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Blind in Afghanistan
One of the paradoxes of America's bumbling intervention in Afghanistan is that the United States knows next to nothing about the country it is occupying. Not only that, but America's learning curve is so steep that it will be years, or decades, before our military and our intelligence services finally figure out which end is up -- if they ever do. Which raises the question: how does years-long counterinsurgency learning curve sqaure with President Obama's pledge to start withdrawing troops by July, 2011?
I raise that question because that deadline will be long come and gone and US forces there still won't have any idea what they're doing.
Last October, in a column here entitled "McChrystal Admits: We Don't Understand the Afghans," I quoted fairly extensively from General Stanley McChrystal's leaked, 66-page report on the war, in which he acknowledged that the United States and its allies, under the umbrella of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), are blind to Afghanistan's complexities. In the report, McChrystal wrote:
"ISAF has not sufficiently studied Afghanistan's peoples, whose needs, identities, and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley."
And:
"Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population."
Now comes Major General Michael T. Flynn, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, who released a paper through the Center for a New American Security that sharply criticizes America's floundering intelligence effort in Afghanistan. (You can read the entire 28-page document here.) In the executive summary, General Flynn writes:
"The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade."
Flynn brags about the recent creation of the "Information Dominance Center," whose Orwellian title suggests a comprehensive effort to figure out the country that we stumbled into nine years ago. The key quote from Flynn's report says otherwise:
"Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers – whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers – U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis, and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency."
Meanwhile, a scathing piece in the New York Times notes that the US military is pathetically deprived of the kind of people it needs before it has any idea about what to do in Afghanistan. The Times reports that Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is very concerned about the lack of Afghan experts inside the armed forces:
"In a memo sent last month to the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Admiral Mullen expressed concern that the services were not consistently providing the 'best and the brightest leaders' for the program's corps, whose members will work in the field and at headquarters."'In many cases, the volunteers have been the right people for this very critical program,' Admiral Mullen said in the one-page memo, dated Dec. 14. 'However, I am concerned that this is not the case across the board.'"
To fix the problem, the military is stepping up training, recruiting, and language instruction, but on a timetable that suggests a years-long COIN effort, since the graduates of this effort won't even arrive in Afghanistan until mid-2011, exactly when the withdrawal of US forces is supposed to start:
"The program was conceived as a way to develop a pool of uniformed experts who would spend several years rotating between assignments in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and desk jobs in Washington or other headquarters working on the same regional issues. At the outset, volunteers receive cultural training and 16 weeks of language instruction in Dari, Pashto or Urdu. In time, they are expected to provide a deep bench for assignments that could significantly alter the course of the war."The military expects to fill all of the positions by the summer of 2011. The first 304 positions -- including trainers, military planners and advisers to Afghan ministries -- will be assigned in Afghanistan and Pakistan by November 2010."
Chas Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told me years ago, after the US blundered into Iraq, "We haven't invaded Iraq, we've invaded the Iraq of our dreams." What President Bush and his fellow bunglers did was to invade a country it knew virtually nothing about. The same can be said of Afghanistan. In both cases, the nations that America dreamed about have turned into nightmares.
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Show AllWhile America's leaders may have been myopic about what to do in Afghanistan, they certainly should have been cognizant of the fact that the war that they had launched against that country was both immoral and illegal and that their chance of successfully occupying Afghanistan was about as likely as the U.S. successfully occupying another under developed country some forty five years in Southeast Asia called Viet Nam.
"Almost all propaganda is designed to create fear. Heads of governments and their officials know that a frightened people is easier to govern, will forfeit rights it would otherwise defend, is less likely to demand a better life, and will agree to millions and millions being spent of 'Defense' ".-John Boynton Priestly [1894-1984], English writer
As usual, the best and the brightest reveal themselves as a bunch of mediocrities, full of arrogance and ignorance, leading the nation into a pit rapidly filling with wasted money, wasted effort, and wasted lives, all the while telling each other that they are the best for the job and the brightest of the nation.
I'm not sure that they really are ignorant. Remember when Rumsfeld's "it's going to be a long, hard slog" in Iraq memo found its way to the press? Remember, how some Bush officials were let go because they said publicly that the cost of the war in Iraq was likely to be astronomically high?
I think those in power are not ignorant, but they are hoping the American public will stay ignorant. That's why Obama likes to make public announcements about what he's going to do and then quietly do just the opposite.
I was a 20 year old college student when the US invaded Iraq and I remember thinking, "This is going to open up a pandora's box of problems." I knew many other very young people who thought the same way. I'm not arrogant enough to think that my friends and I were more intelligent than nearly all the members of Congress. It was common knowledge to anyone even willing to do a modest amount of research on the Internet that experts thought Saddam had been largely disarmed. Ignorance is easily cured with education. I would be very surprised if all of our elected representatives are, indeed, more ignorant than teenagers with internet connections. Democrats are afraid of being painted as weak, and then fulfill this destiny all on their own, by failing to have a spine.
What? You expect us to understand a country we invade? What are you? Progressive commie liberals?
Ignorance is bliss.
Gary
Hello ! the USA has been in Afghanistan big time for 30 years.
Yes siree bob! Since the USA armed the Landlords and Foundamentalists rebelling against the socialist Afghan government implementing civil rights for women and agrarian reform.
Yes siree bob, the USA helped to overthrow the Afghan government that was IMPROVING WOMEN'S civil rights.
Then the Soviets invaded.
The goal is not how to better occupy the nation it is how to get out as soon and well as possible.
Even "progressives" are war mongers.
It's harder to kill 'em and steal their land and their stuff when you actually know them or know something about their own unique version of humanity. The greedy and power-hungry have been successfully annihilating stereotypes for millennia. The only change has been going from a global chess game on a giant board to a computer video game - you know, the one with drones.
Yeah, the patriarchal "dreams" that dictator Unka 'Bomb has of his Father ... land!
The United States military has no business whatsoever in Afghanistan.
Obviously, some people in power wants it there.
I don't know why; and talk of pipelines doesn't cut it.
Summarizing Robert Dreyfuss' article is its first sentence: "One of the paradoxes of America's bumbling intervention in Afghanistan is that the United States knows next to nothing about the country it is occupying." This is less a condemnation of the U.S. military than the education system of the United States. After all, the military must draw its personnel from the populace. Thus, the ignorance of the populace is the source of the problem.
So being is unsurprising. Since the moon landing, American education has been obsessed with "math and science." Liberal and fine arts, as well as social science, have been the sacrifice for this obsession. Ignorant of humans, it is little wonder Americans know "next to nothing about the country it is occupying."
Assumed is since the United States is perfect, everyone else wants to be like us. So there is no need to know how they think. Occupy them, and they will joyfully copy us, except for a few malcontents who can be dismissed as "terrorists."
Talk about serendipity! Just read an article @ http://rawstory.com/news/afp/World_powers_leaving_US_behind_in_m_01062010.html entitled, "World powers leaving US behind in math, science: Obama" Wow! Good ole' O' Bama!
What we need to "win" in Afghanistan is more mathematicians and natural scientists to produce more neutered drones, not literary critics to understand their literature, historians to understand their past, or social scientists to understand their society.
Also just read "LBJ, Lincoln Gordon and the Origins of the Desaparecidos
The American Elite" by William Blum @ http://www.counterpunch.org/blum01072010.html, who concludes with, "And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was 'a good corrective to three years at Harvard.'"
Apparently, after "three years at Harvard," one similarly need not understand other people, because you are so superior to them, all they can want to do is copy you. Thus, all that is needed are mathematicians and natural scientists to develop the weapons to kill the remaining "terrorist" malcontents.
Talk about serendipity! Just read an article @ http://rawstory.com/news/afp/World_powers_leaving_US_behind_in_m_01062010.html entitled, "World powers leaving US behind in math, science: Obama" Wow! Good ole' O' Bama!
What we need to "win" in Afghanistan is more mathematicians and natural scientists to produce more neutered drones, not literary critics to understand their literature, historians to understand their past, or social scientists to understand their society.
Also just read "LBJ, Lincoln Gordon and the Origins of the Desaparecidos
The American Elite" by William Blum @ http://www.counterpunch.org/blum01072010.html, who concludes with, "And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was 'a good corrective to three years at Harvard.'"
Apparently, after "three years at Harvard," one similarly need not understand other people, because you are so superior to them, all they can want to do is copy you. Thus, all that is needed are mathematicians and natural scientists to develop the weapons to kill the remaining "terrorist" malcontents.
"American education has been obsessed with 'math and science.'"
Hahaha...that's a good one. That's why our highly scientifically literate citizenry thinks any mediocre TV personality's opinion on medicine, climate change, stem cells, evolution, or energy is as good as any world renowned scientist's informed point of view. You can just choose to "believe" in these things or not according to many Americans. No scientific process or fact based discussion necessary for our scientifically oriented populace! (end sarcasm) I would say only a minority of Americans have even a basic understanding of science, but that's just my opinion.
I'm sure there is plenty of scholarship surrounding Afghanistan but why would these scholars want to directly associate themselves with US military operations? Understanding takes time and effort. It can't be accomplished in some 16 week crash course. People devote their lives to studying, learning and questioning no matter if their field is in science, humanities or social sciences. People passionate about truly understanding a place and its people are probably hard at work on a dissertation somewhere or joining the Peace Corps, not running down to the local Army recruitment center.
I think the problem is not education, but hubris. The media also totally glosses over the complexities involved. How much in depth information on the culture, geography, and history of Afghanistan was presented to the American public before we began military operations there? I remember approximately none. Everything is sound bites.
Well said. After having spent the last week with a global warming denier, I must sadly agree with you. Said person lives in an upper-middle-class environment in Houston, Texas, where environmental denial appears the norm. Most often asserted was, "Humans can't have that much effect on the environment." "Educated" idiots. At least they seem to primordially grasp one important fact: Industrialization has been a failure. Confronting this reality, their financial and social status must collapse.
Flynn brags about the recent creation of the "Information Dominance Center," whose Orwellian title suggests a comprehensive effort to figure out the country that we stumbled into nine years ago.
The "Information Dominance Center" is the new euphemism for the mainstream media, formerly the MSM. The IDC is headquartered at Fox News, not the New York Times. The use of the word "dominance" is particularly American and particularly telling.
"In both cases, the nations that America dreamed about have turned into nightmares."
Part of the business of US foreign policy is creating nightmares for the rest of the world. We call this bringing them "freedom and democracy." Our "interests" invariably include turning other cultures and societies into flaming, churning nightmares for as long as possible. We did it in Vietnam, Iraq, dozens of other countries to one degree or another, and now we're doing it to Afghanistan. Yemen and probably Iran are next, and Somalia, and anywhere else our greedy eyes alight upon. Of course, this inevitably turns our own country into a nightmare, but the war profiteers report great increases and that's all that counts.
Maybe if we spent a lot less time "dreaming" we wouldn't end up generating nightmares.
The big lie is that big business wants to bring "stability to the region", wherever that happens to be.
The big truth is that big business makes big bucks from instability. Cash from chaos. Divide and conquer.
Iraq is working out just fine for "business".
Permanent instability allows cheap (if sometimes violent) resource extraction.
Afghanistan's next.
Robert Dreyfuss is of course correct about Uncle Sam's cultural myopia when it comes to Afghanistan, and other areas of the world where empire Americana still sprawls. He is also right that it is odd and ominous to see the Obama administration's counterinsurgency strategy pushing to train more multilingual specialists to staff Afghan operations that ostensibly are supposed to be scaled back in 2011 towards promised withdrawal.
I wouldn't read a whole lot into that last trend, however. The military is notorious for piling contingency plan on top of contingency plan. Dig deep enough into the catacombs of the Pentagon today, and you're almost sure to find small teams huddled over super secret, just-in-case blueprints to invade Ireland, launch a preemptive air strike into Ontario, or have the Marine Corps occupy downtown Tel Aviv.
On Dreyfuss's larger point, while it is true that the United States has both overtly and covertly poured billions of dollars into stirring up turmoil in Afghanistan during the last thirty years for little apparent benefit to nonmilitary American interests, we have not been doing so totally blind. Dating back to the Carter administration, and continuing through Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush presidencies, our national intelligence establishment has, out of necessity, relied primarily upon Pakistan to serve as America's eyes and ears in that region of the world.
The CIA, the DIA, and NSA all lacked a pool of bilingual or multilingual homegrown agents familiar with the religious and tribal mosaic of the Hindu Kush. Thus, simple geopolitics dictated that, like it or not, America had to partner up with the Pakistani ISI to first fund and arm the anti-Soviet mujadaheen freedom fighters, and then to fund and support the anti-Taliban warlords (after the Soviets had withdrawn) when the die was cast in October 2001 to bomb, invade, and put Hamid Karzai in charge in Kabul.
Who do you suppose was doing the contemporaneous translation work on all that electronic chatter NSA and CIA was picking up in the weeks and months immediately preceding 9/11? The Pakistani ISI, Saudi intelligence, and other cooperating foreign intelligence services having language fluency and humint assets on the ground among the locals and amidst Al Qaeda, that's who.
A blind man who is also deaf and dumb can easily be lead astray by those he necessarily must rely upon to navigate safely through dangerous and unknown terrain.
Bill from Saginaw
How true.
When I worked in Air Force Intelligence during Vietnam I was tasked with a "mock" exercise. I had to plan the nuclear bombing of two air bases in the Hanoi-Haiphong harbor area. We had to go to the bombing encyclopedia for data. This neat book had the megatonnage needed for blast dammage. It turned out that two smaller nukes did more damage than one of equal total megatonnage. It was a matter of dropping them about 15 miles apart to interdict the airfields and most of the people in between. Another gruesome feature of the bombing encyclopedia we needed was the radar signature of the main cities so the B52s could navigate to the targets correctly. The gruesomeness was that EVERY city in the world (yes the USA as well) was in this bombing encyclopedia with the airfields, refineries and other assorted places along with their coordinates. The excuse they gave us for having US cities there is that B52 crews practiced their bombing runs on US cities.
They should have never allowed a standing army in the USA. The military is a monster that only measures success with destruction.
President Obama's pledges have no meaning unless you speak engsoc (Orwellian dialect).
"What Bush and his fellow bunglers did was to invade a country it [sic] knew virtually nothing about."
They knew one thing: there is a lot of oil in Iraq.
"The same can be said of Afghanistan." Where they are competing with China and Russia for central Asian gas and oil.
They regard cultural sensitivity as window dressing. Smash and grab. USA! Booyah!