Domino Theory Revived

Why the Afghanistan "War" is a Bad Idea

George Bush was roundly criticised for his unilateral declaration of a War on Terror. Cooler, less politically driven heads argued that the word "war" needs to be reserved for a special category of human activity: historically the state of war has meant that normally free peoples have accepted temporarily such erosion of their liberties as conscription, mandatory labour, suspension of habeas corpus, execution of enemy spies, and long periods of incarceration without trial.

It was feared that classifying the resistance of terrorism as a literal war would lead to all kinds of complications. Now we are not sure what else one would call it. People conspiring from halfway around the world to fly planes into buildings and kill thousands of innocent civilians does not fit into any category neatly and easily.

But at least Bush's war in Afghanistan had focus and clear direction--initially: destroy Al Qaeda's base and kill its leadership. But things got lost along the way. Now things have really got messy.

Obama and his coterie of advisers (both inside and outside the Pentagon) have fallen back on their natural political instincts. They do not want to wage wars. They want to build nations. In this matter they are clearly as simplistic and arrogant as the Neocons they despise. Obama and his coterie justify their increased military activity in Afghanistan as conducting the fight against terror by other means. When asked why, it turns out that their long term objective remains the same as the previous administration's. Afghanistan is seen as a refuge for international terrorists. If the US can remove its attractiveness as a refuge, it will help prevent terrorist activities around the world.

To us, this sounds eerily like the despised Domino Theory of Vietnam War vintage. The free world is facing a global threat (then communism, now terrorism). A localised "front" of the threat has been identified (then Vietnam, now Afghanistan). If the threat is not defeated on this localised front, the whole world will eventually succumb. Remember that this theory was used to justify the rapid build up of US troops, leading to a military disaster and a terrible loss of life. Oh, and by the way, the Domino Theory was proven to be demonstrably false. The US lost the Vietnam War; Vietnam became united and communist--yet the Communist Internationale fell apart.

Now the US is doing it again. Once again it is being led by a Democratic president (then Kennedy, now Obama). This is more than just co-incidental. Democratic presidents tend to have an overconfident view of their ability to change things by virtue of throwing government extorted, taxpayers' money at them. The US is going to defeat terrorism in Afghanistan by comprehensively changing its society. This thinking parallels exactly how the left approaches all other social problems.

Fighting crime requires spending billions to remove the ostensible causes of crime (poverty, low education, unemployment). Reducing poverty requires billions to be spent removing the ostensible causes of poverty (poor education, bad housing, dirty streets), and so forth. The same paradigm is being applied to Afghanistan: fighting terrorism in that country, it has been decided, will require the US to spend billions making the majority of Afghanis happy and content so they won't grow opium poppies and they won't support terrorists any more. Obama and his coterie want to create the Great Society in Afghanistan. They want to make Afghanistan the fifty-first state of the Union in everything but name.

Here's the rub. The realists--not the naive dreamers--are now starting to be heard. It will take at least forty years of effort, says the head of the military in the UK. It will cost more than the war in Iraq warns military experts. (The US has already spent over 220bn in the Afghanistan War). The area is desperately primitive. If they are going to "nation build" the costs will escalate beyond belief.

Dutch Army Brig. Gen. Tom Middendorp, commander of the coalition task force in Afghanistan's southern Uruzgan province, described the region as virtually prehistoric. "It's the poorest province of one of the poorest countries in the world. And if you walk through that province, it's like walking through the Old Testament," Middendorp told reporters recently. "There is enormous illiteracy in the province. More than 90 percent cannot write or read. So it's very basic, what you do there. And they have had 30 years of conflict."

These people are radicalised and battle hardened.

As we have said, now that the US has moved from focusing upon military operations to nation building, the costs are going to rise exponentially. And success allowing withdrawal is undefined--if not undefinable.

The government has issued billions of dollars in contracts in recent years, underscoring the vast extent of work that U.S. officials are commissioning. Among other purposes, contractors have been sought this summer to build a 25 million provincial Afghan National Police headquarters; maintain anti-personnel mine systems; design and build multimillion-dollar sections of roads; deliver by sea and air billions of dollars worth of military bulk cargo; and supervise a drug-eradication program.

One solicitation, issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, is aimed at finding a contractor to bring together Afghan economic, social, legal and political groups to help build the country's infrastructure. The contractor would work with Afghan government officials as well as representatives from private and nongovernmental organizations to establish a way to allocate resources for new projects.

"We are looking at two decades of supplying a few billion a year to Afghanistan," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and military expert at the Brookings Institution, adding: "It's a reasonable guess that for 20 years, we essentially will have to fund half the Afghan budget." He described the price as reasonable, given that it may cost the United States $100 billion this year to continue fighting.
"We are creating a [long-term military aid] situation similar to the ones we have with Israel, Egypt and Jordan," he said.

Good luck with that. And yes, there will be a huge troop build-ups. Already the US commander, McChrystal has called for an increase in US troop numbers. The enemy is better equipped, smarter, and more aggressive then before. The Taliban now have the upper hand, says McChrystal. And the strategy has changed from fighting and killing Taliban to protecting the population.

The coming redeployments are the clearest manifestation to date of Gen. McChrystal's strategy for Afghanistan, which puts a premium on safeguarding the Afghan population rather than hunting down militants.

The Daily Telegraph argues that Obama will find it hard to turn down requests for more and more troops.

Having already “surged” an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan bringing US forces up to a peak of 68,000, Mr Obama could be forgiven for responding with expletives. At a time when the US president is under acute pressure to rein in a huge US fiscal deficit and when the Pentagon is severely overstretched, another hefty troop request would be hard to satisfy. Yet it would be even harder to turn down. Having sacked David McKiernan, the previous military commander in Afghanistan, and replaced him with David McChrystal, Mr Obama is beholden to the thinking on the ground. Gen McChrystal, an expert in the troop-intensive ways of fighting counter-insurgencies, is readying a much-awaited assessment report, which is expected to include a request for at least another 10,000 troops. In fact, there are credible rumours that Gen McChrystal could even be planning to ask for as many as 20,000 to 30,000 more. Any such request would be likely to get the backing of David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, which oversees Afghanistan, and author of the counter-insurgency troop surge in Iraq.

The more "things" the US build in the country, the more targets the Taliban will have to blow up, requiring a greater and greater numbers of troops. Ah, but the naive wishful thinkers say, we will train Afghani's to guard them. Yes, and you will pay them how? Don't bother answering the question. It is rhetorical. We know who will pay them. But once the US money dries up--as it inevitably will--the army and the police will disintegrate.

We confidently predict that the US army training schools will become far more effective than madrassa in equipping and training the Taliban. It will also become less and less clear by the day as to why the US is building a nation on the other side of the world. The doubts will be underscored by each returning body bag.