Strategy

To grasp the full madness of the policy we're pursuing in Iraq, you need to look toward Afghanistan. Consider Gregory Warner's observation in The Washington Monthly that "according to the RAND Corporation, the American-led nation-building effort in Afghanistan is the least-financed such effort in sixty years." Now why on earth would you think that's a good idea?

And note that it's not because of a shortfall in overall spending on defense-related matters. Lorelei Kelly notes that when you add together the DOD budget with the military programs in the Department of Energy and the special war supplementals we're spending about $700 billion on defense this year. That's a ton of money. In the context of such extravagant spending there's simply no excuse for the vital military mission in Afghanistan to be getting shortchanged in this manner.

There's no excuse but there is a reason: Iraq, where it seems that no amount of spending is too much, no duration of the war too long, and no amount of patience too much to ask for whether or not the war has any kind of clear strategic rationale. And beyond the money and manpower, there's the crucial issue of attention: what preoccupies the top officials in Washington? Where have we sent our best-regarded commanders? All to Iraq rather than to a theater of more strategic importance to the United States, where our operation has more legitimacy, and where there's a real chance we could secure more international assistance with our efforts if we were willing to make them a bigger priority. But rebalancing in that way would require people to implicitly admit that they'd made a strategic error in the first place by moving attention out of south/central asia and to the Gulf, and we can't have that!

Comments

I don't think Iraq spending is a sufficient excuse for not spending enough on Afghanistan.

Also, I wouldn't characterize Afghanistan as having more strategic importance than Iraq. Iraq is a more advanced country, with much greater potential and with lots of oil.

We all agree that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was an unmitigated disaster. But, now that the violence has died down quite a bit, it seems to me that we need to reevaluate the question of how quickly we should get out. I mean, I agree that we shouldn't be there for 5+ years, but I'm not as sure about leaving immediately as I was before the recent reduction in violence.

Posted by Jim W | December 18, 2007 10:05 AM

It is interesting that both wars were started under the pretext of winning the "war on terror". However, Afghanistan is being cast aside even as the Taliban make a return to power and with them Osama bin Laden. And yet Iraq is more important strategically? Because it has oil? Is Iraqi oil that important? If we are in Iraq because of oil, then this imperialist endeavor cannot win.

Posted by freddiemac | December 18, 2007 10:18 AM

"Also, I wouldn't characterize Afghanistan as having more strategic importance than Iraq. Iraq is a more advanced country, with much greater potential and with lots of oil."

True, but then again, Afghanistan is right next to Pakistan, which has is the only country in the world that combines having nukes with being unstable enough that it has gone through quite a number of coups and has a sizeable Islamist movement. Al-Qaida and the Taliban were founded in Pakistan and it was our forgetting that Pakistan even existed after we worked together against the Soviets in Afghanistan that in part helped lead to many of the problems we have now.

Posted by Reality Man | December 18, 2007 10:52 AM

Forgetting even the importance of Iraq vs Afghanistan, what portion of that $700 billion isn't really going towards anything particularly relevant to either of those kinds of engagements? For all the talk of the War on Terror and the significance of the nation-building military operations in collapsed states in the Middle East, I'll bet the same chunk of money is going towards ballistic missile defense systems that don't work yet, nuclear submarines, next generation fighter jets, etc, as it ever was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

Posted by Will Hutchinson | December 18, 2007 11:13 AM

Matt,

Given the history of such attempts in Afghanistan in the past, it's probably not a good idea to spend tons on it. Better to hold things down, and hope Pakistan doesn't explode.

Long term, Iraq - being in the center of the middle east and the arab world in general - is far more important.

Posted by James Robertson | December 18, 2007 11:16 AM

But James Robertson, doesn't the same historical precedent suggest that such long term adventures in Iraq are equally as doomed to failure. And why is it more important that Iraq is "in the center of the middle east and the arab world in general"? Is it because of all that oil? Should you just come out and say it: Iraq is more important than Afghanistan because Iraq is full of oil, and Afghanistan has nothing.

Posted by freddiemac | December 18, 2007 11:24 AM

These numbers indicate that by cutting unnecessary (in my opinion anyway) war and defense spending the budget could be balanced. Just those 2 things.

The USSR was going to collapse anyway (from its internal contradictions har har), but it's military spending in Afghanistan and in other places hastened its demise. If it wasn't for our current militarism, the US could have a much smaller deficit or even none at all.

I don't want to mention the hoary "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it," but when I read articles about how the rest of the world is abandoning the dollar and how the US economy is headed for disaster and that our politicians are unwilling/unable to fix this, I wonder if it isn't true.

Posted by blah | December 18, 2007 11:33 AM

A three letter word: oil. Iraq has lots of it and Afghanistan none. For Mr. Cheney, Iraq and its oil have always been the main prize. Spending a lot more money on Afghanistan, including investing in encouraging the Warlords to move on to retirement, would be a good move, but I am not sure about having more non-native forces in the Pashtun area.
I think the Iraqis want us to leave and they want Al Qaeda to leave. For two stories from different viewpoints, but with a substantial agreement of facts, paint a picture of the stability that our current policy has created in Fallujah: http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001545.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IK21Ak01.html

Posted by Rickster Sherpa | December 18, 2007 11:55 AM

"Long term, Iraq - being in the center of the middle east and the arab world in general - is far more important.

Posted by James Robertson | December 18, 2007 11:16 AM"

How is Iraq at the center of either? It borders Iran to its East, which isn't Arab and tends (for most people today) to mark the easternmost part of the Middle East. The majority of Iraqis don't share the same religion as most Arabs. Political ideology tends to get exported from the greater Middle East, especially Egypt (Arab nationalism) and Syria, (Ba'athism) to Iraq. Egypt is roughly geographically and ideologically the center of the Arab political world (Nasser, al-Banna, Qutb, etc.) and Saudi Arabia is the center of the Arab Muslim religious world (Mecca, Medina). Iraq is kind of near those places so that power could theoretically be projected from Iraq into Egypt and Saudi Arabia by the US with a functioning, reliant and reliable client state in Iraq, but that would just make Iraq a tool on the periphery to influence the center.

Posted by Reality Man | December 18, 2007 12:01 PM

MY - Where have we sent our best-regarded commanders? All to Iraq rather than to a theater of more strategic importance to the United States, where our operation has more legitimacy, and where there's a real chance we could secure more international assistance with our efforts if we were willing to make them a bigger priority.

It is clear you do not understand strategy at all. If you do not see Afghanistan - a land of little strategic importance abandoned by various powers to hill and mountain barbarians for centuries - is less strategically important than a nation between the two ideological centers of radical Islam - KSA and Iran for the battle against radical Islam. And, the geostrategic impact of having dominant military power in a region with 60% of the world's oil&gas energy supplies.

That said, Bushies have badly bungled Afghanistan, mainly by inept reconstruction and doing nothing about the billions in heroin - because we give Afghan farmers no alternative - going to fund Taliban and the 400-600 Arab fighters hiding with them. We could have done better. Even kicking the idiots of the DEA out and buying the whole heroin crop up and destroying it while funding a 10-year transition to legal crops and industry.

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Reality Man - Al-Qaida and the Taliban were founded in Pakistan.

No. They were not.
The Taliban, the "students", were an indigenous Afghan movement founded in Kandahar that took control of Afghanistan, aided by the ISI.
Al Qaeda was formed in the Sudan, originally. Based on the writings of Egyptian Sayyid Qutb. Most of their followers are Arabs, not Pakistanis. With most we have killed or captured from KSA, Yemen, Sudan, Jordan, Morocco - not Pakistan.
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Will Hutchinson - I'll bet the same chunk of money is going towards ballistic missile defense systems that don't work yet.

The tragedy for the Left is that their 10-year campaign of hysteria against ABM, just like their hysterical nuclear freeze movement - finally confronted reality.

Reality being that the defense is working, technically and politically despite Putin's rancid behavior. Boost phase and terminial tests with US and Japanese Aegis systems and new missile were sucessful. High orbit takedowns achieved. Japanese, Australian, US tests on decoys have shown sucesses. Next up are functional tests of lasers.
With the NORKs, Pakistan, and Iran working on 5,000 KM missiles and already having 3,000 KM range tested & proven MRBM variants capable of hitting all of Japan, India and the ME right now - ABM is happily working out. And the Euros, Japanese, Australians, Indians are active participants with us.

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blah - If it wasn't for our current militarism, the US could have a much smaller deficit or even none at all.

Military spending is now only 3.5% of GNP. Down from the 6-7% level from Eisenhower -Nixon when the dollar was God and we had no huge trade deficit.
Anyone who is honest with you, "blah", will tell you that what is turning the dollar into toilet paper is excessive gov't size, uncontrolled growth in government, entitlements, and pork that takes up 30% of our GDP now. And free trade. And lack of an energy policy to build nukes, do conservation, and get huge substitute oil fossil reserves of America in play rather than buy oil from abroad in the short term.
Entitlements alone dwarf military spending and it will take a true crisis to give our politicians the courage to finally address the entitlements, not the military, that is the heart of our fiscal mess.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 18, 2007 1:15 PM

Thanks Chris for saying all the things I was thinking and more!

I would add that I stopped my subscription to Scientific American, because of how politicized the magazine has become. An example was an editorial back before we invaded Iraq that compared Ballistic Missile Defense to Global Warming. The editor thought we should stop wasting money on the impossible (e.g. shooting down man made missiles with other man-made missiles - something with plenty of precedent) and start doing the necessary (terra-forming the planet - something you read about in the science fiction section of the library).

Posted by Keith | December 18, 2007 11:31 PM

Ford is an idiot.

The Taliban and Pashtun and the Pashtun live in Afghanistan AND Pakistan. This is why the Taliban have found it easy to be resurgent in Pakistan. Although the "new Taliban" in Pakistan are not precisely the "old Taliban" that ruled Afghanistan, although their organization originated from and have in it the same people, they are similar enough that they have no problem supporting both old and new. The problem is that the "new Taliban" support Al Qaeda MORE than the "old Taliban" did. Currently Al Qaeda has more support in Pakistan than they did in Afghanistan.

ABM is not working out, despite his delusions. They still have no system that will work for multiple incoming warheads, let alone "stealth" warheads. While neither Iran nor NK are likely to have those for generations, that merely makes clear that the sole function of the ABM system is to make money for the contractors.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 19, 2007 5:21 PM

Read "The Taliban are Pashtun"...

As an addition, not to mention that it's unlikely that Iran will be attacking anybody other than possibly Israel with missiles any time in the future - and only then if attacked first.

North Korea and Pakistan are pretty much in the same boat. Neither of them are at all likely to ever launch an attack on another country - with the sole exception being North Korea attacking South Korea, which isn't exactly the same thing - for the simple reason that they are likely to get squashed by anybody else they attack - and by the US if nobody else squashes them.

And as long as the US has thousands of missiles and thousands of nukes and the largest military budget than the next X countries combined, none of the countries listed is going to attack the US with any kind of nuke or missiles - ever.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 20, 2007 1:03 AM

Thanks to Chris Ford for adding some facts to this gabfest. And congratulations on being labeled an "idiot" by The Amazing Hack. Anyone who actually knows anything automatically becomes a "moron" to him. Being disagreed with by this clown is a sure sign of having at least a passing acquaintance with the facts.

Time to let the other residents have some time at the computer, Richard. Read a book.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 20, 2007 2:58 AM