I've been pondering how I feel about Obama's decision regarding the next step in Afghanistan and trying to assess what it means, both there and here. Inevitably, the touchstone for viewing any military commitment of this kind to an American of my age is the Vietnam War. Glib analogies to Vietnam are never far from anyone's lip, it seems, be they hawk, dove, or somewhere in-between, with respect to both Afghanistan and Iraq. I think in both cases such analogies have limited utility, although there are aspects of the Afghanistan fight where they seem uncomfortably close.
The first and, to me, most obvious distinction is that Barack Obama's presidency will not be sunk by Afghanistan the way that Lyndon Johnson's was by Vietnam. In large part this is because of the absence of the draft and the fact that very few Americans will actually bear the burden of carrying the fight. Troop levels in Vietnam peaked at nearly 540,000, roughly four to five times the maximum level of troops in Afghanistan will be. Moreover, the way that troop rotations worked then versus now radically narrows the scope of the exposure to the Afghan War -- over the course of the Vietnam War, some 2.1 million Americans saw action in the war zone. To date in Afghanistan, approximately 150,000 Americans have served -- of course, as a percentage, many more of them have seen multiple tours of duty than did during Vietnam. [This does not factor in the huge numbers of professional soldiers of fortune serving there.] In other words, 14 times as many Americans served in Vietnam as have served in Afghanistan and did so at a time when the U.S. had about 100 million fewer people. And because of the draft, the threat of having to serve hung over the heads of tens of millions during the war's seemingly endless course.
The narrowness of the group from which troops will be drawn, the absence of a draft, the discomfort that many Americans feel post-Vietnam with protesting a war, and the fact that many people initially supported the war as a proper response to the September 11 attacks, means that public demonstrations against the war in Afghanistan will likely remain small and receive relatively little attention. Thus, Obama, unlike Johnson, has essentially no fear that public disapproval will result in social turmoil that will drive him from office a la LBJ.
Moreover, I do not think Obama will let the Afghanistan War control and obsess him in the way that Vietnam did Johnson. This has something to do with their differing temperaments -- Obama is cool and self assured in a way that Johnson could only envy -- but also has much to do with their formative political experiences. Johnson came into the Senate and attained real power right at the time when Truman was facing the double blow of having "lost China" and then having been stalemated shortly thereafter in the Korean War. Truman was subject to vicious right wing attack on both of these issues, with public dissatisfaction with Korea ultimately causing him not to seek reelection in 1952. (The parallels with Johnson are a little eerie -- Vice President assumes office upon death of more charismatic predecessor, each shows himself to be more than up to the task of the job, but then has his presidency crushed by involvement in an Asian land war.) Johnson drew the wrong conclusion from Truman's Korea experience and found himself continually doubling down in a losing effort.
The formative political event for people of Obama's age (like me) was, in many respects, the debacle of Vietnam. Even though we were only children, the war in southeast Asia was so ubiquitous in our living rooms and lasted so long that it simply permeated the consciousness of even young children. From about the time I was four until I was thirteen, the daily reports from the battlefield and its body counts were a part of every television newscast you would hear. Indeed, when American involvement there ended, the absence of those reports was a very strange thing for teenagers of the era. It had literally been the background drone of our young lives. This is to say nothing of the period of intense opposition to the war, which lasted a good many years as well and tore the country apart in ways that are hard to adequately convey. The end result, though, is that someone of Obama's age and sensibility cannot help but have drawn the conclusion that a president cannot and should not continue to raise the stakes in such a war and try to do so indefinitely.
Where I do see some unpleasantly common ground is in the nature of the Afghan enterprise itself in terms of terrain, the type of warfare involved, and the character of our ally and our enemy. Although Afghanistan and Vietnam are drastically different in terms of climate and topography, both are inhospitable places to fight, and each denies the United States' military its main advantages -- massive firepower, especially air power, and superior mobility. This is even more the case due to the nature of counterinsurgency warfare, which attempts to place a premium on protecting the local populace -- the "hearts and minds" approach. Alas, I have my doubts that Americans will ever excel at this kind of warfare -- cultural sensitivity isn't exactly our strong suit. Indeed, I heard an interview with some young troops at Fort Campbell Kentucky on NPR the other day and they were bitching about the rules of engagement they would likely face in Afghanistan and I couldn't help but thinking of one adage popular among elements of the military in Vietnam -- "if you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow." This is a disastrous but entirely predictable attitude in an institution peopled primarily with young men whose training is in large part about killing people.
Our ally in Afghanistan also puts me in mind of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, corrupt, ineffective, and viewed by much of the populace as foreign, i.e. run by individuals who are not part of the majority culture in the country. Diem, a devout Catholic, clashed bitterly with Vietnam's Buddhist leadership. Although Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun, most of his government and military leaders are Tajiks, a cause of bitterness among the historically dominant Pashtuns. This ethnic conflict is further exacerbated by the inability of the Kabul regime to assert control of the country and to bring meaningful change to the people in the countryside.
The Taliban, too, are reminiscent of the communist forces in Vietnam in terms of being more determined fighters than their Afghan counterparts. Although unlike Vietnam, they do not enjoy the support of major powers like China and the Soviet Union, the evidence suggests that the Pakistan military remains supportive of their efforts in Afghanistan despite recent efforts against the Taliban within Pakistan. The Taliban fight hard and they fight well despite facing the far better armed Americans and our NATO allies. The Talibs are also viewed as effective at imposing order (shudder) and as not corrupt.
Americans sometime have a hard time accepting that physical coverage is at best a morally neutral virtue. However, it's pretty clear that the Taliban, however repellent, are much more willing to put their lives on the line than are the members of the Afghan armed forces, much as the NVA and the NLF were far superior fighters than ARVN.
So what does this all say about Obama's strategy in Afghanistan -- a ramp up of troops of 34,000 with the promise of a draw down to begin in 2011. My initial thoughts were cynical -- this is a case of trying to please two completely disparate groups -- the military, the Villagers, and the pro-escalation camp on one side and those on the left who were either opponents of the war from the start, or who, like me, have soured on it as it has dragged on a seemingly impossibly eight years -- by doing two contradictory things. But in a way, the policy makes total sense with one huge caveat. It gives General McChrystal the troops he has claimed to need to succeed, but only for a limited time. And it gives the Karzai regime fair warning that we will not be in Afghanistan indefinitely. It's put up or shut up time for all concerned.
My caveat -- if this plan has no realistic hope of success, it is wrong to send further troops to risk life and limb.
I hope that the escalation succeeds and that it creates enough political space within Afghanistan to blunt the Taliban offensive, leading to some sort of political resolution to the Afghan conflict. I fervently hope that the Taliban does not return to power as I find the prospect repulsive. In the end, though, the Afghan people are going to have to decide this, not the Americans.
I am pessimistic about the prospects for success. If July 2011 finds the situation unchanged then I think it is time to go. I believe that Obama will have more than enough cover to make this move at that time. By then, the U.S. will have committed ten years to the endeavor, hundreds of billions of dollars, and likely thousands of lives. The American public will be ready to go, even if the Villagers and Neo-Cons aren't. Ideally Obama will go into 2012 with all American troops gone from Iraq and most of them out of Afghanistan. This will be popular, whatever elite opinion might suggest.
Ultimately, I would suggest going a step further. I would advocate the complete disengagement of the U.S. armed forces from everywhere in the Muslim world. Their presence is an irritant and a serious net negative. If we want to discourage attacks against the U.S. and defuse the recruitment of terrorists, this is the best possible move. Anything we could do to also resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dispute over Kashmir would be helpful as well.
In the meantime, the push to become independent of imported oil should be a very high priority so that such disengagement could be possible.
