Afghanistan

I think absolutely everything Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to say to European leaders about the central importance of NATO's mission in Afghanistan and the need for Europe to do more is correct. But what Gates needs to recognize is that realistically it's going to be hard to accomplish very much on this front until the United States puts some distance between itself and the Iraq War. Both politically and strategically, a deep European investment in Afghanistan just isn't going to be forthcoming as long as the U.S. remains politically and strategically invested in a hare-brained scheme to conquer the Persian Gulf.

My guess would be that Gates recognizes this on some level. But if he does, he needs to communicate that fact to George W. Bush and the other people who make the decisions.

Comments

and my guess is that no one in NATO expects george bush to change in the slightest and therefore they are just waiting him out.

Posted by howard | February 10, 2008 5:32 PM

Matt says:

he needs to communicate that fact to George W. Bush and the other people who make the decisions.

Bet you a dollar Gates thought of that already. My bet is that he decided it would be easier to somehow wrangle NATO into doing the right thing than to get GWB to do it.

Posted by cvcobb01 | February 10, 2008 5:33 PM

Europeans have been living with all kinds of terrorism, from Islamists to the IRA to the Baader Meinhof, for more than a generation. Do Americans not realize how silly, arrogant and stupid they sound lecturing Europeans on terrorism being "serious"?

That said, Gates does seem to be the least stupid person ever appionted to the high levels of this administration. He might be pretty good if he didn't work for a pair of morons. He's far more a chief diplomat than Kindauseless Rice, who seems to be on a very long term shopping trip in an undisclosed shoestore.

Posted by Jim | February 10, 2008 5:38 PM

Quite possibly Matthew is correct but what would that say about the pettiness and unreliability of 'Europe' if they would really withold what most people seem to agree (or at least, claim to agree) is needed and justified help for the endeavor in Afghanistan solely on the basis that the U.S. is doing some other thing that they don't like? If the effort in Afghanistan is worth doing it's worth doing; what does Iraq have to do with the question?

Again, Matthew might well be right that it's a factor. But it shouldn't be, not to serious people.

Posted by Sonic Charmer | February 10, 2008 5:49 PM

"If the effort in Afghanistan is worth doing it's worth doing; what does Iraq have to do with the question?"

Absolutely nothing. Again Matt starts from the belief that we should abandon Iraq and attempts to shoe-horn everything else to support that position. The problem with Afghanistan is that most NATO allies (with noble exceptions including Canada and Britain) don't want fight, and since the Taliban can always retreat to safety in Pakistan, and consequently, can't be decisively defeated, the war in Afghanistan will continue for years. Most NATO allies are happy to send troops on symbolic peacekeeping missions, but there is no political will at home to engage in the real fighting necessary in Afghanistan and risk casualties.

Posted by Fred | February 10, 2008 6:03 PM

Is Gates really trying to get more help or just shift blame to the Euros? It seems to me like Bush is trying to work out his legacy and wants to get Afghanistan of the books.

Posted by ben | February 10, 2008 6:03 PM

If the effort in Afghanistan is worth doing it's worth doing; what does Iraq have to do with the question?

Well, the US is leading the effort in Afghanistan, no? The intervention in Afghanistan has been badly botched and the invasion of Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster. How do you expect Europeans to put their faith in US leadership?

Posted by novakant | February 10, 2008 6:13 PM

Rule by Islamists gains favor in Muslim lands when the current governments are foreign governments, puppet governments set up by foreigners, corrupt governments, or a combination thereof. Although President Hamid Karzai himself is not corrupt, many of those beneath him are. He is not helped by foreign troops which are repeatedly bombing innocent civilians. It's important to remember that the Taliban had totally stopped opium production. Afghanistan is now a narco-state ruled by a corrupt government supported by foreign troops which bomb civilians. No wonder the Taliban is coming back.

Posted by Courtney Squires | February 10, 2008 6:28 PM

"Serious people"?

America is reaping what it sowed with this worthless administration.
After 9/11, the Europeans were solid behind the US.
Article 5 of the NATO Charter was invoked. But NATO involvement was rejected by Rumsfeld as an unnecessary constraint.
After the Taliban government fell, key resources were transferred to Iraq.
There have been many twists and turns since then, as Bush officials have improvised incoherently. Always, the focus has been on preserving American unilateral discretion. Allies have no voice, and have been forced to choose between exit and loyalty.
Currently, there is a patchwork mess of an international civilian effort, two separate command structures for the international military effort, an Afghan civilian command structure, and an Afghan military command structure. Senior American policymakers have less than a year left in their jobs. They work for an administration that, if required to choose between temporary domestic political difficulty and screwing over allies, will screw allies and do so in a heartbeat.
America, having given two terms to Bush, has lost standing in many, many areas. One of which is the ability to make charges of "pettiness and unreliability".
People frequently comment on Bush's low approval ratings. Frankly the surprise is that as many as 3 out of 10 Americans still have a good opinion. European reluctance to enmesh themselves further with this arrogant incompetent loser is, I would suggest, rather more understandable.

Posted by bert | February 10, 2008 6:30 PM

the Taliban can always retreat to safety in Pakistan, and consequently, can't be decisively defeated,

Oh, Fred, you America-hating cynic! We've defeated the Taliban decisively four or five times. George W Bush and John McCain told me so.

Posted by Jim | February 10, 2008 6:35 PM

bert beats me to it, sonic charmer, but anyone who wants to use the word "serious" in this context shouldn't expect to be taken seriously.

as for fred, the dream lives on, doesn't it?

Posted by howard | February 10, 2008 6:36 PM

If the effort in Afghanistan is worth doing it's worth doing; what does Iraq have to do with the question?

Well, the problem is, when we tell them how important sending more troops is, and then we send 85% of our available troops to Iraq instead. That's a pretty obvious way in which Iraq is related. As in many endeavors, if one's actions don't match one's words, then people are going to naturally assume your actions match your real priorities. After all, maximalist rhetoric is easy, while maximalist action is hard.

It's kinda like how, if someone wants to know how committed hawks are to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, you'd look at military enrollment rather than hawkish blog comment counts to determine it. At the individual level, that's not fair; after all, those comments might come from soldiers or, even among those that don't, they may not qualify for military duty, or they may have a job that's even more important than victory in those wars. But when you combine the overall picture of declining military enrollment with spiraling hawkish blogging, it suggests an escalating lack of seriousness rather than an escalating level of commitment.

Posted by Bo | February 10, 2008 6:43 PM

This account from William Pfaff sounds right to my ears.

NATO was signed up by Washington to help in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, not to fight a second war there, this time to keep the ethnically Pathan Taliban forces from reclaiming their own country

Some NATO governments, and some European public opinion, supports U.S. policy, but others see the U.S. as engaged in the same program of imposing a weak foreign-supported government on the Afghans as it has been pursuing, at great human and material costs, in Iraq.

They see no threat to them, or to NATO Europe, from Afghanistan, whereas Americans believe in a global terrorist threat. The Europeans find unconvincing the effort to frame the Afghanistan issue in terms of terrorism versus international peace and democracy – a global ideological war.

Even the newest members of NATO, the most concerned to stay on the good side of the United States, are merely interested in their own security vis-à-vis Russia, and against those separatist or irredentist disputes that continue in their own regions – not in Afghanistan.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 10, 2008 6:56 PM

It's not just that we took most of our troops out of Afghanistan. We also moved most of our translators and intelligence assets into Irag(/n). This is a country that kept the entire Soviet army trapped in a Vietnam-style conflict (and may have helped trigger the eventual downfall of the USSR) and we're trying to get the job done on the cheap.

Posted by ben | February 10, 2008 6:57 PM

My guess would be that Gates recognizes this on some level.

You think so? You don't think his statements could be trying to guilt the Europeans, like one tries to guilt family members or a partner? That is, "leverage"-- trying to make the Euorpeans look bad in front of their publics and the international community (for basically nothing more than not doing our bidding to further our own self-serving interests).

Sounds like the John Bolton school of thought and practice to me, and old hat for the hands in the administration.

Posted by Swan | February 10, 2008 7:06 PM

Right on cue, Matthew's readers all clamor to be the first in line to proclaim how right Europe is not to help their country. "Don't help us on this thing we pretend to approve of and think is so important that we criticize Bush for not doing enough! Bush should come to you for help more, AND you're right not to help us!"

One argument put forth is that Europe cannot be expected to 'put their faith in US leadership' given the disaster in Iraq. I'm not sure who was asking anyone to 'put their faith in US leadership' but anyway, the problem with this argument is that if it is true it fails to prove the point Matthew was trying to make (that we need to '[put] some distance between [ourselves] and the Iraq War'). After all, we could pull out of Iraq tomorrow, but that wouldn't change our 'leadership' that Europe supposedly shouldn't have any faith in, or its prior decisions, so presumably (if the argument is correct) Europe still wouldn't help us in Afghanistan. So why bother pulling out of Iraq then? Clearly it won't accomplish anything vis-a-vis Afghanistan. Or if it will, this argument wasn't correct. Ultimately this is simply a facile excuse of course: Europe is imagined to be saying 'oh gee, we'd LOVE to help you, but you did that Iraq thing so we can't have faith in your leadership, yeah that's it'. But this would be petty, which was my point.

Another argument is that our troop presence in Iraq makes us hypocrites (or something). The problem here is that it's beside the point. Even if we're hypocrites, not doing enough, etc. for not having enough troops in Afghanistan (because they're in Iraq), the fact remains that we have more troops than other countries - who are, therefore, even more wrong than we are. In other words this argument simply concedes my point.

A third argument is that Rumsfeld, a while ago, refused NATO help. Well, now we're asking for it. The answer is imagined to be a huffy "no, because you slighted us five years ago". Once again, how exactly this argument is imagined to be a rebuttal to my claim about 'Europe's pettiness is beyond me.

The real answer of course is that Europe isn't 'petty' and they're not refusing to help for the reasons you guys fantasize about, they're refusing to help because they don't see it as being all that much in their interest. Which, perhaps, it isn't. All well and good except when people like Matthew attempt to shoehorn the whole thing into a 'therefore we must pull out of Iraq' argument, which, as Fred says, is really the starting point in such analyses to begin with.

Posted by Sonic Charmer | February 10, 2008 7:16 PM

Europe cannot be expected to 'put their faith in US leadership' in Afghanistan, given the mess in Afghanistan.
Start paying attention.

Posted by bert | February 10, 2008 7:25 PM

Re: Sonic Charmer at 7:16

Afghanistan certainly needs some help, and helping it certainly could produce benefits that would redound to other states. That much should go without argument.

But it's one thing to help an old, disabled lady who lives alone take care of herself, and it's another to team up with a con-man who is out to scam her out of her money to help her help herself.

Who do you think is going to be pushed out of the way once the con-man has gained her trust? You, that's who-- because the con-man doesn't want there to be any chance of your name appearing on a certain will or check. He'll call you a child molestor and call the cops on you if he has to.

In other words, "helping out" in those circumstances can really be nothing more than a waste of time, unless you can find a way to get the con-man to get lost first. Never believe for a second that Robert Gates or that Bush's social or professional circle care more about anybody's human rights or vulnerability to terrorism than they do about their own agendas.

Posted by Swan | February 10, 2008 7:27 PM

We could have been doing pretty good things for Afghanistan by now. But trying to do the same thing for Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time is turning out to be like trying to have two wives and two bunches of kids at the same time. If the admin. really cared about either of them, they'd be doing things right for one nation or the other, instead of trying to stretch our resources across two long-failing efforts.

Posted by Swan | February 10, 2008 7:38 PM

Ok, bert, 'given the mess in Afghanistan'. So: Europe appreciates the importance of the effort in Afghanistan, they claim, but the US has done a poor job in Afghanistan, therefore Europe won't help us. That... makes sense?

Swan, the U.S. is out to con Afghanistan out of its 'money'? As for the 'care' argument, well if the U.S. being in two countries proves it 'doesn't care', doesn't say much about Europeans who are in neither, does it?

Again, if I took any of these arguments at all seriously, I would be forced to come to the conclusion that 'Europe' consists of nothing but petulant spoiled-brats who let their personal feelings over individuals they don't like (i.e. Bush) get in the way of engaging in worthwhile efforts that affect the lives of hundreds of thousands.

I don't really believe that, of course. What I believe is that these are facile, self-serving stories y'all can't resist cobbling together to demonstrate Bush=bad and the Iraq invasion shouldn't have happened (which is just a special instance of Bush=bad), because that's primarily what you care about.

Posted by sonic Charmer | February 10, 2008 7:57 PM

The thing is, pre-9/11, conservatives used to be perfectly capable of this kind of reasoning. It's really too bad their brains have been broken so thoroughly.

For example, consider a drug addict. Now, a person might argue that, given the poor eating habits of drug addicts, that buying him food would be a compassionate idea. Not so, argued the pre-9/11 conservative; rather, by buying his food, you have actually freed up more drug money for him. In effect, you are buying him more drugs and making his position worse. Instead, the compassionate thing to do is to demand that he quit doing drugs before you help him, since then the food money will actually go to him eating better.

Similarly, most countries realize that by adding their troops to Afghanistan while Iraq is still underway, they're just helping the US commit even more deeply to Iraq, rather than helping Afghanistan. If these countries think Iraq is a mistake, then obviously a request for greater help in Afghanistan is both obviously related to Iraq and obviously a bad idea.

So why bother pulling out of Iraq then? Clearly it won't accomplish anything vis-a-vis Afghanistan.

Dude, I realize, by my previous analogy, you're the guy going "Cocaine is great! Heroin rules!", but really, put down the crack pike. If we pulled out of Iraq, we could quadruple our force in Afghanistan without a single other country's help. Obviously, more troops would accomplish something, or Gates wouldn't be out begging other countries for them.

Posted by Bo | February 10, 2008 7:58 PM

If we pulled out of Iraq, we could quadruple our force in Afghanistan without a single other country's help.

Bo, fair enough, but if that's an argument for pulling out of Iraq, it's one that has nothing to do with getting Europe to help us either way, so it's beside the point of Matthew's post.

Posted by sonic Charmer | February 10, 2008 8:04 PM

Gates would be better off sitting down to lamb and tea with as many Pushtun leaders as possible. The Taliban, frankly, are the Pushtun.

Expecting the Pushtun to ever give up is ridiculous. They've won every war in Afghanistan. Doesn't matter how long, they've always won.

Posted by Greg | February 10, 2008 8:09 PM

As Ron Paul correctly points out, occupation of Muslim lands with foreign troops, as in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, invites retaliation, such as 9/11. We have fallen for the neocon myths that 1.) Muslims "attack because they want to convert us to Islam" and that 2.)Muslims "only understand strength." The truth is that like everyone else they only want to be left alone.

Posted by Eleanor Lambertson | February 10, 2008 8:41 PM

Try to concentrate.

Your words: "faith in US leadership".
It's lacking.
And it's clear why.

Posted by bert | February 10, 2008 8:42 PM

"As Ron Paul correctly points out, occupation of Muslim lands with foreign troops, as in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, invites retaliation, such as 9/11."

You are confusing cause and effect. If memory serves, we invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11. Prior to 9/11, we were the single largest foreign aid donor to Afghanistan.

Posted by Juan | February 10, 2008 8:55 PM

Matt: "I think absolutely everything Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to say to European leaders about the central importance of NATO's mission in Afghanistan and the need for Europe to do more is correct."

As usual, Matt demonstrates his utter ignorance of everything going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention what it will really take to reduce terrorism in Europe or the US.

Truly pathetic.

Neither Matt nor Gates nor anyone else can establish how dumping more NATO troops OR US troops into Afghanistan is going to resolve the problem of terrorism, or make Afghanistan a "viable" state.

Neither Matt nor Gates now anyone else can establish how doing ANYTHING in Afghanistan is going to resolve the problem of terrorism, or make Afghanistan a "viable" state.

1) Afghanistan has nothing whatever to do with the current status of international terrorism. It's a failed state run by warlords and drug dealers engaged in a civil war with its ex-rulers. Who cares?

2) It never did. The presence of OBL and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was a result of the US and Pakistani support of those groups against the Russians - which itself was a mistake, because it was irrelevant to the US what the Russians did or did not do in Afghanistan. The US thought it could "bleed" the Russian like the Russians "bled" the US in Vietnam - forgetting that it was the US that decided to wander into Vietnam for the oil rights.

3) bin Laden and Al Qaeda could have been and can be removed as enemies of the US in five minutes absolutely no cost to the US in men or equipment or money. Simply stop supporting the Saudis, the Jordanians, Egypt and Israel.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 10, 2008 8:57 PM

"If the effort in Afghanistan is worth doing it's worth doing; what does Iraq have to do with the question?"

Bo - Well, the problem is, when we tell them how important sending more troops is, and then we send 85% of our available troops to Iraq instead.

More Bo - If we pulled out of Iraq, we could quadruple our force in Afghanistan without a single other country's help. Obviously, more troops would accomplish something, or Gates wouldn't be out begging other countries for them.

Europe has a larger population and a slightly larger GDP than the USA does. They are just in the same feckless pattern they were in the Gulf War, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Let the US come in and with Britain do 95% of the heavy effort and we will provide some safe rear area support troops.

Iraq has nothing to do with it. It is a substantial part of Europe thinking that no matter what, the free ride will continue. To that extent, they not only wish to invest nothing in lives and treasure in Iraq, they can't even match our minimal troops in Afghanistan. And what little pittance Hans, and Vittorio, and Juan, and Francois sends is deliberately sent with strings to prevent them from getting in harm's way - much to the irritation of Poles, Canadians, Brits, and Dutch who have gone after enemy forces.

YOur argument that if Only, if Only, we could pull troops out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan the Euroweenie nations wouldn't have to be inconvenienced at all by inconveniencing a single Euroweenie or spending any big amount of Euros? It doesn't cut it with people that expected Europe would be true to it's word and do it's fair share of defending the West after the Soviet Union fell. The Afghanistan bit is particularly disgraceful because Europe says they are the ones most affected by the heroin from that narco terror state, and by the radical islamist terror training camps.

It does, as Gates has told them, bring up legitimate questions about their commitment to NATO and if the US should reciprocate if a European matter of security arises that we think we can avoid committing to if it doesn't affect CONUS that much.
One diplomat pointedly told a German minister in 2006 that had dismissed US Afghanistan concerns as "not really a matter that affects us" that we similarly should not be concerned with a Russian oil and gas cutoff that only affects Euros. Which of course got the German sputtering that such an attack on the Fatherland was entirely different and of course the US would stand with their German "friends", as always...

Posted by chris ford | February 10, 2008 8:59 PM

"Afghanistan certainly needs some help, and helping it certainly could produce benefits that would redound to other states. That much should go without argument."

No, it shouldn't go without argument.

In fact, that's precisely the argument. (Worse, the statement above is a tautology. The only way to make it worse is add "...and a pony.")

Afghanistan is not "in a mess". It always WAS a "mess". It's a poor Third World country ruled by warlords and drug dealers and has been for centuries. It will continue to be so for the rest of this century, without a doubt.

If you want to argue that the US and Europe should spend hundreds of billions of dollars in such countries to convert them into better countries, be my guest. Lay out the plan for the next century (or two), because that's how long it will take to convert all those Third World countries (leaving out technology improvements which might speed up the process somewhat - or render it meaningless, as I've said before.)

In the meantime, Afghanistan cannot be "helped" in any significant way.

You want to help?

1) Kill all the warlords and drug dealers.

2) Find some way to make sure nobody takes their place - which basically means killing everybody over the age of five and starting over (and then making sure none of those kids hates you for killing their fathers.)

We bombed Afghanistan and overthrow the previous rulers. They moved to Pakistan. What now? Bomb Pakistan and overthrow that country of 175 million people? We can't even deal with Afghanistan and its 30-odd million or Iraq and its 25 million.

Get a grip. It is NOT doable.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 10, 2008 9:11 PM

"Obviously, more troops would accomplish something, or Gates wouldn't be out begging other countries for them."

No, he's begging them because he THINKS they will accomplish something.

They won't.

As I told Matt the last time he posted this sort of crap, you could immediately redeploy all 160,000 US troops in Iraq to Afghanistan - and all you would do is transform Afghanistan into Iraq.

It might take a little longer because the Iraqis had a more modern military and educated society and thus were a bit quicker on the uptake on how to conduct a modern insurgency than the Afghans are. But the Afghans have even more tenacity than the Iraqis, so they'd learn. They're borrowing Iraqi tactics such as IEDs pretty well.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 10, 2008 9:18 PM

Here's the reality:

http://stopwarblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/poll-nato-support-plummets-in-south.html

Monday, December 3, 2007
Poll: NATO support plummets in south, negotiations wanted

The Associated Press reports on a new poll commissioned by ABC, the BBC and a German TV network:

The poll has found that in southwestern Afghanistan, support for NATO-led forces has plummeted to 45 per cent this year, from 83 per cent a year ago.

According to the survey, the civilian casualties blamed on the international forces is a prime complaint. ...

The survey found that 42 per cent of Afghans rate U.S. efforts in Afghan positively, down from 68 per cent in 2005 and 57 per cent last year.

Just over half of Afghans still have confidence in the ability of U.S. and NATO forces to provide security, down from two-thirds a year ago...

“Attitudes are far more negative in high-conflict areas, particularly the southwest provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, but also in western Herat and other areas that have seen Taliban attacks. Views are far more positive in the more peaceful north,” the report said.

[Note: That would be the "warlord-controlled 'peaceful' north"...RSH]

In the southwest, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and an area of intense combat, two-thirds of Afghans rated U.S. efforts negatively. Twenty-three per cent of respondents there said local people support the Taliban — three times more than last year and compared to only eight per cent nationally.

Last year, 81 per cent of residents in the southwest said the Taliban had “no significant support at all.” Now, only 52 per cent say so.

Despite the increasingly negative view of U.S. activities in their country, 71 per cent of Afghans still support the American presence, and 76 per cent view the Taliban's overthrow as a good thing.

More than a third say the Taliban are the prime cause of violence in the country, followed by 22 per cent who blame al-Qaeda and foreign fighters. Nineteen per cent cite international forces or the U.S. government as the primary cause.

Other results of the poll have prompted consternation:

Despite the Taliban's very negative reputation -- and partly linked to perceptions of its strength -- 60 percent of Afghans say the Karzai government should negotiate a settlement in which Taliban leaders would be allowed to hold political office in exchange for laying down their arms. Support for a settlement is 16 points higher among those who think the Taliban has grown stronger rather than weaker; and it peaks, at 88 percent, in its home base, Kandahar. ...

In another troubling result, favorable opinions of Osama bin Laden have increased in the Southwest from 1 percent last year to 15 percent now. ...

There's been a decline in the number of Afghans who say U.S. forces should remain in their country either until security is restored, or permanently -- now 49 percent, down from 60 percent last year. Just 14 percent desire immediate withdrawal; most of the rest divide between a one- or two-year time frame.

While they remain, these forces clearly face danger -- not just from Taliban and other fighters, but from a substantial segment of the population. Seventeen percent of Afghans say attacks on U.S. forces can be justified. That rises to 26 percent in Southwest overall, peaking at 40 percent in Helmand, and about as high, 38 percent in Nangarhar, in the East. And it's 28 percent among Pashtuns, vs. 10 percent among all other Afghans."

Anyway you slice that poll, the US and NATO do not have significant credibility and are losing what credibility they have. Increasing the numbers of US and NATO troops will only accelerate that process.

Worse, as long as Afghanistan is ruled by corrupt war lords and drug dealers, there is no chance the US or NATO can gain credibility or alter the political situation there.

There IS NO military solution in Afghanistan, any more than there is in Iraq, or there was in Vietnam, or will be in Pakistan.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 10, 2008 9:26 PM

European governments are exceptionally hard to corral into military interventions abroad, even when such interventions seem clearly in their own interests. It was hard enough in Bosnia. In Afghanistan it's all the more difficult because 1. it's nowhere near Europe and 2. the odds of success look slenderer every year. Add to this the fact that the Bush administration has no credibility abroad whatsoever, and that no one is interested in listening to the US at the moment when it argues for more military interventions, and you have a very weak position indeed.

Posted by brooksfoe | February 10, 2008 9:44 PM

Matt, you're joking, right? Dubya's running out the clock on this one, and everything is secondary to that--and in suspended animation. Bush is praying that Iraq's final descent into intercommunal conflagration happens on some Democrat's watch. Nothing else matters. The fact that our military forces are broken and we can do little or nothing for now to make the grand gesture you so perspicaciously described as needed--and we have to draw down our forces in Iraq regardless: None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that Bush repeats "I do believe in fairies" until next January 20 and can then wash his hands of the whole world.

Posted by elle loco | February 10, 2008 9:50 PM

European governments are exceptionally hard to corral into military interventions abroad, even when such interventions seem clearly in their own interests.

Then so much the worse for Europe. If their pig-headed refusal to do more in Afghanistan because they don't like America's policy in Iraq leads them to suffer the adverse consequences Gates predicts, they'll only have themselves to blame. Hopefully, reason will ultimately prevail over petulance and they'll step up to the plate.

Posted by Mixner | February 10, 2008 10:02 PM

elle, I think that's true but says little about what, given the situation, a perspicacious Bush administration official (should such a thing be possible) ought to do. One thing they ought to do, and this is where I think Matt is right, is avoid appearing to hector allies about "not living up to their responsibilities" or not being "serious" or suchlike. The arrogance of such claims is all the more egregious because it is entirely unearned. American officials must stop talking this way; it accomplishes nothing, and only further erodes whatever declining willingness Europeans might have to listen to us. Matt is right that an American admission of error in Iraq, at least a tacit one, is a necessary precursor to regaining our standing to make requests abroad. It will never come from this administration, but it's important to repeat that it is necessary.

Another way of looking at this is to consider what the differences would be, in terms of European clout, between a McCain administration and an Obama administration. My European friends overwhelmingly voice the sentiment that if McCain is elected, "the US is finished". The US needs to show a decisive change of course from the Bush administration on the issue of military adventurism, and a withdrawal from Iraq is the place to start.

Posted by brooksfoe | February 10, 2008 10:12 PM

Totally OT here, but in one of Swan's posts he says "trying to guilt the Europeans, like one tries to guilt family members".

First time I've seen "guilt" used as a verb.
Has this come into use?
Linguistically-oriented inquiring minds want to know:

Posted by MikeN | February 10, 2008 10:16 PM

Sonic Charmer,

I didn't actually claim that the U.S. was out to con Afghanistan out of its money. Instead I made an analogy to show that our ostensible 'help' may not actually be in Afghanistan's best interest. I doubt a lot of people who read this blog take your posts too seriously.

Posted by Swan | February 10, 2008 10:41 PM

I bet if we focused on Afghanistan and didn't invade Iraq it would have helped out a lot of common Afghanis' pockets, though (and the same with Iraq if we were focused on them, instead). Also it would help out if we didn't deal with such loser, Cheney-crony reconstruction contractors.

Posted by Swan | February 10, 2008 10:45 PM

MikeN,

It's short for guilt-trip, maybe? In any event, it's pretty common coin around here, in New Jersey. Now that I think about it, I guess people used to say "guilt-trip" (as a verb) more, but now just "guilt" is more common. I totally would be surprised if people in other areas of the country weren't using this as a verb too, but I guess it's entirely possible.

Posted by Swan | February 10, 2008 10:51 PM

"Both politically and strategically, a deep European investment in Afghanistan just isn't going to be forthcoming as long as the U.S. remains politically and strategically invested in a hare-brained scheme to conquer the Persian Gulf."

This analysis seems very satisfying from an anti-Bush perspective that is charitable to European intentions. I wonder what evidence there is for it. Iraq has happened, so the association of it with operations in Afghanistan are going to be there going forward. Do we really think that European publics and officials are going to ante up in Afghanistan if we get out of Iraq? I'm sure an Obama or HRC administration would be more persuasive, but it also seems that European have little stomach for these long, deep committments where more than a handful of their people get killed. Our long, post WWII quest to pacify Europe and Europeans has worked spectacularly well.

Posted by Colatina | February 10, 2008 10:59 PM

My European friends overwhelmingly voice the sentiment that if McCain is elected, "the US is finished".

I very much doubt your European friends really believe that, unless they are really, really, REALLY stupid, which I doubt. They are most likely just echoing the kind of absurd hyperbole we see from some of the more excitable commenters here, in an attempt to convey their deep displeasure with our current president and recent U.S. foreign policy, in particular with the Iraq War.

The U.S. is, and for the foreseeable future will remain, much too important to Europe and the rest of the world for them to isolate themselves from us. They need our military power, they need our economic power, they need our scientific and technological expertise, and they love our popular culture. They're not going anywhere, despite the hissy fits.

Posted by Mixner | February 10, 2008 11:03 PM

If their pig-headed refusal to do more in Afghanistan because they don't like America's policy in Iraq leads them to suffer the adverse consequences Gates predicts

It won't.

Posted by BP | February 11, 2008 1:47 AM

but it also seems that European have little stomach for these long, deep committments where more than a handful of their people get killed.

You forgot the words "pointless" between 'deep' and 'commitment'. Sloganeering, which is the only thing the Bush Administration and its die-hard supporters here have been doing, is not an effective substitute for strategy.

Posted by BP | February 11, 2008 1:52 AM

Hopefully, reason will ultimately prevail over petulance and they'll step up to the plate.

That's very nice of you to demand (in baseball terms, no less, as if it were a game), that people pony up hard cash and blood for pointless wars that have no popular support anywhere, neither in the US nor Europe, nor in the countries supposedly being liberated.

Posted by BP | February 11, 2008 1:58 AM

Sonic Charmer has pretty well wrapped this one up. A few additional facts:

--Those who imagine that we would have had lots of help from "allies" like France in Iraq if only the Bush people had talked nice should consider that absolutely everyone agreed with the liberation of Afghanistan, and promised help. See what we got, divide by five, and that's about what we might have expected in Iraq even if we'd gotten the approval of Bono, and Al Gore approached Chirac on his knees.

--All politics aside, "help" from the Euros hasn't amounted to much because there's no there, there. Then SACEUR General James Jones told BBC in 2004 that continental European forces were "less than 10% usefully deployable." They have lived as parasites on US strength so long that they don't have any to speak of. Most of these countries' defense establishments are basically jobs programs, with more hair-dressers than special ops forces.

--Posters with less than no knowledge of military affairs imagine that if we'd only replicated Soviet tactics in Afghanistan, by now everything would be hunky dory. In fact, sending the 3rd I.D. (Mech) banging around the Hindu Kush would probably have produced about the same results the Russians got--lots of extra casualties.

--Any discussion of helping Afghanistan that doesn't start with the de-criminalization of drugs in Western countries is, by definition, not serious. Attempting to shift blame for the drug problem from rich consumers to impoverished Third World farmers is both counterproductive, and ridiculous.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 11, 2008 3:05 AM

Ultimately this is simply a facile excuse of course: Europe is imagined to be saying 'oh gee, we'd LOVE to help you, but you did that Iraq thing so we can't have faith in your leadership, yeah that's it'. But this would be petty, which was my point.

No, it's not petty. The US strategy, which was Rumsfeld's strategy, failed both in Afghanistan and in Iraq and this failure is the cause of the current , dismal situation in both countries.

To refresh people's memory:

Rumsfeld's strategy, as opposed to Powell's et al, was to go in with the least amount of troops deemed needed, eliminate the bad guys and get out again as soon as possible. This was part of his pipe dream of a 'transformed military' and an active disdain for both large ground forces and nation building. It failed.

In Afghanistan the keys were handed over to a bunch of warlords early on and neither the problem of the Afghan/Pakistani border region, nor the political, economical and social problems of Afghanistan as a whole were ever addressed. All that was achieved was a temporary weakening of the Taliban and the pacification of Kabul. It was never even attempted to take control of the whole country, which is why the Taliban were able to regroup, the warlords were able to rule their fiefdoms in pretty much any way they liked and the structural problems of the country were left unsolved.

In Iraq the same strategy was attempted initially. Remember Larry Di Rita saying that the US "owes the Iraqi people nothing" after having toppled the dictator, Wolfowitz saying Shinseki's estimates for troop levels were "wildly off the mark", that the Iraq war and reconstruction would "pay for itself" and that US troops were supposed to be leaving again as early as September 2003. Again, the US was at no point able to control and pacify the whole country, because the mission was woefully underfunded and undermanned.

The current mess in both countries is a direct result of Rumsfeld's et al strategic misconceptions. Additionally everybody, and that includes governments and whole countries, who dared to question the wisdom of these policies that were doomed to fail was actively and publicly maligned and the public was lied to over and over again.

So it is understandable that many are less than enthusiastic about cleaning up and paying for the mess created by US foreign policy blunders. It doesn't help that there is still no clear strategy outlining the way forward in either Afghanistan or Iraq, not to speak of a consistent policy towards Pakistan, but that the US seems to be content if it can just keep a lid on things and have them look not like a total disaster.

Posted by novakant | February 11, 2008 4:01 AM

What a stupid post. Has it ever occured to Americans that European governments might be hesitant for getting into such adventures for reasons that have nothing at all to do with sticking it to the US? There's domestic politics in those countries too, you know. And warfare just isn't as popular among Europeans, a factor aggravated by the seeming pointlessness of the Afghan enterprise. What is more, some countries have constitutional restrictions on the use of force for other than defensive purposes, etc. What the US is doing in Iraq is pretty irrelevant, it won't have any appreciable impact on how European governments are going to respond to American requests for more troops in Afghanistan. It's not about you, get used to it.

Posted by gr | February 11, 2008 12:23 PM

Thank you gr.

There are three reasons Europeans are reluctant to send troops to Afghanistan.

1. The troops are there to begin with to get bin Ladin. He and the Al Qaeda leadership fled to Pakistan.

2. It was never the point to begin with to transform Afghan society and culture by force. We Europeans have had colonial empires and we know that this sort of thing is futile. Sure, one could stay for a while to transition after the Taliban, but no indefinite stay. Anyone who wants to have an indefinite stay and who doesn't know about the history of European colonialism should shut up about it.

3. It is a fact (I'm sorry, but it is) that it's impossible to collaborate with George W. Bush. Whenever he is part of a venture he 1) Demands everything should be done his way, 2) doesn't listen to any kind of advice, and 3) he is often unknowledgable. George W. Bush is Commander-in-Chief of US forces, US President and Robert Gates' boss, so this is not trivial. It's not Robert Gates who sets policy, however much he would want to, it's his boss.

By the way, I didn't read this site yesterday. You can't count on me responding.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | February 11, 2008 1:03 PM

BTW, one more thing. That we are fighting Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan is bullshit. I'm sorry, but it is. Most of the Al Qaeda terrorists come from Saudi Arabia, where there is a US-friendly regime.

When most of the Islamic terrorists come from a state that has a US-friendly regime since 70 years back, then it's time to start thinking.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | February 11, 2008 1:16 PM

It is pathetic to see Gates using scare tactics to try to get more European forces in Afghanistan. The less European forces there are in Muslim lands, the less the Europeans have to fear from Islamic terrorists. Terrorism is best combatted by international police work (as in a case Gates cited) rather than through murderous invasions. 9/11 was retaliation for our support of Israel's occupation of Palestine as well as for the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia, and now we have generated more retaliatory terrorism by occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

Posted by Sabine Wales | February 11, 2008 2:11 PM