Common Sense Political Thought

Our good friend Donviti almost raised an important question, and then backed off of it. In quoting from Frank Rich’s article in yesterday’s New York Times, Messrs Rich and Viti both looked at the (supposed) inadequacy of the President’s plans in Afghanistan, mentioned Pakistan, but then ignored the logical consequences. Mr Rich wrote:

“Along its border,” of course, means across the border — a k a Pakistan. Obama never satisfactorily argued why more troops in Afghanistan, where his own administration puts the number of Qaeda operatives at roughly 100, will help vanquish the far more substantial terrorist strongholds in Pakistan. But even if he had made that case and made it strongly, a larger issue remains: If the enemy in Afghanistan, whether Taliban or Qaeda, poses the same existential threat to America today that it did on 9/11, why is the president settling for half-measures?

By “half-measures,” Mr Rich refers to the number of additional troops being put in Afghanistan.

It’s not just that Obama is fielding somewhat fewer troops than the maximum Gen. Stanley McChrystal requested. McChrystal himself didn’t ask for enough troops to fight a proper counterinsurgency in Afghanistan in the first place. Using the metrics outlined in the sacred text on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus’s field manual, we’d need a minimal force of 568,000 for Afghanistan’s population of 28.4 million. After the escalation, allied forces will reach barely a quarter of that number.

If the enemy in Afghanistan today threatens the American homeland as the Viet Cong never did, we should be all in, according to Obama’s logic. So why aren’t we?

The problem neglected by Messrs Rich and Viti is that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is wholly meaningless to al Qaeda and the Taliban. They move across it perfectly freely, perfectly naturally. They are not government troops, they neither represent nor respect any government, and will do whatever they believe to be in their best interests to win. If al Qaeda and the Taliban are in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, as President Obama stated, our respect for the international border simply gives those organizations a safe haven. By “half-measures,” Mr Rich could have, and should have, meant not really dealing with the problem of al Qaeda and the Taliban across the Pakistani border.

Now, we have been willing to send unmanned drones over Pakistan, both for surveillance and bombing attacks, but the use of ground troops has been out of the question, though the possibility certainly exists that there have been covert missions which have crossed the border.

In some ways, the Predator drone work reminds me of the Operation Menu covert bombing campaign waged against North Vietnamese and Viet Cong positions in eastern Cambodia. Initial cross-border surveillance operations ordered by President Lyndon Johnson generated a lot of intelligence, but Cambodian ruler Prince Norodom Sihanouk would not budge from his “neutrality” between the warring sides in Vietnam. President Richard Nixon then ordered a covert bombing attack on suspected Communist positions, supply dumps and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. The bombing campaign was certainly a nuisance, but it did not seriously hamper Communist military activities. The Predators are, of course, much more precise than gravity bombs from a B-52.

President Nixon then asked for planning for an invasion of eastern Cambodia, to use troops on the ground to destroy the Communist bases and supply caches on the ground, something that bombing by B-52 Stratofortresses couldn’t do with precision. Strategically, it was the only decision which made sense: you can’t allow your enemy safe sanctuary. Operationally, it was not quite as successfully as the President had hoped.

The North Vietnamese response to the incursion was to avoid contact with allied forces and, if possible, to fall back westward and regroup. PAVN (People’s Army of Vietnam ) forces were well aware of the planned attack and many COSVN/B-3 Front (Central Office for South Vietnam) military units were already far to the north and west conducting operations against the Cambodians when the offensive began.

Politically, it was a disaster: the Cambodian incursion sparked anti-war protests much greater than we had seen before, including the famous Kent State shootings. I was in high school at the time, and remember the protests well, even though they never came to the small town in which I lived.

President Obama is in pretty much the same position as President Nixon found himself in 1969 and 1970. If he continues to fight in Afghanistan, he really can’t allow the enemy to have a safe haven in Pakistan. If concentrations of al Qaeda or Taliban can be located in Pakistan, the President has to be ready to authorize whatever force is necessary to take them out. But the US certainly has to be able to keep such plans a secret: when the Vietnamese Communists knew that US troops were coming to a particular area, they simply withdrew, knowing that the US troops would be out again soon enough.

President Obama knows about the enemy presence in Pakistan, and I’m certain that at least the option of using American troops to go after them has been presented to him; the Pentagon would have been derelict in not at least having the option ready for presentation. At some point, President Obama is going to have to take that option.

We lost in Vietnam, in part because we didn’t have the support of the public to win, but also because we unnecessarily restricted what we were doing against the enemy. But when we lost in Vietnam, it wasn’t really a threat to the United States; the Vietnamese Communists were mostly interested in ruling Vietnam. To lose against al Qaeda is different; the Islamists would happily strike the United States again, and if they can seize power in Pakistan, they seize possession of nuclear weapons as well. Our good friend Donviti hates that President Obama has taken the decision to stay in Afghanistan and fight the Islamists, but really, it was the only decision he could have taken. We can’t just fight this war; we have to win this war.