The logical core of Matthew Hoh's resignation letter (updated)
This passage from
his letter is to me the heart of the argument for curtailing rather than expanding America's stake and commitment in Afghanistan:
"I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. [My emphasis.] Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights that the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries."
The United States entered Afghanistan -- properly and with every moral and practical justification -- to disrupt, punish, and kill groups that had planned the 9/11 attacks. It is now in a mess in Afghanistan largely because of the
crucial misjudgment nearly eight years ago to shift effort and attention to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Not everything in foreign affairs can be explained by logic. But as Hoh argues, if we're serious in thinking we can now eliminate terrorist threats with our troops in Afghanistan, then logically we must also send them to Pakistan and beyond. And if we're not serious, then how can we keep them there?
For-the-record point: resignations on principle are vanishingly rare in U.S. government practice. It's much easier to keep your head down, protect your career prospects, and when it's over say that you had been against [failed policy xx or yy] all along. Apart from the merits of his argument, Hoh deserves respect for taking this step so forthrightly. Each person who does so creates an example for others to reflect upon.
UPDATE: A reader in Europe writes,
"There's an interesting book (dated,may well be 30 yrs old) comparing resignations in the UK with those in the USA, showing that the British tradition allows to resign and later be appointed again because you did the "honourable thing" whereas in the US excuses like"return to the family"or "other pursuits" were mostly used to cover up."
The book he is referring to is
Resignation in Protest by Edward Weisband and Thomas Franck, which I have heard of but have not read. Thanks to reader P.A.
McChrystal as Obama's savior?
I mentioned recently William S. Lind's
argument that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has, intentionally or not, done the Obama Administration a favor with the bleakness of his report on the prospects in Afghanistan. In response to the
recent Australian analysis of the McChrystal report, cited
here, a reader writes with a view complementary to Lind's:
"I suspect that the news media and blogosphere has overplayed the
tension between McChrystal and the Obama administration. As your
recent post on the Afghan Rorschach test suggests, McChrystal has given
an unvarnished assessment of the state of play, and a fairly
unvarnished assessment -- or at least a shockingly high assessment --
of the numbers of troops he needed to 'turn the conflict around.'
"In short, he made his troop request high enough to be
fairly easy to reject, and his report pessimistic enough to rule out an
Obamaesque middle course He can't be expected to craft a report that
would make withdrawal seem easy, but it is to his credit that he
(unlike Westmoreland) has made a good faith effort to make increased
commitment seem hard.
"One of the problems with civilian commentary on
Afghanistan is that civilians have been much slower than the military
to learn the lessons of Vietnam."
More on the Afghan Rorschach test
A friend in Australia pointed me to the
transcript of a speech in Canberra last week by Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald, who has reported extensively from Afghanistan over the past eight years. The war in Afghanistan has been a bigger matter for a longer time in Australia than in the US, in part because Australian troops have suffered many more casualties in Afghanistan than in Iraq. McGeough's speech is coruscating, and it uses Gen. McChrystal's report in a way I haven't seen applied anywhere else: as a radically honest reporting document, which in its very honesty reveals why its recommendations would not work out.
I mean these few samples to whet interest rather than to substitute for reading the presentation as a whole. Although he is tough on the Obama Administration, McGeough offers no support to the likes of Dick Cheney and his recent criticisms. As McGeough says in the final words of the speech, referring specifically to the Bush Administration's choice to
switch manpower, money, and attention from Afghanistan to Iraq starting in late 2001:
"By the way, a recent American intelligence estimate put the
insurgency's full-time fighting strength at at-least 25 000, up 25 per
cent on the previous year. There should never have been a debate about
how strong the insurgency is. They were on the run in 2001 - and they
came back, only because they were allowed to."
Below and after the jump, other samples of his reasoning. But please do check it out. First, on the similarity between the Soviet and American wars.
"After eight years, Washington finds itself in the same position that the Soviet Union was in Year 8 of its occupation of Afghanistan, seemingly having learnt nothing from history - until McChrystal's bombshell assessment.
"I want to read from a defence official's letter dated August 17. He calls for an honest admission of failure after eight years, citing the squandering of huge material resources and considerable casualties and a failure to stabilise the country - militarily or politically. Most of the population has lost trust, because the campaign is bogged down and a strategic breakthrough is unlikely.
"The experience of the past years," he continues somberly, "clearly shows that the Afghan problem cannot be solved by military means only. We should decisively reject our illusions and undertake principally new steps, taking into account the lessons of the past, and the real situation in the country..."
"That might have been a note to General McChrystal as he prepared his report - but the date was August 17, 1987. And the author, Colonel K. Tsagalov, was addressing the then newly appointed Soviet defence minister, Dmitry Yazov."
Continue reading "More on the Afghan Rorschach test" »
