The 19 True Things Generals Can't Say About Afghanistan

[Lemur]

In honor of Veterans' Day, Nigel Tufnel Day and Binary Day, I present the 19 true things a general cannot say about our mission in the 'Stan:

1. Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.
2. We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.
3. The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt.
4. Karzai's family is especially corrupt.
5. We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.
6. But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.
7. Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.
8. Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe
9. Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.
10. Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn't end the fighting.
11. The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.
12. Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there's no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.
13. Even non-Taliban Afghans don't much like us.
14. Afghans didn't get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .
15. And they're not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we're paying more and getting less than any other player.
16. Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?
17. The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.
18. We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won't act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.
19. The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.

[rajpoot]

True words.

Question. How did you guys get into this?
Number two, how do you think this will end? Because I don't think anyone can sort out Pakistan and Afghanistan unless they themselves want to be fixed. And I'm not sure they do. Not the ones who actually hold the power anyway.

[drone]

Question. How did you guys get into this?

9/11. But the real screw up occurred March 20th, 2003. Resources and attention diverted, goodwill thrown away, opportunity wasted.

[Major Robert Dump]

I could tell you some stories.

But I don't want to get in trouble. The manner in which we are building and educating and policing the money here goes against just about every domestic policy we have back home, from banking regulations down to basic welfare principles. Then again, Washington in corrupt, so one could simply say the Afghans are learning from the pros

[Ja'chyra]

I've heard some stories, apparently you can make a life sized armchair from £1m in cash

[PanzerJaeger]

9/11. But the real screw up occurred March 20th, 2003. Resources and attention diverted, goodwill thrown away, opportunity wasted.

How would more resources and attention have changed the outcome?

[Centurion1]

dont invade a country that is renowned for its rebellious nature towards foreign invaders....

and when you get there you cannot pussyfoot about.

[drone]

How would more resources and attention have changed the outcome?

Afghanistan took second rate status once Iraqi Freedom started, our motives and commitment in-country became questioned. There are no guarantees we would have ever succeeded, but the invasion of Iraq doomed our chances in Afghanistan.

[PanzerJaeger]

Yes, I think we've all heard the 'we took our eye off the ball' meme ad nauseam at this point, but is there any solid evidence to support the notion that it made any difference? Usually when we say something 'doomed' something else, there is a solid historical line from A to B. The idea seems to make sense if you don't really think about it, but I've always had a hard time connecting the dots on this one.

It seems to me that the factors working against the coalition (mainly internal and regional politics) would persist regardless of what happened in Iraq. Would a suitable Pashtun leader have emerged if we didn't intervene in Iraq? Would Pakistan have suddenly decided to be an honest broker?

I'm just not sure that pouring more resources into the country in 2003 would have altered the situation in any meaningful way, especially when both the Soviet experience and our contemporary situation are examined. As for good will, how much did the West really garner in 'Operation Collateral Damage', err, I mean the initial 2001 air campaign? And how much effect did the Iraqi invasion really have on the opinion of your average Afghani? Did he suddenly shift from feeling liberated to oppressed because of what was happening in Baghdad?

It just seems like a simple excuse to explain away a complex, and ultimately predestined, failure.

[CBR]

9/11. But the real screw up occurred March 20th, 2003. Resources and attention diverted, goodwill thrown away, opportunity wasted.

Yes and to illustrate it:

[CountArach]

Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.

The entire problem with the Drug War in a nutshell.

[lars573]

Well.. I've never been part of a NATO or UN operation, but I have been part of the Coalition in Iraq. I very much enjoyed working with the various British, Australian, Polish, and Japanese units that I encountered. They all did their part as far as I saw, and because of that I would be loathe to say that they are just "going through the motions" in Afghanistan. However, I could be wrong. The division of forces in Afghanistan is very different than in Iraq. Not only that, but the amount of troops in Afhganistan has fluctuated wildly over the course of the war. Far more so than in Iraq.

That's a not so subtle jab at Germany and Italy. They want the US bases, and were arm twisted into sending combat troops to Afghanistan. And the German forces was told not to risk combat casualties (at least that's the reputation they earned). The mission be VERY unpopular with the German public. And to a lesser extent Canada and the Netherlands. Who had large combat missions but after a decade the political will to dried up, and the combat mission was ended.

[Vladimir]

Dude. Relax. There's no point getting stressed about what you can't change. It just bites you in the end.