Afghan Update 11/17 – The Optimists in the Room
Edward Kenny
Afghanistan Study Group Blogger
Is Afghanistan a Lost Cause? ASG Director Matt Hoh and Nir Rosen Debate Peter Bergen and Max Boot
Last week Afghanistan Study Group Director Matt Hoh and Nir Rosen debated Max Boot and Peter Bergen on the question: “Is Afghanistan a lost cause?” (NPR recently uploaded the debate onto their website). However, rather than being a neutral debate, the parameters of the discussion favored those supporting the war effort. As Max Boot contended in his opening statement, Matt Hoh and Nir Rosen had to demonstrate that the war could not possibly be won:
They have to convince you that it’s impossible for America and our allies
to prevail in Afghanistan, that there is no way we can achieve our objective, which
isn’t to create paradise on earth, but merely an Afghanistan that is free of terrorist
safe havens and that can secure and govern itself”
Obviously the logically impossible burden of proving a negative is a much tougher requirement than simply saying the costs of the war outweigh any possible benefit. Additionally, Max Boot ignores that the U.S. can less expensively achieve its aims by pursuing a different strategy. In some ways, Matt Hoh and Nir Rosen are the optimists in this Afghan debate because they suggest there are alternatives to the surge; it’s the pro-COIN (counterinsurgency) group who believe that the war can only be won through increased military action, an assertion increasingly at odds with the facts in three significant ways.
Fuzzy Numbers: The Use and Misuse of Polling Data
During the debate, Max Boot and Peter Bergen argued copiously that polling data suggests Afghans support a NATO presence and are optimistic about the future. But these polls should be examined critically: first, as Mr. Rosen pointed out, polling data in Afghanistan is notoriously unreliable; second, a reliance on national polling misses the point. The insurgency is primarily in the Pashtun region, as Max Boot himself pointed out: “63% of the attacks happen in just three provinces.” We suspect that polling numbers in those three provinces would strongly contradict the national data.
Will a U.S. Withdrawal Strengthen al-Qaeda?
When Max Boot he asked whether a U.S. retreat from Afghanistan would strengthen al-Qaeda, he intended his question to be rhetorical; nonetheless his query deserves some serious consideration. Numerous reports suggest that al-Qaeda uses foreign occupation as a recruiting tool for its global jihad. Consequently, it is doubtful that unilateral withdraw would cause a loss of prestige for the U.S. and in turn embolden our adversaries. While a unilateral withdrawal would likely impact al-Qaeda’s ability to recruit, it may encourage state actors such as Iran to defy U.S. interests. To ensure that this outcome does not materialize, a settlement should be negotiated that saves face for all parties and attends to the regional aspects of the conflict. This gets back to a fundamental point: the U.S. can more easily achieve its strategic goals, with significantly less cost, through alternative strategies.
What Happened to Peter Bergen?
Another cause for concern in this debate was the disappointing performance of Peter Bergen, an otherwise brilliant scholar and journalist. He conflates the Pakistani Taliban with the Afghan Taliban throughout the discussion. As Bergen well knows, Pakistan has moved strongly against the Pakistani Taliban; however, they have simultaneously gone out of their way to support the Afghan Taliban—the very same groups fighting U.S. forces. As long as the Afghan Taliban has sanctuaries in Pakistan, the insurgency will not be defeated.
Later in the debate, Bergen calls today’s Taliban more radical and more aligned with al-Qaeda than the Taliban of the 1990s:
This is a Taliban that is more ideologically aligned with al-Qaeda. The reason
that we’re facing the big insurgency that we are is that they’ve adopted wholesale al-Qaeda’s
tactics from the Iraqi theater. Suicide attacks went up five times between 2005 and 2006,
IED attacks. These groups are much more closely aligned…
This misstatement is worse than Bergen’s confusion over the Taliban. Here, he conflates ideology with tactics. Although the Taliban are using IED and suicide attacks, this is hardly evidence that the Taliban is in league with al-Qaeda. By this hasty standard, the Tamil Tigers—the world’s very first suicide bombers—are associated with al-Qaeda.
The main problem with Bergen’s argument (and others like him who try to sell the war on the grounds of counter-terrorism) is that it relies on layers of dubious assumptions, each one as unlikely as the last. Bergen assumes that the Taliban, absent the presence of U.S. troops, would be able to march into Kabul and win the war with ease. This defies historical precedents: after all, Najibullah lasted for three years after the Soviets left, and he was facing a far more popular and unified insurgency. Even with a troop drawdown, the U.S. would still be in a position to offer technical support and training to pro-western forces as a hedge against Taliban incursions.
Next, Bergen assumes that Mullah Omar, once in power, would invite al-Qaeda back to Afghanistan. This presumes that Omar’s decision-making is fundamentally irrational; after all, Omar has already suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the U.S. military. Recently, Mullah Omar has even given hints that the Quetta Shura would be willing to make concessions on the issue of international terrorism, evidence that Bergen rejects later in the debate for no apparent reason.
Additionally, Bergen assumes that al-Qaeda would choose to move out of Pakistan to a strategically inferior geographic location in Afghanistan—again the only plausible explanation here would be that al-Qaeda is somehow unconcerned about its own self-preservation as a terrorist organization.
Finally, Bergen assumes that al-Qaeda’s operational capability will improve if the organization is acting from Afghanistan instead of Pakistan. Since al-Qaeda recruits globally without regard to territorial boundaries, this is a hard argument to make.
In short, Bergen’s presupposes that nearly everyone in Afghanistan is “irrational” (except the U.S. of course!), an assumption that effectively rules out a negotiated settlement. This is an extreme position; one that even the Pentagon would not take.
Budget Games: What Role Does the War in Afghanistan Play?
While it was never expressly mentioned in the debate, the release of the Simpson-Bowles plan, makes this a good time to review the costs of the war. The Afghanistan Study Group has long touted the excessive costs of the war, including the $119 billion budgeted for next year, in order to underscore that the current strategy is unsustainable. Those favoring counterinsurgency point out that the cost of the war is only 1% of GDP. While the war is only a small fraction of GDP, it is and will be a significant part of the deficit.
To illustrate, we can make an educated estimate based on a recent New York Times info-graphic. According to the diagram, the current projected budget shortfall is 418 billion in 2015 and will rise to 1345 billion in 2030. If the U.S. reduced it’s presence to 60,000 troops by 2013, the deficit savings would equal 51 billion dollars in 2015, and over 149 billion in 2030. In effect, the war accounts for over 10% of the shortfall over both the short and long term. More importantly, the Afghan War is arguably the most popular way to significantly reduce the budget deficit. Compared to tax increases and cuts in benefits, ending the war is actually quite popular, and consequently more likely to be politically feasible.
Giving these staggering numbers, winding down the war should be an integral part of any serious plan to decrease the deficit. Therefore, we are disappointed that Bowles-Simpson did not address this crucial issue. As Afghanistan Study Group member Gordan Adams put it: missing from the plan was “a different view on how the U.S. engages the world and the missions we give the armed forces.” Obviously, cutting back in Afghanistan is a useful place to start.
