In a Washington Post op-ed, Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that Afghanistan does not matter as much as General McChrystal and our military leaders think. Haass says Afghanistan is not a "war of necessity," but a "war of choice." His reasoning does not justify his conclusion.
Haass says there are four reasons people put forth to demonstrate that Afghanistan is important, but "[n]one of these assumptions is as strong as proponents maintain." But they aren't blithe assumptions. They are well-reasoned arguments. Let's consider each in brief.
Haass summarizes the first argument he wishes to dismiss this way: "First, if the Taliban returns to power, Afghanistan will again be a haven for terrorist groups." This is undoubtedly true and Haass does not offer any reason to think otherwise. (For a detailed analysis of how al Qaeda functions within the Afghan insurgency, and is a staunch ally of all the insurgency groups we face today, see here.)
But Haass says that al Qaeda "does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat," because the organization can and does use areas such as Yemen and Somalia. Using Haass's logic, then, why not allow al Qaeda and its allies to take over whatever geographic territory they desire? After all, there will always be "areas of least resistance" for them to "gravitate" towards.
The problems with Haass's reasoning are manifest. Jihadist hotspots such as Yemen and Somalia are certainly concerns. And America needs a strategy for dealing with al Qaeda's presence in both nations. But, al Qaeda and its allies grew out of the original conflict in Afghanistan, which was orchestrated from Pakistan. This is why al Qaeda is strongest in South Asia today.
With the exception of a five-year or so sojourn in Sudan during the early 1990s, the al Qaeda terrorist network has always been centered in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Only a porous dotted line separates those two nations, and al Qaeda's central leadership is, for the moment, on the Pakistani side of that "border." So, while al Qaeda desires Yemen and Somalia, those countries are a few neighborhoods over, whereas Afghanistan is in al Qaeda's backyard.
This is the chief reason that American and coalition troops are not involved in a day-to-day struggle for Yemen or Somalia, as they are in Afghanistan. One could add that there is slim chance that Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, AbuYahya al Libi, and their ilk, are moving to either Somalia or Yemen any time soon.
Haass summarizes the second argument he claims to rebut this way: "Second, if the Taliban takes over, Afghanistan will again become a human rights nightmare." Again, this is true and Haass offers no reason to dispute it. Instead, Haass dismisses this concern out of hand by snidely remarking that "helping Afghan girls get an education, no matter how laudable, is not a goal that justifies an enormous U.S. military commitment."
But this isn't just about the education of Afghan school girls, as admirable a goal as that is, now is it? Yes, there is frequently a balancing act between human rights concerns, which certainly have a place at the table, and America's national security interests. This has been pointed out time and again by our foreign policy experts, so we don't need Haass to point it out again. Moreover, Haass is simply wrong in how he attempts to introduce this sliding scale here.
Recall what happened in Afghanistan the first time around, when America, Pakistan, and the Saudis bled the Soviets dry by massively funding and arming the mujahideen. After the Soviets left, so did America's interest. The result was a bloody civil war, the rise of the Taliban, and the mass oppression of the Afghan people -- who have been traumatized as much as any peoples on this planet over the past thirty years.
So, this isn't just about educating a few Afghan school girls. There are very real concerns about the battle for Muslim hearts and minds too. Consider how America would be perceived if it decided that killing senior al Qaeda leaders warranted its presence in the region, but committing the necessary resources to prevent al Qaeda's brethren from brutalizing and terrorizing Muslim civilians in Afghanistan was not worth the effort.
Does he think that his, and now I'm paraphrasing, ‘Afghan people don't matter much' approach would make it easier to wage the "middle" of the road campaign he calls for? How does Haass think America's presence in the region would then be perceived? How many new members would the Taliban, the Haqqanis, and al Qaeda attract to their ranks?
Consider this last question from the perspective of would-be recruits sitting on the fence in the current fight. On the one hand, you have the Americans and their allies who, in the Haass world, are not concerned with protecting them or their families. On the other hand, the jihadist hydra is rising to power once again, and they will very much kill these fence-sitters if they don't choose to follow Allah's self-proclaimed warriors. It is very easy to see how not protecting the Afghan population, as General McChrystal proposes, would lead to a worsening of the situation from every perspective, except the jihadists'. Osama bin Laden explained this "weak horse / strong horse" dynamic years ago.
The truth is that Afghanistan today is one of those few places where there is a precise confluence of human rights concerns and America's national security interests.The next argument Haass claims he finds fault in is: "Third, a perceived defeat of the United States in Afghanistan would be a blow to U.S. prestige everywhere and would embolden radicals."
Again, this is true and Haass does not offer a single reason to think otherwise. In fact, he concedes "the taking of Kabul by the Taliban would become part of the radicals' narrative." But he then offers this incredibly flawed retelling of history: "the United States fared well in Asia after the fall of South Vietnam, and less than a decade after an ignominious withdrawal from Beirut, the United States amassed the international coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait."
Where to begin?
It is remarkable that the head of a major American foreign policy think tank would sugarcoat the "Vietnam Syndrome." Perceptions of America around the world were damaged for decades after the Vietnam experience -- so much so, that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri have repeatedly used Vietnam to frame their propaganda. There is an obvious reason that al Qaeda's leaders have said that they and their allies are going to make America experience something approximating Vietnam in both Iraq (where they failed because a strategy that prefigured McChrystal's plan was employed) and Afghanistan (where Haass says it wouldn't be so bad). But Haass misses it.
And, how callous does one have to be to claim that anyone "fared well in Asia" after the American retreat from Vietnam when Cambodia and Laos fell, hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered or starved by Communist forces on the Indochinese Peninsula, and Vietnam itself experienced an epic refugee crisis? Such crude formulations certainly reinforce the most negative stereotypes of American foreign policy.
It is equally remarkable that the head of a major American foreign policy think tank would try to spin the "ignominious withdrawal from Beirut" in a positive light because this was one of the seminal events in the rise of jihadism. Osama bin Laden was so impressed with what Hezbollah and Iran achieved in 1983 and 1984 that he asked for their assistance in recreating that experience in Saudi Arabia, where American troops were stationed throughout the 1990s. According to the 9/11 Commission, they obliged bin Laden's request and the result was the August 7, 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which were directly modeled after Hezbollah's earliest attacks in Beirut.
Besides the lost American lives, the blow to American prestige in Beirut, and later in Somalia with the "Blackhawk Down" episode, directly contributed to al Qaeda's perception, as well as broader perceptions, of American weakness. Osama bin Laden has cited the experience in Beirut as transformative for jihadist thinking, saying that the Americans were "cowards" for running. Soviet forces, bin Laden surmised prior to the September 11 attacks, put up much stiffer resistance than the Americans ever would.
It was not until the post-9/11 world that America rolled back these perceptions of her will to fight. But now Haass wants to go back to the September 10th world and pretend that the fall of Afghanistan would not reignite widespread belief in American weakness once again. This is the worst sort of reasoning because it ignores and outright distorts actual history.
Lastly, Haass thinks he has found a way around this argument: "Fourth, an Afghanistan under Taliban control would be used by extremists as a sanctuary from which to destabilize Pakistan." Again, Haass makes an important concession to those who think this is a strong argument by admitting that "allowing the Taliban and al Qaeda to reestablish a sanctuary in Afghanistan would make it harder to defeat them in Pakistan." Yes, it would.
But, he says, it is nonetheless "bizarre" that anyone would see the effort in Afghanistan "as essential to protecting Pakistan." No, it is not bizarre to think that.
Haass is right that we have much to fear as Pakistan inches closer and closer to implosion. But he fundamentally misunderstands the forces that are pushing Pakistan to the brink.
Pakistan is, in the most general and simplified terms, divided between a civilian population that is comparatively moderate and a military-intelligence establishment that, despite all of its post-9/11 support and own internal divisions, is not. For decades, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment has made the sponsorship of jihadist groups a fundamental pillar of its foreign policy. It is Pakistan's military-intelligence complex that has kept the Taliban and its allies alive, despite periodic skirmishes. The Pakistanis do this because they see these groups as a necessary counterweight to Indian influence and because there are a disturbingly large number of "true believers" in their uniformed ranks.
Haass correctly notes, "It is the government of Pakistan that is tolerating the very groups that the United States is fighting in Afghanistan in the name of Pakistan's stability." This includes al Qaeda, by the way. But tolerating this sponsorship in Afghanistan does not mean that we will somehow avoid their drive to overtake Pakistan itself as well.
Should Afghanistan fall to the Taliban and its allies, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment's decision to continue sponsoring them would be, to a large degree, vindicated. Yet, it is this jihadist network that threatens the very fabric of Pakistani society today. (See the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as just one of countless examples.) We should never forget that it is the extremist milieu sponsored first by President Zia ul Haq and then his ideological heirs in the military that made it possible for al Qaeda to rise in South Asia in the first place.
So, raising the costs of Pakistan's support for jihadism is necessarily an essential part of the American-led campaign in Afghanistan. If you think earning Pakistan's cooperation against the jihadist hydra including al Qaeda is difficult now, imagine what would happen if they are triumphant in Afghanistan once again. And imagine how strong the insurgency inside Pakistan itself would become if there was an Islamic Emirate to the immediate north that was further fueling it.
To be fair, Richard Haass is not arguing that we abandon Afghanistan "to its fate." But he has not proposed anything that is a viable alternative to the strategy set forth by General McChrystal and his staff either. His call for a "high-level diplomatic" engagement with Iran, with respect to Afghanistan, is a Washingtonian's pseudo-intellectual fantasy. It is repeatedly mugged by reality. Iran sponsors attacks on Americans inside Afghanistan today. The mullahs have no interest in helping us in any conceivable way.
Instead of putting forth a comprehensive alternative, Haass trumpets a series of intellectually and morally vacuous arguments that say much about the American elite's lack of will in this fight and very little about who our enemies are and how they can be defeated.
