It’s long past time to end the fool’s errand in Afghanistan. My latest in FrontPage:
The former chief of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, was recently asked what the U.S. should do in Afghanistan now. Here is McChrystal’s response:
I don’t know. I wish I did … If we pull out and people like al-Qaeda go back, it’s unacceptable for any political administration in the [United States]. It would just be disastrous, and it would be a pain for us. If we put more troops in there and we fight forever, that’s not a good outcome either. I’m not sure what [is] the right answer. My best suggestion is to keep a limited number of forces there and just kind of muddle along and see what we can do.
McChrystal is not alone. Lawrence Sellin pointed out Friday in the Daily Caller that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, recently said much the same thing:
Were we not to put the pressure on Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other groups in the region we are putting on today, it is our assessment that, in a period of time their capability would reconstitute, and they have today the intent, and in the future, they would have the capability to do what we saw on 9/11.
Dunford added: “If someone has a better idea than we have right now, which is to continue to support the Afghans and continue to put pressure on those terrorist groups in the region, I am certainly open to a dialogue on that.”
Right. But the fact is that al-Qaeda and the Taliban and the Islamic State are in Afghanistan, and just biding their time until we leave. Are we going to stay there until the end of time? What we should do is pull out and adopt a strategy modeled after the old containment strategy that was used in the Cold War. I’ve harshly criticized the foreign policy establishment for retaining old Cold War paradigms and failing to adapt to the new realities of the world, particularly the resurgent jihad, but in this case the wonks would do well to revisit some Cold War history.
What would be contained today would be jihadis: we would focus our efforts on preventing them from ever leaving Afghanistan and sowing mayhem anywhere else, while giving up our quixotic aspirations of Wilsonian nation-building. Accompany that with a robust and unapologetic affirmation of American values (freedom of speech, equality of rights of women, etc.) instead of the support we have given to Sharia in Afghanistan (and previously in Iraq), and an honest acknowledgement of the motivating ideology behind jihad activity, and we might actually start getting somewhere.
But none of this is likely to be done. And meanwhile, RT reported several weeks ago that “a US soldier has been killed and one more wounded in an “apparent insider attack” in Kabul, according to AFP citing NATO mission in Afghanistan. The attacker was reportedly killed.” This was just the latest “green-on-blue” attack, in which a member of the American military is murdered by someone who was supposed to be on his side.
One of the elements of the establishment media’s rap sheet on me, which supposedly establishes that I’m a bigoted “Islamophobe,” is that I’ve said that there is no reliable way to distinguish jihadis from peaceful Muslims, because peaceful Muslims have not made any particular effort to separate jihadis from their communities. Yet these ongoing insider attacks in Afghanistan prove me correct. These murders keep happening because there is no reliable way to distinguish an Afghan Muslim who supports American troops from one who wants to murder them, and political correctness prevents authorities from making any attempt to do so anyway, because it would suggest that Islam is not a Religion of Peace. And so ever more U.S. troops are sacrificed to this madness.
The fool’s errand in Afghanistan has no goal, no end point, no definition of victory. It should have been ended years ago, and should be ended now. What are we fighting for at this point, anyway? The Taliban are never going to surrender. American forces have supervised the implementation of an Afghan constitution that enshrined Islamic law as the highest law of the land. Yet Islamic law is nothing like the democratic principles that we went into Afghanistan to defend (over here) and establish (over there). Sharia institutionalizes the oppression of women and non-Muslims, extinguishes the freedom of speech, and denies the freedom of conscience.
Was that what we were fighting for?
Nonetheless, America continued to pour out her blood and treasure for this repressive state, with no clear objective or mission in view other than a never-defined “victory.” No one has defined what victory would look like in Afghanistan. What could it possibly look like? Has the Ghani regime ever allowed women to throw off their burqas and take their place in Afghan society as human beings equal in dignity to men? Does the Ghani government, or any Afghan government that would follow it, ever intend to guarantee basic human rights to the tiny and ever-dwindling number of non-Muslims unfortunate enough to live within its borders? Of course not.
And no matter how long American troops stay in Afghanistan, no Afghan regime is ever going to do such things. But nonetheless, we remain there. Muddling along is the order of the day.
Emilie Green says
“I’m not sure what [is] the right answer. My best suggestion is to keep a limited number of forces there and just kind of muddle along and see what we can do.”
This from the guy who, in planning a royalty-filled retirement, has authored all sorts of papers including these books,
– Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
– My Share of the Task: A Memoir
– Leaders: Myth and Reality
So rather than having been a leader McCrystal admits that he’s basically muddled his way through. He know jack-squat about Islam, but is par excellence in the Fine Art of Bull-Sh___ing.
And having been on the receiving end of a government paycheck in active life, he’s now getting a government pension. For not having done anything of value except to tell us, Muddle On.
Guy Forester says
I think he was more interested in learning about his girlfriend than the threats facing us. Sorry, wrong dufus. I guess he was just there getting some combat time and a badge or two so his pension would go up with his rank when retiring.
I would like to hear from someone that served in that area under his leadership.
Wellington says
I too envision a containment policy but an even more expansive one, to wit, containment of the entire Islamic world. This will be made all the more difficult because millions of Muslims have come to Western nations but should Islam finally, once and for all, be described as iniquitous to all non-Muslims, and I’m thinking here especially of the West, then we will have turned the corner of corners by finally properly characterizing the enemy—Islam, all of it.
Many steps thereafter will have to follow, including the cessation of further Muslim immigration to the West and expulsion of the most “devout” Muslims when they act upon the more warped dictates of their creed. This will take time, money and much determination, but if the entire Islamic faith is not properly characterized for the totalitarian ideology which it surely is, then forget about all I have just written because if you can’t even identify the enemy, you can’t win the war. And the enemy is Islam and it most certainly is at war with us.
vlparker says
Agree. That is the only sane response to islam.
vlparker says
And kick as many muslims out of the US as we legally can. All muslims who aren’t US citizens should be deported and all immigration of muslims should be stopped.
gravenimage says
Hear, hear, Wellington! The Muslim world was largely isolated from the civilized world for almost two hundred years–and during this period we were largely safe from Jihad.
mortimer says
Afghastlistan must be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It’s for their own good.
Once all Afghan women are educated, there will be a transformation of the region. There must be universal scolarization.
A nation-building strategy will eventually pacify Afghastlistan. It’s not a strategy for impatient observers. It will bear fruit in the following generations.
vlparker says
LOL. We can’t even control islam in the US and you want to spend forever in Afghanistan trying to nation build? After the first couple of hundred years, if they are pacified by then, where do we go next to pacify? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Yemen? Qatar? How about South Africa, Somalia and the Congo?
Utter insanity.
gravenimage says
Mortimer, we cannot civilize Afghanistan. It is almost 100% Muslim, and as long as this is true you can’t build a nation there.
mortimer says
Stanley McChrystal and Joseph Dunford are right.
A collapsed Afghanistan will be very similar to the collapsed IRAQ into whose VACUUM the ISIS CALIPHATE moved swiftly.
THERE MUST BE NO POWER VACUUM IN AFGHASTLISTAN.
Geoffrey Britain says
The author states, “What we should do is pull out and adopt a strategy modeled after the old containment strategy that was used in the Cold War.”
Containment must be both pragmatic and theological.
Reduce recruitment by issuing all troops with “Silver Bullet Gun Oil”: “COMPANY SELLS GUN OIL LACED WITH PIG FAT TO DENY MUSLIMS PARADISE”. (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/05/26/company-sells-gun-oil-laced-pig-fat-deny-muslims-paradise)
As the author and many others well know, Allah has declared that a Muslim at the time of their death who is in a physically “unclean state” can NEVER enter paradise. Contact with any part of a pig renders a Muslim ‘unclean’ and a special cleansing ritual is required to return a Muslim to cleanliness. Captured terrorists should receive a quick military trial and those judged guilty, executed in a visually unclean manner. The execution should be uploaded to a website for Muslims thinking of jihad to contemplate the risk they now face.
Containment of jihadist terrorist attacks can be contained by attaching what for them is intolerable consequence to their actions. Since jihadists are merely Islam’s agents, of which Islam has hundreds of millions… intolerable consequence must be directed at Islam itself and for that part of Islam that for Muslims has inestimable importance… which is Islam’s ‘holy sites’ of which they have never lost even one. America and Israel (W. Europe is lost) must hold hostage the continued existence of Islam’s ‘holy’ sites. A new doctrine that every mass jihadist attack will result in the destruction of an Islamic ‘holy’ site. The Taliban destroyed priceless Buddhist statues, give Islam a taste of its own medicine. Declare that the day a nuclear terrorist attack upon a Western city occurs is the day that Mecca ceases to exist. Declare that mass Muslim riots will result in the expulsion of ALL Muslims in that area.
The author further states, “I’ve said that there is no reliable way to distinguish jihadis from peaceful Muslims, because peaceful Muslims have not made any particular effort to separate jihadis from their communities.”
This is true but that truth extends far beyond this particular parameter. The brutal truth is that there is no reliable way to distinguish jihadis from peaceful Muslims… period. ALL Muslims embrace Islam’s fundamental tenets and those tenets are murderously brutal toward non-Muslims. Peaceful, ‘secular’ Muslims often become devout and Allah repeatedly calls upon the faithful to subdue the infidel by whatever means are necessary. Allah declares that the entire world must be Islamic. ‘Moderate’ Muslims, by continuing to embrace Islam are in willful denial about the inherent nature of the totalitarian ideology they embrace. In that support, however tacit… they become complicit in Islam’s crimes against humanity.
“I too envision a containment policy but an even more expansive one, to wit, containment of the entire Islamic world.” Wellington
Yes. Containment does begin with identifying the source.
“Once all Afghan women are educated, there will be a transformation of the region.” mortimer
Lol
Wellington says
I agree with all you have stated but as I indicated in my 12:31 P.M. post above, what must come first is a very wide spread acceptance, including by the vast majority of the Western elites, that Islam is a giant negative. This is the sine qua non development that must occur so that effective solutions such as you proposed can thereafter be implemented.
As long as Islam is not considered inimical to basic human values embraced by at least the West, and the stupid game continues by which a distinction is made between “radical Islam” and “Islam” or “Islamism” and “Islam,” etc., then none of the salient matters you proposed have any chance of being implemented.
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer in FrontPage: Gen. McChrystal’s Afghan Strategy: ‘Just Kind of Muddle Along’
…………………..
That “muddling along” is just getting a lot of Americans killed.
seabird says
Pakistani ISI support of the Taliban with sanctuary, weapons and training inside that country.
20,000 Saudi- financed Madrassas cranking-out an endless supply of fighters (and cash) ready to fight for 50 or even 100 years.
2,400+ US soldiers dead, 20,000+ injured and maimed, 1,700 contractors dead.
Tens of thousands of Afghani citizens dead.
Trillions of US dollars wasted (and looted).
This is the price of ignorance in believing in “spectacular allies” and the R.o.Peace nonsense.
And when we do withdraw, thousands of Afghani refugees will have to be brought over to save them from certain slaughter when Afghanistan falls to Jihadists.
This General never learned the lessons of Vietnam or those of Napolean or the USSR in Afghanistan.
This isn’t “muddling”, this is the “quagmire” predicted by “leftists” against our involvement in that country.
General McChrystal merely proved in his failure-that they were right.
Guy Forester says
The idea that if we leave these hell holes like Afghanistan we will suffer more 9-11 attacks is hogwash.
For starters, try reading 1,000 Years for Revenge by Peter Lance. Remember the 20th hijacker, Moussaoui? How about Able Danger? How about the reports of guys learning to control but not take off or land an airliner?
We knew who these people were, where they were, what they were capable of, and every effort to act was blocked by the higher ups. Try reading about what really happened prior to, during, and after the WTC bombing in 1993. Try reading about what happened to Phil Haney in his investigations into terrorist activities.
Phil Haney posts on this site and I know he reads at least some of these postings. The failure to stop terrorism here at home has little to do with our sending our soldiers into these hell holes in perpetuity.
We need to vet immigrants and visitors and stop hampering our investigators, military, and law enforcement with politically correct and absurd restrictions. Bring our troops home and send them out only if we absolutely must and for very, very good reasons. When they are sent out, they should be sent out to win. Ask Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany how that works.