RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

As sometimes happens, Dan Riehl inspired the following:

I concur with Dan’s analysis and prognosis.

The debate is precisely one of policy, not whether what started out as OEF should be supported since it became this administration’s project.  I suggest the policy in question is military policy, which, as always, is diplomatic policy extended to national security intentions.  What’s the national security threat in AFPAK?  AQ is re-established in the Horn of Africa — and, some would say, this administration.  Taliban (Arabic for “students”)?

Absent willingness to annihilate the entire population of a large topography — no easy task in itself — the only way to conduct a successful military campaign off home soil is to be doing something the population there fundamentally is grateful you are doing.  Usually this means, getting some hag (tyrant) off their back and not replacing it with a different one.

In order for a population to feel some gratitude for what the outsider is doing, the population has to feel some unity within itself.  It has to self-identify in some substantial way as a single reality, a “people,” and finally, a “nation.”

Successful military operations, especially COIN (counter-insurgency) operations, premise on a substantial spirit of nationalism by the people amongst whom the operations occur.

Iraq could succeed because the people self-identify as Iraqis.  They have a substantial spirit of nationalism which transcends party and denomination, and long have had.

Afghanistan and adjacent “areas,” nominally of Pakistan, have no substantial spirit of nationalism, never have had.  There it is all warlords — Karzai one of them — and families.  Among the Pashtuns, one family in particular has controlled the smuggling and other activities of their area for centuries.  The Taliban are this family and its tributaries.

There is no basis for COIN operations (nation-building) in Afghanistan, unlike Iraq.  No nationalist spirit.  COIN, which is the ostensible policy of this administration in AFPAK, cannot succeed in that topography.  The Soviet demonstrated the difficulty of annihilation operations.

What’s left?  CT (counter-terrorism) operations, which is about the only kinetic activity going on in AFPAK now.  This fact gives rise to Yon’s description of AFPAK as a hunting lodge shooting for bad guys.  That’s fun, of course, but not producing a long-term security asset, which is the sole legitimate reason for committing armed forces to combat.

CT is not able to secure foreign or even domestic soil (if the domestic soil has enough people on it).  This lesson was learned the hard way in Iraq until the switch to COIN and a good area commander (Petraeus) reshaped (the “surge”) the operation to foster Iraqis’ substantial, pre-existing nationalism (itself a legacy of deep history, the British Army and Saddam Hussein).

AFPAK has no nationalist base.  COIN is an impossibility there.  So CT can be done (the quick success of OEF proved that) but it cannot bring forth a stable, friendly or friendly-enough situation.  There is no situation to be friendly from.  It’s all tribes/families and warlords, no cohesion.  Well, almost.  There is one sliver of possibility CT and COIN together could bring about a friendly-enough situation — friendly-enough to the USA, Europe and beyond.

That possibility arises from the fact that a nation rises up around an Army it considers its own.  No Army, no nation.  Have an Army a people love, have a nation.

(The totalitarians in WH and Congress either haven’t figured that out yet, or, more likely, they want US Armed Forces as personal Praetorian Guard to stand between them and the opprobrium they know the array of their wants arouses amongst their subjects — a risky want, that.)

There are efforts underway to stand up the Afghan Army, which like the Iraqi Army, still shows British Army influence, a plus.  The Afghan Army is far, far less than the Iraqi Army was and is — for two reasons: lack of widespread nationalist spirit and sodomy, at which Afghans (I use the term ethnically, not politically) may be deemed the world champions.

Efforts by US Army personnel to train up the Afghan Army have been underway for years.  If that effort succeeds and if Afghanis rally to the Afghan Army by self-identifying with it as theirs, AFPAK could be a friendly or friendly-enough topography.  Big “ifs”. GEN Petraeus can be relied upon to intensify effort to move those “ifs” to “ises”.  Will he encounter the reality that that is not really what the occupier of the WH wants him to do, even though he is told it is?  Hasn’t he taken that into account by agreeing to accept demotion?  Don’t you love rhetorical questions?

The effort to stand up the Afghan Army constitutes the largest nation-building operation in memory, starting as it has from near zero.  The time-line for it must be long, say, “Decades.”  Its chances of success slim.

Then there are the diplomatic policy questions whether all of that is desirable, possible of success, ours to do and worth the cost.  And finally, there is the political question of what does this administration really intend by having US and NATO forces in AFPAK.

Let’s assume for the moment at least that its stated intentions in re AFPAK are like its stated intentions in every other area of its activities: namely, lies.

What if its motive is to expose US Armed Forces and their families to harm, to include physical, morale, reputation and legal harm?  What if its intent is to embarrass Officers, conflict Enlisted and show its favored “Muslim world” that US Armed Forces can be defeated, and should be?

What if this administration’s desire is to use US Armed Forces, while they are succumbing to the aforementioned intentions, to kill its competitors for world domination?  E.G.: it’s OK to make sweet with Muslims but not if they want to supplant me and my administration.  Then, we kill ’em.

In other words, what if this administration’s policy is personal and not American?  What if the security it wants is its own, not this nation’s?

It is something to consider.  It seems that every time someone believes what this administration says it intends or says it does they get bit where it hurts.  Maybe that hurt, and others like it, are what this administration and its legislature sincerely want.

If so, and even if not so, questioning and even demurring the need or wisdom of extended US Armed Forces operations in AFPAK as well as questioning and even suspecting the motives of this administration’s activities with respect to AFPAK are eminently desirable, and Chairman Steele has every reason to do that.  He’s doing his job.

Dan rightly concludes that it’s the “Left” (I prefer “totalitarians”) who will try to halt extended operations in AFPAK by US Armed Forces.  They got more than they bargained for with this one they put in the WH.

US Armed Forces themselves are not happy being in AFPAK because they know the score there, the lack of nationalism, and what that portends.  They were happy in Iraq because they knew nationalism was there to build on and they knew that their C-in-C loved them, did not want to hurt them.

Finally, while I’m likely more than one decade older than Dan, I too side with the young ones, the let it all happen/don’t get flustered by anything folks.  I like what they are doing.  I like that they can appreciate genuinely educated people, such as Hansen, Krauthammer and Bertonneau.  I do not like, and never have, what the tony, elitist, entitlement, stuck-up, old-before-their-time, grunge-in-khaki-and-blazer-with-tassle-loafers Republican/Conservative establishment pols and acolytes have done all my life, and from long before.

So, you go kids!

Update 1: Patrick Buchanan: Is Trumpism The New Nationalism?

Update 2: Traitor To His Class [:-)]  Page 2

Nothing is more terrifying to the elite than Trump’s embrace of a tangible American nationalism.

Update 3: Robert Gast: Lost Cause: A Special Forces Soldier’s Case For Leaving Afghanistan

doc_steve
There is an actual (Inter)National Security argument for staying in the Middle East, but to articulate it is impossible in today’s (or even yesterday’s) political climate. Like all polygamous societies, the Arabs need to kill a certain fraction of their sons every year, or end up with wild bands of rootless young men raping and pillaging at home. Islam explicitly turned this requirement outward – to spreading Islam though conquest, murder, rape and slavery of others, not your own tribe(s). Thus, Islamic Arabs literally cannot be peaceful for too long, or the wifeless men go amok… and Islam explicitly tells these angry young men how to solve their problem – jihad.
If (and this is a big if) you accept the premise that some fraction of Arab men must die and/or expand by conquest, and that historically the primary front for expansion is Europe (for the Arabs), then the only question is whether to indulge them here, or there. Our stance in the Middle East under Bush, Obama, and to some extent even Trump, is that Arab culture requires conflict, and we would rather be blowing things up over there than over here.

There is, of course, also the question as to why the US is still trying to solve feckless Europe’s problems; the argument there being that Europe has proven incapable of managing their own affairs, and the US was twice drawn into a World War to sort them out. Like the “fight them here or there” argument, this is the “fight them now, while they are weaker, or later when they are stronger” argument; i.e. if the French had done more than “oui, oui” at Hitler at the beginning of WW II, would there have been a WW II?

This is not, by the way, meant to necessarily argue that that we should stay in the Middle East; I’m merely pointing out that no one really stupid gets to pulling the levers in DC; whether right or wrong, there is always a reason for these kinds of policies; and if you want to argue against them you first need to drag them into the light of day…

David R. Graham to doc_steve
Very insightful statement in several directions. Thank you! Sound 50K feet high view of the field. I am folding these facets into my own contemplations of the matter.

There is another course of action: colonize Afghanistan. Finding wide support for that course of action would be difficult. But it is as rational a course of action as the one Gast commends.

And strong pluses of several kinds can be adduced for colonizing Afghanistan, starting with the fact that a foundation for doing that is in place.

The inner question is not get out or stay but rather: what strategic interest(s) has USA in Afghanistan at all?

Falling Up
A friend recently suggested we were maintaining Afghanistan as a country sized live-fire training base and weapons test range. I don’t have a better answer beyond a sense that the some people are getting very rich from us being there. I’d like to see a Venn diagram of them and #NeverTrumpers.

David R. Graham to Falling Up
Very close to the truth. The live-fire training aspect is an excuse for being there, not a reason. Some CDRs there have summoned the excuse to placate Soldiers’ displeasure with having no good military reason for being there if they are not allowed to just win the war, which they are not allowed to do. Strategic and tactical planning as well as the more well-known ROEs prevent US Soldiers from winning the war there. They easily could do if ordered to do it.

GO career promotions, CIA/SEALs/NGO analyst and operator promotions and just plain cussedness, as well as contractor income are the actual reasons for keeping US forces in Afghanistan post-success of the punitive expedition that completed in 2002, as Gast points out. Remember, school and contractor boards are stuffed with retired GOs and ADMs, and their staffs include clouds of retired COLs.

And yes, probably most of those worthies are NeverTrumpers because Trump wants to close the gas tanks inflating their name, fame, and retirement accounts. Think Barry McCaffrey and a murmuration of others.

CreativeDude✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ Terran
“High-ranking members of two administrations and senior military commanders were aware of a clear lack of purpose in Afghanistan, yet lied to the American people to justify the continuing conflict.”

A clear and concise statement that explains how many of us feel about both the republicans and the democrats in congress. A sizable percentage of republicans would instantly sell their voters down the river if democrats would guarantee them a permanent seat at the table where tax dollars are carved up.

David R. Graham to CreativeDude✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ Terran • 36 minutes ago
Don’t forget the GOs and ADMs sitting on the boards of defense contractors and their big law co-conspirators.

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA