The Obama-neocon Afghan action plan: saving face by humiliating ourselves


Gen. Mark Kimmitt (Ret.)

In her September 21 blog article, Diana West describes a recent panel discussion sponsored by a conservative-neoconservative group called the Foreign Policy Initiative. The neoconservatives, she says, seem to be the only faction now on board with Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Everyone at FPI, she writes, supports

our grovelling, humiliating attempts to … curry favor in Afghanistan by giving Afghans things—not beads and trinkets, mind you, but multi-million-dollar infrastructure projects and troops to guard them, metric tons and tons of wheat and troops to guard them, lots of cash to compensate for “civilian” casualties and troops to guard them, etc.

Supporters of this strategy say we would lose face by leaving Afghanistan. I’m sorry, but we lose face every day we force our bravest, most promising citizens—our soldiers—to execute this humiliating and impotent policy to submit to Islamic sensibilities to try to make them like us. And our enemies, particularly in the Islamic world, understand this.

West then describes a frightening conversation she had with one of the panel participants, an intellectually inert and seriously off the planet retired brigadier general named Mark Kimmit.

During the panel discussion, Kimmitt had said among other things that the center of gravity of our efforts is no longer the defeat of the enemy forces, and no longer support of the local population, but rather maintaining the U.S. population’s support for the war. Kimmitt stated that maintaining the American people’s support for our military presence in Afghanistan would be “the center of gravity” of this effort “for the next 10 years.”

* * *

I wrote to Diana West:

Diana, in your article about the FPI panel last week, you wrote:

There was not one single solitary mention of Islam (nothing new there) and just one reference in passing to the unconscionable burden McChrystal has placed on troops by restricting already restricted ROE [rules of engagement] in the unicorn-like pursuit of Afghan hearts and minds.

I just want to verify that. You attended an entire neocon panel on Afghanistan (lasting, I would suppose, at least an hour and a half), and the word Islam and its variants were never once mentioned?

Diana West replies:

Larry, this is totally par for the course. Yes. This happens every time I go to any discussion on Iraq or Afghanistan—four, maybe five times in the last year or so. The only time in my experience it is ever mentioned is if I bring it up in question (I wait for the very end to try just to give them a chance).

—end of initial entry—

LA writes:

Another Diana West column on the subject, from April 2009, is What Do You Mean “If We Ever Want to Leave” Afghanistan?

This reminds me of the song from Camelot:

If ever I would leave you
It wouldn’t be in summer.
Seeing you in summer I never would go.
Your hair streaked with sun-light,
Your lips red as flame,
Your face witha lustre
that puts gold to shame!

But if I’d ever leave you,
It couldn’t be in autumn.
How I’d leave in autumn I never will know.
I’ve seen how you sparkle
When fall nips the air.
I know you in autumn
And I must be there….

If ever I would leave you,
How could it be in spring-time?
Knowing how in spring I’m bewitched by you so?
Oh, no! not in spring-time!
Summer, winter or fall!
No, never could I leave you at all!

LA continues

The column I just linked, “What Do You Mean ‘If We Ever Want to Leave’ Afghanistan?”, ought to be read. It tells of the first meeting last April of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a group of the usual neocons which has found, for itself, a happy fit with the Obama adminsitration on Afghanistan. The following excerpt shows where the title of the column comes from:

Onto Afghanistan, where we are told U.S. national security depends on denying sanctuary to Al Qaeda and related jihadists. Meanwhile, the world is riddled with jihadism in the form of active agents, sleeper cells, propagandists and sympathizers from the Bekaa Valley to Belgium, from Iran to London, from Saudi Arabia to South Florida. Nearly eight years after 9/11, the United States still has unsecured borders, but it is Afghanistan where we must establish security and clean government—for our own good.

Why? Frederick Kagan said “we have to establish the legitimacy of the Afghan government (because) that’s how you end an insurgency.” John Nagl was more emphatic still, stating, “If we ever want to leave, we have to build an Afghan government that can accomplish those goals (of good government) on its own.”

If we ever want to leave?

During a coffee break, I asked military historian Frederick Kagan whether there was any successful historical model for this strategy. Ticking off a few non-matches including the Boer War in South Africa, Malaya, and civil war in El Salvador, he, a little sheepishly, offered Iraq.

Steve H. writes:

I read Diana West at Townhall today. What I find most disturbing are comments posted by so called conservatives. These are the people that will deliver this country its final blow by giving us another McCain or Gingrich when we need a Washington. This is why we’ll never win. By the time the Republican primaries reached PA last time, I had no vote. These simpletons had already decided it for me.

Jon W. writes:

Current VFR postings, comments and links to Diana West’s observations on nation building in Afghanistan and about even military leadership’s avoidance of the words Islam and Islamists cast a pall over any hope I had of our policy makers turning this country around to face the enemy before it is too late for us to effectually act as a nation.

Nation building on the quick sands of dar al Islam and restrictive rules of engagement condemn us to the ignominy and bankruptcy the iron fisted Soviets experienced but with more fallout promised; this just as Kipling would have foreseen for the current iteration of folly.

There is no current prospect for a sane move toward separation like you called for in your speech. As an alternative we lack the stomach for Trumanesque (real) shock and awe using, say, surgical pre-announced strikes to serially vitrify a sufficient number of impotent-moon-god inspired and protected domes (redoubts) .

Hapless policies have devolved into self-pleasuring; doing things that will allow us, the increasingly touchy feely, to feel good about having done the only things considered thinkable by enervated eloi. Going for consummation of the only favorable or tenable outcome is unthinkable, and the windows of opportunity for national action are closing if not already closed.

LA replies:

But surely you didn’t expect any progress towward reason in this areas under Obama?

Kurt V. writes:

You wrote:

During the panel discussion, Kimmitt had said among other things that the center of gravity of our efforts is no longer the defeat of the enemy forces, and no longer support of the local population, but rather maintaining the U.S. population’s support for the war. Kimmitt stated that maintaining the American people’s support for our military presence in Afghanistan would be “the center of gravity” of this effort “for the next 10 years.”

Regardless of what I think about our Afghan policies or Kimmitt, he is technically correct in his assessment. According to joint doctrine, strategic and operational centers of gravity (COGs) develop between belligerents: COGs we must protect, and COGs we must attack in order to attain strategic and operational objectives. Kimmitt identified our strategic COG that is critical to our ability to sustain action in Afghanistan. Although it is arguable as to whether protecting our COG has a higher priority, popular support at home has an extremely short shelf life. As for classic COIN theory, the Afghan population—and more specifically the Pashtun—will likely determine the outcome within the country. I was there, and teach this stuff for a living these days.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 25, 2009 01:12 PM | Send