The chief of NATO, General James Jones, says the next few weeks could be decisive for the alliance in the fight against the insurgents in Afghanistan. Big surprise that, as the Taliban funfest has been heating up from beyond a peace making operation to a balls-out war for the past six months. Canada is up to its armpits in Afghanistan, with a few thousand boots on the ground getting shot at, killed and wounded. The most recent casualties were several injured and one killed in a friendly fire incident near Panjwaii.
The call for reinforcements overlooks an elemental feature of the whole Afghanistan/Iraq battle zone: You can’t hold ground unless you have people on the ground. This is Tactics 101 and has been true since Roman times. Unless you have troops in the location, you cannot hold the location.
This was never more true than in Viet Nam. The Viet Cong could control vast areas of the south, using the wonderfully effective tool of terror. The Viet Cong could hold ground with a lightly armed company as the non-combatant civilians were utterly cowed. The US would get annoyed by this and send in a couple of thousand troops by helicopter. The troops would patrol aggressively, shooting up everything in sight. Lines would be drawn on maps in various colour grease pencils, press conferences would be held, body counts taken and more rounds fired off. A week later, the US troops would helicopter out feeling all victorious. By the afternoon, the Viet Cong were back in control of the area.
Afghanistan and Iraq are exactly the same. You cannot hold ground with an absentee landlord.
There are two ways to get a population to accept your position. The first is to terrorize them beyond all possible sense. Ask any former Soviet-bloc country, like Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia or Poland: Terror works just fine.
The second is to have a lot of well-armed troops, visible, all over the place. Again, ask any former Soviet-bloc country. Knowing that there were a couple of dozen divisions of armoured troops just the other side of the border with Russia, tends to adjust your attitude as a country.
Since NATO has decided not to pursue Option #1, (thank heavens) that leaves Option #2.
NATO and the US in their other conflicts have tried to use air power as a way to hold ground. It didn’t work 1963 through to 1972 until Nixon turned the B-52’s loose and used them as a terror weapon to bomb the snot out of anything that moved. Total destruction of whole swaths of Ha Noi convinced the North Viet Nam government to come back to the bargaining table. Only by using air power as a terror weapon can you change anything except narrow areas of landscaping. Ask Israel about using air power as a terror weapon: They can explain it just fine.
Boots on the ground are the only way to bring about change in a vaguely humanitarian way. The problem is NATO and the US do not have enough boots on the ground. To paraphrase Rumsfeld, you fight with the army you have, not the army you want. Except Rumsfeld has had nearly three years to get the army wanted over there and working to adjust some attitudes.
The only way to close down the insurgency in Afghanistan and stop the civil war in Iraq is to put a lot of troops into the area. We’re talking about units on most street corners, ready and willing to bring all kinds of hell down on anyone dumb enough to fire at them. This would require, according to some estimates, close to 500,000 troops. There aren’t enough troops available to do it in Iraq or Afghanistan, which explains General James Jones’ comments.
The US might be able to muster some more if they bring back Selective Service and draft about 100,000 able-bodied citizens. There is the other issue of how to pay for it, but Dubya and Rumsfeld have proven that they have no shame about racking up the biggest federal deficit ever. What’s another trillion, right? Especially when their buddies get a big slice of that pie, those two would do it.
The other contentious issue is the political will to reestablish the Selective Service draft and then actually draft a lot of people into the military. Wrap it up in the “War on Terror” and that sandwich would be swallowed by the Conservative Right with a big glass of milk. Needless to say the bulk of draftees wouldn’t be the children of the Republican base, as the college deferment would pop up instantly. There would also be a draft deferment based on owning more than one cell phone and having five pieces of Abercrombie and Fitch apparel in your closet. Oh, and being white, wealthy, lazy and from Texas.
I dare not suggest that mandatory Selective Service for all undocumented aliens wanting citizenship is a solution. Those swine in DC like Cheney and Rove are vile enough to figure they could make it fly, especially if Halliburton and KBR do the selecting and the initial training for a fee. I don’t want my name anywhere near that idea and I feel guilty for even having the concept come to mind. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.
Could the US and NATO win in Iraq and Afghanistan? Nope. Not with the way things are today. There are not enough feet in the dirt. It hasn’t worked in the past. It won’t work now, even with the most high-tech of high-tech weapons. Ground is held by armed troops, not computer screens and consultants. And you can’t improve the current situation until you hold the ground.
By the way, I define “win” as having the local population confident enough to run their own affairs. The lights have to be on, the water has to work and there has to be some kind of infrastructure for security that will keep the local market operating so people can buy, sell and grow food. The rest of it (Full Jeffersonian Democracy bowing to Washington five times a day) is immaterial and will never happen if the people don’t have food, water and a little bit of security.
So, the options in front of us change.
The first is to put as many feet as possible over there and try to control things long enough for change to happen. This could take another year or two of deaths, horrific injuries, shattered lives and destruction beyond all sense for everyone involved. It might even mean a massive military mobilization on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II. Run by who? The UN? Please don’t make me laugh that hard; my lips are chapped and my leg hurts.
The second option is to pack it up and go home. Pull up the tents, pack up the tanks and say “Thank you for playing. Good Bye. Whoever is left alive in six months’ time can call us.” This means making a difficult moral decision to look at our responsibilities for causing a lot of the madness in the area.
My personal thought is that we may be responsible for half of the insanity. Remember that Saddam was a US ally, funded and CIA-supported when he was fighting Iran. The Taliban were our allies, funded and CIA-supported when they were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, so the US and by extension the Western World, does have some blame to shoulder.
I could bring up a lot of oil and politics jiggery-pokery about Hamid Karzi being a former Unocal fixer, Halliburton having their fingers up the arse of the Iraq State Oil Company as well as ARAMCO from Saudi Arabia and the whole House of Saud being propped up by Big Oil. But I won’t, as it is too long a post as it also includes monomaniacal American support for Israel and some other stuff that is too disturbing to contemplate or explain.
Iraq and Afghanistan also have to smarten up a goodly bit. Stop behaving like tribal assholes and remember that you are part of the whole world. Otherwise the West is going to have to cut you loose to kill each other and live with our guilt over causing it.
RoadDave 