justification at the UN, recall, was entirely security in nature, and not the horrors of Saddam’s regime and the benefits of a democracy domino in the Middle East. Similarly, it was the Taliban’s support of al-Qaeda, not their dreadful treatment of women, gays, history, and culture, that prompted the invasion in 2001.
Like it or not, humanitarian intervention in this country is a non-starter. Bill Clinton gets a lot of flack for not stopping the genocide in Rwanda. How, one wonders, could he have done it? Stopping mass killings on a far smaller scale in the Balkans was deeply unpopular from the start. Losing a mere 18 men during another intervention in Somalia created such public outcry we withdrew. Much as Samantha Power makes impassioned pleas for us to act as the world’s rescue cops, no one wants their children to die for someone else’s freedom; they’d rather they defend their own.
It’s harsh, but it is an unpleasant reality.
First, those reasons were part of why we went, but that wasn’t my point. You may not have meant it, but you said those were no reason to occupy. They are, and quite good ones. It is just not true that no one wants their children to die for others freedom, though it is a small number who would decide on that basis alone.
Given your response, what you mean is it is a reason that is insufficient to mobilize the populace. Fair enough, but it isn’t what you said.
Still, I disagree with your formulation as well. Security concerns are not sufficient either. If France was felt to be harboring AQ I don’t think we would likely do anything there either. More would be needed, though AQ certainly after 9/11 weighs a lot heavier on the scale. I agree with you about Clinton, in fact I alluded to just that. I have long pointed out when it came to the first Iraq war that it wasn’t about oil, it wasn’t about Kuwait, it wasn’t about human rights, it was about all of those things. That was true the second time as well. No, we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq just because of the oil, it was that they invaded another country, that that country had oil, that they threatened other countries, that those other countries had oil, that he was a brutal monster, that he was likely to plunge the entire Mid east into war, etc. Any one of those factors missing and we likely make another decision in both conflicts. That includes all those pansy assed reasons you claim don’t matter.
If Canada decides they need to go green and shut off the oil pumps, for them and us, that would affect us more than anything that happens in the Mideast, but I doubt we would invade.
If they ended up under the control of Fascists who were brutalizing their population whiloe cutting off our oil I think the calculus changes quite a bit. I predict tanks rolling over the border.
Why?
Because we do care about such things, not just me or neo-conservatives or starry eyed Hollywood liberals.
If the second case were true but we could do business with them and get our oil? Maybe, maybe not, but I would guess that is a far harder call than the first instance where they are just making a stupid choice about their economic and energy policies but are still a relatively free and democratic society.
So no, I think you are wrong on that as well. Those things matter, and they matter a lot, and they did in both Iraq wars. People only buy that by looking at them in isolation, while never asking if all those “real” reasons were sufficient in isolation either.
Then throw in the fact that there is a high correlation between each of the factors and we see another reason why such things matter. Countries with human rights, freedom, democracy, etc., don’t typically harbor large scale terrorist movements. They can have cells, but 75,000 people running through camps over a five year period don’t happen in France, Canada or Britain. Terrorists yes, mass movements such as in Afghanistan? No.
Actually, I don’t think you really dispute this, you just aren’t thinking through the implications as you look for a coherent foreign policy. I’ll help you, none of the various schools work, and none of them will. No set of rules will help. Everything is too contingent for such things and trying to find a template to help you make your decisions will find none of them really fit, and if they can it is because anybody can make anything fit if they just think about it in the way that allows them to make it do so.
Thus realists could oppose the Iraq invasion or support it. The same with neo-cons and liberal internationalists. Afghanistan is no different. There is no coherent foreign policy, and I have felt that way for over twenty years. I suggest the actual results and actions of our leaders and other nations should make that clear, but heck, evidence doesn’t matter to people if it shows their evidence is not as rock solid as they think it is. They still want to believe that if people thought like they do things would be better, when in fact, the evidence is that it really doesn’t make much difference at all.
The likelihood of a good or bad outcome seems to be more due to chance than any particular general approach to foreign policy. Human Rights matter, democracy matters, it all matters. The hard part is deciding how much weight to give them in a particular instance, and there we are just feeling around in a dark box trying to figure out the shape of the things in it and guessing how what we do will affect things. Generally, we will be wrong. The best you can hope for is to be just a bit less wrong. That is actually quite an achievement.
“Losing a mere 18 men during another intervention in Somalia created such public outcry we withdrew.”
And would it not be the job of the President to explain why we were there and why we needed to continue? How much of an outcry was it? All I remember was the retreat. We weren’t there to fight. We weren’t even there to feed people. We were there to feel good about our own d*mn selves.
Oh Lance. You misguided soul.
)
You say that there is no set in scribe recipe for military action, but then you go on to describe a nice little soufflé consisting of a pinch of human rights violations, a teaspoon of economic crisis, and BAM a dash of security for spice. (You like the Emeril reference? I knew you would… you coon-assed mudbug.
It’s interesting that you used Canada as your hypothetical rogue nation. Canada, our largest trading partner and cultural younger brother, would be quite another story as it is located directly on our border. I wonder why you didn’t use a more apt comparison for a far off nation like Iraq like … oh, I don’t know… Paraguay, or Zambia. Your Canada reference is… oh how do you say… “unhelpful”.
I can only expect that you would know damn well why your soufflé would rise.
It isn’t like you imagine, that in order to tip the scale of public opinion, nice little measured grams. That it takes a gram of this, or a gram of that. It’s that large hunk of iron, most recently known as WMD, that makes those scales plunge in one direction.
You say that there is no recipe for military action, but you’re most certainly wrong. We have history to prove how that soup boils. We can easily look at why public opinion did sway in one direction in our most current of conflicts, it was security. It was the “smoking gun of a mushroom cloud” not “oh yeah, btw, there’s that whole Saddam is a bastard and kills his own people thingie.”
Josh is right. Security was the motivation. And practically speaking, it was the sole motivation. Everything else is just gravy.
It’s kinda like making a good gumbo, you need a solid roux.
It is how they say, the proof is in the pudding.
Okay, now I’m starving.
I wonder if I have any of that boudin left over from our crawfish boil? I’ll go check.
But before I go, there is one last thing.
Well if you want to talk about hypothetical and go all academic on me, then fine. Perhaps one day in the future you and I can dust off my old Risk boardgame and play it out. Until then, I’ll deal with reality and what actually happened.
BTW, I would sooo kick your ass at Risk.
Or the evidence of history.
Firstly, you’ll have to detail how the Bush administration has ever answered their critics before I’ll swallow that fishbone. This administration is infamous for doing what it wants regardless of the opinions of others. Infamous!
Yes. Because it is such a burden.
Imagine how hard it is for me to carry such the burden as not being wrong. Heavy is my brilliance
I try sometimes to free myself of the bonds of not being wrong. The weight, my God, the weight.
Ultimately Lance, I enjoyed your lofty flight into the “what ifs” of the past.
I think you make for a good metaphysician. Only I think it lacks one thing…
More cursing.
Fuck you, man!
Yeah! That’s the ticket.
Cheers.
Okay, then use Britain. I chose Canada as a specific instance of being an important trading partner specifically in oil. I think all your reasons strengthen my argument, not hurt it. The point was we wouldn’t invade them if they stopped trading with us, if they stopped being our largest trading partner. We would only do it if the wimpy human rights angle was thrown in.
Once again, you commit an error. Sure that is what swayed it, but it wasn’t sufficient in and of itself. France has WMD and I haven’t heard any serious discussion of invading them. However, if they were murdering their people by the tens of thousands, threatening their neighbors, etc., then I suggest we might look at it quite differently.
Nor am I saying that all countries are equal. Once again, it all matters. That includes cultural affinity, historical attachments and a host of other things. In Iraq’s case the other things might have been gravy, but without them we still would have refused the meal in all likelihood. Those things not only do matter, and a great many people felt so at the time despite your claims to the contrary, but they should matter.
Maybe, but I would win in a game of Diplomacy, a game that requires a lot more skill and ability to read and persuade other people.
Now you are using the same kind of post hoc reasoning that the neo-cons used to justify their actions. Yes, fortune matters. The weather is bad on D-Day and Eisenhower’s gamble fails, and people talk about what actually happened, rather than what could have happened. Large scale amphibious invasions are madness, he used poor judgment in not calling it off, etc.
Uh, I just gave an example and you use the claim they never do it to prove the example isn’t valid. Seems kind of pointless to debate such a circular argument. Still, recent economic policy changes certainly supplies a fertile ground of examples. How about all the changes in Iraq strategy, including the surge? Pick one from the dozens those two areas should provide you that you find convincing since with any particular one you can use the same tactic. “That example doesn’t work because they don’t do that!” Uh, not a game I plan on chasing down the hole.
I’m interjecting here, but not because I have much of a stake in where this discussion has gone—this was about Afghanistan, recall, not Iraq (and that the differences between the two are very important). But I do want to raise issue with Lance’s mentioning of D-Day:
That’s actually true. D-Day was absolutely madness, and it probably should have failed. We tend to look back at history as fatalistic, and see genius in Eisenhower’s gambit, rather than folly. But even though it worked gloriously and ended the war probably years sooner than otherwise, D-Day was insanity. That it worked is no argument to try it again, nor is it an argument to simply throw one’s fate to the winds and hope they’re in your favor that day. There is something to be said for planning, and a reasonable use of modern analytical tools like alternative futures to plan for contingencies.
Because “what could have happened” matters intensely. “What could have happened” is the Iraqis could have welcomed us with flowers and open arms and worked together to build a stable society. And so on. What you intend is not the same thing as what you should reasonably expect. I don’t doubt we all had good intentions about the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan). But that says nothing about whether they were good ideas or not. That is what this post is about, specifically with regards to Afghanistan. Was it a good idea? Or Not? And if so, why aren’t we acting like it?
Too late,
I’ve already kicked your sorry ass out of Africa, Europe, Asia, ect… And now are forced to make your last stand huddled in Australia.
Your diplomacy will not help you.
Prepare to defend yourself.
[...] Rehashing Iraq military strategy April 6, 2008 Posted by ymarsakar in Politics. trackback [nobody]that has argued the U.S. had too many troops in Baghdad after the removal of the Ba’athist regime. [...]
Pogue,
None of those places matter in a game of Diplomacy.
“Because “what could have happened” matters intensely.”
Correct, though I don’t think D-Day was madness. It was risky, and we tend to view things as if what happened is all their is to say, when in fact it isn’t. The range of possible outcomes is usually far wider than we expect, and that is as true after the fact than before. Sorry to hijack the thread Josh, but Iraq wasn’t my point, just an example since Pogue was talking about it.
The point applies to Afghanistan, Iraq, or when we finally do decide it makes more sense to occupy Toronto than some Mid East capital. Really, what would you like to add to our domain, Toronto, Vancouver and Whistler or Damascus and Haifa?