The debate over Western strategy in Afghanistan continues and becomes more heated by the day.
As new information is released concerning the debate within Soviet ruling circles in the 1980′s…we can see some parallels between the Soviet experience and the Western (read U.S.) one.
Should there be a troop surge or not?
Was anything to be gained by continuing to prop up a puppet government?
Should the Red Army stay the course or pull out?
The government in Moscow was divided against itself….with some on one side and some on the other. Many in the Soviet military believed that the war could not be won by force of arms. Others promoted the “surge” theory and said…”send in more soldiers and we can win “.
Criticism of the Soviet policy of national reconciliation in Afghanistan and analysis of general failures of the Soviet military mission there were presented by a Colonel Tsagolov to USSR Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov of August 13, 1987. His letter represents the first criticism of the Afghan war from within the military establishment. Colonel Tsagolov paid for his attempt to make his criticism public in an interview with Soviet influential progressive magazine “Ogonek”. He was expelled from the Army in 1988.
But Tsagalov was right.
Still, -the Russian military continue to insist – even today – that they were not defeated in Afghanistan. Nevertheless they and their political Masters achieved none of their limited political aims: -to stabilise the government - to secure the towns, train up the army and police.
Like the Canadian General – Rick Hillier – Russian military leaders boasted they could fix things and leave within six months.
They were wrong. And so was Hillier. And so is Hillier’s hero Petraeus.
The Russian/Soviet experience in Afghanistan is very instructive.
As one Russian General remarked: “We tried to teach them how to build a new and decent society, knowing that we ourselves had failed to do so … Our army was given tasks which it was in no position to fulfil. No regular army can possibly solve the problems of a territory in revolt.” He was right.
Western soldiers were assigned a mission they could not possibly fulfill.
And so we are left on the horns of a dilemma.
Please write a comment and let’s see if we can advance this story just a bit.
I recommend anyone who is in the least interested, to visit this site.
I find one of the most disturbing parts is the game they play. Officials, media and even honest soldiers who profess the futility of the ground effort play the game of refusing to be honest and open about the real motives behind the war. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23848.htm – this former marine who retired in protest of the war is correct to point out how all the reasons for a military presence in Afghanistan don’t hold water yet he refuses to acknowledge the basic premise behind the war. Afghanistan is important for geopolitical / strategic reasons (oil and natural gas pipelines and opium/drugs/money laundering). To give up at this point would be letting go of these which given how financially difficult and debt producing the rest of Western power’s middle east wars have been, are made all the more strategically important. There are a few, like former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan – Craig Murray who are willing to publicaly state this-
“Just as almost everything you see about Afghanistan is a cover for the fact that the actual motive is the pipeline they wish to build over Afghanistan to bring out Uzbek and Turkmen natural gas which together is valued at up to $10 trillion, which they want to bring over Afghanistan and down to the Arabian Sea to make it available for export.
And we are living in a world where people, a small number of people, with incredible political clout and huge amounts of money, are prepared to see millions die for their personal economic gain and where, even worse, most people in bureaucracies are prepared to go along with it for their own much smaller economic gain, all within this psychological mirage which is so much of the war on terror.”
We can chose to accept that the war is a selfish one in which the sufferings and carnage of the Afghan people (and young soldiers) is an acceptable or unacceptable price or we can pretend it’s not and try to uphold the reasons that don’t stand up to scrutiny – As a society we’re pretty good at not scrutinizing!
The very best thing we could do at this point is to pull back…permit the Afghans to form whatever government they can – and then learn to understand and deal with that government.
No question – the pipeline is key.
We will need the pipeline for sure. But we will have to deal with a hard-nosed Afghan government and we’ll have to pay…big time…and so we should.
The war is over now.
All that remains to be done is to decide how to remove the soldiers.
During our sickening experience in Rwanda, where we put Mayberry style peacekeeping to the test, we were privy to a scene of astonishing barbarism. Our so called peacekeepers could hear the screams at night as women and girls were killed by sharp pieces of glass ripping apart their genitalia. Don’t believe me? It’s part of the record.
Also part of the record was the heads up information that the little short guy from shawinigan was given as well as the sacred UN. And to add insult to injury, 11 Belgian peacekeepers were chopped up and neatly stacked in a corner. This experience motivated Alan Rock and others to craft the R2P document, and save legendary peacekeeper, Barney Fife, to police shopping mauls.
So what is Canada about? Will we intervene according to the document of R2P, will we try to resue failed states, or will will watch from a very safe distance, criticize the Americans, and try to negotiate an exchange of cooking utensils between two benign nations? Very few get killed during the latter, and with a little embellishment, we can get back to believing in ourselves as universal messengers of peace, brotherhood and goodwill.
R2P is an interesting idea but hardly applies to Afghanistan…where R2R would be a more appropriate approach. R2P can’t work when the big western military forces are busy with unnecessary and unwinnable and some say – illegal wars.
We failed to undertake R2P in both the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda…but at least we moved the concept of international criminal law and justice a baby step forward, with the establishment of Tribunals to try the guilty and convict them.
Check out the case of Matthew Hoh, one of America’s bravest soldiers, who has concluded along with a majority of the American public, that Afghanistan cannot be won by military force, without the deployment of 400-600 thousand soldiers. And even then, the outcome would be in doubt. It’s an exercise we simply cannot afford to carry out.
We would do well to continue to develop and refine the body of international law and build a better international system of justice.
That may be difficult though, since certain past officials in the U.s. could get caught in the net.
The Russians certainly didn’t discuss a troop surge as such, the expression wasn’t coined until America’s rampage-wagon was well off its trolley in Iraq.
The distorted worldview driving GWB’s “troop surge” started out under his admin’s working title * New Way Forward, probably a Frum-ism to mislead middle-America, the coastal ones who aren’t necessarily gun-toting bible-thumpers like the neocons running the show at the time, but were too busy buying and selling crap mortgages to really pay attention.
So New Way Forward worked for them, while Troop Surge delighted the Laz-E-Boy belligerents.
Win-win.
Except it would take an intelligent juvenile to ask, why a surge anyway?
Were your original estimates that badly out of whack?
If expressions like Troop Surge, Weapons of Mass Destruction, War on Terror and Mission Accomplished have to be used at all in future ReedWrites, they should be inside “Asterisks of Evil”….
*A working title, sometimes called a production title, is the temporary name of a product or project used during its development, usually a film, novel, video game, or music album. Working titles are used primarily for two reasons; the first being that an official title has not yet been decided upon, the second being to intentionally disguise the production of a project.
The President described the overall objective as establishing a “…unified, democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror…..“
Point taken and noted.
We’re in an age of extremism on all sides.
I fear for Canada, as the country moves further to the Right and away from responsible government.