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Don't Forget Why We're in Afghanistan and IraqWe're in a long war against Islamic terrorism.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Sept. 7, 2009, at 11:54 AM ET

Right though I so very often am, it always makes me feel distinctly queasy to find myself in the majority. A few weeks ago, I reported Rory Stewart's increasing misgivings about the course being followed by NATO and the United States in Afghanistan. (Stewart has seemed to me both the shrewdest supporter as well as the smartest critic of the counter-Taliban effort—don't miss what I quoted him as saying on both sides of the case.)

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Now it seems that every columnist from George Will to Tom Friedman has decided that we are being played for suckers by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and drawn into a lethally baited trap by a Taliban that is increasingly able to pose as the voice of the Pashtun people. Some appalling disclosures from the recent Afghan elections seem to lend support to both of these dire conclusions.

On the other hand, if I had been writing a few months ago, I would have been—and, in fact, was—most worried by the apparent collapse of Pakistani government and society in the face of Pashtun/Taliban aggression on that side of the border. A fertile and prosperous and advanced valley in the Swat district, only miles from the capital city, had been ceded without a fight. A long nightfall appeared to be beginning, presaged by a torrent of refugees. Now, it is a trifle early to speak with any certainty, but four more recent things appear to have happened. First and most important, many local people have mobilized to protest, and to resist, the evident horrors of Taliban rule. Second, the Pakistani army seems, at least for now, to have recovered some of its nerve and to be contesting the terrain. Third, American drone strikes have pinpointed and killed at least one especially ghastly Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who, among other crimes, was the probable organizer of the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Fourth, there are believable reports of a squabble among the Pakistani Taliban about the succession to this gangster. None of this would have seemed very probable six months back.

The needle oscillates, and will continue to do so, but the four requisites are in place: citizens rejecting theocracy and its partner, organized crime; an indigenous army that fights for its own reasons; American airstrikes that are careful and discriminating; and the development of splits that can be exploited among the jihadists. A mixture not unlike this worked in Iraq, at least to the point where the conflict could be redefined. It is not yet inevitable that a comparable outcome is beyond reach in Afghanistan.

The question of whether we can or should protect potentially pluralist regimes, whatever their shortcomings, either directly or from "over the horizon" is not, as some critics condescendingly put it, a matter of "babysitting" or "adoption." It is a question of how long-term we are prepared to think. And here are two long-term considerations: The first is the training and traction that will be required for a long war against Islamic terrorism, and the second is the inescapable question of Iran.

However much and however justifiably the press prefers to lay the emphasis on stories of "overstretch" or "post-traumatic stress disorder," it remains the case that we have been schooling a superb generation of soldiers who have the irreplaceable advantage of having fought, and in many cases vanquished, the deadliest imaginable enemies in the most arduous possible terrain. This means that if, say, the government of the Philippines or Indonesia or India or any of the other Asian democracies should request assistance against the same foe, we would be able to supply them with a wealth of expertise as well as a fair bit of muscle. Whatever political decisions are made about our posture toward the rather sketchy Karzai or Maliki governments, the long-term abilities conferred by this bitterly won battle-hardening constitute an asset that is unquantifiable. And it isn't merely combat experience, essential as that may be, but the learned ability to find ways of isolating, discrediting, and dividing the terrorists.

A presence in Iraq and Afghanistan also means that the recent coup by the Revolutionary Guards in the all-important country of Iran is a coup that already faces containment. Just across two of its main frontiers are some pretty formidable contingents that the dictatorship must always keep in mind. This consideration is likely to become ever more important as the crisis of the mullahs deepens. Until recently, they would have seen at least one clear way out of their cul-de-sac: another holy war with a rival or neighbor, most probably a Sunni Arab one. Among the extremists in Tehran, there have already been bellicose noises about Bahrain, for example: a monarchical Arab mini-state with a majority Shiite population that some claim to be rightfully Persian. Given the rapid progress that it has made toward nuclear capability, and the no-less-rapid way that it has alienated its own people, the temptation for the Ahmadinejad regime to "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels" and to appeal to tribal and religious emotions is already fairly great. Now, try to picture the foregoing equation with the U.S. military presence removed, let alone with it having admitted defeat.

On its own, of course, the Iranian menace would not justify keeping forces in two neighboring countries. Nor could the presence be justified by the opportunities for training that it provides. But we don't have the right to forget why we are in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place: to make up for past crimes of both omission and commission and to help safeguard emergent systems of self-government that have the same deadly enemies as we do and to which, not quite incidentally, we gave our word.

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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

COMMENTS

The United States has walked willingly into the trap Bin Laden declared publicly he was setting for us, i.e., to get us so entangled in fighting in a forever-war in the Middle East that we would bleed ourselves to death. And guess what? Despite the experience with Vietnam, despite a change in administration, that is exactly what we seem determined to do.

-- bubba_barry
(To reply, click here)

You will not catch terrorists by bombing civilians. You will not catch terrorists by breaking into a hospital. You will not catch terrorist by setting up checkpoint in a road and shoot at cars. There are only two ways to stop terrorist.

1) You win over the population, so they'll tell you where the terrorists are

2) You kill them all

You will not achieve step 1 by randomly killing the population, and there are not enough bombs for step 2. The current Afghan government is both illegitimate and irredeemably incompetent. The US simply cannot 'win' with the current strategy.

-- Ronin8318
(To reply, click here)

I agree that we are in a long war against Islamic terrorism, but think we need a new approach. This strategy of promoting democracy in countries such as Afghanistan (that are not willing to bleed for it themselves) by investing American lives and intensive resources to build political and physical infrastructure is not sustainable. The collective will of the American people to support a war effort (from the time they start really paying attention to it) seems to have an expiration date of about 3-4 years, plus or minus (minus in times of economic stress when they feel the money can be better spent at home). There is no shortage of failed states that can serve as launching pads for terrorism. In the event that Afghanistan becomes a beacon of hope, opportunity, and democracy, the sins of omission and commission that led to 9/11 will still not be redeemed.

-- ArmyWifeScientist
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Asian countries have an unfortunate tendency to locate their capitals near security threats.

Pakistan's capital used to be Karachi, a vast city which is a long way away from the turmoil in the northwest. Indeed, most of Pakistan is untroubled by the goings-on in the Pashtun belt, but Islamabad - an ersatz bureaucratic invention - was deliberately placed up there to help "unite" the country.

Kabul is also perilously close to the Hindu Kush and the nasty Pashtun tribesmen who inhabit it. And Seoul is unfortunately near to Kim Jong-Il's gangster state, so much so that the South Koreans sometimes talk of moving their capital from beyond the range of Kim's artillery pieces.

We probably should not let the location of capitals disturb our perception of war. What we need to do is choke off the Taliban's funding from the Gulf, refine and develop new technologies to fight more effectively in the Pashtun's rugged vatan, and for our politicians to engage in more effective public diplomacy than they have recently done, in order to boost the morale of the general public. Then we would win.

-- GreenwichJ
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