George Will Is Right

Townhall.com ^ | September 2, 2009 | David Harsanyi

[Kaslin]

This week, prominent conservative pundit George Will wrote a column advocating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. His piece, not surprisingly, was met with instantaneous anger, disdain and derision from most of the right.

"But let's be honest," wrote noted neoconservative William Kristol on The Washington Post's blog. "Will is not calling on the United States to accept a moderate degree of success in Afghanistan, and simply to stop short of some overly ambitious goal. Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat."

Tossing around the words "retreat" and "defeat" -- or, as one critic more creatively asserted, Will's column "could have been written in Japanese aboard the USS Missouri" -- is the rhetorical equivalent of the vacuous "chicken hawk" charge leveled at any civilian who supports military action. It's emotive and hyperbolic, and I probably have used it myself, but it's not an effective argument.

Judging from their harsh reaction to Will, it's not clear when, if ever, some conservatives believe the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan. Even less clear is how the victory narrative is supposed to play out. Does this triumphant day arrive when every Islamic radical in the region has met his virgins? If so, after eight years of American lives lost, the goal seems farther away than ever.

Or is victory achieved when we finally usher this primitive tribal culture, with its violent warlords and religious extremism, from the eighth century all the way to modernity? If so, we're on course for a centuries-long enterprise of nation building and baby-sitting, not a war. The war was won in 2002.

If the goal is to establish a stable government to fill the vacuum created by our ousting of the Taliban and al-Qaida, we've done quite a job. Most Americans can accept a Marine's risking life and limb to safeguard our freedoms. But when that Marine is protector of a corrupt and depraved foreign parliament -- one that recently legalized marital rape and demands women ask permission from male relatives to leave their homes -- it is not a victory worth celebrating.

You know, idealism regarding Afghanistan's future begins to dissipate the first time we read the words "why don't we negotiate with the moderate Taliban?"

But while strict Shariah law is acceptable, illicit drugs are not. If most of us agree that America has no business foisting its notions of wrong and right on other cultures, why, then, did we spend hundreds of millions of dollars eradicating poppy crops (one of the only productive crops of the Afghan farmers)? Was it because our own war on drugs has gone so splendidly?

It is perplexing that advocates of a long-term engagement in Afghanistan -- folks who often reject social engineering as a tool of public policy -- accept the idea that a nation with scores of ethnic groups, widespread corruption, no industry and no bonding of language or nationality can be coaxed into constructing a stable and lasting democratic society.

What seemed to irk Will's detractors most, however, was his inconsistency. You can go from patriot to cheese-eating surrender monkeys in a mere 750 words. And if you once supported Operation Enduring Freedom, you apparently have cast your lot with Kabul forever. Which makes sense, because it's going to take that long for American troops to find a puppet Islamic state that pretends to value any enduring freedoms.

Naturally, the invasion made sense after the 9/11 attacks. Fighting terrorism with force makes sense. The subsequent military victory was worth celebrating. But if every military engagement includes an open-ended plan for nation building that pins our fortunes on the predilections of a backward nation, we are, indeed, setting ourselves up for failure.

[This_far]

Of course, a policy of ‘retreat’ only applies to our presence in other countries.

Illegals entering our borders, do so with a phalanx of laws/lawyers to shield them from those who attempt to protect us from our representatives.

[HarleyD]

We’re spending billions of dollars to eradicate poppy crops in Afganishan while drug lords are growing drugs crops in our national forests.

[Iron Munro]

This week, prominent conservative pundit George Will wrote a column advocating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Should read:

This week, prominent FORMER conservative pundit George Will wrote a column advocating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
.

[nathanbedford]

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and we cannot kill all of them. The way to deal with any Islamic (Islamicist) movement is to enlist the sane Muzzies to liquidate the insane Muzzies because we have convinced them that if they do not police the crazies in their own religion either we will kill them or the Islamists will. Even if we could kill them all, the mothers of America will never tolerate the kind of casualties required to do so unless you want to go nuclear in which case we in America will not be able to tolerate ourselves..

It’s time to get down to the business of thinking about America's strategic interests. What do we want to accomplish in Afghanistan? Obviously, we want to leave a country in place which does not support terrorism. That would be nice, but does it make us any safer? No. Because, so long as Waziristan provides a sanctuary for terrorism, it doesn't matter whether the terrorists also have Afghanistan. The problem compounds, if you want to leave Afghanistan a place which is not safe for terrorists you must also convert northwestern Pakistan into a place which is not safe for terrorists. If one of these places is not permanently "pacified" the other will equally not be pacified.

How do we propose to do that, with American boots on the ground? With 50% of America against the war in Afghanistan, what percentage of America do you judge will support putting troops into Pakistan? Assuming you can get public support for putting troops into Pakistan, can you be sure that the Pakistani government will not oppose our troops? Can you be sure that the Pakistani government will not threaten to use nuclear weapons against our troops? Even if such a threat were hollow when made, can we afford to disregard it? Can you see an end game to the pacification of Waziristan? I cannot. Neither could Winston Churchill more than a century ago.

Could it be done with drones and conventional air power working in close alliance with the Pakistani government and with some tribes in Waziristan? I do not know. As in every war America fights, we are in a foot race between our own casualty count and the enemy. Some might argue that the Serbs were pacified by air power alone, but is Afghanistan the same as Yugoslavia? Does not history teach us that "pacification" unavoidably means occupation? Have we figured out how to do that in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan without unacceptable casualty counts?

If casualty counts are not problematic enough, do we have the money? How broke are we? Is the debt growing to 11 trillion? Will the entitlements inexorably carry us to $26 million, as recently reported? It has now become a real question whether we can finance such a war.

While we are exercising our vision about how to pacify Waziristan, can we be sure that our efforts will not radicalize the reasonably sane portion of the Muslim population of Pakistan further against America? Will it turn the military against us? The Secret Police? What about those people who control the nukes? How much would take for people like A. Q. Khan who sold nuclear secrets to turn over some nukes to the Taliban or other terrorists in retaliation?

Would an American invasion with ground forces into the Northwest of Pakistan make that more or less likely? How do you know? But can we conduct our foreign policy out of fear or should we simply pursue our own best interests and let the chips fall where they may? According to Michael Scheuer, ex-of the CIA and responsible for watching bin Laden, we are not acting and have not been acting in pursuit of our own interests for years. He says that's why we are fighting these wars in the first

So we come back to my initial premise which is we must enlist the sane Muzzies to fight our war for us. We cannot win it alone. The way we enlist support from Muzzies is to show them who is boss. They respect power and they despise appeasement.

But let us not deceive ourselves. It required only 19 Muzzies to bring down the World Trade Center and kill 3000 Americans. We can kill all the Muzzies in Afghanistan, and they will still be able to scrape up from somewhere among the godforsaken corners of the world another 19 Muzzies to deliver what this time might be a weapon of mass destruction. And that weapon might just come from Pakistan. We cannot hope to conquer and hold every square inch of territory between the Atlantic coast of Africa and the western border of China in order to stop the formation of a terrorist squad only nineteen men (or women) strong.

So the war is primarily a war of intelligence. After we wring all the benefits we can out of our listening devices, we need indispensable local knowledge. Human intelligence must primarily come from the Muslim world because they have the language, the culture, and the tribal affiliation which we could never hope to penetrate. But we can hope to suborn them, turn one tribe against another, as the French did in North America and the British did so successfully in India and Pakistan. But conquering and holding territory is not the answer; it is probably not even the means to the answer.

A war of intelligence is primarily a war of alliances.

So when we do our strategic thinking about what the interests of America are in places like Afghanistan, we ought to consider what our goals are there and how we can accomplish them. Putting boots on the turf and holding it as an end in itself is worse than useless, I fear it is self-defeating.

Putting boots on the ground and fighting only to a stalemate is the equivalent of defeat because unnerves our allies, encourages our enemies, and dispirits our grieving mothers. Rather than intimidating Muslim governments to cooperate with us, it encourages them to pander to their street. Intelligence suffers. When intelligence suffers it actually makes us more vulnerable, not less.

Whatever we do, must be done decisively and successfully or not at all.

Until we're able to answer fundamental questions and articulate exactly what troops there can accomplish and at what cost, we are just spending blood and treasure without purpose.

[factmart]

Have you forgotten, 911!

[shibumi]

"There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and we cannot kill all of them."

Of course, we really haven't put that thesis to the test, have we?

(Rest assured, the Jihadis want nothing less than death or conversion for the other 5 billion of us.....)

[pnh102]

I have to agree somewhat. The government in Afghanistan is morphing into something that is no better than what the Taliban was when it ran the show.

It is not right for our troops to die for that.

To this day I still don't get why we insisted on putting into place a government that is based on Islam, which is exactly what the Taliban regime was, when a secular government would have been far more appropriate. I can understand that there would have been a lot of opposition for doing this, but when you are at war, you have to erradicate your opposition, not try to play nice with it.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

The problem is that we are antagonizing our allies and in the course of abolishing our intelligence service. We are making the CIA so untrustworthy that other nations will not share their intelligence with us. Their seems to be some evidence that Pakistan is finally stepping up in the frontier areas as a matter of national survival. In addition the Afghan Army soldiers seem to be becoming more effective and more numerous so there is a prospect of being able to pass the job to them.

AConcerning corruption I do not give a damn, it has been their way of life since before Alexander the Great. As far as supporting democracy, enforcing women’s rights and fighting poppy growers these are all nice things, but not worth fightting a war about!

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

You actually have it right. Only tactical nukes will get the attention of Islam. There is no room for playing nice if you want progress. Iraq will devolve as all Islamic regimes eventually do. The war is / was lost when the Afghans started talking about including a moderate Taliban in their government. Frankly, these people do not seem to want to be free. I think Obama will sell out the troops anyway. Lets get out since we have already telegraphed our “can’t we all just get along foreign policy”. I don’t see a positive end game with Obama at the controls.

[nathanbedford]

I share every one of your concerns, Lucius, especially since I believe that ultimately the war against Islamist terrorism is a war which will be won or lost strategically because we have succeeded or failed to the Muslim world to our cause and, tactically, because we have won the war of intelligence.

NTHockey, putting aside the morality of nuking anybody, I do not see how nuking Waziristan would make America one ounce safer from the greatest threat which is the detonation of a nuke in the homeland or the release of a biological agent which can be accomplished by a coterie operating out of anywhere in the Muslim world.

I can well understand how one would have only short shrift for politicians who treat brave Marines like pawns. I think most of us honor your son's service. But even if the Marines do all the Marines can do, what does it avail if we have no strategic goal because we have no defined war aims?

[Alberta's Child]

Judging from their harsh reaction to Will, it's not clear when, if ever, some conservatives believe the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan. Even less clear is how the victory narrative is supposed to play out. Does this triumphant day arrive when every Islamic radical in the region has met his virgins? If so, after eight years of American lives lost, the goal seems farther away than ever.

Or is victory achieved when we finally usher this primitive tribal culture, with its violent warlords and religious extremism, from the eighth century all the way to modernity? If so, we're on course for a centuries-long enterprise of nation building and baby-sitting, not a war.

Couldn't have said it any better.

[Alberta's Child]

To this day I still don't get why we insisted on putting into place a government that is based on Islam, which is exactly what the Taliban regime was, when a secular government would have been far more appropriate.

That's exactly the same question I asked about Iraq, ironically.

"War on terror," my @ss.

[lentulusgracchus]

Our interest there has always been fairly simple, and we should keep an eye on that.

We didn't go there, as you point out, to transform Afghanistan into a clone of West Germany ca. 1959. Nor would that seem to be either necessary to our purpose nor particularly helpful, since it would require too much energy and treasure.

Rather, leave the place with a government that won't tolerate Al Q'aeda hanging around, training terrorists and hatching plots and messing around with poison gas and uranium and atomic-bomb blueprints. That's all.

That's all we need to prevent a repeat of 9/11.

If Afghans want to grab the gusto and build their mountainous country into the new Switzerland, let them.

[mazda77]

Natan,

Sadly, the ability to win through intelligence is no longer available, especially given the mindset of the current administration. Couple that with the egegiously stupid ROE our boys are fighting under right now, the Viet Nam redo is at our hands, already.

I say get our drones out of Pakistan because they will be captured on the whim of a government that has no stomach to clean up their own messes, pull our boys back and let it all go to hell in a handbasket. That will accomplish your goal somewhat as India will finally have to deal with the situation in their back yard instead of playing their fence game between us and the Chicoms.

This time, lets make sure we have enough carriers present to handle the number of helecopters that will be coming their way.

[listenhillary]

The Obama administration has ordered an end to use of the phrase “Global War on Terror,” a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

In a memo sent this week from the Defense Department’s office of security to Pentagon staffers, members were told, “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”

A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, from whom the direction reportedly came, told the Post there was no guidance given from the agency and that it was merely the “opinion of a career civil servant.”

A Pentagon spokesman said there was no memo or specific directive instructing officials to stop using the ‘Global War on Terror’ phrase but acknowledged that the department has officially adopted ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ as the new term for the war.

More
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/03/25/report-obama-administration-backing-away-global-war-terror/

How does the president get any funding from the congress for an overseas contingency operation?

Is it in the constitution for the president to fund a overseas contingency operation?

If it is no longer a war, why are our troops overseas at all? Is this an undeclared war that the left used to rip GWB over?

If there is no war on terror, what are we fighting for? Obama’s ego?

[kimla]

We’re spending billions of dollars to eradicate poppy crops in Afganishan while drug lords are growing drugs crops in our national forests.

_____________

Wrong! Haven’t you heard? US and Allied troops can’t touch the damn poppies! No more carpet bombing the cash crop of the taliban! No more firing back when you are fired upon! .McChrystal’s strategy since he was appointed by 0bama....

How long does it take to crush the spirit of the deployed? Don’t give them the proper ammo or equipment to fight a war, drop them in the dirtiest country you can find and sit back.

[wastoute]

As always you make a number of excellent points. We cannot allow the militants to regain control of a nation and with that passports and other sorts of administrative things that make the terrorism business easier. We don't need to build a nation there, we just need to keep Al Queda and the Taliban out of the gummint. It ain't victory and it ain't pretty but we can't allow a situation where there is an "Al Queda" State Dept. with access to a Treasury and such. As much as it irks me to have Red State boys and girls dying to protect Blue Staters (I would like to see that end more than anybody) I don't think we can just walk away. We don't need to try to "win" either.

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[nathanbedford]

Of course I share your anger at the Obama administration for gutting our intelligence efforts.

One can only question what the motivation for an American-hating president might be to do so. How deliberate is the emasculation of America's defenses? Is this coldly calculated or is this merely the miscalculation of a shallow ideologue who has backed into the most powerful position in the world and knows nothing more than to undermine the nation he hates?

The stakes can be called almost infinite because when you play in Pakistan you're playing with nukes.