Afghanistan and Iraq; Necessary and Choice?
Filed under: Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on July 15, 2008 @ 12:03 pm CEST
Christopher Hitchens argues that it is time for opponents of the Iraq War - who oppose this war while they support the war in Afghanistan - to stop pretending that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are truly inherently different. Iraq is, he says, often portrayed as a war of choice, whereas Afghanistan was a war of necessity. This is, Hitchens writes, not correct.
- Many of the al-Qaida forces—most notably the horrific but now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—made their way to Iraq in the first place only after being forcibly evicted from Afghanistan. Thus, if one did not want to be confronting Bin Laden fans in Mesopotamia, it was surely a mistake to invade Afghanistan rather than Iraq.
- The American presence in Afghanistan is not at all “unilateral”; it meets every liberal criterion of being formally underwritten and endorsed and armed and reinforced by our NATO and U.N. allies. Indeed, the commander of the anti-Taliban forces is usually not even an American. Yet it is in these circumstances that more American casualties—and not just American ones—are being experienced than are being suffered in Iraq. If this is so, the reason cannot simply be that our resources are being deployed elsewhere.
- Many of the most successful drives against the Taliban have been conducted by American forces redeployed from Iraq, in particular from Anbar province. But these military victories are the result of counterinsurgent tactics and strategies that were learned in Iraq and that have been applied triumphantly in Afghanistan.
Although the first point makes some sense, it has to be pointed out that Saddam was not a friend of Islamic extremists as such. If they would have tried to take over Iraq, and create a true safe haven for themselves on a large scale, Saddam would have declared war on them.
The other two points are correct.
In other words, any attempt to play off the two wars against each other is little more than a small-minded and zero-sum exercise. And consider the implications. Most people appear now to believe that it is quite wrong to mention Saddam Hussein even in the same breath as either a) weapons of mass destruction or b) state-sponsored terrorism. I happen to disagree, but just for an experiment, let us imagine that some regime did exist or did arise that posed such a combination of threats. (Actually, so feverish is my imagination that I can even think of one whose name also begins with I.) Would we be bound to say, in public and in advance, that the Western alliance couldn’t get around to confronting such a threat until it had Afghanistan well under control? This would be rather like the equivalent fallacy that nothing can be done in the region until there is a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute. Not only does this mean that every rogue in the region can reset his timeline until one of the world’s oldest and most intractable quarrels is settled, it also means that every rogue has an incentive to make certain that no such settlement can ever occur. (Which is, of course, why Saddam threw, and now the Iranians throw, their support to the suicide-murderers.)
Again this reasoning make sense, but only to a degree. The notion that the West should only fight one war at a time is ludicrous in so far that you can’t allow other ruthless dictators and extremists to, then, do whatever they want to do. They have to understand that the fact that the West is fighting one war in a certain country does not mean that they are safe to commit the most hideous crimes against the West and threaten regional stability.
However, the above was not the case with Saddam. If Saddam did not truly have WMDs that could actually enable him to take on the West - and he did not - there was quite simply no immediate threat and, thus, no necessity to go to war. Hitchens seems to forget that without those ingredients an initial necessity is not present.
After this, Hitchens argues correctly that contrary to what progressives argue, withdrawing troops from Iraq in order to send them to Afghanistan will not result in the defeat of the Taliban. ‘The continued and, indeed, increasing insolence of the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies is the consequence of one thing and one thing only. These theocratic terrorists know that they have a reliable backer in the higher echelons of the Pakistani state and of its military-intelligence complex and that while this relationship persists, they are assured of a hinterland across the border and a regular supply of arms and recruits,’ he writes.
More troops, or only more troops, are not the answer. No, Pakistan has to change its approach to Afghanistan and the Pakistani government has to deal with those who (secretly and not so secretly) support the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Next:
So, the question for Sen. Barack Obama and his glib supporters is this: Would they solve this problem by removing the American forces from Iraq and putting the thereby-enhanced contingent there to patrol a frontier where one of our main “allies” is continually engaged in stabbing them in the back?
And this paragraph basically makes Hitchens’ article make sense. Sure, there was no necessity five years ago to declare war on Iraq in order to win the war in Afghanistan, but that has changed. Today, in July 2008, extremists will turn Iraq into a safe haven for themselves and their brethren at the very moment the US withdraws from it. Next they will stage attacks against Western and Afghani troops in Afghanistan; the terrorists will either blow themselves up, etc., or attack and quickly turn back to Iraq.
Much like the PKK do in the North; the PKK attack Turkish forces in Turkey, and then quickly run back to Iraq where the Turks can’t touch them.
Those who oppose the American presence in Iraq have to take this into account. They should come up with a solution to secure Afghanistan’s borders. Unless they do so, their talk of withdrawal cannot be taken too seriously.
1 Connor
July 15, 2008 @ 2:11 pm CESTPerhaps there was no "necessity" to invade Iraq, although one wonders what else we would have done: Kept on intermittently and ineffectually bombing for years and years, our troops waiting on the border?
But you also need to look at the opportunity presented by Iraq, and not just the "necessity": The chance to remove a hated dictator from a volatile region of the globe, to finish a war that had been started almost 13 years before, to plant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy, and to stem the growth of Islamic extremism. Unfortunately that last goal has proven elusive, probably because the tricky security situation has been inhibiting potential missionaries.
But we’ve achieved a considerable amount in Iraq even, if by Michael’s standards, it wasn’t a "necessity".
2 RRRocks
July 15, 2008 @ 5:39 pm CESTNo war is ever justified. However the left continues to try and justify the Afghanistan war to make themselves not appear to be weak and intimidated.
The antiwar is opposed to both wars. The democrats are just opposed to Iraq. The two wedded and along with their insane energy policy that will destroy America in 4 years after Obama is elected……together they will bring us home from there as well.
Right now Afghanistan is a smoke screen for their inability to have the heart to fight a war. Just or not. The minute they are in power they will set their sights on pulling out of Afghanistan too.
Fine. I just wished they were honest about it, instead of using deflection and misdirection to decive the voters in order to gain power.
3 Kevin H
July 15, 2008 @ 10:54 pm CEST#3 is a bit ridiculous. So you start a war to train people to fight a war that is already going on? Also, there is no reason that they couldn’t have learned counterinsurgency in Afghanistan the same way they learned it in Iraq: On the ground. The key here is the tactics that are finally being used, not where they learned them.
I think many liberals (myself included) would be willing to say that Iraq is NOW a war of necessity. If we were to simply redeploy to Afghanistan, many of those fighters would simply migrate into Iraq. However, it is clear that at the time the war began, this was not the case. We foolishly chose to open up another front in the war on terrorism, and our goal of irradiating or containing terrorism has been hurt because of it.
I think a clear seperation of past and present are needed by both liberals who are so angry at the mistakes of the past that they are blind to the nesscities of the present, and conservatives who are so focused on the present that they are unwilling to admit those past mistakes.
4 utsu
July 16, 2008 @ 1:23 am CEST"The chance to remove a hated dictator from a volatile region of the globe, to finish a war that had been started almost 13 years before, to plant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy"So get to work on some other countries as well. Until then, I will know that it is only about getting cheap oil."and to stem the growth of Islamic extremism."Post-invasion problem. The US should get out once ASAP - the only concern should be the liberty and environment of the average Iraqi, screw anything else."But we?ve achieved a considerable amount in Iraq even, if by Michael?s standards, it wasn?t a "necessity"."You could have acheived more if you hadn’t put your trust in your government while there was no reason to. US civilians failed the troops and the Iraqis horribly."However the left continues to try and justify the Afghanistan war to make themselves not appear to be weak and intimidated."Oh, you’ve read all our minds. Dash it, I guess the jig is up."The antiwar is opposed to both wars."For separate lists of reasons. You give the impression that you see these people as having some mental conditions or something."The two wedded and along with their insane energy policy that will destroy America in 4 years after Obama is elected"It took Bush 8 years to screw up the US indefinitely. I guess the democrats are better at destroying the US than republicans as well."The minute they are in power they will set their sights on pulling out of Afghanistan too."Well, that region is proper screwed up as well. The "long haul" approach has failed again and again - when will war supporters see that the onus is still on them?The wars were handled as if a strawman socialist had done it - idealistically, proudly, naively, unrealistically and with no concern for the future, the people on the ground or any long-term consequences. Why? Because many right-wingers were drunk at the prospect of emulating some shiny, diffuse civilization-saving orgy of manliness from the past, and refused to see the evidence suggesting most of it was about oil. The rest of the US was frightened, or vindictive.Then, when we realize they have screwed up three whole nations in different ways (the US, Iraq and Afghanistan), created a net increase in terrorism and also forced US troops to function as indefinite plugs against some bloodbath we want to end it ASAP. Obama lays out a detailed plan, talks with generals, visits Israel and even demands that Pakistan stops abusing US trust. But the left-wingers are partisan idealist naifs who have no concern for civilians or future consequences and have no respect for the troops. Also, they’re sly. So the media makes sure no one forgets some people actually discuss whether Obama’s a muslim or not (seriously, they STILL talk about it as if it isn’t the topic of people who drink paint thinner on public transportaion vehicles).I see very little today that suggests that the Afghanistan conflict is some temporary shield to whatever pathetic accusations of cowardice are levelled by the people who couldn’t bother to demand a functioning war effort. Or, for that matter, considered akin to the Iraq occupation by most left-wingers. The former is justified and executed with vicious incompetence, the latter is immoral, unjustified and handled with a carelessness that is titanic in scope.
5 Chuck Norton
July 16, 2008 @ 1:57 am CESTMichael - if you read this report - http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/iraqi/index.html
You will see that internal Iraqi documents show that Saddam supported any terrorists that shared similar enemies. Including giving training, shelter, materials, and financial support to terror groups that worked directly with bin-Laden. Iraqi intelligence watched bin-Laden closely to make sure that he did not turn against Saddam - and he never did. Saddam did not have control over the terror groups, or even have any operation influence outside of the training and material support but since they shared many of the same goals he didn’t have to.
6 Interested
July 16, 2008 @ 2:53 am CESTProve what you "know"
Again prove, then take a history lesson and place your right-wingers in camp with the Left, for without the left, it could not have happened. And again - prove it. We’re not talking your petty little wanna-be’s
Well you said one thing right. Whether you intended to or not.