Obama’s solution for the Afghanistan-Pakistan nightmare (part one) — VOICES for REASON

In a speech announcing his “comprehensive, new strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama warned that “The situation is increasingly perilous. It has been more than seven years since the Taliban was removed from power, yet war rages on, and insurgents control parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attacks against our troops, our NATO allies, and the Afghan government have risen steadily. Most painfully, 2008 was the deadliest year of the war for American forces.” He may well have been understating the magnitude of the problem, particularly in Pakistan (consider this recent brazen attack). And while both liberals and some conservatives have commended Obama’s strategy (with minor qualifications), I regard it as fundamentally misconceived.

The strategy lays out what Team Obama claims are necessary steps to deal with the resurgent Islamists on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. That action plan is based on certain assumptions about what went wrong. But that diagnosis, in my view, is false.

Let’s start with one of the core claims in Obama’s speech (I’ll address another in a follow up post).

What went wrong in the Afghanistan war? A major factor, according to Obama and many others, was the failure to send enough resources — primarily troops and financial aid. Moving forward, on this premise, “America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan…”; and so Obama’s sending 21,000 American soldiers into Afghanistan, and has promised boatloads of aid.

But this misses the underlying problem.

I’ve argued on other occasions that Washington’s war failed because it was hamstrung by self-effacing battle plans. Our military was ordered to pursue Taliban fighters, for example, only if it simultaneously showed “compassion” to the Afghans. The U.S. military dropped bombs — but instead of ruthlessly pounding key targets, it was ordered gingerly to avoid hitting holy shrines and mosques (known to be Taliban hideouts) and to shower the country with food packages. The U.S. deployed ground forces — but instead of focusing exclusively on capturing or killing the enemy, they were also diverted to “reconstruction” projects for the sake of the Afghan population. And this pattern continues today and is likely to intensify. The New York Times reported that “vast numbers of public, religious and historic sites make up a computer database of no-strike zones” while Air Force lawyers vet all air strikes.

The war put concern for the welfare of Afghans ahead of the necessary goal of defeating the enemy. Washington did not aim at smashing the Islamists, so instead they were scattered and left free to re-arm and fight another day. Sending 21,000-plus U.S. troops into Afghanistan will be of limited help — unless they are given new battle plans that entail the total defeat of the Islamists. But that goal is not on the agenda, as I’ll explain in my next post.