by H. N. Burdett
When American liberals went ballistic over President Obama's decision to prolong rather than abruptly shut down United States presence in West Asia, their opposition to preemptive war blocked common sense.
Whether one agreed with George W. Bush's constantly changing rationale for the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or deemed them as the sheer lunacy of a son obsessed with completing his father's unfinished business, precipitous withdrawal from the region would guarantee the worst possible outcome -- one featuring hitherto unseen carnage and the triumphal return of the Taliban.
Whenever American troops leave that beleaguered region, there is no assurance that the Taliban or a fundamentalist equivalent will not flood back into Afghanistan, or that a despotic heir to Saddam Hussein will not emerge in Iraq.
If the loss of thousands of young men and women Bush and Obama have sent halfway around the world to defend and promote freedom and democracy is to have any meaning, perhaps we owe it to the memory of this lost treasure to exert a final effort to show that they did not die in vain. Those who contend that it is insanity to even consider the risk of compounding a hideous mistake make the valid case that the senseless bloodshed must end, that allowing it to continue is patently unacceptable.
President Obama has sent the nation's most successful warrior, Gen. David H. Petraeus, to replace the disgraced Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as the head of our military operations in Afghanistan. Still, the odds are not in our favor.
The U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is not the issue and it is not scheduled to change. Gen. McChrystal was cashiered for insolence, not incompetence. One might pause to reflect on how some of our nation's great generals -- from Ulysses S. Grant to George S. Patton -- might have fared had the equivalent of a Rolling Stone reporter been present when they and their staffs were letting off steam.
Petraeus doubtless has the political skills McChrystal lacked, though the latter is said to have gotten along swimmingly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which perhaps had more than a little to do with their both feeling a longer U.S. presence in that country is required.
Karzai is reportedly making his own deal with the Taliban, which has the earmarks of his willingness to become their puppet just as he is now that of the Americans. What choice does the duly elected but thoroughly corrupt leader of the land "where empires come to die" really have?
If Obama holds to his July 2011 timetable to begin the U.S. troop withdrawal, Karzai's options are reduced to effecting detente with his enemies under their nefarious terms, or returning to exile.
Meanwhile, Petraeus has said the test of strategic leaders is in their ability to perform three enormous tasks: "get big ideas right," "communicate the big ideas throughout the organization" and "proper execution of big ideas."
With the cooperation of American diplomats, the Obama administration and Karzai, the general may well be able to carry out the first two tasks in his new post. The third -- "proper execution" -- is the unknown quantity.
Petraeus is wise enough to understand that conditions in Afghanistan today are not the same as they were in Iraq when he launched his celebrated game-changing surge. For starters, it is foolhardy to even begin to compare the two neighboring countries. Iraq, prior to the invasion by the U.S. and its allies, was among the more secular states in the region; Afghanistan is one of the more fundamentalist.
The "big idea" Petraeus's leadership must "get right" is to convert Afghanistan into, at very least, something far less than a haven where terrorists may train and establish headquarters, and, at best, a democratic nation. As unlikely as the latter proposition may seem, rank-and-file Afghans, exhausted from 30 years of war, may yet embrace it.
For all of his corruption and questionable leadership ability, Karzai is likely correct when he postulates that it will require 10-15 years to complete the change the United States and presumably much of the rest of the world would like to see happen in Afghanistan.
There is also a growing body of opinion that the current problem with the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the American people hardly notice that we are fighting a perpetual war there. This may be at least partially attributable to the distractions of an imploded economy and nearly one of every 10 employable Americans unable to obtain a job. It may have even more to do with a level of detachment resulting from the war being fought by a standing army of professionals rather than citizen soldiers conscripted to fight it.
The bottom line is that the war in West Asia is not receiving the serious attention, much less adequate support, of the American people.
As it became painfully evident in the McChrystal affair, the military has been known to assume moral superiority during protracted wars. This is unlikely to change much under Petraeus. It would be more surprising if disrespect for civilian authorities were not widespread among U.S. military forces today. The problem may not be so much with the generals, their staffs and the fighting men and women they command, as it is with the situation in which their political leaders have placed them.
Former U.S. Army colonel, Vietnam veteran and Pentagon intellectual, Andrew J. Bacevich, now a history and international relations professor at Boston University, is among the few experts looking beyond Afghanistan. He provides us with the following two options for the future and the dismal consequence for failing to choose one or the other:
"The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly 'at war' with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damge to the army and to American democracy will be severe."
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