Friday, September 4, 2009

“Where foreign forces have had a large footprint and failed, in no small part it has been because the Afghans concluded they were there for their own imperial interests and not there for the interests of the Afghan people,” Mr. Gates said. But he said that General McChrystal’s emphasis on reducing civilian casualties and interacting more with Afghans “has given us a greater margin of error in that respect.”
Oh, problems... First, he volunteers idea that Americans are imperialists which is, one, either not true as he seems to mean it or way too simplistic but regardless in effect endorses a jihadist point of view given the way he expresses it; and two, even if in broadest terms it is true that is not necessarily a bad thing - what the hell, it's not like Afghanistan is a thriving, dynamic state - some classic Roman style imperialism might do some good - we left some pretty big imperial footprints in Japan and Germany after WW2 and that worked out - India is a much more tolerable behemoth because of England - Goths were able to sack Rome because Rome taught them how to do it [is that a good thing?]. But of course Afghanistan is a long way remove from pre-war Japan or Germany and in relative terms may be even more backward than the Goths et al and so it is that Gates locks himself into these misstatements by his next sentiment - 'interests of the Afghan people'. His concern should be with what's in the interests of the American people - fighting a war to preserve the interests of a culture that is at least 500 years behind the times is absurd! Afghanistan is a sinkhole because of its culture - an honest acknowledgment of that fact then leaves you with three possible options: stay away, but remain committed to blow up anything having to do with al Queda should it re-emerge; stay involved but on a limited basis that secures American interests but keeps hands off as far as Afghan society goes - if the Afghan people want to fight the Taliban the way the Northern Alliance did then of course support them but from a distance - we can't fight their wars for them unless we get to change them as well; level the fucking country, seriously [and by that I mean act like an imperial power and impose your will] . COIN starts off with the wrong questions and therefore ends with the wrongs answers. Afghanistan is a tribal society, it's a relic - asking how to instill good governance without an imposing imperial footprint brings you to the faulty conclusion of COIN and it's population centric ideals - but tribal societies have no interest in good governance, in fact an overreaching central authority is probably the last thing they're interested in - as far as we know the kleptocracy of Karzai is good governance to them cause he just goes off and does his thing and leaves them alone to grow poppies. The Taliban knows this - the Taliban has figured out that COIN, which demonizes conventional war and opts for a theory of winning hearts and minds, works to their advantage because it is burdened by time constraints, doesn't understand the culture it is trying to engage, and fosters illusions concerning the brutal nature of warfare that will quickly turn American public opinion against the war as soon as events conspire to tear the illusion down - ie dead soldiers or dead civilians - see for example recent bombing of stolen fuel truck that apparently has killed scores of civilians - in a conventional war that's just an unfortunate mistake, but for a COIN operation that pretends war can be civilized, it's a disaster. Indeed, the incident is more telling than that: consider that when the bomb was released it's possible there were no civilians around the truck, but because of the impoverished, tribal, scavenging reality of Afghan society, by the time the bomb hit the truck had been swarmed by civilians trying to steal gas. Hell, it's possible that the Taliban, knowing exactly how the culture worked, set the whole thing up.

update: apparently Germans called in the air strike and now there brews up a bitter dispute between Americans and Germans about who's responsible, there seems to be a significant amount a confusion here about what happened - but that doesn't weaken my point, rather serves it, seeing as how the Germans are there operating under very limited rules of engagement which makes them reluctant to get their hands dirty which in turn leads to faulty intelligence and an over reliance on easy solutions to keep those hands clean - all of which I think are natural consequences of the irrational presumptions and ensuing compromises underlying COIN tactics.