Why Peaceniks Should Care About the Afghanistan Study Group Report

This is funny and emotionally
satisfying, and also represents a truth for peace activists: ending the
war is a first principle, not something contingent on whether a
particular means of doing so satisfies someone else's notion of what is
practical.

On the other hand, peace activists can't be satisfied
with being right; they also are morally compelled to try to be
effective. And part of being effective is giving consideration to, and
seeking to publicize, arguments are likely to end the war sooner rather
than later. It's not likely, for example, that discussing ways in which
the war might be useful for the long-term maintenance of the "capitalist
world system" will turn the Washington debate against war in the short
run. If, on the other hand, central to the official story is a claim
that the war is a war against Al Qaeda, but senior U.S. officials
publicly concede that there is no significant Al Qaeda presence today in
Afghanistan, that is certainly a fact worth knowing and spreading.

This is why it is important for as many people as possible to read and digest the short and accessible report of the "Afghanistan Study Group"
which has been publicly unveiled this week. The assumptions and
conclusions of the ASG report should be the subject of a thousand
debates. But there are a few things about it that one can say without
fear of reasonable contradiction. The authors of the report oppose the
war and want to end it. The principal authors of the report are
Washington insiders with a strong claim to expertise about what sort of
arguments are likely to move Washington debate. The authors of the
report have a strategy for trying to move Washington debate so that at
the next fork in the road, the choice made is to de-escalate the war and
move towards its conclusion, rather than to escalate it further.
Therefore, the arguments made deserve careful consideration. They may
not be particularly useful for making posters for a demonstration. But
for lobbying Congressional staff, writing a letter to the editor, or
making any other presentation to people who are not already on our side,
the arguments of the Afghanistan Study Group are likely to be useful.

Many of the authors and signers
of the report are known to peace activists who follow policy debates.
Former Marine Corps captain Matthew Hoh, director of the ASG, made waves last October when became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest
over the Afghan war. Stephen Walt, with his co-author John Mearsheimer,
helped break open mainstream debate about U.S. policy towards Israel
and the Palestinians with their book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy." Juan Cole, author of the blog Informed Comment,
is the author of "Engaging the Muslim World." Robert Pape, author of
"Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," has documented how U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan has produced more terrorism. Former CIA official Paul Pillar attacked the central justification of the current military escalation in an op-ed in the Washington Post
last September, arguing that there was little reason to believe that a
"safe haven" for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would have any significant
bearing on the terrorist threat to the United States. Steve Clemons of
the New America Foundation, author of the blog Washington Note, originally convened the ASG.

Of
course, these impeccable "establishment dissident" credentials do not
put the assumptions or conclusions of the report beyond criticism. But
they do make a strong case for consideration of the report.

Furthermore, the Afghanistan Study Group does break new ground politically, in the direction of ending the war.

By
far the most important contribution, in my view, is the report's call
for expedited and more vigorous efforts to resolve Afghanistan's civil
war through political negotiations leading to decentralization of power
in Afghanistan and a power-sharing agreement between the government and
the insurgency. This call should be a commonplace, but the opposite is
currently true: people in Washington, even critics of the war, are
afraid to say out loud the most important fact about ending the war:
there needs to be a political deal in Afghanistan with the Afghan
Taliban insurgency. One of the most important potential accomplishments
of an experts' study group is to try to put into play key facts which
experts know but politicians are afraid to say. It's the "Murder on the
Orient Express" strategy: if there's something important that no-one
wants to say, have a bunch of people say it together. If the Afghanistan
Study Group makes it easier for people to say out loud, "There needs to
be a political deal with the Afghan Taliban," it will have made a major
contribution to ending the war.

The second important contribution
is to focus attention on the urgent need to engage "regional
stakeholders," especially Pakistan, India, and Iran, in a political
resolution of the armed conflict. In particular, current U.S. policy has
appeared to be predicated on the bizarre belief that the U.S. can
cajole Pakistani decision-makers into abandoning what they perceive to
be their core national security interests in Afghanistan, rather than on
the far more realistic approach of engaging with Pakistan so that its
national security concerns are met in an Afghan political settlement.
The approach of trying to "wall out" antagonistic regional actors has
failed spectacularly in Afghanistan and produced much needless death and
human suffering, as it failed before in Iraq and Lebanon. If the Obama
Administration would implement the course correction in Afghanistan
which the Bush Administration implemented in Iraq and Lebanon after 2006
- accepting that antagonistic regional actors could not be walled out,
and that the U.S. is better off trying to manage their influence rather
than trying to exclude it - it would be a major step to ending the war.

The
third important contribution is the call for the U.S. to reduce and
eventually end its military operations in southern Afghanistan. Southern
Afghanistan, the historic heartland of the Taliban insurgency, is the
focal point of the current U.S. military escalation; the current U.S.
military escalation in southern Afghanistan is the main cause of the
fact that U.S. troops are dying in record numbers.

The fourth
major contribution of the report is to attack the central justification
of the war: the claim that it will reduce the threat of terrorism
against Americans. The report argues:

First,
the decision to escalate the U.S. effort in Afghanistan rests on the
mistaken belief that victory there will have a major impact on Al
Qaeda's ability to attack the United States. Al Qaeda's presence in
Afghanistan today is very small, and even a decisive victory there would
do little to undermine its capabilities elsewhere. Victory would not
even prevent small Al Qaeda cells from relocating in Afghanistan, just
as they have in a wide array of countries (including European
countries).

Second, a U.S. drawdown would not make Al Qaeda
substantially more lethal. In order for events in Afghanistan to enhance
Al Qaeda's ability to threaten the U.S. homeland, three separate steps
must occur: 1) the Taliban must seize control of a substantial portion
of the country, 2) Al Qaeda must relocate there in strength, and 3) it
must build facilities in this new "safe haven" that will allow it to
plan and train more effectively than it can today.

Each of these
three steps is unlikely, however, and the chances of all three together
are very remote. [...] Most importantly, no matter what happens in
Afghanistan in the future, Al Qaeda will not be able to build large
training camps of the sort it employed prior to the 9/11 attacks. Simply
put, the U.S. would remain vigilant and could use air power to
eliminate any Al Qaeda facility that the group might attempt to
establish. Bin Laden and his associates will likely have to remain in
hiding for the rest of their lives, which means Al Qaeda will have to
rely on clandestine cells instead of large encampments. Covert cells can
be located virtually anywhere, which is why the outcome in Afghanistan
is not critical to addressing the threat from Al Qaeda.

In short, a
complete (and unlikely) victory in Afghanistan and the dismantling of
the Taliban would not make Al Qaeda disappear; indeed, it would probably
have no appreciable effect on Al Qaeda. At the same time, dramatically
scaling back U.S. military engagement will not significantly increase
the threat from Al Qaeda.

From the point of view of
official Washington, this speaks to the core of the argument against the
war. Continuing the war is not promoting the national security
interests of the United States, and in fact is counterproductive to
those interests.

This is also the part of the argument that is
most likely to stick in the craw of many peace activists, in part
because they have a well-grounded allergy to efforts to promote the
purported "national security interests of the United States," and in
part because the report, if implemented, still envisions a potential
role for U.S. military force in the region.

However, a bit of
realism about prospects in the near-term future is in order. If you look
around the world, the U.S. is currently deploying military force in a
lot of places. In the places where the U.S. is deploying military force
without the presence of a significant number of U.S. ground troops, this
activity goes on without occasioning significant public debate in the
U.S. There is essentially zero public debate over what the U.S. is doing
in the Philippines, almost zero about what the U.S. is doing in
Somalia, very little about what the U.S. is doing in Yemen, not very
much about what the U.S. is doing in Pakistan. Following the blip
occasioned by President Obama's announcement of the so-called "end of
combat mission" in Iraq, it is likely that public debate about what the
U.S. is doing in Iraq will fall back towards Pakistan levels.

That
these things are true, of course, does not make them just. However, as I
wrote at the outset, it is not enough to be right; one has the moral
obligation to also try to be effective. And part of being effective is
understanding where the adversary is vulnerable, and where the adversary
is not, at present, very vulnerable. The permanent war apparatus is
currently politically vulnerable over the war in Afghanistan primarily
because U.S. troops are currently dying there in significant numbers for
no apparent reason, so it makes sense for this to be a central point of
attack.

The choices before Washington in Afghanistan, in the short run, are not "counterterrorism" or
"counterinsurgency." Washington is already pursuing counterterrorism in
Afghanistan, as it is in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and almost
certainly it will continue to do so in some way in the near future,
under any conceivable U.S. policy likely to be implemented. The choices
before Washington in Afghanistan in the short run are "counterterrorism"
and "counterinsurgency" or "counterterrorism" alone.
"Counterterrorism" in Afghanistan and elsewhere is killing innocent
people, and that must be opposed. But "counterinsurgency" in Afghanistan
is killing far more people, and it is much more politically vulnerable.

The fact that you cannot, at present, see your way clear to quitting drinking, is not a good reason not to quit smoking. The recommendations
of the Afghanistan Study Group, if implemented, will significantly
reduce the harm currently caused by U.S. policy in Afghanistan, both to
Americans and to Afghans. That is why its conclusions should be urgently
pressed on Members of Congress and officials of the Obama
Administration, and should be pushed into the mainstream media and
public debate.