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.

[timetostand]

I believe George Will is right for this reason;

I don’t trust Obama as CIC and I think he will sink the military into a quagmire to tie it up and decimate it’s ranks through low morale. He and his cronies will strap the military with unreasonable rules of engagement ,as in Vietnam! The POS president would love to see the US lose this war in disgrace. Afganistan is a extremely difficult theater of operation as the Soviets learned in it’s total defeat. Afganistan can be isolated.

Having said this, I believe the enemy has got to be confronted but our troops need to have a CIC that understands what it means to fight to win. What they don’t need is to needlessly die in a war that is being fought on two fronts, in Afganistan and at home.

[nathanbedford]

There is a limit to the spirit of sacrifice of the mothers of the red state boys.You put it very well. So we ask, can technology substitute for American lives, for boots on the ground? Can we get the job done with American air power and Afghan national forces? Can the drones in support of the Afghans do it?

The problem with relying on the Afghans is we expect them to behave as 21st-century men when they are closer to Hunter gatherers or nomads who have recently been provided AK-47s. Much like early American Indians were given flintlocks and firewater. They are not patriots, they are tribal. They are not democrats, they are Muslims. Think of the American Indians who made treaty with the white man against other Indian tribes and why they did so-because they did not entertain a vision which said this is how the world works which, unfortunately for them, the white man held and imposed through his technological superiority. The Indians had no idea of property in the Anglo-Saxon sense, and neither do the Afghans have an idea of nationalism in the 21st century sense. So we can provide the drones and the helicopters and the rockets, but can the Afghans provide the boots on the ground in furtherance of American interests?

[rbg81]

I stopped reading George Will long ago. Never trust a man who wears a bowtie.

[qwertypie]

The correct answer, of course, is to be prepared to fight another half-hearted war a decade from now, while in the meantime hosting Ramadan dinners.

[NTHockey]

The first thing I learned in my four years as an active duty Marine is that the Eastern mind does not function like the Western mind. To the Eastern mind, death is something to be sought because this existence is so bad. A nuke would do the job nicely.

The second thing I learned is there is no substitute for raw, unaldulterated power. You gain no respect when you are, or are perceived to be, weak. We have conveyed weakness in every conflict since WWII. Again, a nuke would do the job nicely.

As for the threats from the other parts of the Mohammedan world, again very simple: Attack us and Mecca will glow for a thousand years.

BTW, the other things I learned had to do with alcohol and inflicting pain. See my tagline.

[TADSLOS]

Well stated as usual, nathan. We expend alot of resources in Afghanistan exercising nation building where no government, in the western civilization economic and democratic sense of the word, has ever taken hold and endured. If making Afghanistan into our own image or some other democratic facsimile is our goal there, we had better be ready to commit to a long, long stay with ample forces and resources to turn multiple generations of Afghans heads around.

I don't see that scenario as a realistic option. Americans simply don't have the patience for it. Our politicians certainly don't display the political will to commit to victory and the Afghanis, after 5+ years of relative freedom from their Taliban tormentors, have already indicated that they are not that enthused with moving beyond a tribal form of governing and lifestyle.

Besides, Afghanistan isn't the center of gravity for defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda in any case. That distinction belongs to Pakistan. Afghanistan is merely the age old tromping grounds. What's the end state to all this? We may as well be doing back to back combined arms live fire exercises at NTC the way the situation exists now.

As poor a description the "War on Terror" moniker was from the Bush administration, the Obama administration won't even characterize this war as such. It's merely a contingency operation now. That's non-committal coward's talk that leaves our troops in a dangerous lurch. The contingency was planned well before 9-11. We are now executing a war plan. Let's either close with the enemy in his own camp or get the hell out until we, as a nation, decide whether fighting and dying for our own liberty on foreign ground (ala war with hostile islamic states and their proxies intent on subduing or killing us) is worth the cost in blood and treasure.

[wastoute]

I suspect you are correct that Afghans will never have any sense of national "allegiance" but as a tribal, corrupt country there will probably be enough that can be bought to do just enough to stay in power. Intellectually very unappealing result but probably the best attainable. As I stated, allowing the Taliban and Al Queda access to the priveledge of a recognized "nation" isn't an option.

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[Elsie]

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.

AMEN!

[Elsie]

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.

The 'war' will be won in the BEDROOM!

or lost....

---

Average Western family = 2.2 people

Average Muslim family = 8.1

[Elsie]

Only tactical nukes will get the attention of Islam.

And only Pearl HArbor 'got the attention' of the USoA.

Do you REALLY want ALL of the Muslims in the world after your case instead of just the extreme militants we got now?

[Elsie]

Frankly, these people do not seem to want to be free.

Oh?

I'd almost venture to say that they are more 'free' than the average U.S. citizen, whose overlapping layers of Government have piled law after law after law upon us until we are so bogged down now that hardly anything can be accomplished.

[Little Ray]

You’re right and wrong.

If being “nice” won’t work, then we need “colonial troops” - brutes who will do what we can’t ask of our own troops and whose casualties don’t really matter to us. Troops who can exterminate entire villages and burn towns for cooperating with or sheltering the enemy. Then pick a tribe that’s cooperating with and supporting the Taliban and go. And don’t stop while there is one of them left alive. We shouldn’t have to make more than one or two examples.

We also need a covert “War on Money.” The terrorists run on money and loot. We need to find where it comes from and kill the people responsible - no arrests, no trials, no mercy. If they happen to be foreign nationals residing in “friendly” states, we’ll need to be sneaky. The same is true for the organizations that handle the money - destroy them and kill their leaders - quietly.

We don’t need our people in the front line. We just need to provide the air cover, and the covert force.

[starlifter]

George has an excellent point. What we're doing there has nothing to do with the WOT.

We don't have the assets to easily find the bad guys and those rare times when we do we're afraid to act on it. Meanwhile we're pissing away American lives for no positive outcome.

By overreaching and not having realistic war aims we got ourselves into something we can't get out of. Killing bad guys who mean us harm is good war aim. Trying to build a western-style democracy in that God-forsaken place is a joke.

I'd dearly love to lay blame for this one on the Messiah, but GWB was president for the first six or so years of this absurdity.

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

We will not win being nice in Afghanistan. So, if nice is what you want, welcome to quagmire, which all US citizens will tire of eventually. We will just eventually declare victory and leave and let it collapse. Watch Iraq as we depart, you will get a clue.

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

Ok. We are not free, we have the IRS. There is still some reasonable expectation that we will not be rounded up and burned alive by our friendly Arab/Pakistani neighbors, but they do it Pakistan/Afghanistan and they have pretty much driven the Christian out of Iraq.

[nathanbedford]

Good point.

Once one recognizes the truth of your insight, it puts a whole new timeline onto the struggle and forces us to realize that it is a timeline alien to our culture but one with which we had better reckon.

[Ramius]

As long as the hunting is good, I see no reason to leave the happy hunting ground. I don’t care if we’re there for a hundred years. As long as Islam writ large keeps sending their vermin to Afghanistan to die at the hands of the U.S. military, I think we should oblige them.

It’s the flypaper doctrine. Find a place that attracts the insects and kill them there. Keeps them away from here.

[nathanbedford]

As I was reading your suggestions it occurred that the the Obama administration would never adopt any of them but then it occurred that Obama is already killing people from drones which is hardly any different morally than executing terrorists out of a hand, which should be allowed against a combatant who is out of uniform. Then it occurred that I have not heard a peep of protest from the left about the assassinations from drones, although I concede that I am not tuned in to those venues.

Our forefathers discovered that there were certain advantages in enlisting the Indian tribes to do your fighting and there's not much difference between sending one Afghan tribe in after another tribe to root out terrorists in the fastness of Waziristan and paying the Indians to bring back scalps.

So we have an administration which is fastidious about depriving some terrorists of sleep and making them dunk for Apples where it has been demonstrably effective in protecting the homeland and cavalier about killing whole families from drones. The only conclusion I can draw is that the choices are not made out of desire to use what works.

[samsmom]

I’m with George Will and I am a conservative with a son in the Marines. Afghanistan is corrupt and still the number one producer of poppy/heroin in the world—8 years after U.S. forces landed. Karzai’s running mate is a drug lord, his brother is a drug lord. What the heck are we doing?! The U.S. Attorney General is considering prosecuting former CIA interrogators. Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters know our rules of engagement and are killing us with that knowledge. Their base of operations is in Pakistan. We are only prolonging the pain and the cost. We will leave without victory like in Vietnam and the Afghans who helped us will be damned. Which may be why they are so reluctant to help us.

[nathanbedford]

I take it you have had good experience in shoveling flies?

As a strategy for fighting the war against terrorism one could hardly conceive of a strategy better calculated to lose the war against terrorism than your "flypaper doctrine." One does not win asymmetrical wars by playing your opponents game. America cannot endure long-term wars and cannot sustain casualties. 1.6 billion Muslims have a nearly infinite supply of martyrs eager to trade their lives for American lives. I cannot imagine any strategy which would make Osama bin Laden happier than one in which we trade, even at an uneven ratio, American lives for cheap and expendable Islamist lives.

If you think the trading lives in godforsaken places like Afghanistan has even the slightest hope of preventing another 19 terrorists from committing another outrage on the American homeland, you have departed reason entirely. Could you please explain how killing ragtag combatants in Afghanistan will stop terrorists in downtown Manhattan? Are you implying that, contrary to my first post of this series, that Islamists cannot find as few as 19 terrorists to attack America even if they are fully occupied in places like Iraq or Afghanistan? The idea is patently absurd.

The flypaper doctrine is the strategy best calculated to lose a Western power the asymmetrical war against terrorism.