Instahoglets - Af/Pak Edition

By Steve Hynd

A round up of some of the best recent articles dealing with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Obama's "clap harder" plan.

-- The Nation's Russ Hoyle interviews Andrea Bachevitch, containment proponent, who says: We Can't Remake Afghanistan And Don't Need To. 

if we can't "fix" Afghanistan, then it's absurd to think that we can "fix" Pakistan.

-- Col. Sam Gardiner: Planning For Failure In Afghanistan.

No less than eight strategy reviews have been conducted in the last several months. They've all concluded that the primary objective should be more limited, essentially calling for action to stop Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. The problem with even this more limited objective is that there is no way in which the United States or NATO could achieve it without staying forever.

Tom Engelhardt: The A.I.G. Of American Foreign Policy.

As Obama's economic team overseeing the various financial bailouts is made up of figures long cozy with Wall Street, so his foreign policy team is made up of figures deeply entrenched in Washington's national security state -- former Clintonistas (including the penultimate Clinton herself), military figures like National Security Adviser General James Jones, and that refugee from the H.W. Bush era, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. They are classic custodians of empire. Like the economic team, they represent the ancien régime...the end result is likely to be that, as with A.I.G., we, the American people, could end up "owning" 80% of the Af-Pak project without ever "nationalizing" it -- without ever, that is, being in actual control.

Robert Dreyfuss: No Benchmarks Yet.

 Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, ridiculed the administration for not having set the benchmarks it promised, at a CFR roundtable that I attended. "President Obama said there would be no blank checks, and he promised there would be benchmarks," Gelb told me, in an interview. "But when he released his plan, you couldn't find a single benchmark in it!" Added Gelb, to the gathering of reporters:

"How the hell do you formulate a policy based on benchmarks if there are no benchmarks? And how the hell do you have a policy if there's no way to know if benchmarks are being met?"

Nicholas Schmidle at Foreign Policy magazine: The Idiot's Guide To Pakistan

Are people within the ISI any more Islamist than any of the others? I don’t see why they would be. The ISI draws from the ranks of the regular Army (in addition to some civilians), the same Army that is commanded by Sandhurst-educated, Johnnie Walker Black Label-loving Anglophiles. What makes the ISI different is not so much its personnel as its agenda, an agenda that might, on any given day, include ferrying money to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan or training Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters to wage jihad against India in Kashmir. These programs are considered to serve Pakistan’s national interests, not the religious preferences of its generals.

Eric Martin quotes Andrew Exum:

The emphasis on destroying "safe havens" also establishes a tricky rationale for our presence in Afghanistan. Even if we succeed in spreading effective governance to southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, are we then prepared to go to wherever the transnational terror groups relocate? Are we prepared to clear out the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon? Or provide governance to the Horn of Africa? The new Obama plan is a dangerous precedent. If the reason we are staying in Afghanistan is to deny al-Qaeda the use of safe havens, where are we going next?

Jeremy Scahill: Obama's Neoliberals Selling His Afghan War One Report at a Time:

Reading the Center for American Progress’ new report supporting President Obama’s escalation of the US war against Afghanistan is a very powerful reminder of how much neoliberals and neocons are alike. This, of course, is not some genius observation, particularly since CAP and the neocons are making it hard to miss, what with their love triangle with the war. Indeed, CAP’s launch event for its report, “Sustainable Security in Afghanistan: Crafting an Effective and Responsible Strategy for the Forgotten Front,” included a leading neocon, Frederick Kagan and was promoted by William Kristol’s new version of the Project for a New American Century, the Foreign Policy Initiative. So, here is part of what we are seeing unfold: Running parallel to the bi-partisan war machine within the official government is a coordinated campaign in the shadow government—the think tanks. Or, as Naomi Klein describes them, the people paid to think by the makers of tanks. CAPs particular role in this campaign appears to be attempting to sell Obama’s war.

“The problem is not that the Bush administration’s effort in Afghanistan failed,” CAP declares. “The problem is that it was never given a chance to succeed.”

Christian Science Monitor: Antiwar activists split over Obama's Afghanistan policy:

Obama's decision to send another 21,000 troops to Afghanistan to help stabilize "the most dangerous place in the world," as he calls it, is shifting some anti-war activists into (reluctant) opposition. It's also forcing some members of Congress to explain to voters why they opposed a troop buildup in Iraq but now support one in Afghanistan.

"This could be a one-way ticket to a quagmire," says former US Rep. Tom Andrews (D) of Maine, national director of the Win Without War coalition.

"Sometimes less is more. In the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the deployment of US troops can be a source of instability, not stability," he says. "These are very real concerns that we have, and we want to articulate them in a respectful way."

Since President Obama's announcement of a new strategy in Afghanistan last month, Win Without War and other groups have been trying to revive a dialogue on the war. They're especially urging members of Congress and the news media to get back to the business of vigorous criticism and oversight.

The anti-war movement shifted into low gear after Obama's election. Funding and staffing for most groups dropped, in some cases precipitously.

Apparently it's OK to wage decades-long colonialist wars without exit plans if you're a Democrat. That's the implicit argument of those who castigated Bush but won't say a word about Obama's perpetuation and escalation of Bush's failed strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That includes most of the "progressive" blogosphere. I'm depressed at how fast so many pro-Dem bloggers have forgotten their principles - and the entire issue - now that it's their guy escalating a war without setting any realistic strategy.

As one friend put it to me: "the Obama strategy -- or rather his presentation of it -- consciously plays into a key part of the liberal internationalist belief system -- that a smart, liberal president can turn the dial up or down on military deployments and thus "adjust" the strategy as he goes along. People who are not at all certain this is going to work are convincing themselves he can reverse course if need be. Of course the historical realities show that the system doesn't work that way at all.  War takes on a momentum of its own, and you can't simply remove troops because something isn't working.  The best example of that is JFK and Vietnam, of course."

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

More and more it's looking like we voted for Obama but got Clinton both on the economic and FP fronts.