Afghanistan and Iraq and Terrorists- Déjà Vu, All Over Again? (Part I)

In late 2006, I wrote about the war in Iraq, how it started and, more important, how and why we should get out. To a great extent, President Obama is faced with a very similar set of circumstances in Afghanistan, although our reasons for being there in the first place has a certain apparent rationale and not the fantasies of Vice President Cheney and the neo-conservatives, they are still flawed. President Obama has adopted the war in Afghanistan as his own and, in so doing, has hurt himself, his overall goals for the country and his entire agenda.

In that 2006 essay, I wrote

[President George W. Bush and] his administration state that, to leave Iraq precipitously would create more chaos in the middle-east, would result in a loss of credibility with respect to the Unites States and would encourage terrorist states such as Syria and Iran (as well as North Korea) to intensify their efforts to support and export terror. Moreover, the inevitable civil war in Iraq would result in even more instability in the region. This would conceivably translate into greater danger to this country.

They are right.

[The Bush] administration's critics assert that continuing our present activities in Iraq spreads our resources too thin, preventing us from giving meaningful attention to terrorist-supporting states such as Iran, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia, and from focusing on the Israel-Palestinian quagmire, endangering the only true democracy in the region. This is to say nothing of the killed and wounded Americas engaged in Iraq, as well as the thousands of civilian Iraqis. As to civil war in Iraq, it is upon us now.

They are right, too.

So what is the solution? .... [W]e must choose the lesser of the two unfortunate results. That would be to leave Iraq to its own fate. If the present Iraqi government cannot prevent civil war and create a peaceful society, it's their problem. The only unity in Iraq now is the near-universal hatred of America!

Substitute "Afghanistan" for "Iraq" and the parallels are clear. We have brave and good men and women in the armed forces. I have no doubt that, if called upon to do so, our military could whip that of any other nation. What our forces are not successful at is "nation building"; it is not their mission, not something for which they are trained. "Nation building" is an internal process used by people to whom it's important.

Let's start with Iraq.

George Will, hardly a liberal supporter of President Obama, wrote last week, "Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two months have passed, and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly transitioning to normality free of sectarian violence."

General Roy Odierno, our top guy in Iraq, sees the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops "as a check on Iraqi military and political leaders' baser and more sectarian instincts." After over six years, 4,300 American deaths and 31,483 wounded, President Obama has to realize that it is simply wrong for the U.S. military -- overextended and in need of materiel repair and mental recuperation -- to stick around Iraq to improve the instincts of corrupt leaders. If there is a worse use of the U.S. military than "nation-building," it is adult supervision and behavior modification of other peoples' politicians. The Iraqi government, as a self-sustaining and strong recipient of the support of the Iraqi people, does not exist and won't exist until it is forced to by its people (which is doubtful) or it devolves back into a dictatorship, one we make like better than Saddam - maybe.

We have pulled our troops from most of Iraqi cities and terrorist attacks have increased against Iraqis. Nearly 800 have been killed in the past two or three months. At the moment, we are planning to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq with then next year leaving up to 50,000 can remain for another two years as "advisers" to an Iraqi government that is open about its belief that the presence of U.S. forces is superfluous and obnoxious. They don't want us there and we should expend no more men and women and resources trying to forge a Jeffersonian democracy out of tribes and sects who reject the very idea.

As I wrote before, if the Iraqi government cannot prevent or survive a civil war, that has to be its problem and not ours.