Afghanistan: Why we should be there (or not), how to conduct the mission (or not) & when to leave

[PolSciPof]

There are legitimate reasons why we are in Afghanistan. The Afghan sovereign law-making body gave legitimacy through legislation. Aside from the fact that any crime committed by any American or Canadian in Afghan soil is under their court's  jurisdiction and covered by Afghan criminal laws, they cannot also escape the long arm's reach of Canadian military tribunals. Moreover, we are promoting democracy. We also have the blessings of the Canadian electorate who elected the majority of those who passed the laws legitimizing our presence in Afghanistan.

 

[MarkOttawa]

From Terry Glavin, recently returned from the Sandbox:
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-follows-is-preview-of-my-essay-in.html

...
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD –It might help to imagine this place as something out of a science-fiction movie, set in the distant future, on a desolate, searing-hot and faraway planet. More than 30,000 earthlings from 42 different countries are hunkered down in a vast and heavily-guarded mining colony in the middle of a windswept plain. Groaning, lumbering vehicles rumble around dusty streets. Strange pilotless aircraft circle overhead...

I'm headed back to Afghanistan within the month. I won't be inside KAF, but instead, like the time before,
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-vancouver-review-taqunya-in-kabul.html
I'll be embedded with the people, as I like to say (I was on CBC Radio this morning here in Victoria giving out of myself about these things)...

Also from the time before:

Riding With Mad Max Across The Kandahar Plain, To Visit With Ehsan Ullah Ehsan
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/11/riding-with-mad-max-across-kandahar.html

More on that good Afghan and the CF here:
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/01/letter-of-grief-and-hope-from-kandahar.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Afstan: Bye bye ISAF Regional Command South as US takes control
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/afstan-bye-bye-isaf-regional-command.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Afstan: Jan. 28 international conference/ANA, ANP training
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/afstan-jan-29-international.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Journeyman]

Afstan: Bye bye ISAF Regional Command South as US takes control
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/afstan-bye-bye-isaf-regional-command.html

From this link, above:

The command — which switches annually between Britain, the Netherlands and Canada with a permanent American deputy commander — will be replaced by two division sized commands [emphasis added] of about 30,000 servicemen each

I can't imagine something as straight-forward as merely being abolished will be capable of shrinking the bloated sinecure for staff-officers that is RC(S). I bet they bumble along for another year or so, making powerpoints, before they realize they have no command. [/cynicism]

“The US Marines hardly take orders from the US Army, let alone a British command structure,” one source told The Times.

:rofl:

 

[vonGarvin]

I can't imagine something as straight-forward as merely being abolished will be capable of shrinking the bloated sinecure for staff-officers that is RC(S). I bet they bumble along for another year or so, making powerpoints, before they realize they have no command.

I predict that RC (S) will in fact BLOAT LARGER.  I mean, they will need Staff Officers to work out what they will do when command shifts, which requires J4-5-7's, J5-1-7s and lord knows what else.  Oh, and a PowerPoint brigade!

 

[zipperhead_cop]

I predict that RC (S) will in fact BLOAT LARGER.  I mean, they will need Staff Officers to work out what they will do when command shifts, which requires J4-5-7's, J5-1-7s and lord knows what else.  Oh, and a PowerPoint brigade!

Is that where you got your PowerPoint Ranger qual?  ;D

 

[MarkOttawa]

Terry Glavin takes on our craven political class:

'The question will be, for how long do you want to be paying the Taliban with your money?'
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-long-do-you-want-to-be-paying.html

An "odd guard guarding an embassy"
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2414456&p=1
is all that will be left of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan next year. Thus Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared, unchallenged, and as though it were only up to him to decide in the first place. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff pledges to support only a "different role focusing on a humanitarian commitment," indicating such open-mindedness as to risk having his brains fall out, and the New Democrats haven't made a contribution to the discussion since their 2006 edict declaring that Canada should simply refuse the United Nations' entreaties altogether because Afghanistan is just "not the right mission for Canada."

...Canada has been paralyzed by the frenzies and taboos that have come to afflict its entire political class. The most recent spasm combines elements of both.

The frenzy: The only thing the House of Commons special committee on Afghanistan has been allowed to talk about is whether or not someone in cabinet might have done something that might be cynically construed as an act or an omission that might be spun in such a way as to suggest something less than assiduousness in the care and feeding of captured Taliban brigands, three years ago. The taboo: It's only a war crime if the Conservatives did it...
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/13/terry-glavin-cover-up-what-are-the-liberals-hiding.aspx
You know paralysis has set in when that all that's left to us is to answer harangues to light our torches and march on our summarily-prorogued Parliament, while the rest of the world goes about its business...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Canadian and US armies going to the people in Kandahar City and environs--with a price
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/canadian-and-us-armies-going-to-people.html

A story in Stars and Stripes noting the armies' cooperation (something our media rarely mention, the American troops mentioned are under CF command)...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[leroi]

Controversial Canadian, Conrad Black, weighs in on Canada's commitment to Afghanistan and why we should stay--I  like what he has to say ... and my own opinion on the mission boils down to some thing simple my mother taught me: "If you're going to do something do it right to and see it through to the end or don't do anything at all;  my Dad's advice would be the same but expressed more tersely as "shit or get off the pot."

Having said that, my resolve weakens (guiltily) when I stare into the eyes of another photo of Fallen Comrade(s) and hear stories of our wounded coming home.  With each and every ramp ceremony I ask myself is it worth it? Yet, it's my belief that this is exactly how the enemy wants us to feel--so Canadians will put pressure on the government  to withdraw and  insurgents will succeed with their evil fatwas;  continuing to grow, spread and  propagate terrorism;  inspiring an irrational hatred of the west and continue oppressing others and violating basic Human Rights--WITH VIOLENCE. 

Conrad Black: Sticking Around in Afghanistan

The National Post: January 16, 2010

(Reproduced in accordance with the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.)

Link

After Barack Obama made his recent policy statement about the war in Afghanistan, I wrote here that the combination of the U.S. build-up, confirmation of war aims, and the major offensive by Pakistan, after years of shilly-shallying by that country, would produce an important victory over the region’s terrorists. Unfortunately, the current position of the Harper government is not so praiseworthy as Mr. Obama’s. “We’ve done enough” is not an acceptable, or even honourable, revised mission statement at this stage in a just war that has both NATO and UN legitimization. 

The Bush-Rumsfeld approach to waging war generally ignored foreign assistance, except for the British and Australians in Iraq. The Bush White House was concerned that any effort to build NATO solidarity would restrain the scope and force of the U.S. war on terror. There was some basis to the concern. But in regard to Afghanistan, this was no way to lead an alliance that had just rallied with sincere and affecting solidarity to America’s side following the attacks of 9/11. After failing to follow up aggressively on their initial success in Afghanistan, and moving the Pentagon’s primary focus to Iraq, the Americans left their allies milling about in central Asia with inadequate forces (though the United States continued to field, by far, the largest national contingent). The Taliban began to recover. It was at this point that Canada, as one of the larger force contributors and bearers of casualties, should have co-ordinated with the other countries, agitated constructively and forcefully, and told the United States that if it didn’t produce a credible war plan and an appropriate U.S. force level to achieve it, we were all pulling out.

Instead, we plodded imperceptibly on in the Mission Unaccomplishable of holding Kandahar province (one million people), the Taliban’s heartland, including Kandahar City with 500,000 people, with only about 2,500 troops, and rarely more than 400 trigger-pullers in operation at a time, and for many months without helicopters. By comparison to this, even Horatius at the Bridge, Dollard facing the Indians, and the defenders of the Alamo all could be said to have had superfluous manpower.

Now, after many mistakes, the United States is executing an apparently successful plan to secure and depart Iraq, and has accorded Afghanistan 30,000 more first-class soldiers, under the leadership of a respected and successful allied force commander, General Stanley McChrystal. Across the border in Pakistan, meanwhile, a combination of Taliban outrages, U.S. diplomacy and assistance, and an apparently substantial move toward Pakistani military resolve, has transformed that country into a more willing and effective ally.

A recent poll by the BBC, ABC, and the German network ARD has revealed a sharp rise in Afghan support for the U.S.-NATO force presence (to 70%), and support for the present Afghan government, as opposed to the Taliban, of 90% to 6%. NATO is not an occupier, and the Taliban does not have a fraction of the popular support necessary for a truly successful insurgency, once the Afghan government forces are adequately large, armed and trained. Instead of padding around indecisively and furtively, bending to the pacifistic posturing of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, Canada’s government must lead domestic opinion to a new Afghan policy based on the following points.

Canada should remain at present strength in Afghanistan until President Obama’s proposed initiation of de-escalation in 18 months. Following that period, we would then determine our future policy, independently of the United States, but simultaneously. This commitment should be conditional on continuing to receive adequate support from the three crack U.S. Stryker battalions that have been placed under Canadian command at Kandahar. The question of detainees is a side-show. The Allies should develop a common policy about when to hand over detainees to the Afghan government, and what treatment of those detainees will be expected of the Afghans — a more universal implementation of the sort of policy that the Canadians already have in place, in other words.

The Harper government should aggressively repeat the rationale for the Afghan intervention originally advanced by the Chrétien government: that terrorism is a threat to all civilized countries, that Canada pledged to do its part, that NATO is the most successful alliance in history and the cornerstone of the security of all its members (except the United States, which provides most of the security), that this is a just and necessary war for the reasons that President Obama and other allied leaders (as well as three successive Canadian prime ministers of both major parties) have articulated, and that premature withdrawal would confirm the Bin Laden charge that the West is decadent and cowardly.

Finally, Harper should acknowledge that it would a fraud to leave, as is currently contemplated, fewer than 1,000 “non-combat” Canadians in the country: They would be nothing but sitting ducks. Canada’s foreign policy establishment must stop moping about Pearsonian peacekeeping and “punching above our weight.” Peacekeeping doesn’t work when there is war, and isn’t usually necessary when there isn’t.

Canada should recognize that it is one of the 12 or 14 most important countries of the 193 in the world, and bulk up its weight accordingly and, to apply that clichéd metaphor, punch that weight. We can’t wallow in nostalgia about peacekeeping and grumble about being under-recognized when we hide our light under a bushel, and announce we are pulling out of an eight-year commitment now that we are on the verge of participating in a much-desired and very necessary victory. In geopolitics, flyweights aren’t heavy-weights. There is no international free lunch. And being served one is an ignoble ambition for such a distinguished country as ours.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Kabul attacks:Taliban propanda watch, Globeite edition
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/kabul-attackstaliban-propanda-watch.html

With apologies to Milnews.ca. First a real news story from Matthew Fisher of Canwest News...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Afstan: Dutch not fighting? "Bullshit"
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/afstan-dutch-not-fighting-bullshit.html

That's their commander in Uruzgan speaking...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[George Wallace]

For all of those who are using History as their basis for why we shouldn't be there, perhaps some of the words from Richards J Heuer Jr, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis may be of interest:

Chapter 4

Comparison with Historical Situations

A third approach for going beyond the available information is comparison. An analyst seeks understanding of current events by comparing them with historical precedents in the same country, or with similar events in other countries. Analogy is one form of comparison. When an historical situation is deemed comparable to current circumstances, analysts use their understanding of the historical precedent to fill gaps in their understanding of the current situation. Unknown elements of the present are assumed to be the same as known elements of the historical precedent. Thus, analysts reason that the same forces are at work, that the outcome of the present situation is likely to be similar to the outcome of the historical situation, or that a certain policy is required in order to avoid the same outcome as in the past.

Comparison differs from situational logic in that the present situation is interpreted in the light of a more or less explicit conceptual model that is created by looking at similar situations in other times or places. It differs from theoretical analysis in that this conceptual model is based on a single case or only a few cases, rather than on many similar cases. Comparison may also be used to generate theory, but this is a more narrow kind of theorizing that cannot be validated nearly as well as generalizations inferred from many comparable cases.

Reasoning by comparison is a convenient shortcut, one chosen when neither data nor theory are available for the other analytical strategies, or simply because it is easier and less time-consuming than a more detailed analysis. A careful comparative analysis starts by specifying key elements of the present situation. The analyst then seeks out one or more historical precedents that may shed light on the present. Frequently, however, a historical precedent may be so vivid and powerful that it imposes itself upon a person's thinking from the outset, conditioning them to perceive the present primarily in terms of its similarity to the past. This is reasoning by analogy. As Robert Jervis noted, "historical analogies often precede, rather than follow, a careful analysis of a situation."39

The tendency to relate contemporary events to earlier events as a guide to understanding is a powerful one. Comparison helps achieve understanding by reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar. In the absence of data required for a full understanding of the current situation, reasoning by comparison may be the only alternative. Anyone taking this approach, however, should be aware of the significant potential for error. This course is an implicit admission of the lack of sufficient information to understand the present situation in its own right, and lack of relevant theory to relate the present situation to many other comparable situations

The difficulty, of course, is in being certain that two situations are truly comparable. Because they are equivalent in some respects, there is a tendency to reason as though they were equivalent in all respects, and to assume that the current situation will have the same or similar outcome as the historical situation. This is a valid assumption only when based on in-depth analysis of both the current situation and the historical precedent to ensure that they are actually comparable in all relevant respects.

In a short book that ought to be familiar to all intelligence analysts, Ernest May traced the impact of historical analogy on US foreign policy.40 He found that because of reasoning by analogy, US policymakers tend to be one generation behind, determined to avoid the mistakes of the previous generation. They pursue the policies that would have been most appropriate in the historical situation but are not necessarily well adapted to the current one.

Policymakers in the 1930s, for instance, viewed the international situation as analogous to that before World War I. Consequently, they followed a policy of isolation that would have been appropriate for preventing American involvement in the first World War but failed to prevent the second. Communist aggression after World War II was seen as analogous to Nazi aggression, leading to a policy of containment that could have prevented World War II.

More recently, the Vietnam analogy has been used repeatedly over many years to argue against an activist US foreign policy. For example, some used the Vietnam analogy to argue against US participation in the Gulf War--a flawed analogy because the operating terrain over which battles were fought was completely different in Kuwait/Iraq and much more in our favor there as compared with Vietnam.

May argues that policymakers often perceive problems in terms of analogies with the past, but that they ordinarily use history badly:



When resorting to an analogy, they tend to seize upon the first that comes to mind. They do not research more widely. Nor do they pause to analyze the case, test its fitness, or even ask in what ways it might be misleading. 41


As compared with policymakers, intelligence analysts have more time available to "analyze rather than analogize." Intelligence analysts tend to be good historians, with a large number of historical precedents available for recall. The greater the number of potential analogues an analyst has at his or her disposal, the greater the likelihood of selecting an appropriate one. The greater the depth of an analyst's knowledge, the greater the chances the analyst will perceive the differences as well as the similarities between two situations. Even under the best of circumstances, however, inferences based on comparison with a single analogous situation probably are more prone to error than most other forms of inference.

The most productive uses of comparative analysis are to suggest hypotheses and to highlight differences, not to draw conclusions. Comparison can suggest the presence or the influence of variables that are not readily apparent in the current situation, or stimulate the imagination to conceive explanations or possible outcomes that might not otherwise occur to the analyst. In short, comparison can generate hypotheses that then guide the search for additional information to confirm or refute these hypotheses. It should not, however, form the basis for conclusions unless thorough analysis of both situations has confirmed they are indeed comparable.

LINK

 

[MarkOttawa]

Globeite Doug Saunders still can't tell a US Marine from a soldier
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/globeite-doug-saunders-still-cant-tell.html

Afstan: The US Army in Arghandab: a tale of two battalions
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/afstan-us-army-in-arghandab-tale-of-two.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Afstan: International conference/Globeite Doug Saunders smackdown
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/afstan-international-conference.html

Yet more US Army troops for CF's Task Force Kandahar/Globeite Doug Saunders smackdown (2)
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/01/yet-more-us-army-troops-for-cfs-task.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Talking to the Taliban/ANA Update/Beyond Uppestdate: Karzai clanger
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/02/talking-to-taliban.html

Not as simple as many Canadian opposition politicians and pundits (really disgusting example here) seem to believe...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Video: Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance on Afstan--from CPAC:
http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&lang=e&clipID=3608

On January 20th, 2010, in Ottawa, Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance, the former Canadian Forces commander in Kandahar, delivered a speech entitled "From the Front Line: Canadian Forces in Afghanistan".

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Aussies hope Dutch will maintain some presence in Uruzgan/US and Pak operations
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2010/02/aussies-hope-dutch-will-maintain-some.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Edward Campbell]

Notice the resemblance?

Now take note of this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s National Post:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/02/adrian-macnair-peace-in-our-time-at-any-price.aspx

Adrian MacNair: Peace in our time, at any price

Posted: February 02, 2010

The recent conference in London with representatives from more than 60 countries comprised of foreign ministers, diplomats, and leaders, has much in common with the Copenhagen conference that weathered a winter storm of international attention the month before. Both attempted to use flawed reasoning and shoddy research to push through agreements that would transfer billions of dollars of wealth from the industrialized world into the hands of corrupt, unscrupulous scoundrels looking to further their own interests.

Such is the case with the endemically corrupt Hamid Karzai government, now calling for peace talks with the Taliban “at any cost”. And a beleaguered western media, bored of the same coverage of a war that doesn’t seem to make for flashy headlines quite like it used to, are vigorously endorsing the sell-out to the men who, a few short years ago, were routinely compared to the worst scum of the earth.

Mr.Karzai’s finance minister, Omar Zakhilwal, has even welcomed the idea of Taliban leaders in the cabinet of the Kabul government, and promised their participation right down to the village districts where they currently run shadow governments of intimidation and terror. The Karzai government is asking for $1-billion to “reintegrate” these wayward fellows.

The Canadian media has been preparing for the withdrawal with the kind of premeditated self-defeating rhetoric that has turned the public against the mission. The Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom asks what the Afghan war even accomplished, suggesting we sacrificed billions of dollars and “some” 139 souls for nothing more than taking sides in an “ethnic battle”.

The Toronto Star writer doesn’t bother to mention any of the positive developments that have emerged since the Taliban were ousted, going as far as to suggest the war precipitated the planning of the foiled terrorist attack in Toronto. This is terrorist apologism at its very worst, as Mr.Walkom suggests Afghanistan was invaded by the United States on false pretenses, perpetuating the most widely circulated fabrication of the war. He follows this with a glib remark about al-Qaeda not even being in Afghanistan anymore, paradoxically questioning the need for the war in the first place.

But what Walkom seems to miss, along with others for whom no level of Taliban appeasement is too much,  is that talks with the Taliban won’t work. Not eight years ago, and not now. That’s because the Taliban aren’t negotiating for a role in Kabul’s government; they are negotiating for the total control of Kabul, and the entire country it governs.

The insurgents realize that western attention deficit disorder has taken effect, and sooner or later the political will to stay will wane, aided and abetted by a media reprinting the public relations memos of Mullah Omar. Anyone with common sense has to realize that the Taliban need only stay the course for a few more years, wait for the NATO withdrawal, and then launch the siege of Kabul.

The western world is making a mistake in pretending the Karzai conference was anything more than a self-serving scheme to distribute more wealth into hands of the power elite. They don’t care about the 200 Afghan women’s rights and civil society organizations that gathered in Kabul prior to the conference to protest the idea of selling out the rights of Afghan women and men to the Taliban.

The International Declaration of Human Rights isn’t something that can be negotiated back behind a burka. No serious person would entertain a power-sharing agreement with terrorists and criminals who are members of a United Nations watch list. The intellectual arm of the Taliban, not the warm bodies who serve for a paycheque, will not for an instant compromise their ideologically driven goal of reinstalling the Sharia State and a return to football stadium executions and stoning deaths for women who commit the crime of being gang-raped.

The myth of a power-sharing accord between the Taliban and the Karzai government is as legitimate as the myth about a “moderate” terrorist. The Taliban will entertain peace talk proposals for only so long as it benefits their strategy. But when they see an opportunity to let the hammer fall, they will not hesitate. Expect it to be particularly brutal.

National Post

Canada, along with the rest of the US led West is practicing appeasement politics again: but this time “we” are appeasing our own base nature which is unwilling to do what is necessary to help the helpless and comfort the wretched of the earth – not, at least, as soon as the novelty wears off.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Just remember what happened following the Vietnam “peace” agreement of 1973.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/honor/peopleevents/e_paris.html
The consequential reality here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/timeline/tl3.html#b

Mark
Ottawa