A Few Thoughts on Afghanistan

It appears that we are at a crossroads of sorts in Afghanistan: do we commit more troops as the Obama-appointed commanding General McCrystal requests, or do we fold our tent and "advance to the rear" as we used to say in the Marines.

Once again, we are suffering from an excess of public opinion based upon a deficit of information. The information the public has about this war comes overwhelmingly thru the media who, as I have said many times, is wholly unequipped to report it. I, for one, would have a lot more faith in the information coming from Afghanistan/Iraq if it were coming from someone with even the slightest military background or knowledge; but, as far as I know, there is still not a single reporter over there who has seen the inside of a military uniform. I get into the reasons for this elsewhere on this Blog, but why does it matter?

Well, context, for one. I won't reiterate the list of problems caused by reporters reporting on subjects with which they are wholly unacquainted, or express once again my amazement that the entire US media could not find one single, solitary reporter with any military knowledge to report on what is (hello?) largely a military matter, when they seem to be able to find doctors to report on Swine Flu, money guys to report on the credit crisis, show-biz types to report on the crucial events going on in Tinseltown, exploding breast implants, etc. On the verge of violating my pledge not to reiterate it, I'll stop now.

But context: over this past weekend there were a couple of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of, I believe, 14 Americans. This was reported as "the worst one-day casualty rate in over 4 years". In the narrow sense, I don't doubt that. On last night's news there were the predictable interviews conducted by militarily vacuous reporters. One I happened to see was with John Kerry, who was asked if Americans would continue to support the war with "these kinds of casualties" (or something like that). You'd have thought this was Tarawa. The reason, of course, that the media grades this war "on the curve" is that they have absolutely no perspective on how these casualties compare to prior wars. Can we just take a couple of steps back here?

The casualty rate in Afghanistan/Iraq is among the lowest in US history, and certainly the lowest for length and number of troops involved. While every war is different and the Taliban aren't exactly dug in on Monte (Al Akbar) Cassino or Sugarloaf, the casualties in this war have been very low by any historical standard, especially if one amortizes them over the length of it. That would probably be somewhat unfair, since this is a relatively low intensity conflict, probably most analogous to Viet Nam. OK fine: American deaths in Viet Nam were just shy of 60,000. Are we up to 5000 yet in this war, which has been going on longer than Viet Nam, and which is being fought by a volunteer military? If we get to the stage where the public is unwilling to accept casualties among those who volunteered to go in defense of the country, we won't have one.

And can we revisit for just a moment how we became involved in Afghanistan/Iraq (with overwhelming bi-partisan support)? Have that many Americans forgotten 9/11/01? Remember those planes? Remember who planned those attacks and where they were based? Right -- Al Qaeda, sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan. I know, I know -- it was all planned and carried out by Bush -- this is a problem with mass communications today: the internet gives voice to nutcases whose rants would not previously have gotten past the padding in their cells, and those not generally paying attention are easily swayed.

So we went in for the right reasons: to clean out Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and destroy Afghanistan as a viable base from which to plan future attacks. From that point of view, it seems to have worked. If there have been any other attacks, please let me know cuz I missed them.

Of course the long-term solution is to get the Afghan Army and economy up to speed, to where such activities are no longer so easy or attractive. Is there anyone out there who doesn't think that's been going on? OK, Nancy Pelosi probably doesn't, but the things Nancy Pelosi doesn't understand could fill a book. There are countless government-sponsored and private efforts throughout the country aimed at providing the younger generation an educational alternative to IED101. And countless schools set up to educate Afghan women for the first time, construction of infrastructure that we take for granted or are unaware of because the media simply doesn't report it, etc, etc.

I am as regretful as anyone over every single American death, but such efforts are the only viable way I can see to turn that country around. It will all be for naught if the US military closes shop and the country reverts to tribal warfare and return of Taliban rule. As I said, this war is most similar to Viet Nam among those the US has fought since its inception, and another similarity is that the media, through inept (or downright hostile) reporting, has largely turned the country against it. During the recent Presidential election, was it not the Obama supporters who were attacking Bush for not having paid enough attention to Afghanistan? Ah, but now that their Boy is in the White House and they're face-to-face with the reality of what commitment to Afghanistan means (more troops), those same air-heads are now calling for US withdrawal from it!

McCrystal is not the first general in history to request more troops. The most famous US example was George B McClellan who, once he had whipped the Army of the Potomac into shape following 2nd Bull Run, could not bring himself to use it, and was constantly badgering Lincoln for more troops. Lincoln finally fired him for inaction and eventually settled upon U S Grant, who was the opposite of McClellan in nearly every respect. Every American officer studies this as an example of the limits of Executive patience.

But the desire for more troops is only natural: if the impending battle/operation ends unsuccessfully, it is not the President or Congress who is going receive primary blame -- it's the commanding general on the spot. Ask Lucas at Anzio, Fredendall at Kasserine Pass, Burnside at Fredericksburg, or even Villeneuve at Trafalgar. It is the rare case where fewer troops are better than more and, at the very least, in the event of defeat, the general can point to his pre-battle request for reinforcements. The exception, of course, is the US Marines, with too many examples of battles won with obsolete equipment and against overwhelming odds to cite here, the best known being General Vandegrift and the boys at Guadalcanal. I was a lousy Marine, but am proud to have been one, nonetheless.

In any case, is not the Commanding General in the field best equipped to estimate his need for troops? The Commanding General that the current Commander in Chief Himself appointed? Hello? So it seems to me that this must be a choice between sending 40K more troops as McCrystal has requested, or pulling out. Surely even Obama wouldn't do anything as dumb as leaving an inadequate force there to serve as nothing so much as a target for RPG's and AK-47's.

One obvious problem we have is that Obama was elected by promising the clueless Left what He had to to get their votes. Now that many of those promises are proving unworkable (gee, what a surprise), those same voters are demonstrating continued cluelessness in not understanding why He hasn't kept them and why the nirvana Obama promised them has not materialized. He cannot afford to lose their support, and so is caught between alienating them further, and doing what is clearly in the interest of the country.

What message is Obama's current dithering sending to the enemy, if not that the US is nearing the end of it's willingness to continue, and they must hold out just a little longer for victory before moving back into the cave to plan new attacks? Unlike some other historians, I like FDR's declaration of "unconditional surrender" terms to the Axis at Casablanca, and his sticking with it, literally to the death.

I'm afraid we are still paying the price for having left Viet Nam without achieving a clear victory. Our enemies (foreign and domestic) know that, given enough perseverance, they can outlast the American public's will to continue; our friends always have that question in the back of their minds -- "should I ally with the US, and what happens when the US pulls out and I am left here with the enemy"; and those who are simply too clueless to understand that there is a price for freedom know that if they put up enough of a ruckus, they can defeat the interests of their own country. I'm sure Jane Fonda is on her way to a cave right now. Once she's arrived, can we just bulldoze the entrance?

Styrofoam Columns Set in Sand

or Why Obama is a One-Term President



Barack Obama was elected largely in reaction to the perceived inadequacies of George W Bush; in other words, He speaks well and gives people the Pablum that goes down easily: world peace, the rosy assumption that the rest of the world "is just like us", be nice to our enemies and they'll be nice in return (such as closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, unilateral disarmament, and disarming the Patriot Act), big government programs so no one has to worry about anything, government management of the country via appointed "Czars", curbing the perceived excesses of corporate management, an approach to appointments where affirmative action trumps ability -- in short, all things that most 6th graders would reflexively agree were good ideas. This is why 6th graders don't vote, but it pretty well describes the Obama voter -- the wide-eyed innocent who can't or hasn't thought through the long-term consequences of what Obama is pushing, with little understanding of how the world works or has worked in the past, or the arrogance to think that He can make it work for the first time in human history.

Obama cannot be re-elected without these people. When He finds (as He is now finding) that the fine-sounding pap He fed them to get elected runs afoul of the real world, and He cannot avoid going back on His campaign promises, these simple creatures will feel betrayed and will turn on Him, as many are now doing. I mean, didn't He say we'd be out of Iraq within some ridiculously short period of time only someone unfamiliar with reality would buy? And damn! Closing the Guantanamo prison has consequences that appear to have been too arcane for the Obama voter. And is it true that His government health insurance scheme won't go into effect until He has left office, thus letting Him lay at the door of His successor the inevitable chaos that will ensue?



As a side note, I love the use of Medicare as an example of how government health insurance has worked. Medicare is the single biggest reason health care costs are so high now. Do we punch another hole in the bottom of the boat to let out the water coming in thru the first one?


Those who had their eyes open during the campaign, who realized He was simply promising what he had to to obtain the votes of those who had no idea what was going on (and probably shouldn't be allowed to vote), will never vote for Him. As the next election draws nearer, Obama will be torn between doing what is clearly the right thing for the country, and saying and doing what will, once again, obtain the votes of those who still don't get it. If He chooses the latter, the disasterous consequences will, by then, be all too apparent. And for his starry -eyed worshippers, enough of those will have become alienated by His unfulfilled promises that he will lose.



There is precedent for this throughout US history: Thomas Jefferson was elected largely because John Adams was perceived as too tough on foreign policy, having almost brought the country to war with France in 1798. As Secretary of State under Adams, Jefferson has opposed any build-up of the navy as provocative and wasteful. In those days, the size of a nation's navy was indicative of it's foreign policy. Just so any Obama voters reading this will understand, building up the Air Force was not really an option at this point. So when the Tripolitan Pirates began attacking US merchant shipping in the Mediterranean (as you recall, the US had voluntarily given up the protection of the Royal Navy), and the pirates wouldn't be nice to us just because we were nice to them, the only effective response was naval (Commodore Bainbridge, Presley O'Bannon, and Stephen Decatur were sent "To the Shores of Tripoli" -- isn't there a song in there somewhere?). Little remembered is that the terms of release of the American seamen still required the payment of $60,000 each to the Dey of Algiers.



The Jefferson Administration had an isolationist undertone to it, and was certainly domestically focused (Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, etc). The weakness of the Jeffersonian Navy encouraged the impressment of American sailors by the navies of England and France during the first decade of the 19th Century, which led directly to the election of James Madison and American involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, known here as the War of 1812. In Jefferson's defense, the idea at the time was that if England declared war, the US could actually build a navy before the Royal one arrived. To disprove that, see White House burning at right.



But the underlying point is that the foreign policy weakness of the Jefferson navy led directly to US involvement in the War of 1812.



There are other examples of the downside of a weak President, or at least one who, to get elected, caters to the naivete of those with little understanding of how the world works. Remember Jimmy Carter? A very smart guy, but certainly the weakest US President in the 20th Century. The latter half of the 19th Century had some weak Presidents too, but small government was the norm then and the effects were masked.



Carter's approach to foreign policy was based upon the false premise that our enemies operated on the same paradigm that we do, and would honor the agreements we made with them. Also assumed was that if we are just nice to them, they will be nice to us -- hold hands in a circle, pass a joint around, sing a few stanzas of Kumbaya, and everything will be fine. Go ahead and give them what they want, because they've agreed to do what we asked. This is seen as nothing but weakness and stupidity by our enemies who, once they have what they want on this round, have no intention of honoring their end of the agreement, and this perceived weakness got us the Iran Hostage Crisis and Russian invasion of Afghanistan.



Clinton had some Carter in him, as demonstrated by the stupid "Framework Agreement" with North Korea and the equally dumb Kyoto Protocol, which was made even dumber by the implicit and, to be kind, highly dubious assumption that man is causing global warming (see Global Warming Thru the Ages on this Blog).



So Obama is a one term President because being a good speaker only gets you to first base. It's kind of like a Ponzi Scheme, so much in the news lately: it's all great in the beginning, but eventually the cumulative weight of the deceit upon which it is built, causes the whole thing to come crashing down.