On Monday Barack Obama published an op-ed piece in the New York Times, on Tuesday he gave a speech on Iraq and foreign policy (video, full text). (What? Was there something else going on this week? How stupid.) The op-ed piece is basically the Iraq-centric Cliff’s Notes version of the speech and the general point he’s making is unchanged from last summer. He wants a structured and relatively swift withdrawal from Iraq and one of his main reasons is that Iraq has been nothing but a distraction from efforts against the people who were responsible for the 11 September attacks. Obama wants to refocus on Afghanistan, even promising to send two extra brigades there.
Obama is certainly correct that Iraq has been a major distraction from Afghanistan, but two extra American brigades are not going to make a long term difference. To his credit, Obama appears to understand this (it’s at 20:45 on the video link):
Moreover, lasting security will only come if we heed General Marshall’s lesson, and help Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up. That’s why I’ve proposed an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance each year, with meaningful safeguards to prevent corruption and to make sure investments are made - not just in Kabul - but out in Afghanistan’s provinces. As a part of this program, we’ll invest in alternative livelihoods to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers, just as we crack down on heroin trafficking. We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism. The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring, because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared.
Reconstruction cannot be merely a fig leaf to cover military action, but as incompetent as the current Administration has been, Afghanistan is not a simple problem. Take, for example, the impressive sounding $1 billion extra in non-military (that’s important) aid per year; it amounts to only a little more than $30 per capita, certainly a helpful sum, especially in a poor place, but hardly a life changing amount. And that’s if you spent the money efficiently and effectively, a task which over the last seven years proved all but impossible. (This recent BBC story has a brief and troubling rundown.) Afghanistan is, like Iraq, quite beyond the capabilities of the United States to solve.
An Obama win in November will, obviously, change the way American foreign policy is practiced. Less obvious, but perhaps just as important, his election should also have a dramatic effect on the way American foreign policy is perceived. To say that American leadership on Afghanistan has been lacking the last six years is a major understatement, a President Obama, especially one bringing the Iraq war to a close, would have a lot a credibility to say to the rest of the world that Afghanistan cannot be forgotten again. If Obama made it clear to other world leaders that he was serious about Afghanistan he could potentially recapture some of the spirit of 12 September. If he wanted to heap a load of shit on his predecessor while he was at it I doubt many world leaders would object.
Yet even a world community strongly behind a renewed effort in Afghanistan is no guarantee of success. On Monday, Professor Cole pointed out that it’s very likely that the war in Afghanistan no longer has much to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Al-Qaeda is a landless terrorist organization and the word “Taliban” has become an inaccurate catchall for what are most likely tribal fighters opposed to foreigners and the central government:
When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn’t we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with “Taliban”. But I’m not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means ’seminary student.’) The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These ‘neo-Taliban’ don’t seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.
That’s probably too complicated a concept, even for a skilled speaker like Obama, to be much use on the campaign trail. But it underscores the necessity of giving Afghanistan a fair shake from the international community; the one it should’ve gotten in 2001-2002 but didn’t because of Iraq. The immediate lesson of the 11 September attacks was that failed states could not simply be ignored by the wider world. Lawless countries pose very real threats to the peace and stability of everyone, no matter how remote they may seem. If that idea is at all true, and in the broad strokes it sure seems to be, then Afghanistan cannot be abandoned by the United States simply because of Iraq fatigue any more than it can be abandoned to the United States by the rest of the world because of anger over Iraq.
It’s a problem for everyone and a freshly minted President Obama could make that case anew. Will it work, who knows? Afghanistan has proved itself impervious to efforts at outside interference innumerable times. But unless Obama can get the rest of the world on board and take a real shot at it, four years from now it will be his failed war. That will be bad for him politically, but worse, in every sense of the word, for the Afghans and everyone else.
