… or to occupy Afghanistan.
John A. Nagl is der Führer of the COINdinistas and author of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife.” Nagl can not admit that the counterinsurgency campaigns he argued for failed both in Iraq and in Afghanistan to achieve their goals. While everyone acknowledges that war in Afghanistan is already lost and all politicians are looking for a faster way out of there he still claims that the “west” is Not losing in Afghanistan.
Nagl starts his OpEd with this false claim:
Americans haven’t lost a war in so long, we’ve forgotten what doing so looks like — and what it costs. The only war that we undeniably lost was the Vietnam War; thrown out of the country literally under fire, we abandoned our allies to a horrific fate and left behind a legacy of terror in the region, breaking our Army in the process.
Hmm – wasn’t there, beside Vietnam, this other war where Nagl promoted his ideas? Does he believe that Iraq war was not lost? Wasn’t the U.S. kicked out of that country? Doesn’t the terror there continue? Are the suicide numbers in the U.S. army not at a record height?
Despite the miasma of discontent with the effort, the United States and its many allies are not losing in Afghanistan. … We are proceeding with our plan to hand over primary responsibility for security to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
This will allow the United States to accomplish our national security objectives in the region: defeating al-Qaeda; preventing al-Qaeda and its affiliates from establishing permanent bases in Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan; and maintaining our own bases in the region from which to operate drones, manned aircraft and Special Operations forces. Calls for a more rapid and complete withdrawal ignore the geopolitical realities and threats that first led to U.S. intervention after the Sept. 11 , 2001, attacks — and that will continue to require armed U.S. assistance for decades to come.
Since when were these “national security objectives” Nagl lays out the aim of the war on Afghanistan? Who has ever defined them as the war’s aims? The U.S. wants, according to Nagl, keep troops in Afghanistan and continue to wage war there until, well, when? Forever?
Somehow I do not have the impression that the Afghans will agree with that:
President Hamid Karzai has warned there might be no immunity from prosecution for foreign troops after 2014 if the insecurity in Afghanistan does not come to an end and the country’s borders are not properly protected.
Karzai discussed the matter with visiting Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Thursday, saying that the Afghan people may not allow the government to allow the foreign soldiers this leniency if poor security continues, according to a presidential statement released Saturday.
Afghans might “not permit their government to grant immunity… if the war and insecurities continue in Afghanistan, Afghan borders are not protected, and the immunity for foreign forces comes on top of these issues”, the statement said.
Translation: “Unless you are not needed you will not be welcome here anymore. That’s because you are the problem.”
It has been obvious for a while that Karzai is copying the strategy Maliki used in Iraq to kick the U.S. troops out. Iraq signed some longer term agreements with Bush but the Status Of Force Agreement that would have given U.S. troops immunity in the country was left out of the package to be negotiated later. When the Obama administration tried all it could to keep U.S. troops in Iraq the Iraqis simply rejected to sign the SOFA and the U.S. troops left. The war was lost. The aim of pulling Iraq into the U.S. client camp and to keep it as a fighting base in the Middle East was not achieved. The U.S. left with its tail between its legs.
In May Obama and Karzai signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement. The U.S. had tried to get a SOFA included. But Karzai wanted to keep that card to play it at a later moment. He could for example use that in his own negotiations with the Taliban. They do want the U.S. out and as long as Karzai does not sign the SOFA he has the capability to guarantee that the U.S. will go. He might get something in return for that.
Besides a SOFA there is one other legal move that could give U.S. troops continued immunity in Afghanistan and thereby enable Nagl’s dream. A UN Security Council resolution under Chapter 7 could order a new UN peacekeeping mission for Afghanistan and designate U.S. troops as participants or even leaders. But to get that resolution will require to overcome a potential Russian and Chinese veto. They would of course have certain conditions, they would restrict the size, tasks and time of that force and would demand a high political and even financial price. I doubt that the U.S. will be willing to pay such a price for continuing an endless mission under guaranteed continued enemy fire.
Back to Nagl’s hogwash:
We will bear the heavy burden of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years. U.S. soldiers will continue to serve in the region, assisting Afghan (and sometimes Pakistani) security forces against threats to the stability of both nations, conducting raids on insurgents and terrorists and preventing a broader war in South Asia. This is what success looks like in such wars.
To continue war for years and without any defined aim or end is what success looks like?
Whoever makes such a statement must be a regular consumer of Afghanistan’s premier export product. Or that persona must be a unscrupulous lobbyist for the military industrial complex that makes loads of money by continues war. Then again no sane lobbyist would argue, like Nagl, for an open ended war because lobbyists know that the U.S. tax payer will not agree with such.
I believe that Nagl knows that war in Afghanistan is lost. Just like the war in Iraq was lost. But Nagl is a weak and rather stupid man who can not admit that he is wrong and that he has been wrong for a long time.
This has been evident for quite some time. Only a stupid man could come up with idea of eating soup with a knife and only a real idiot man would attempt to learn it.