[Originally published in The Herald of Randolph.]
President Obama is in a real pickle around Afghanistan. It is, partly of George W. Bush’s making, partly of his own.
George W. Bush went to war in Afghanistan for compelling reasons that centered on the horrors of 9/11. The main reason was to bring to justice those who had perpetrated the 9/11 attacks against America. We were focused entirely on a terrorist organization called Al Qaida. The battle came to a speedy conclusion. We destroyed Al Qaida’s bases in Afghanistan and defeated the Taliban whose crime had been to give sanctuary to Al Qaida.
That changed rapidly as the Bush focus switched to Iraq. US claims of lraqi misdeeds – WMD and connections to Al Qaida – proved false. At the same time, there was much talk from the White House about the “long war” against terrorism.
In retrospect, pinning down the true motivation of the Bush White House for its Middle East policies remains illusive. So far there have been no “kiss and tell” stories from former insiders, so we have no real fix on the truth.
However, if you look dispassionately at what actually happened between 9/11/2001 and the 2008 Presidential election, some reasonable conclusions can be drawn.
First, we were given the “War on Terror”. Even though the name made no sense at all, it got across the fact that our American government was getting ready for what it began to label the “long war”. It was coupled with the color-coded terrorist threat system which fluctuated up and down like a yoyo. Then we began to see incursions into our civil rights in the form of some activities authorized under the Patriot Act and some with no constitutional basis at all.
The White House was in a dither. Karl Rove sponsored endless talk of the ”long war” and Vice President Cheney spoke ominously of going to the “Dark Side”, which, unfortunately, we ultimately did. It almost looked as if the White House was consciously trying to keep the American public on edge, insecure, submissive and prepared to accept any activity as long as in enhanced their security. The goal? To maintain their power.
The most telling point, however. was when the White House began to refer to literally any activity it did not like as “Terrorism”. There was clearly a conscious move to confuse terrorism and insurgency in the minds of the American public. Thus, an organization like Hamas, which clearly commits terrorist acts, was labeled “terrorist”, even though it runs the entire civil side of life in the Gaza and in much of Lebanon as well. It’s sort of like saying that the American Revolutionaries were terrorists, where they were clearly an insurgency, simply because they used terrorist tactics.
What was the purpose of conflating terrorism with insurgency? It enabled the Bush administration to explain the invasion of Iraq as, inter alia, a battle in the long war on terror, which it clearly was not. It then enabled them to label the Taliban as part of the war on terror and justify a move back to Afghanistan and a brand new “surge” as the “most important site in the War on Terror”, even though the Taliban are an insurgency, pure and simple.
Terrorist organizations over the last half-century have tended to last no more than 10 years because they have little local support. In contrast, insurgencies have seldom been defeated because their fellow citizens usually share their views.
So, even under President Obama, we are now considering a military campaign designed to “defeat the Taliban”, whatever that may mean and however unlikely it is to be successful, a struggle that will likely take decades, when the Taliban and Afghanistan have nothing to do with terrorism!
How is it possible that anyone as intelligent and as quick a study as President Obama could get caught in this Bush trap? It’s really pretty simple. During the campaign, while criticizing our presence in Iraq, Obama said that Afghanistan was the most important country in our fight against terrorism. At least he didn’t say “war on terror”. So here he is, with things going (predictably) badly in Afghanistan, saying not only how important ”success” is there, but that he will take into account the recommendations of his field commanders – a group which is generically incapable of saying any given military fight cannot be won. Yet, Obama is in the crosshairs of our military establishment, of all Americans who support military solutions to just about all our problems and likeminded, mostly Republican congressmen. Obama further suffers from the fact that he has virtually no military credentials. Thus, for him, any decision is a political no-win.
So, the future of our involvement in Afghanistan (and probably also in Iraq), as so often in the past, will be decided on the basis of Obama’s political needs here at home rather than the facts on the ground in the Middle East. That approach has seldom worked in the past and there is no reason to believe it will work in the future.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He is a former long time resident of Brookfield who now lives in Williston.
