Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique
Barack Obama wants to get out of Iraq by summer 2010 but wants to send 10,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.
Obama's editorial is thoughtful and far more sensible than anything we are hearing from the White House or McCain, and I agree with most of it. But I have one quibble and one major critique. The quibble is that Obama talks about leaving a small American force in Iraq after most of the troops are withdrawn, to continue to fight "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia."
That suggestion is not plausible for several reasons. If there is only a small force in the country, who will rescue them if their helicopter gets shot down or they are ambushed and besieged? Then, how would a small American unit be any good against a terrorist organization operating in remote parts of Sunni Iraq? They don't know Arabic, can't hope for really good intelligence from locals, etc. Wouldn't it be more efficient to let the Special Police Commandos of the Iraqi Interior Ministry take care of this sort of thing? By the way, no one seems to be calling themselves "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" any more on the jihadi bulletin boards. The main fundamentalist vigilante group is the "Islamic State of Iraq."
And then there is the problem that the Iraqis are demanding veto power over US operations in Iraq, a demand that will only grow with time. If they don't concur that a Sunni group is terrorists, the Baghdad government could just keep the US unit cooling its heels. It is precisely over issues such as Iraqi demands that US troops get permission before they act that Karen DeYoung at WaPo says have definitively derailed negotiations between Bush and al-Maliki on a Status of Forces Agreement. Now the two leaders seem likely just initial some quick and dirty executive-to-executive understanding that may not last past Bush's last day in office next January. So the Iraqis are unlikely to want a special forces unit of the sort Senator Obama envisages running around Iraq at will.
It will be over with by then. Iraqis want their sovereignty back.
The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq.
The major critique I have is that Obama keeps talking about intensifying the search and destroy missions being carried out by US troops in the Pushtun areas of southern Afghanistan. As we should have learned from Vietnam, search and destroy missions only alienate the local population and drive it into the arms of the insurgency.
Tom Engelhardt explains how US bombing strikes sometimes hit innocent civilians, including now several wedding parties, which is rather alienating to the clans that are attacked. (The US military says that the insurgents routinely allege that wedding parties were hit when they were not actually. But then there are those pesky photographs of what are obviously civilians . . .)
The cost of such guerrilla struggles is high. On Sunday, Pushtun guerrillas attacked a remote base where US troops were under a NATO command and killed 9 of them, wounding 15. Many more "Taliban" were no doubt killed. But the evidence is that the Afghan insurgents are getting better at fighting the US.
When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' don't seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.
There has now been a rise of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, on a scale never before seen. One killed 24 people in a bazaar at Deh Rawood on Sunday. Robert Pape has demonstrated that suicide bombings typically are carried out by people who think their country is under foreign military occupation. If the US keeps sending more troops, will that really calm things down? (See also the recent blogging of Barnett Rubin on the situation of Afghanistan)
I don't know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted. I wish he would talk to some old Russian officers who were there in the 1980s first. Of course, it may be that this announced strategy is political and for the purposes of having something to say when McCain accuses him of surrendering in Iraq.
If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.
I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters. So he made a Zionist speech in Boca. In the context of US politics, that is to be expected; he would not be any sort of politician, much less a phenomenon, if he did not try to reassure Jewish Americans about his commmitment to Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal. But Obama went on to praise Zionist thinker Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people. And then he gave away Jerusalem, undivided and permanently, to the Israelis in the middle of ongoing negotiations over its status between Israel and the Palestine Authority in the context of the Quartet, which the US government supports. Neither of those two things was necessary. It was overkill. And Obama now has some bridge building to do with the Arab and Muslim worlds if he becomes president, since Jerusalem is also dear to their hearts.
Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.
We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.
Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.
Beware.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/14/2008 01:10:00 AM
|
Facebook
33 Comments:
If Obama gets elected President I think we will see his mind change.
I think he is being political at this point and not logical.
The military will also change their plans once Bush goes away.
The US Government and brass need a good translator and a good historian to learn what "guerrilla" means. They can start wirh the US War of Independence
Excellent analysis, as usual, Prof. Cole.
I just have one small bone to pick: Obama mentioned in his op-ed that he would commit $2 billion to support international efforts to help refugees in Iraq (and in the larger region, one hopes). This is something no one else has suggested -- in fact, I don't think any one else in the public eye in terms of government or political leadership has even mentioned the word "refugees."
I think Obama should be commended for this, albeit I know keeping the promise will be difficult. But at least he actually acknowledged that there are refugees created by the war. To me, that's extraordinary.
This is from today's Haaeretz:
Obama said on Sunday he used "poor phrasing" in a speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.
"You know, the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech. And we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given," he said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria - GPS."
"The point we were simply making was, is that we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent," Obama said.
When is it ok to start laughing at Barack Obama?
Dr. Cole, thank you for the thoughtful analysis of Obama's rhetoric. To be entirely truthful, Senator Obama's slide to the center in appealing Israeli Jews, alienation of Iran, and support of the colonial adventure in Iraq is not what the country needs. I am hoping that he regains some composure and fights the Republicans where it is needed most, namely in our increasingly dangerous war-time policies.
"The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq."
If it weren't for OUR darn oil under THEIR sand...
As the hip hoppers "Maroons" said:
"If it wasn't for dis' If it weren't for dat..
The world would be a better place..."
America needs foreign wars to serve as distractions from the failures at home. Obama was refreshingly naïve to that fact for a while but he's being persuaded and maneuvered into signing on to the same tiresome program. Instead of resisting he's recognising that in America war is Populism to a significant percentage of the public.
"If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour." -- Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
I think it is time for the admiration to lessen.
If I had to guess, I would say that commitments to 'leave a small force' would be among the most easily abandoned of the current pledges a politician could make.
That strikes me as entirely the sort of thing one must presumably say now.
Whereas by the time an actual U.S. withdrawal from the occupation had occurred, the majority of troops would have gone, the vast majority of journalists & news coverage would be (even more?) gone, and the issue's presence in daily debate would likely be pretty low.
In short, I'm not bothered by current commitments to maintain a 'small force' of U.S. military in Iraq.
I might be bothered if at such time as the debate was current -- i.e., the withdrawal has occurred and the 'small force' becomes a controversy from which a hypothetical Obama administration refuses to approach flexibly.
But for now, I don't see it as a huge issue, and I would bet that even many Iraqis who want to see the occupation ended might see it the same.
Wonderful post ! I hope that Obama will hear you.
"Then, how would a small American unit be any good against a terrorist organization operating in remote parts of Sunni Iraq? They don't know Arabic, can't hope for really good intelligence from locals, etc. Wouldn't it be more efficient to let the Special Police Commandos of the Iraqi Interior Ministry take care of this sort of thing?"
Yeah unless, you know, the US takes the Iraqi example and creates it's own special forces and organises them into the kind of small groups hinted at.
I dunno, something like those that already operate in Iraq and Afghanistan, speaking the language, with intel support etc, etc, etc.
Seriously, what's the name of the blog again ?
" Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda?"
Is that supposed to be a serious question ? What igloo are you in that you can't access as quickly as I can the testimony of commanders, constant updates on operations and a general clue as to what's been occurring for the past 7 years ?
"When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces?
...
Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard?"
Wouldn't you hear more about successful al Qaeda operations if they weren't ?
Abu Nidal's been awfully quiet lately. Lack of success against them to blame too no doubt.
"I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.')"
So what ? Do the original Taliban get a pass on this basis too ? Does this distinction have any merit whatsoever ?
The solution to Afghanistan and to the problem of Al Qaeda lies primariuly in Pakistan. Political work must be done in the tribal areas to activate the Pashtun penchant for "side switching." And economic work is needed throughout Pakistan to build up a viable public school alternative to the madrassas.
By leading with political and economic struggle, we can then apply carefully-calibrated military action where appropriate against Al Qaeda and the Taliban forces in Pakistan. This will relieve pressure on NATO forces in Afghanistan. And taking even one week's worth of Iraq war spending and using it for reconstruction purposes in Afghanistan will also help enormously.
The point being, nuclear-armed Pakistan is the nexus of a more intelligent "war on terror." And we must remember the goal should be to support democratic forces within Islam, who are ultimately the only ones capable of isolating and defeating Al Qaeda.
Concur with your thoughts; if we are to withdraw from Iraq, then do so, no 'residual force' period. BUT what neither McCain nor Obama mention is the spy facility otherwise known as the Embassy. I suspect that such a 'residual force' would be more to protect it than anything else.
There is a saying 'say what you mean and mean what you say'; American's DO appreciate such when they can experience such but have become lazy in holding politicians to that ethos. And the result is we are watching the Constitution be eviscerated and the nation bankrupted.
It's amazing to watch an empire be created and dissolved so quickly.
Mr. Obama needs more than a weather gauge, I think. The position he took on Jerusalem is completely untenable - not even the Bush White House has played its hand quite as ineptly on that issue.
And as to Afghanistan? Muslims do not accept Christian soldiers on their ground - and in their eyes, NATO is engaged in a Crusade, and it is their duty to oppose it.
Which takes us to Kipling's by know well known lines. I used them in 1978, when writing an article on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan for a magazine. I was not in a second's doubt that it would end in misery for the Russians - as it will end in misery for NATO in Afghanistan and for the U.S. in Iraq.
Muslims do not countenance rule - actual or by proxy - by Christians on their own land.
They poem is just as valid today:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier _of_ the Queen!"
During the CPA rule of Iraq, its AEI-picked tenth-tier Zionists and right-wing staffers often came up with grand plans for some Iraqi sector or another. They often followed it by: " and I will sell Iraqi oil to pay for it." The Iraqis simply did not exist or had any opinion in the CPA's warped vision of the world.
Obama's grand plans are from the same stable. His troops do not need Iraq's approval, and he is free to plant troops in any country he likes. The reality, as the CPA brats found out, is different. Even if a US-puppet government survives and is free to choose, they would want troops to serve them not to chase same imaginery al-Qaeda. But as we have already seen the pressure to remove every single US soldier is huge already. The British also had plans for their rule of Basra and the South, but then had to ask the Mahdi Army's permission to evacuate from the city.
ref : “what is reported in the press is that they [ie., AngloAmerican / NATO Occupation Forces] are fighting with [The] "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking ‘Taliban’ (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' [so-called "Taliban militants or insurgents" by Western media] don't seem mostly to have that background: a lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers...”
imho, You have made a very important point, Professor ~ bravo! ~ as the West is loathe to use the simplest, most descriptive language, lest it reveal that any resistance movement exists, meaning that AngloAmerican / NATO troops constitute a military Occupation Force, thus. otoh, From the West's all-to-casual ‘Taliban’ labelling, or branding we can infer that ‘shame’ does exist, to some extent, within not only the Western press corps, but also within the NATO, et al officer corps.
For our troops there is no Old Glory in this New Kind of War.
Unfortunately the broad sword of euphemism / language malapropism cuts both ways: as WE deal with our shame, apparent by lumping together all peoples of the Middle East into "for us or against us" compliant or competitive groups, THEY deal with their anger, apparent by lumping together all peoples of the Euro-West as "wealth-extracting colonialists" or "JudeoChristian military crusaders".
Dr. Cole, I would just like to remind that you've called the war in Afghanistan "the right war," (HIST 241) and have expressed limited admiration for the Bush administration's handling of it up until the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. How was it the "right war" if, in fact, it has been unwinnable from the start?
The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq.
TELL IT PROFESSOR COLE !!! SAY IT LOUD !!!
Put Every Single Swinging Richard On A Plane and GET THE FUNK OUT !!!
"Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people." If you simply mean Herzl is generally credited with starting political Zionism, that is true. But the phrase about a land without a people came from Israel Zangwill, not Herzl. Herzl never denied that there were Arabs in Palestine. He expected them to get along well with the Zionists (as set forth in his Utopian novel Altneuland). One can argue that even in the Ottoman era that expectation was delusional, but there is no need to attribute to him views he did not express.
Re 10,000 more for Afghanistan
The question Obama's comment raises is what troop deployments will go to Afghanistan before a new 'war president' takes the oath. Obama may just be calling for what is already planned. Great way to look prescient, without violating his classified briefing.
Bebop McCain is getting the same briefings, but is locked into 'Iraq first, then bomb Iran' tune bondage.
Mullen/Gates are quite clear that they want to send the reserves to Afghanistan, just as soon as we have a reserve. (Hint: we don't, and that is a military sign of tactics trumping strategy on some front.)
The Great Petraeus of late '08 hasn't weighed on whether the Great Petraeus of early '08 is losing the argument on keeping our un-reserved force playing whackamuqtadah in Iraq. At least until the guys who got extended to 15 months get 12 at home.
We've gone from less than a division chasing the Taliban in 2002, to a 53,000 Euro-US troop commitment in June 2008. After 300% inflation, everyone is agreeing that is not enough to prevent further deterioration. 53K and rising is not counting contractors , which may outnumber the uniforms, as in Iraq.
Can you spell 'escalation'? How about 'quagmire'?
Hum "Knee Deep in the Big Muddy'?
Anyone (besides 'Napoleon in Egypt' Juan) remember the point of the 'tar baby' or 'briar patch' fables?
Notice Obama says redeployment, instead of withdrawal, for all combat forces.
"Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal."
That's like talking about Russian security from Chechnya. It's a sick joke.
And isn't Israeli about to defend "it's security" by bombing Iran?
Dr Cole wrote:
"Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public."
Isn't it a good thing that Obama freed himself from being captive to those embarrassing 'strong representations' of filibustering telecom immunity?
You can have Iron Fist McCain or Velvet Glove Obama. Not saying that the differences, such as they are, won't make a difference of several million lives sacrificed to empire, or differences in the precise kinds and degrees of misery inflicted on people. If you're going to vote for either of these prospective Commanders of Grief, do it with eyes open and don't kid yourselves about "transformation."
On Afghanistan I like what you say but I doubt your analysis.
Pakistan is in a very bad way
(electricity a few hours a day?) and
I would guess that quite a few 'bad people' are
leaking over the border just the same way they are in Kashmir(or Iraq). Afghanistan is suffering from too much Pakistan, just as Karzai says.
Democracy isn't doing too well in Pakistan with its array of corrupt politicians. I see on BBC there is economic collapse in the 2006earthquake zone.
Can the US keep Pakistan functional( by posting troops close by to 'help')? Maybe P is a Cambodia style disaster in the making.
I don't have answers but the Afghanistan problem is much larger than Afghanistan IMO.
Yeah, the original Afghanistan War of 2001 was done right. Very few US boots on the ground, backing Northern Alliance to overthrow Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda training camps.
That isn't what is going on now. There are 66,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan! When did I or anybody else sign on to *that*?
If the problem was that the Karzai government was weak, that may be less of a problem in Afghanistan than you would think. The best Afghan governments are always weak.
Obama says he wants only to withdraw "all combat forces," but combat forces represent only 25 percent of U.S. military personnel in Iraq. So, presumably, he doesn't want to withdraw the other 75 percent over the next two years. As a result, America will continue to have a HUGE presence in Iraq which the Iraqi people rightly consider a NUISANCE. And he's also calling for an additional 90,000 new troops for our military, which is another ingredient for more war and U.S. hegemony.
If Obama drifts too far right Nancy Pelosi can be trusted to keep him focused on his promise to get U.S. troops out of the Middle East, pronto.
Well, maybe not.
There are 66,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan! When did I or anybody else sign on to *that*?
Hmm. So everybody at NATO was asleep at the conference table and Rumsfeld or somebody forged their signatures?
Happy days.
"That's like talking about Russian security from Chechnya. It's a sick joke."
If you are AGAINST Zionist crimes, you should know, that Chechnya "independence" is championed by the same Zionists who championed Iraq "liberation"
And, anyway, Chechnya is at least by law a part of Russia and its people are NOT Palestinians under Zionist rule.
Does Afghanistan have the revenues to support a national army to secure the country?
The quibble is that Obama talks about leaving a small American force in Iraq after most of the troops are withdrawn, to continue to fight "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia."
That's more than a quibble. Obama clearly plans to continue the occupation of Iraq "on the cheap". He's got the "enclave theory" in mind. Remember that from Vietnam? Obama is a red, white, and blue imperialist.
The major critique I have is that Obama keeps talking about intensifying the search and destroy missions being carried out by US troops in the Pushtun areas of southern Afghanistan.
Not only Afghanistan but Pakistan and Iran!
I don't know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted...
Gee... BO says :
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven.
Starting(!) in Afghanistan and Pakistan... what part of starting his "redeployment" in Afghanistan and Pakistan do you not understand? Or are you arguing on purely the level of posturing? That he shouldn't say what he means to do because that might cause him... ahem... difficulties getting elected?
I wouldn't vote for BO if he were the only one running. He is committed to inaugurating Bush' third term. Just doing it "right" this time. Why do you think he has all these column inches in that Neocon Organ the NYTimes? I've had more than enough of unbridled US imperialism!
I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters... Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard.
Again you seem to be saying that it's OK that he does these things... he just shouldn't say he's going to do them in public. Surely you cannot mean this?
We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama.
I don't find anything admirable in BO. He's a fraud... a triangulating Bill Clinton on steroids. And with his pied piper persona he'll be very, very dangerous to have in power when the economy collapses.
Remember the Weimar Republic?
We need to get out of there.
Amen! And the corollary to that is we need to get away form BO just as fast as our little legs will carry us!
Ralph Nader this is your year!
I agree when he says he'll pull out of Iraq. About terrorism, I agree but it should be a more focused campaign that doesn't deploy military and shoot left and right. I'm supporting Obama! Pls VISIT WHYOBAMA08.org!!!
Thanks Juan,
I feel a lot better now.
Un abrazo
David
Post a Comment
<< Home