How Did AfPak Strategy Get So Confused?

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Recent events surrounding Afghanistan shouldn’t confuse anyone, as the reality of the situation still lies in one simple statement: The US-NATO coalition has lost a war its political leaders never meant, or knew how, to win.

‘Winning’ in Afghanistan was never anything more than killing Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, as many of their fighters and civilian supporters as possible and then getting out immediately with the full knowledge that—as Mao said long ago—insurgencies always rebuild and the process might need to be repeated.

The best and most appropriate response to al-Qaeda’s September 11 raid, then, would have been a unilateral US punitive expedition that inflicted massive death and destruction on the enemy and delivered a clear warning to Islamists not to pick fights with the United States. Indeed, many Islamists expected this response, which is why they poured vitriol on bin Laden and expected the US military to set back their movement a decade, if it did not destroy it completely.

Faced with this criticism, bin Laden simply said ‘wait,’ adding (in paraphrase) that the Americans and their allies can’t stomach casualties.


"Both General Patraeus and McChrystal have more experience in the air conditioned halls of the Pentagon than in the real world. Neither one of them are buddy buddy with Obama. Mr. President, if you wanna go in there, you better make damn sure that you've got your ducks in a row. At the moment, you've got a crazed group of Canada Geese running around and nipping like headless chickens on LSD. Don't let these kids keep dying while you keep trying to figure out a plan."



Gen. David Petraeus, spent hours explaining the nuance of U.S. policy on Afghanistan to Congress, has the confusion about the July 2011 timeline been resolved? Not so much.

While this has played out, Hamid Karzai reportedly met with Sirajuddin Haqqani—a major Afghan insurgent leader—and prepared to surrender under the guise of creating a coalition regime. And all his failures and fabulously corrupt relatives.

Karzai is talking to Haqqani, and probably Taliban leaders, to see if there’s a governing arrangement that will give him a role in post-NATO Afghanistan and doesn’t lead to his execution after the last NATO trooper leaves.

so Karzai and his family will have to step up the pace of their alleged thievery and get ready for an early exit that leaves the West holding the bag.

Too much Western funding has been stolen and sent abroad by Karzai’s cronies; too much popular support for the war in the West has been squandered; too many U.S.-NATO troops are dead or maimed; too much has been done by the West to push Pakistan toward the abyss by demanding its military do Western dirty work; and too much time has been wasted on counterinsurgency theories and policies that avoid killing the enemy and his civilian supporters. The one thing the West ‘can start over completely’ is a revision of the plans for withdrawal that moves up the departure date.

After nine years, it is utterly impossible to restart Western policy in Afghanistan. Too many Afghans are dead; too many Afghans and non-Afghan Muslims have joined the Taliban-led insurgency; too much pro-Taliban money is pouring into Afghanistan from wealthy donors on the Arabian Peninsula and across the Muslim world.



The bottom line is that the United States and NATO stand defeated in Afghanistan.