Letting Go
Back in early 2004, when it was already clear that the Iraq War was going poorly, I began to ask the following question: what if we had to topple Saddam Hussein? What if he was implicated in the 9-11 plot? We didn’t and he wasn’t – but what if the facts were different? What would we be doing differently? How would we be handling the war? What would be our war aims now that that goal was accomplished?
I asked the question that way because it seemed to me that the thin justification for the war allowed most commentators to evade the more troubling problem: that it wasn’t clear we had any way to win, and the poor justification for the war had little to do with that fact (we weren’t, for example, materially hampered by the fact that we had little allied support diplomatically or militarily, and the Iraqis would have resented an occupation with French and Egyptian support fully as much as they resented the American occupation with the more limited international support it had).
We’re now facing essentially that situation in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is being called a “war of necessity” because we could not simply suffer the attacks of 9-11 and leave it at that. A spectacularly successful attack on American soil demanded a more substantial response than a criminal investigation. The attacks on New York and Washington were acts of war. We had to respond similarly.
But, as everyone understood at the time, bombing Afghanistan wouldn’t actually eliminate the threat of terrorism (that wouldn’t eliminate al Qaeda in Afghanistan itself, and anyway Afghanistan was less important as a base for terror attacks than Hamburg or Rotterdam). We had to make war on Afghanistan, or we’d look ridiculous, and invite further, much more serious challenges. But what were our war aims?
Minimally, our war aims in Afghanistan were to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and their top henchmen. We failed in this mission, and once we failed initially our continued presence in Afghanistan does nothing to bring us closer to fulfilling it.
More substantially, our aims were to depose the Taliban regime that allied itself with al Qaeda, and make sure it did not return to power. We accomplished the first aim, but we are pretty plainly failing at the second, and it is manifestly unclear to me that we have any plausible strategy for achieving this war aim.
Maximally, our aim was to radically change the political dynamic across the region such that it was transformed into peaceful and friendly territory. No comment.
So suppose you could go back in time to 2001, knowing what we know now about the course of the war in Afghanistan. The experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade have convinced you that neither a prolonged and intensive occupation nor a relatively casual and low-footprint strategy is likely to prevent the Taliban from returning to power, at least in part of the country. We can topple them, and install a replacement, but we can’t ensure that they will not return – indeed, the odds are that they will, whatever we do. How would our behavior after 9-11 have been different, if we had that knowledge?
Presumably we would still have felt the strong need for a military response. Presumably as well, we would have considered it inadequate to invade the country, try to capture our top targets, fail to do so, and then simply leave, declaring our work done as best we could. So what would we have done differently? How would we avoid being in precisely the situation we are now in?
Obviously, not invading Iraq would have changed many things. If not invading Iraq meant we were certain to have captured our top targets, we could plausibly have simply walked out at that point. Let’s set that counterfactual aside for the moment, though, and assume that we still failed to get a confirmed capture or kill on our top targets in the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. It’s not obvious to me that, in that case, the fundamental dynamic in Afghanistan would have been materially different from what happened in our world, unless you believe that having lots of troops in the country for a long period would have permanently changed the situation there such that the dynamic we’re now observing – the Taliban regaining strength over time on the basis of incorruptibility and Pashtun ethno-nationalism – would not have obtained, and that’s something I have a hard time believing.
This is what is meant by tragedy: when you feel compelled to do something that will only lead to pain and failure. You can talk all you want now about the need to win, and you can talk all you want now about simply declaring victory and going home, but the fact that will be plain in the first case is that we keep staying because we can’t figure out how to “win” and in the second case it will be plain that we left because we lost.
UPDATE: I should have titled this post, “I Can’t Go On. I’ll Go On.”
I ask myself the same question every time I read the news.
My counter-factual wonders what would have happened if America, buoyed by sympathy from almost all of the nations of the world – including the Arab world – had channeled that huge amount of goodwill, support and power – both hard and soft – into its nation-building efforts in Afghanistan.
Since we passed up on that option, we are left with only tragedy and tragedy has no solution.
— Kevin Lawrence · Sep 9, 03:32 PM · #
Hmm. One wonders what future nations might have pursued the “Mouse That Roared” strategy in your counterfactual.
Seriously, though, the question remains open whether any such strategy could have succeeded, and I remain rather skeptical.
— Noah Millman · Sep 9, 03:37 PM · #
Sadly, we’ll never know.
— Kevin Lawrence · Sep 9, 04:49 PM · #
Noah,
I believe that the afghan problem was solvable, and is less solvable now due to our own actions.
Consider that the Taliban fought a largely indecisive civil war against other afghan factions for nearly a decade before they finally won. Over the course of this war, each faction switched sides several times, as readily as many switched to our side after our initial invasion. The roulette wheel only stopped when Pakistan decided to invest a substantial amount of money, material, and intelligence aid into helping the Taliban win decisively.
This indicates to me that taliban dominance is not the state of nature in afghanistan. Furthermore, had we not missed our opportunity at tora bora by relying on non-U.S. troops to close off Al-qaeda retreat, we would have eliminated a substantial portion of Al-qaeda and Taliban top leadership and cadre. Tie this better military strategy to a political strategy that focused on making Pakistani non-support for the taliban the sine qua non of our policy in southwest Asia, and it seems to me we could have developed a very credible outcome: a much diminished enemy, and a loosely knit afghanistan dominated by factions and warlords, not unlike much of afghan history. Not a beautiful picture, but one that accomplishes our central aims at low cost and makes a taliban return exceedingly difficult.
As it stands, our failure to destroy the retreating core of the enemy made organizing across the border in pakistan feasible. Our continued presence and heavy footprint in the country then allowed the taliban to mobilize the pashtun ethnic nationalism and anti-imperialist politics you reference.
As it stands, we’ve probably lost all chance at an acceptable outcome, so we ought to just cut our losses. But this was blunder, not tragedy.
— brendan · Sep 10, 12:03 AM · #
I think the seminal mistake that lead to all others in Afghanistan came in late September of 2001. The mistake was to conflate al Qaeda with the Taliban. They were closely linked, but separable.
Shortly before the invasion commenced, the Taliban declared that it would turn over bin Laden in exchange for not being invaded. Now, there’s no telling whether or not this was simply a stalling tactic, or whether the Taliban actually had the capacity to deliver him, but what if the US had taken them up on this? What if, instead of declaring all-out war on the Taliban and al Qaeda simultaneously, we moved to extract bin Laden using the same special forces operation that we used anyway, but this time with no effort to depose the Taliban. If the warlords had a choice between remaining in power while not fighting (and probably not helping either) American forces, could we have prevented the escape at Tora Bora? If, instead of worrying at all about Kabul, we simply kept a very large metaphorical gun pointed at the head of the Taliban (and at all the sub-heads, given the decentralized nature of the organization), we had gone obsessively after Osama and Zawahiri?
I think we could have captured one if not both. On the downside, it would have left one of the most execrable regimes in the world standing. However, it would have undercut a rather massive stanchion of military support out from under the Taliban. I’d wager to guess that with al Qaeda removed and bin Laden’s financial sponsorship pulled, the Taliban would have been far more vulnerable to an internal rebellion. We would have bin Laden, and Afghanistan would have self-determined its government, with the US to thank for removing the foreign prop for the Taliban.
Would this actually have happened? I have no idea — it’s a counterfactual, with all the trouble that entails. But it had no chance in the grand neocon schemes of the Bush administration’s top advisors.
— Michael Bacon · Sep 10, 12:20 PM · #
Michael,
quite the contrary—the Bush “neo-con advisors” made several offers in September and early October to not invade afghanistan in exchange for a hand-over of bin laden. These offers were rejected. Given that a purported change in position was offered only as the air campaign commenced, after nearly a month of negotiations, I think they were probably right to see it as a stalling tactic. Moreover, the special operations military strategy we used relied heavily on local forces opposing the regime. Absent such forces (which we couldn’t have used if we were going to keep the regime, obviously) we would have required the active cooperation of the regime itself, which they were unwilling to provide. In the event, local cooperation proved our undoing at tora bora anyway.
I would also add that knocking over the taliban regime was a legitimate and worthwhile goal. The most important part of the first gulf war was the message that America does not put up with the conquering of oil. The similar message that active sanctuary for anti-american terrorism does not end well for you is a worthy one.
on your larger point, the most interesting thing to me about the Afghan operation is how cautious the Bush administration was—the transformation from pre 9/11 realists to the full neo-con does not really get going till early 2002. They gave the talbian several chances to give up bin laden without a war, which I would not even have considered. They made an explicit effort at first not to get involved in nation building. they were so afraid of putting ground forces in Afghanistan that they failed to commit the forces necessary that could have stopped the tora bora disaster. Early in the administration, efforts to link Iraq to 9/11 were shot down vigorously. The period from December 2001-March 2002 was critical, and I think historians will show that this was when the administration decisively changed character.
— brendan · Sep 10, 12:47 PM · #
The scary part is that this threatens to become a recurring tragedy. We could always get attacked again by somebody who’s good at hiding. And all he has to do to claim a “victory” is stay hidden.
— Consumatopia · Sep 11, 01:53 AM · #
P.S. Gentlemen, the U.S. won the Iraq war. Both missions (remove Hussein dynasty and give a liberal democracy a reasonable chance to take over) now accomplished.
— Carl Scott · Sep 11, 08:38 PM · #
Re the last line: that was a good movie. :-)
It was one both our son and we could enjoy.
— Julana · Sep 12, 12:42 AM · #
Oh, it goes back to Beckett. . . .
— Julana · Sep 12, 02:03 AM · #