Obama's AfPak
Flip-Flop
Posted on May 16, 2010, Printed on May 17, 2010
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175248/
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Obama’s
Flailing Wars
A Study in
BP-Style “Pragmatism”
By Tom Engelhardt
On stage, it would be farce. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, it’s bound
to play out as tragedy.
Less than two months ago, Barack Obama flew into
Afghanistan for six hours -- essentially to read the riot act to Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, whom his ambassador had only months before termed “not
an adequate strategic partner.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral
Mike Mullen followed within a day to deliver his own “stern
message.”
While still on Air Force One, National Security Adviser James Jones
offered reporters a version of the tough talk Obama was bringing with
him. Karzai would later see one of Jones’s comments and find it insulting.
Brought to his attention as well would be a newspaper article that quoted
an anonymous senior U.S. military official as saying of his
half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a reputedly corrupt powerbroker in the
southern city of Kandahar: “I'd like him out of there... But there's
nothing that we can do unless we can link him to the insurgency, then we
can put him on the [target list] and capture and kill him." This was
tough talk indeed.
At the time, the media repeatedly pointed out that President Obama,
unlike his predecessor, had consciously developed a standoffish
relationship with Karzai. Meanwhile, both named and anonymous officials
regularly castigated the Afghan president in the press for stealing an
election and running a hopelessly corrupt, inefficient government that
had little power outside Kabul, the capital. A previously planned
Karzai visit to Washington was soon put on hold to emphasize the
toughness of the new approach.
The administration was clearly intent on fighting a better version of
the Afghan war with a new commander, a new plan of action, and a
well-tamed Afghan president, a client head of state who would finally
accept his lesser place in the greater scheme of things. A little blunt
talk, some necessary threats, and the big stick of American power and
money were sure to do the trick.
Meanwhile, across the border in Pakistan, the administration
was in an all-carrots mood when it came to the local military and
civilian leadership -- billions
of dollars of carrots, in fact. Our top military and civilian
officials had all but taken up residence in Islamabad. By March, for
instance, Admiral Mullen had already visited the country 15
times and U.S. dollars (and promises of more) were flowing in.
Meanwhile, U.S. Special Operations Forces were
arriving in the country’s wild borderlands to train the Pakistani
Frontier Corps and the skies were filling
with CIA-directed unmanned aerial vehicles pounding those same
borderlands, where the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other insurgent
groups involved in the Afghan War were located.
 In Pakistan, it was said, a
crucial “strategic relationship” was being carefully cultivated. As the
New York Timesreported,
“In March, [the Obama administration] held a high-level strategic
dialogue with Pakistan’s government, which officials said went a long
way toward building up trust between the two sides.” Trust indeed.
Skip ahead to mid-May and somehow, like so many stealthy insurgents,
the carrots and sticks had crossed the poorly marked, porous border
between Afghanistan and Pakistan heading in opposite directions. Last
week, Karzai was in Washington being given “the red carpet treatment” as
part of what was termed an Obama administration “charm
offensive” and a “four-day love
fest.”
The president set aside a rare stretch of hours to entertain Karzai
and the planeload of ministers he brought with him. At a joint news conference,
Obama insisted that “perceived tensions” between the two men had been
“overstated.” Specific orders went out from the White House to curb
public criticism of the Afghan president and give him “more public
respect” as “the chief U.S. partner in the war effort.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured Karzai of Washington’s long-term
“commitment” to his country, as did Obama and Afghan War commander
General Stanley McChrystal. Praise was the order of the day.
John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
interrupted a financial reform debate to invite Karzai onto
the Senate floor where he was mobbed by senators eager to shake his
hand (an honor not bestowed on a head of state since 1967). He was
once again our man in Kabul. It was a stunning turnaround: a president
almost without power in his own country had somehow tamed
the commander-in-chief of the globe’s lone superpower.
Meanwhile, Clinton, who had shepherded
the Afghan president on a walk through a “private enclave” in
Georgetown and hosted a “glittering reception” for him, appeared on
CBS’s “60 Minutes” to flay Pakistan. In the wake of an inept failed car
bombing in Times Square, she had this stern message to send to the
Pakistani leadership: "We want more, we expect more... We've made it
very clear that if, heaven forbid, an attack like this that we can trace
back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very
severe consequences." Such consequences would evidently include a halt
to the flow of U.S. aid to a country in economically disastrous shape.
She also
accused at least some Pakistani officials of “practically
harboring” Osama bin Laden. So much for the carrots.
According
to the Washington Post, General McChrystal delivered a
“similar message” to the chief of staff of the Pakistani Army. To back
up Clinton’s public threats and McChrystal’s private ones, hordes of
anonymous American military and civilian officials were ready to pepper
reporters with leaks about the tough love that might now be in store for
Pakistan. The same Post story, for instance, spoke of “some
officials... weighing in favor of a far more muscular and unilateral
U.S. policy. It would include a geographically expanded use of drone
missile attacks in Pakistan and pressure for a stronger U.S. military
presence there.”
According to similar
accounts, “more
pointed” messages were heading for key Pakistanis and “new
and stiff warnings” were being issued. Americans were said to be
pushing for expanded Special Operations training programs in the
Pakistani tribal areas and insisting that the Pakistani military launch a
major campaign in North Waziristan, the heartland of various resistance
groups including, possibly, al-Qaeda. “The
element of threat” was now in the air, according to Tariq Fatemi, a
former Pakistani ambassador, while in press reports you could hear
rumblings about an “internal debate” in Washington that might result in
more American “boots on the ground.”
Helpless Escalation
In other words, in the space of two months the Obama administration
had flip-flopped when it came to who exactly was to be pressured and who
reassured. A typically anonymous “former U.S. official who advises the
administration on Afghan policy” caught
the moment well in a comment to the Wall Street Journal.
“This whole bending over backwards to show Karzai the red carpet,” he
told journalist Peter Spiegel, “is a result of not having had a
concerted strategy for how to grapple with him."
On a larger scale, the flip-flop seemed to reflect tactical and
strategic incoherence -- and not just in relation to Karzai. To all
appearances, when it comes to the administration's two South Asian wars,
one open, one more hidden, Obama and his top officials are flailing
around. They are evidently trying whatever comes to mind in much the
manner of the oil company BP as it repeatedly fails to cap a demolished
oil well 5,000 feet under the waves in the Gulf of Mexico. In a sense,
when it comes to Washington’s ability to control the situation, Pakistan
and Afghanistan might as well be 5,000 feet underwater. Like BP,
Obama’s officials, military and civilian, seem to be operating in the
dark, using unmanned robotic
vehicles. And as in the Gulf, after each new failure, the
destruction only spreads.
For all the policy reviews and shuttling officials, the surging
troops, extra private contractors, and new bases,
Obama’s wars are worsening. Lacking is any coherent regional policy or
semblance of real strategy -- counterinsurgency being only a method of
fighting and a set of tactics for doing so. In place of strategic
coherence there is just one knee-jerk response: escalation. As
unexpected events grip the Obama administration by the throat, its
officials increasingly act as if further escalation were their only
choice, their fated choice.
This response is eerily familiar. It permeated Washington’s
mentality in the Vietnam War years. In fact, one of the strangest
aspects of that war was the way America’s leaders -- including President
Lyndon Johnson -- felt increasingly helpless and hopeless even as they
committed themselves to further steps up the ladder of escalation.
We don’t know what the main actors in Obama’s war are feeling. We
don’t have their private documents or their secret taped conversations.
Nonetheless, it should ring a bell when, as wars devolve, the only
response Washington can imagine is further escalation.
Washington Boxed In
By just about every recent account, including new reports from the
independent Government
Accountability Office and the Pentagon,
the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is going dreadfully, even as the
Taliban insurgency gains potency and expands. This spring, preparing
for his first relatively minor U.S. offensive in Marja, a
Taliban-controlled area of Helmand Province, General McChrystal
confidently announced that, after the insurgents were dislodged, an
Afghan “government
in a box” would be rolled
out. From a governing point of view, however, the offensive seems
to have been a fiasco. The Taliban is now reportedly re-infiltrating
the area, while the governmental apparatus in that nation-building “box”
has proven next to nonexistent, corrupt, and thoroughly incompetent.
Today, according to a report
by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), the
local population is far more hostile to the American effort. According
to the ICOS, “61% of Afghans interviewed feel more negative about NATO
forces after Operation Moshtarak than they did before the February
military offensive in Marja.”
As Alissa Rubin of the New York Times summed
up the situation in Afghanistan more generally:
"Even as American troops clear areas of militants, they find either
no government to fill the vacuum, as in Marja, or entrenched power
brokers, like President Karzai's brother in Kandahar, who monopolize
NATO contracts and other development projects and are resented by large
portions of the population. In still other places, government officials
rarely show up at work and do little to help local people, and in most
places the Afghan police are incapable of providing security.
Corruption, big and small, remains an overwhelming complaint."
In other words, the U.S. really doesn’t have an “adequate partner,”
and this is all the more striking since the Taliban is by no stretch of
the imagination a particularly popular movement of national resistance.
As in Vietnam, a counterinsurgency war lacking a genuine governmental
partner is an oxymoron, not to speak of a recipe for disaster.
Not surprisingly, doubts about General McChrystal’s war plan are reportedly spreadingno
longer being labeled an “offensive” -- in the Kandahar region
already shows signs of “faltering” and its unpopularity
is rising among an increasingly resistant local population. In
addition, civilian
deaths from U.S. and NATO actions are distinctly on
the rise and widely
unsettling to Afghans. Meanwhile, military
inside the Pentagon and in Washington, even before it’s been fully
launched. The major U.S. summer “operation” -- it’s
and police forces being trained in U.S./NATO mentoring programs
considered crucial to Obama’s war plans are proving remarkably hapless.
McClatchy News, for example, recently reported
that the new Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP), a specially
trained elite force brought into the Marja area and “touted as the
country's best and brightest” is, according to “U.S. military
strategists[,] plagued by the same problems as Afghanistan's
conventional police, who are widely considered corrupt, ineffective and
inept.” Drug use and desertions in ANCOP have been rife.
And yet, it seems as if all that American officials can come up with,
in response to the failed Times Square car bombing and the “news” that
the bomber was supposedly
trained in Waziristan by the Pakistani Taliban, is the demand that
Pakistan allow
“more of a boots-on-the-ground strategy” and more American trainers
into the country. Such additional U.S. forces would serve only “as
advisers and trainers, not as combat forces.” So the mantra now goes
reassuringly, but given the history of the Vietnam War, it’s a
cringe-worthy demand.
In the meantime, the Obama administration has officially widened
its targeting in the CIA
drone war in the Pakistani borderlands to include low-level, no-name
militants. It is also ratcheting up such attacks, deeply unpopular in a
country where 64% of the
inhabitants, according to a recent poll, already view the United States
as an "enemy" and only 9%
as a “partner.”
Since the Times Square incident, the CIA has specifically been striking
North Waziristan, where the Pakistani army has as yet refrained from
launching operations. The U.S., as the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill
reports,
has also increased its support for the Pakistani Air Force, which will
only add to the wars in the skies of that country.
All of this represents escalation of the “covert” U.S. war in
Pakistan. None of it offers particular hope of success. All of it
stokes enmity and undoubtedly encourages more “lone wolf”
jihadis to lash out at the U.S. It’s a formula for
blowback, but not for victory.
BP-Style Pragmatism Goes to War
One thing can be said about the Bush administration: it had a grand
strategic vision to go with its wars. Its top officials were convinced
that the American military, a force they saw as unparalleled on planet
Earth, would be capable of unilaterally shock-and-awing America’s
enemies in what they liked to call “the arc of instability” or “the
Greater Middle East” (that is, the oil heartlands of the planet). Its
two wars would bring not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but Iran and Syria
to their knees, leaving Washington to impose a Pax Americana on
the Middle East and Central Asia (in the process of which groups like
Hamas and Hezbollah would be subdued and anti-American jihadism
ended).
They couldn’t, of course, have been more wrong, something quite
apparent to the Obama team. Now, however, we have a crew in Washington
who seem to have no vision, great or small, when it comes to American
foreign or imperial policy, and who seem, in fact, to lack any sense of
strategy at all. What they have is a set of increasingly discredited
tactics and an approach that might pass for good old American
see-what-works “pragmatism,” but these days might more aptly be labeled
“BP-style pragmatism.”
The vision may be long gone, but the wars live on with their own
inexorable momentum. Add into the mix American domestic politics, which
could discourage any president from changing course and de-escalating a
war, and you have what looks like a fatal -- and fatally
expensive -- brew.
We’ve moved from Bush’s visionary disasters to Obama’s flailing wars,
while the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq continue to pay the
price. If only we could close the curtain on this strange mix of farce
and tragedy, but evidently we’re still stuck in act four of a five-act
nightmare.
Even as our Afghan and Pakistani wars are being sucked dry of
whatever meaning might remain, the momentum is in only one direction --
toward escalation. A thousand repetitions of an
al-Qaeda-must-be-destroyed mantra won’t change that one bit. More
escalation, unfortunately, is yet to come.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project,
runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The
End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond,
as well as of a novel, The
Last Days of Publishing. His latest book, The
American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket
Books), will be published in June.
[Note on Sources: Let me offer one of my periodic
appreciative bows to several websites I rely on for crucial information
and interpretation when it comes to America’s wars: Juan Cole’s
invaluable, often incandescent, Informed Comment blog, Antiwar.comwar news summaries), the thoughtful
framing and good eye of Paul Woodward at the War in Context website, and
Katherine Tiedemann’s concise, useful daily briefs of the
most interesting mainstream reportage on Afghanistan and Pakistan at
the AfPak Channel website. A special bow to historian Marilyn Young,
author of the classic book The
Vietnam Wars, who keeps me abreast of the latest thinking on
all sorts of war-related subjects via her own informal information
service for friends and fellow historians.]
(especially Jason Ditz’s remarkable daily
Copyright 2010 Tom Engelhardt
© 2010 TomDispatch. All rights
reserved.
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