Walking Out Of Afghanistan

In the early 1970s, Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont is reputed to have suggested that we resolve the unpopular war in Vietnam by having all our troops shout, “We win!” And then run for the boats. Is that the model we want for Afghanistan?
Remember, the Vietnamese hadn’t done anything to us or even threatened us. Ho Chi Minh adored the Declaration of Independence and he’d tried to be friends with both Wilson and Truman. Even as an enemy he had no ability to damage any part of the United States.
When we did finally pull out of Vietnam (quite unilaterally), no one blew up any buildings in the US or in the cities of our allies. We were just as safe after that war as we were before it. (This begs the question of what we were doing there in the first place—and I can offer no better answer than Temporary Insanity.) Will we be safe if we walk away from Afghanistan?
People trained in Afghanistan—and working with the blessing of the people who are killing our troops now—have already blown up a couple of landmark buildings in New York. They left us a couple thousand dead civilians, and they keep talking about doing it again.
Unlike the Vietnamese, who were willing to be our friends before the war and are perfectly content to be friendly afterwards, Afghanistan contains some real enemies. One reason they haven’t blown up any more American buildings may be that we are keeping them too well occupied fighting us at home. Do we really want to stop—and free them up to do more mischief here?
When Obama meets with his generals over the next few weeks, he has a whole lot of issues to consider that I’m very glad I’m not facing. He is losing support at home—and that makes fighting a war exceedingly hard indeed. A lot of Americans simply want out.
We are fighting in execrable terrain that the enemy knows well. We are hunched up against the borders of some enemy dominated provinces in Pakistan that they can hide in and we cannot pursue. NOBODY over there really likes us.
Our often stated goals of turning Afghanistan into a democratic nation are looking more and more unattainable as the bombs go off. Elections are, if anything, more crooked than our city ballots were under the days of the worst machines. “Nation building”? In Afghanistan? Only if you believe “creation ex nihilo” is an ongoing phenomenon.
It appears that we can neither fish nor cut bait. If we stay, they kill some of us there. If we leave, they come here and kill some of us. Talk about “no win”. If we don’t shoot back, they get bolder. If we shoot back we often hit civilians (who may well be just as much our enemies as the chaps with guns) and are excoriated for killing “innocents”.
Is it possible that we are working from the wrong playbook? During the Indian wars and the Civil War we worked from the strategic point of view that killing and starving lots of civilians would eventually damage the enemy war effort. When they finally quit, Lee’s men hadn’t eaten in days. The Indians were finally forced to come to us for government issue food.
Perhaps we should forget about democracy in Afghanistan and nation building—and just concentrate on making sure no one survives to blow any of us up. Churchill looked at the ruins of London during the blitz and said to the Germans, “You do your worst and we shall do our best.” Our best eventually came to killing up to half-million German women and children in a single raid.
Maybe a workable third alternative in Afghanistan will be a more ruthless version of older strategies. After all, these are enemies. The village “civilians” are not picking up weapons to fight on our side. Perhaps we should leave a small, picked group of special forces types (with, unlike now, enough helicopters in hand for rapid deployment missions) and bring the nation builders home.
Should we make it clear that we are only there to destroy radicals and their silent partners who want to hurt us? And that we will do it—as we did in the 1800s and the 1940s—without pity. After we have convinced them of our intentions—and killed enough—we can sit down and talk?
Horrible as this third alternative sounds, somebody show me how either of the others will work. I don’t see it. I don’t hear Obama talking like he does either. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is a very, very, very messy and nasty business. God help us. And them.