War and Peace, Time and Patience: The Afghan Surge

War stands sui generis among issues of public concern. Nothing is less repugnant, or less reflexive, to the human psyche. But as my generation and that of my parents—the baby boomers—drift further from any direct experience with a “war of necessity,” war’s basic trickiness stands in ever starker relief against the ambivalence of our times. Afghanistan challenges our temperament for violent conflict in ways men like Churchill and Truman, for all their wisdom, could not have foreseen.

There are many arguments against our involvement in Afghanistan—that we entered the conflict in a fever of righteous pique; that we don’t have any clear goals there; that Pakistan is the more important focus; that the country is as unstable now as it was when the Soviets tried to conquer it; that any resultant increase in national security is not worth the cost. These points are all valid and worthy of consideration, and yet all but this last have little bearing on the reality of the day: we are there.

We are there, and like it or not, we have to do something.

We could, of course, withdraw immediately. This sounds like a fine idea to skeptics on the left, many of whom seem not so much pacifist as exhausted. These are the same Democrats, it is important to remember, who happily trumpeted Obama’s commitment to escalating the “real war” in Afghanistan in exchange for withdrawal from Iraq during the 2008 campaign. Fickleness is a friend to all politics.

But unless we are heartless we must ask: withdrawal at what cost? Aside from a small buffer from the remaining external forces (who would see it as betrayal), Afghanistan would almost certainly be plunged into a state of anarchy and bloodshed. Our enemies in the region (al Qaeda, the Taliban) would be empowered. The American military would lose faith in their commander-in-chief, who would have expressly contradicted the recommendations of his top military advisors, not to mention broken a clear campaign promise. The political fallout for President Obama would be sharp; “surrender” would once again be the most popular word on Fox News. And who knows what would happen in Pakistan? Would it respond with a newfound responsibility for the region, or with more of the same corrupt apathy? Would the regime even survive? There is a reason it has been called the “Af-Pak” strategy. What begins in Afghanistan surely does not end there.

Of course we know, based on last week’s decisions, that immediate withdrawal is not a tolerable option for our Commander-in-Chief. Nor should it strike us as a reasonable one. What then?

We could stay forever. The neoconservative right demands empire: how else can we maintain democracy and security in one of the most unstable, corrupt places on the planet? Not until there is a functioning democracy, a competent army, a vanquished Taliban and nary a trace of opium would Bill Kristol and his cynical ilk be happy—nor even then, for they don’t actually care about Afghanistan. They want permanent war.  They want, if we are a bit conspiracy-minded, a reason to keep producing tanks and Kevlar and paying for “private security forces.”  They want a satellite in the Muslim world from which to police the region, sovereignty be damned. And they want, most ludicrous of all, for this permanent American presence to somehow engender good feelings and blot out Islamic terrorism for good. Hearts and minds are one side of COIN [PDF], after all.

So the neoconservative solution doesn’t seem reasonable either. Where does that leave us?

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Fort Hood

It’s hard to know what to think, except what a tragedy it is. We still know very few details, but everyone’s already got an opinion. I tend to agree with James Fallows when it comes to events like this:

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the “expert” talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre “mean”? A decade later, do we “know” anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They’ve got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don’t mean nothing.

RIP.

Jason Zengerle makes what I think is the appropriate counterpoint:

[I]t’s difficult not to see the Fort Hood shootings as different from Austin and Columbine and Paducah. The fact that they occurred on an Army base; the fact that the shooter was Muslim officer; the fact that we’re currently fighting wars in two Muslim countries–they all add up to make the meaning of this more apparent than the others. Rather than Columbine, think of Oklahoma City as a more appropriate historical precedent.

If you’re interested in what they’re saying around the web, Andrew has, as usual, a good roundup. Chilling stuff.