War on Taliban cannot be won, says (British) army chief

[spindrifter]

From The Sunday Times October 5, 2008

Christina Lamb Helmand, Afghanistan
Britain's most senior military commander in Afghanistan has warned that the war against the Taliban cannot be won. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said the British public should not expect a “decisive military victory” but should be prepared for a possible deal with the Taliban.

His assessment followed the leaking of a memo from a French diplomat who claimed that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador in Kabul, had told him the current strategy was “doomed to fail”.

Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan, said it was necessary to “lower our expectations”. He said: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.”

<snip>

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this. That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

<more>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882597.ece

[shadowknows69]

1. What's the famous Kipling quote about Afghanistan?

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

[entanglement]

9. Kipling was a shameless apologist for empire. Unfortunately, his

intellectual descendants (like Niall Ferguson) are still carrying on in his tradition to this day, falsifying and whitewashing history.

[SoCalDem]

2. Bullets cannot kill philosophies..

The only thing that can defeat the taliban is MASSIVE foreign aid to Afghanistan in the form of roads, schools, hospitals, manufacturing base..and to buy up all the poppy they grow, while transitioning them to a more preferred cash crop (that pays them as much as poppy)..

and the hard part?

we cannot expect anything in return...politically, that is.. for at least a generation..

If we give freely because we want them to succeed on their own terms, they may defeat the taliban on their own..but if we bully them into submitting to OUR ways, the oldtimers will turn to the taliban and their toxic brand of Islam.. take our "aid" and then kill us every chance they get..

[malaise]

4. That won't work

They'll take the money and still kill Westerners. They hate the West and who can blame them. They have always hated the West. The don't want Westerners in their country.
Who do you think is buying the poppies now.

[SoCalDem]

5. Which is why we cannot win, and we should leave them alone

It's a conundrum, and we keep trying to force people to like us.. Until the people can choose something they like better than the Taliban, they will not change..

We are not willing to, and maybe cannot commit to a long enough term of aid to make a difference, so we are only creating more enemies, and we should just go..

I am aware that the US buys their drugs on the black market..my "solution" was to buy them and NOT make drugs from them :)..we throw more money away trying to interdict them , as drugs:)..just pay the individual farmers and cut out the drug cartel:)

[ConsAreLiars]

11. You are way off the mark on this "They hate the West " BS. That is RW propaganda

and not at all true. They hate bandits, thugs, thieves, invaders, and murderers. The people of Afghanistan were as friendly and congenial to western visitors who came as guests as the people of Europe.

[Bigmack]

3. I don't understand Obama....

all gung-ho for the war in Afghanistan.

How can you expect that country to jump from the 12th century to the 21st?

I've got a reasonable idea. Buy up all the dope from the growers and pay/give them some of the crap that makes the modern world. You wanna subvert the Taliban, bomb Afghanistan with R-rated DVDs and video games.

[spindrifter]

6. I was there last year--there isn't enough reliable electricity

for the DVD and video game gambit to work. Even one of the Afghan professors who was quite well connected stayed at our guest house which had a generator which kicked in when the city power supply went out (many times a day). Our Dari instructor couldn't afford to use the internet cafe more than a couple of times a month and he had a steady group of internationals who paid him well for their lessons. Afghanistan needs a decent, reliable infrastructure.

[LBJDemocrat]

7. How about this:

Let Afghanistan worry about Afghanistan.

[entanglement]

10. That's like someone burning your house down and leaving you to worry about rebuilding it

You wouldn't be too pleased if that happened, would you?

[JohnyCanuck]

12. If he was a real asshole (as most arsonists are)

I would tell him, pay me for my house and then get the fuck out of my life.

[scarletwoman]

8. There was a very good opinion piece in the Star-Tribune a few days ago:

Want war? The Afghans will oblige

Not necessarily on behalf of Al-Qaida or the Taliban. On behalf of their sovereignty.

By WILLIAM DAVNIE

October 1, 2008

The United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States. Three Great Powers. Four invasions of Afghanistan. The first three ended badly for the invaders -- and for the Afghans. Now, both U.S. presidential candidates tell us we need more resources for Afghanistan, where our military leaders assert we aren't losing -- but concede we're not winning, either. Before following either candidate, perhaps we should compare wars and consider the current realities. Why do we think the fourth time's the charm?

<snip>

The pattern seems clear. Our invasion, too, was quick, with thankfully few casualties. The country was a mess, but calm enough that we could support elections and take pride in them. Today, no one would call the country calm, and the U.S. and coalition casualty rates exceed those in Iraq. As the British and the Soviets learned, defeating Afghanistan does not equal controlling it.

Why? First, the Afghans simply hate outsiders on their land. Hospitable in the extreme to travelers, they adamantly oppose invaders of any sort or reason. A recent Toronto Globe and Mail survey of Taliban fighters showed that they fight not for the Taliban nor for jihadist Islam, but against Western troops in their country. If we are there, they will fight. As one Afghan expert put it, "This raises the question of whether Afghanistan is not becoming a sort of surreal hunting estate, in which the U.S. and NATO breed the very 'terrorists' they then track down."

<snip>

We really have only one interest in Afghanistan -- that it not be used as a platform for attacks against us. We shorthand that as capturing Osama bin Laden, but we really need only that he can't operate beyond the Afghan-Pakistan border region. If our very presence actually feeds sympathy for him and undermines the governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan -- what are we accomplishing?

Does Afghanistan need vast amounts of aid, military and civil? To be sure. But all observers consider that a task of decades, if not generations. Are we prepared for that? Unlikely. And if we're not, then, again, just what are we accomplishing, as we spend money and lives while stimulating opposition, not reducing it? Rather than fighting the Fourth Afghan War, and further alienating both Kabul and our ally in Islamabad, perhaps we need to accept that Afghanistan -- and Pakistan -- will not be governed as we would like. They just need to prevent their territory from being used against us. That would be a position that Pakistan could support, and that offers some hope of a joint approach to progress in Afghanistan.

William Davnie, a retired Foreign Service officer with experience in Afghanistan and the surrounding region, lives in Minneapolis.

We need to get our military OUT, not deeper in.

sw