We’re having the wrong debate on Afghanistan

One can begin to see the contours of a major debate on the future of America’s military deployment to Afghanistan. With the beginning of President Obama’s drawdown set to begin next month, and the campaign for the Republican nomination to replace him beginning to take form, candidates and voters are asking whether we should stay past 2014 or go (either then or sooner).

I think it is best that we stay, but I also think the entire argument is irrelevant. I say that for this reason: we will be out of Afghanistan militarily in 2014 whether we like it or not.

Whatever our president might want, their president has made it quite clear who his friends are: the Taliban and their Pakistani sponsors. Hamid Karzai has never been able to see past his Pashtun connections, and they have led him to believe that he can be more secure making a deal with our enemies than staying with us. Looking back, our de facto complicity in the deeply flawed presidential election of 2009 was a very large mistake.

However, the Pashtun are not the majority in Afghanistan (neither are they all friends of either Karzai or the Talibs). In fact, Afghanistan’s Parliament – elected under much fairer circumstances – is largely under opposition control (in part because, as I mentioned earlier, non-Pashtun tribes cobble together a majority in Afghanistan). So the Afghan people are less enthused with the Taliban than their president.

Add to this the pro-Taliban Pakistan, heavily anti-Taliban India, and anti-American regime in Iran (all which will probably be armed with nuclear weapons by 2014), and it’s a complex picture indeed. The question we should be asking is this: What can we do to hold the Taliban at bay – and push them to their demise – after our troops have gone?

The answer is hardly easy, or even simple. If we do choose to aid the anti-Taliban Afghans, it could be anything from military aid (assuming Karzai doesn’t get his meat hooks into the National Army), to political backing for the Parliamentary majority akin to what we did for the anti-Communists in Italy during the late 1940s. More concrete aid (military, economic, etc.), will require precision at the provincial or even local level – not just in Afghanistan, but getting the aid through Pakistan.

There will be temptation to simply wash our hands of the whole thing . . . except that’s what led us to 9/11 in the first place. There will be another impulse to shower Afghanistan with money – never mind that it may go to the wrong place and the wrong politicians (or that non-military aid even in the hands of the right politicians, could nudge them to make severe policy mistakes).

As strange, complex, and difficult as it may sound, we have managed somewhat similar issues before: El Salvador and Nicaragua, Poland, and yes, Afghanistan, before we jumped ship in 1992). President Bush the Younger himself had authorized military and other aid to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance one week before 9/11 – when the Taliban had over 90% of the country and complete control of whatever it called the government. Today, the anti-Taliban forces have control of the Parliament and (or more logically, due to) enough tribal support to have a firm majority in the country.

We tend to forget that the Vietnam War continued for two years after our troops came home. What defeated South Vietnam was a lack of financial support from the United States (the South Vietnamese military literally ran out of bullets).

So . . . our military is not staying in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean the Taliban automatically win – far from it, in fact. We need to accept both realities before we can come up decide whether keeping the Taliban out of power is a real priority and if so, how we will do it.

None of that will happen the, however, as long as we continue to ask the wrong questions and have the wrong debate in Afghanistan.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

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About the author

D.J. McGuire

Former candidate for Board of Supervisors in Spotsylvania, current blogger, economics teacher, and long-rumored windbag. There are two causes closest to the heart: steering the country away from the social democratic nonsense that is sinking Europe, and convincing the rest of the "rightosphere" that the NBA really is a joy to watch.