naked capitalism

Richard Kline says:

Kupchan and Simon’s remedies for the flesh-eating staph infection which is the US occupation of Afghanistan look ’sensible’ in contrast to Stan McChrystal’s hunter-killer napkin-sketch—but are no less nonsensical and wrong.

“Build up the Afghan police and Army”: Which is worthless now, and will so remain, as recruits have zero incentive to fight, enlist only for money, and are riddled with Taliban plants. Anyone with any moxie works for a warlord: cannon fodder recruits are trying to earn something for their family and stay alive. There will be no substantial, effective recruitment of _Pashtuns_ furthermore, without which an effective military in S Afghanistan is not possible. This notion ’sounds sensible’ but is nonsense in context. It comes from a false analogy to Iraq where the strategy failed too: the Iraqi army was of little functional effect even eighteen months ago, and was routed utterly by Sadrist insurgents when sent to the field. The change in Iraq came when the tribal leadership was bribed en masse to desert the insurgency. (In my view, bribed by the Saudis and the Jordanians, but I’ve yet to see any reportage that confirms that hypothesis.) In short, it was a _political solution_. The analogy in Afghanistan would be to bribe the Taliban to split from the Pakistani Pashtuns, or at least not openly back them. The only effective bribe would be to stand down most US troops in Afghanistan outside of base enclaves at the periphery, mostly in the north and to hand the government of the country back to the Taliban. We’ll know that the US wants peace when they make that obvious move . . . about three presidential administrations from now.

“Build up a rump state of effective institutions.” Look, in an ethnically segmented, 19th century state with no functioning economy outside of the export of raw opium, this is sheerest fantasty. A ‘rump government’ of Tajiks and Uzbeks will have no better weight on Pashtun opinion in the south than crepe paper. The only ‘rump government’ which might work is a Pashtun one sympathetic to the Taliban. Which is what Karzai wanted to be but the US wouldn’t let him so that what threadbare legitimacy he came in with five years ago was filched but colossally despised local warlords. Intensive US aerial bombardment of Pashtun areas has effectively aborted any remote possibility that this strategy could be effected as of Nov 2009.

I won’t even bother with their third point because one sees the drift: they are operating in a fantasy where they are the ones in charge of future outcomes so that whatever might be desirable for them is, of course, possible. Very American, this self-serving optimism, but nonsense.

To save them time, I will simply skip the fantasy and describe the four options which remain possible. 1) We keep bombing Afghans we perceive to be hostile until we get tired of the push-back and expense and leave. 2) We recruit another military power to occupy or annex Afghanistan for us and to take over the implementation of 1) while we leave. 3) We withdraw to peripheral compounds, cut a deal to hand the country to the Taliban, and set the bar as high as we can get for non-support of hostiles to us, and set a timetable for withdrawal. 4) We just cut to the endgame, get on the plane, and leave. Do I think that we’ll follow any of these policies? No: we’ll stay there bombing and fantasizing until Pakistan goes critical and we get dragged in there too, to our everlasting misery, regret, and totally deserved ignominy. Stumbling to perdition.