by Jeff Huber
We’re going through Bananastan* war strategies like they’re Pez candies. As Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com has noted, General Stanley McChrystal’s new report on Afghanistan “admitted that the current strategy, which was itself a new strategy presented only five months ago to replace the previous new strategy, isn’t working and that yet another new strategy is needed.” It seems certain that Stan the Man will ask for more troops, though, so we’re at least being consistent in our policy of sending more American soldiers to war without knowing why.
When you slice out the wimp words and platitudes, the current new strategy is the same as the old new strategy: clear, hold and build. Any new strategy the war wonks come up with will look pretty much the same, and will require even further escalation in terms of troops and national treasure. Clear, hold and build hasn’t worked in Afghanistan just as it didn’t work in Iraq. It didn’t work in Vietnam either, even though at one point we committed over a half-million troops there. It will never work.
Any cogent strategy must be built around realistic, achievable goals that involve U.S. national security. Our goals, as presently stated, involve turning Pakistan and Afghanistan into real countries with real security forces that civilian authorities are in control of and disrupting terrorist networks. We’ll never achieve those things. The Bananastans will always be warlord-ruled thuggeries, and it is impossible to disrupt terrorist networks when the only “sanctuaries” those networks need in order to operate are pockets large enough to carry an iPod.
Our top military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, still insists that Afghan civilians are the “center of gravity.” Civilian populations are never a center of gravity. They may be a critical factor — a strength, weakness or critical vulnerability — but only to the extent that they affect political leadership, and that affect is almost always overstated. America supposedly has the most representative form of government of any modern nation, yet even though the population has voted against war in two straight national elections, we’re still embroiled in two wars. Afghanistan’s voting process makes the electoral systems of Florida and Ohio look honest, and it’s difficult to say where Afghan political leadership lies: with the official government or with the warlords or with whatever the loose collection of hooligans is that we refer to as the Taliban.
Original antiwar
(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)