Troop Increases In Afghanistan
In my previous post on Afghanistan I argued in support of lowering our expectations there and focusing our strategy on eliminating the safe haven for Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, rather than turning Afghanistan into a prosperous democracy. I also suggested – and there seems to be a general consensus on this point – that the support of the Afghan people is central to winning this war.
It’s been widely reported that President Obama has ordered the sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. I support that decision, as long as it is made in the context of the strategy I just indicated (we’ll find out if that’s the case when we find out the results of the 60-day Af-Pak strategy review). It’s not at first glance clear how more troops are consistent with such a strategy – it might seem that more troops are necessary only if we’re pursuing a more ambitious strategy, and that a greater, more intrusive American presence is more likely to inflame Afghan popular opinion. That’s definitely the risk that comes with more troops, but this UN report is enough to persuade me that more troops is better than what we’re doing now.
The level of civilian deaths last year was at its highest since the war began. A small majority – 55% – of those deaths were caused by the Taliban, which is good news in the sense that it’s better than if we were causing the most civilian deaths there. But the trouble is that of the civilian deaths caused by us, 65% are a result of airstrikes. Airstrikes are an important tool, but if they’re going to result in large numbers of civilian deaths, they need to be avoided if possible. An increased ground presence will, presumably, at least partially alleviate the need for airstrikes. Our presence will be more pervasive, but the tradeoff is (hopefully) fewer civilian deaths, which is hugely beneficial to our goals there. It also, of course, puts American troops at greater risk, which is why if we’re going to fight this war at all, we need to have clear and realistic objectives so we’re not sending these troops into a quagmire. It’s not yet clear if that’s the case, but hopefully Obama or Gates gives us some indication sometime soon.
Comment by Brandon on 18 February 2009 at 1:50 pm:
Reducing air strikes would certainly reduce collateral damage, but I doubt that Americans have the stomach for what that would entail. If you’re trying to kill someone, you either do it from a distance (air strikes, artillery, snipers) or up close and personal. Distance killing has the disadvantage of being inaccurate relative to precision up close and personal strikes.
The problem with the up close and personal alternative is that it also means that American soldiers will be at much greater risk of dying themselves. It seems that 1 American = X non-Americans. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but that seems to be the equation. There has to be truly massive foreign casualties to put people in another country in an uproar, whereas relatively few domestic casualties will do the same thing.
Again, Eddie Izzard brings us great wisdom.
“And he was a mass-murdering fuckhead, as many important historians have said. But there were other mass murderers that got away with it! Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there; Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest at age 72, well done indeed! And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people, and we’re sort of fine with that. “Ah, help yourself,” you know? “We’ve been trying to kill you for ages!” So kill your own people, right on there. Seems to be… Hitler killed people next door… “Oh… stupid man!” After a couple of years, we won’t stand for that, will we?”
Essentially when the Taliban kills Afghans, people here aren’t as shocked as when they kill Americans. If we kill Afghans the public is mildly uncomfortable, if American soldiers start dying in large numbers because we’re afraid of collateral damage people will have a bit of a fit.