War of Choice?

[Zack]

Is our open-ended occupation of Afghanistan a good strategic decision? I thought that I was alone in the view that it was not, but Stephen Walt seems to agree with me.

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/...afe_haven_myth

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/20/safe_haven_2_a_response_to_peter_bergen

I don't see how we expect to completely eliminate safe havens inside Afghanistan after we leave, particularly in light of some of the more dismal assessments of the war. In addition, many of the safe havens are across the border in Pakistan, safe for the most part from Afghan forces, and our own ground troops. It doesn't seem plausible that we will successfully eliminate all of these havens in the region, much less across the globe. This also assumes that if the Taliban were to regain power in Afghanistan (a proposition I am skeptical of anyhow) it doesn't necessarily or even likely follow that they will invite al-Qaeda to set up shop in their country, or even if they did, that it would in any meaningful way improve al-Qaeda's capabilities. The Taliban itself is not a ideologically homogeneous entity, and is furthermore not as global in its aspirations as al-Qaeda is. The camps that were in Afghanistan taught small unit tactics for the most part, which did not play any role in the attacks on American soil. The knowledge necessary to make explosives is also not in any way related to our success or failure in Afghanistan. Bombings targeted at Westerners do not seem to be at all related to the existence of safe havens.

Our presence in Afghanistan seems to have the opposite effect of what we intend. Removed from its state as a "vital national interest" the blood and treasure we have and are expending to try to defeat the insurgency and stabilize the government seems wasted. I, like Walt, do not find the moral argument compelling, nor would I expect the Congress or American people to be willing to expend enormous resources on something that is not necessary, and probably hurts our security in the short term.

[Abu Suleyman]

The flaw with Walt, as is so often the case, is that he fundamentally believes that most states, and indeed most organizations are merely security seeking, that is to say that all they really want is to keep on doing what they are doing without interference. Although he does not explicitly state so in these articles, he is a well known and perhaps even the leading advocate of Defensive Realism.

In the Afghanistan case, this is fatal in several ways:

1) Even assuming that the Taliban and any Taliban inspired successor state are merely security seeking, their very presence in the region is destabilizing, as proven by how things were prior to 9/11. Neither Pakistan (as long as it is secular, but with large Islamist contigents), nor Shi'ite Iran can allow a Salafi regime exist unmolested in their neighborhood, to say nothing of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakstan, or Uzbekistan, which all have their own problems.

2) There is reason to believe that the Taliban, even if they have no designs on attacking the U.S., are more than security seeking insofar as they also wish to convert Pakistan to a Islamic state. Witness the seizure of Swat Valley. If Pakistan became a "Taliban" state, then we would have a Pashtun-Islamist Nuclear Superstate in Central Asia.

3) Even if the Taliban fails to seize power in Pakistan, as actually seems likely, the biggest threat for training camps and safe havens is not attacks against the US, but attacks against China, India, and Pakistan. All three countries have significant Muslim minorities/groups, and are nuclear powers. Indeed, there are more nuclear states within driving distance from Kabul than from Berlin. While there may be reason to doubt that the US would be their target in any meaningful timeframe there are already Salafist groups operating in all three countries, and we have every reason to believe that at least in Pakistan and India there are direct and indirect ties between those groups and the Taliban.

These three reasons are not proof that the war is a war of necessity for the United States, but it is proof that the war is necessary for a super-power. It is no secret that many realists, and many political scientists believe that the doctrine of primacy (i.e. holding on to superpower status) is a case of the juice not being worth the squeeze. However, such ideas are not common in the American Foreign Policy community. If the U.S. were to abandon Afghanistan, it would be exatly like Britain abandoning Greece in the opening hours of the Cold War. In essence, we would be signalling to the world that we are abandoning all pretence of Superpower status, leaving areas like Central Asia to the Great Powers of the region, and becoming one great power among many.

This all goes unsaid, because the President and his staff neither wish to seem like they are pursuing the same strategy as Pres. Bush, nor do they wish to admit that if they abandon Afghanistan, they have essentially presided over the demise of the American "Empire". Walt, for his part, knows that even outside of the United States, in spite of protestations to the contrary, the idea of the return to multipolarity is not popular, because most countries are freeriding off the US. Therefore he cannot openly say "we need to accept that we are no longer a superpower". Even returning to a position of hegemonic offshore balancer seems like a step down from the titanic power the US has had for the past twenty years.

[Fuchs]

1) Even assuming that the Taliban and any Taliban inspired successor state are merely security seeking, their very presence in the region is destabilizing, as proven by how things were prior to 9/11.

Incursions to the north were under control of Russian forces, Pakistan was stable, the Muslim separatists in the Chinese border region didn't make it into our news and Iran had a more stable government and less separatist trouble than today. So what exactly was worse or more destabilizing in the region prior to 9/11 when the Taliban were in power?
It doesn't look as if our actions actually stabilized the region.

2) There is reason to believe that the Taliban, even if they have no designs on attacking the U.S., are more than security seeking insofar as they also wish to convert Pakistan to a Islamic state.

The USA is a better example of a state that is actually not security-seeking (no matter what the propaganda says).

3) Even if the Taliban fails to seize power in Pakistan, as actually seems likely, the biggest threat for training camps and safe havens is not attacks against the US, but attacks against China, India, and Pakistan.

Their problem - their solutions. None of our business.

These three reasons are not proof that the war is a war of necessity for the United States, but it is proof that the war is necessary for a super-power.

I disagree. inf act, I even disagree with the assertion that the USA is a super power. It's a great power. It had much too small actual influence and success for a superpower in the past eight years.

There's no way of staying a superpower by pretending so with a series of failures.
The USA did not lead in any successful major affair for about ten years unless its influence was codified in multinational institutions (and even then only occasionally).
The only independent political initiatives with an U.S. "leadership" function in the past 8+ years were utter failures so far. Those nations who followed the U.S. lead usually followed into disaster; in economic policy, foreign policy and wars.

The Afghanistan war is therefore no war that protects U.S. superpower status; it's more like the Suez crisis or the Soviet-Afghan War.
It confirms the inability to dominate and reform even an extremely backward country.

The direct Western involvement in the Afghan Civil War was a war of choice. We probably would have achieved the extradition of OBL and his loons if we had respected Pashtun hospitality a bit more. At the very least we would have prevented that OBL and AQ take responsibility for 9/11 (which would have taken away the Taliban's excuse for no extradition; the assertion of innocence). That in turn would have spared us of most of the global jihad crap.

An alternative path would have been an indirect involvement; pressure on Pakistan to stop support and own support for Northern Alliance warlords and non-Taliban Pashtun powers.

Finally, we could have limited ourselves to raids and covert actions (that's what I expected to happen in autumn 2001).

[Abu Suleyman]

I just knew that Fuch's would be the guy who would post a reply, and I just knew that he would have to take a swipe at the U.S.

Up front I have to take issue with some of your assertions, in part because I don't understand some of your assertions. In your refutation of the Taliban as a destabilizing force, you cite domestic instabilities. However, my point was not that the Taliban contributes to domestic instability, but that as a government it contributed to international instability, which it undoubtedly did. When the Taliban was in power, all states in the region had a vested interest in controlling it and a legitimate fear of interference in their domestic affairs. Moreover, the fact that something doesn't hit our news is hardly an argument.

I love the ad patria attack at the US, but I guess I can't be surprised, since you are European. (See what I did there,nudge, nudge, wink, wink.) Whether the US is more or less security seeking, or whether it claims to be is irrelevant to whether the Taliban can be trusted to behave as a security seeking state.

Finally, your belief and my beliefs about the US's superpower status are irrelevant to the assertion that American Policy makers believe that the US is a superpower and therefore act accordingly. Whether successfully or not, any state (US or otherwise) which views itself as Superpower is going to view involvement in Afghanistan as a war of necessity, because it is for any state that is a superpower. The rest of the arguments about what form that involvement should take are spurious and irrelevant to the question of necessity.

Put another way, imagine that you have a daughter, who thinks that she is a princess. A princess must have a crown, and arguing with her that she is not a princess and therefore does not need a crown is futile because she is a princess, dammit; now get her her crown! There are things that whether we agree with them or not, or even if they are true is not the important issue. In this case, America and American's generally believe that the US is a super power, indeed so do the Jihadi's which is why we are the "Great Satan" and not, China or India. You may be right, and I know plenty of people who would agree, but that doesn't matter for this discussion.

I would point out that you are completely willing to address the Pashtun's in terms of their cultural perspective, and demand that the US do so, but are totally unwilling to look at things from an American Policy makers perspective. In English we have a saying that goes "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." I know there is one in German that means the same thing, but I can't remember it. It means, in this case, that what is good for one country is good for them all. (If you know the German saying, please tell me.)

[Fuchs]

OK, let's focus on one thing.

You wrote

(...)Although he does not explicitly state so in these articles, he is a well known and perhaps even the leading advocate of Defensive Realism.

In the Afghanistan case, this is fatal in several ways:

1) Even assuming that the Taliban and any Taliban inspired successor state are merely security seeking, their very presence in the region is destabilizing, as proven by how things were prior to 9/11. Neither Pakistan (as long as it is secular, but with large Islamist contigents), nor Shi'ite Iran can allow a Salafi regime exist unmolested in their neighborhood, to say nothing of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakstan, or Uzbekistan, which all have their own problems.

in a "War of Choice?" thread.


I took your words as an assertion that the entry into the war was not a matter of choice, but of necessity because the Taliban were intolerable.


First, I wondered why they were tolerable up to 9/11, but that's a worn (albeit strong) question.


Second, I decided to poke at the oh-so terrible situation of Taliban in power by describing how relatively stable, under control and tolerable the pre-9/11 situation in and around Afghanistan really was.


A robust, shi'ite Iran was their Western frontier.
Russian 'peacekeeper' MRDs were keeping Muslim guerrilla incursions under control north of Afghanistan.
Pakistan was still a much more stable and robust state in the SE than it's now.
China had at most minor troubles with Muslim separatists who didn't even make it into our news, so were hardly a significant component of "necessity" (in fact, afaik those Uighurs aren't much connected to the Taliban anyway).
The Afghan Civil War was still going on, with wannabe-religious representatives of the majority tribe in power.

That was an acceptable, bearable situation, it did not constitute a necessity for a Western involvement in the war.


Finally about the superpower thing:
Beliefs constitute no necessity. Beliefs are illusions, thoughts - not the real world.
And group think doesn't impress me at all anyway, so I'm not particularly impressed by the prevalence of certain ideas in certain institutions or nations if those ideas cannot stand up to analysis.

[Abu Suleyman]

I took your words as an assertion that the entry into the war was not a matter of choice, but of necessity because the Taliban were intolerable.


First, I wondered why they were tolerable up to 9/11, but that's a worn (albeit strong) question.


Second, I decided to poke at the oh-so terrible situation of Taliban in power by describing how relatively stable, under control and tolerable the pre-9/11 situation in and around Afghanistan really was.

Fuchs, you are an excellent representative of discourse that I have read. I mean that as a compliment, in spite of what I am about to say.

I am not addressing this question as a historical one (i.e. how did we get here), but rather as one of current situations. Indeed, this is the way in which Walt approaches the problem himself. The point of any current political question is not what the problem was then, the question is what the problem is now. Most people, at least in the US, would agree that ignoring the Taliban/Al Qaeda in AF prior to 2001 was a mistake. The fact that we did so does not make it any less of a mistake. Apparently, you believe that we should have continued on pretty much the same path post 2001 as we (the US) had pre-2001, and I think that if you can be dispassionate about the issue you could make the argument that a purely covert/law enforcement approach to AF would have been preferable to what we did. The problem is that in the US there is no such thing as dispassion about 9/11, everyone has strong emotions, and we just have to accept that. What happened, regardless of whether it was good or not was almost inevitable given the political make up of the US.

All of that notwithstanding, the question is "Where are we now?" I do believe that Pres. Obama clearly stated that he is approaching the issue from a current events mode, and I think we have to take him at his word. As things stand now, AF is a critical theatre of operations if the US sees itself as a Superpower. It is possible that the US entered AF voluntarily, and I would say that our method of entry was definitely elective. Nevertheless, given the axioms extant in the US, AF is a "must-be" involved area.

To put it analogously, imagine if you had a man who was afraid of heights on a cruise ship, who went out on decks and because of his fear of heights passed out and fell overboard. Barring external intervention like a helicopter rescue, at that point if he wishes to return to the ship his is in a 'Must Swim' situation. Tossing him a dinghy and saying that that is actually an acceptable alternative is not going to work. Neither is berating him for being afraid of heights nor for falling overboard. None of this is to say there isn't something to learn from the situation afterwards, but at the moment the man is in the water, his assumptions and beliefs about the situation create a critical interest.

The same is true for the US. America's national personality guaranteed that after 9/11 no small response would do. Love us or hate us, we don't take kindly to MASCAL sneak attacks, just ask the Japanese, (or Spain, although it probably wasn't their fault). Now that we are where we are at, our assumption that we are a Superpower, rightly or wrongly, and the situation in Central Asia demands that we be involved there.

Pre-empting a possible response, you may be thinking, "All you have to do is abandon your stupid/futile/arrogant idea of Superpower status and the problem goes away." This is my point exactly. But so far, no one is openly talking about that, and I don't forsee it becoming politically viable in the US any time soon.

[William F. Owen]

• A robust, shi'ite Iran was their Western frontier.
• Russian 'peacekeeper' MRDs were keeping Muslim guerrilla incursions under control north of Afghanistan.
• Pakistan was still a much more stable and robust state in the SE than it's now.
• China had at most minor troubles with Muslim separatists who didn't even make it into our news, so were hardly a significant component of "necessity" (in fact, afaik those Uighurs aren't much connected to the Taliban anyway).
• The Afghan Civil War was still going on, with wannabe-religious representatives of the majority tribe in power.

That was an acceptable, bearable situation, it did not constitute a necessity for a Western involvement in the war.

Well 911 could have been planned and conducted by any average bunch of Canadian students, living in Montreal, with enough funding for the plane tickets, and MS Flight Sim. That's a fact.
Invading A'Stan and still being their is a choice. It's not an essential imperative to US National Security. Being in A'Stan is also a Policy, not a Strategy. I more over doubt that it is even possible to have a strategy for the "GWOT" as you cannot have a strategy for a war against an abstract noun.

Fuchs, you are an excellent representative of discourse that I have read. I mean that as a compliment, in spite of what I am about to say.

I've known Fuchs for about 5 years, and well before we ever came to SWC. Yes he is a very annoying German, and he regularly holds my feet uncomfortably close to fire, but his whole approach to the current norms and approaches to warfare deserves to be better understood than it is.
Personally, I see great merit in trying to view the world the way he sees it. Point being, it behoves us all well to note that however competent the US Army maybe, the US does not set the gold standard of either strategy or the conduct of any type of warfare - and nor does the UK.

[Entropy]

A couple of points:

A war can evolve over time. In the case of Afghanistan I think it began as a war of necessity and is now, in it's current form, a war of choice. A COIN-based nation-building enterprise is a choice and there are other options to consider between nation-building and abandonment.

Secondly, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Taliban in Pakistan are not the same thing. They may appear to be similar, but they are not. Different leaders, different fighters, different constituencies, different goals. Also, the idea that the Pakistani Taliban might take over or conduct a coup in Pakistan is ludicrous. That said, there is a real possibility that Islamists could come to power in Pakistan, but an Islamist take-over is not the same thing as a Taliban take-over.

Third, the Taliban may or may not be destabilizing, but I think the same could be said for a highly centralized Afghan government as well as the US presence. Which is more destabilizing? It depends on who you ask, which is one reason terms like "stability" are less useful as descriptors and policy goals for a place like Afghanistan.

Fuchs,

I agree with some of what you say, but on this you are flat wrong:

We probably would have achieved the extradition of OBL and his loons if we had respected Pashtun hospitality a bit more. At the very least we would have prevented that OBL and AQ take responsibility for 9/11 (which would have taken away the Taliban's excuse for no extradition; the assertion of innocence). That in turn would have spared us of most of the global jihad crap.

That's exactly what the US tried for more than five years. Much of the source material from that era is now declassified at the GWU archive. Contrary to your assertion, the US engaged the Taliban on many levels to get them to either control, extradite or expel UBL. A useful summary of this activity can be found here.

And this mostly a myth:

Second, I decided to poke at the oh-so terrible situation of Taliban in power by describing how relatively stable, under control and tolerable the pre-9/11 situation in and around Afghanistan really was.

The Taliban brought a lot of anarchy and bloodshed to many parts of Afghanistan that were perfectly stable.

[Fuchs]

@Abu Suleyman:

I am aware that emotions and an urge to not do things by halves led to what happened.
Our difference is that I consider this to be a failure, while you seem to consider it as a justification.

@Entropy:
About our two disagreements:
I assume that disagreement #1 centers around a different estimate about the effect of 9/11 on the amount of pressure to be applied. It was a Pearl Harbour moment, and I assume that those guys were smart enough to understand this after a bit of discussion and possibly some demonstration. Imagine a perfect continuous double circle of JDAM craters around Kabul as a late argument.

The second disagreement, the internal state of affairs: There was a civil war, so what?
We had lived with an Afghan Civil War for 22 years and most of the time it hadn't bothered us at all. Ask a taxi driver whether he can recall any negative effect of that civil war on his life in '79-'00. He won't remember any.
Things were awry, so what? We still don't seem to go into Sudan. Or Congo. We don't go into the tribal regions of Pakistan right now.

Sure, there were some not so pleasant things going on. Yet, that doesn't make it a war of necessity. Also keep in mind that an indirect involvement had a huge chance of replacing Taliban atrocities with Northern Alliance atrocities.

History as it happened replaced Taliban atrocities with Northern Alliance atrocities, underground Taliban atrocities a couple of bombed marriages and other misfortunes.

I simply fail to see a necessity. Urge, yes. Hate and anger, yes. Gut and stomach feelings - yes.
Rational necessity - no.

Keep in mind; no Taliban crashed into skyscrapers. And if I remember correctly they didn't even declare war at least on paper until directly attacked.


Even Neocon warmongers didn't see a necessity to invade Afghanistan until 9/11, and even then they regretted that Afghanistan wasn't Iraq.

[Entropy]

Fuchs,

Suggesting a few JDAM's would have compelled the Taliban into giving up UBL is wishful thinking even if it were politically possible at the time. Regardless, we made it clear to them beforehand that they would be held responsible for any more attacks. Even when the Taliban were completely routed and in disarray they kept to their narrative of previous years and demanded evidence of UBL involvement before turning him over.

The Taliban wanted to be recognized, to be treated as a state entity. We de-facto recognized them as such in the course of our relations pre-9/11 and offered up the possibility of political recognition if the UBL problem could be solved. They claimed they had UBL under control. They claimed he could not plan or conduct any attacks and they claimed he was innocent. They were either lying or were wrong. As a de-facto state, invasion was entirely legitimate. In other words, if you want to be seen and recognized as a state and the legitimate representatives of your "nation" among the community of nations then you damn well better prevent your allies from attacking other states.

In the end, I think it remains unclear who was the dog and who was the tail in the Taliban-AQ relationship. A decent argument can be made that the Taliban were dependent upon AQ and could not have split with UBL even if the Taliban wanted to.

[Fuchs]

Fuchs,

Suggesting a few JDAM's would have compelled the Taliban into giving up UBL is wishful thinking even if it were politically possible at the time.
My point wasn't that simple.
Regardless, we made it clear to them beforehand that they would be held responsible for any more attacks. Even when the Taliban were completely routed and in disarray they kept to their narrative of previous years and demanded evidence of UBL involvement before turning him over.
...
They claimed he could not plan or conduct any attacks and they claimed he was innocent.And were likely right about it, at least in the strict sense of your words.

The important point is that AQ claimed the same at that time. That was important because it was a major barrier to their later global jihad phenomenon that turned many previously harmless people into new (wannabe)terrorists.


You're missing one bit of info to understand me in this case:
I define justified or not, successful or not based on the net effect. An action that does not lead to a better end result than inaction is neither justified (at least ex post) nor successful. (PM)

OBL's later admittance of guilt did in my opinion hurt us very much, and as paradox as it seems; we could have been better off even if he wasn't extradited.

By the way; I don't think that threats must always be carried out if unsuccessful. Bluffs are part of the business. A previous threat (especially one that doesn't constitute an entitlement to someone else, as Britain's guarantee of sovereignty did with Poland in '39) does not constitute a necessity to go to war.

[Abu Suleyman]

@Abu Suleyman:

I am aware that emotions and an urge to not do things by halves led to what happened.
Our difference is that I consider this to be a failure, while you seem to consider it as a justification.

First off, I hope that neither Fuchs nor Wilf has taken offense to anything I have written. I am a firm believer in dialog, preferably strong dialog, between people of differing opinions, because that is the only way that you can figure out the truth. I appreciate having such an able proponent of the "typical" European point of view on this forum, and hope you will continue to keep us informed and honest. Anything I have said which was taken as hurtful I assure you was intended only in the spirit of affection that exists between those who embark on challenging tasks together, and if it was taken in any other way, I apologize for presuming on your good natures.

I don't see emotional decision making as a justification; I see it as something that just is. This delves more into a moral question than the one that we are addressing, but I think that it explains our discussion well. I realize that there are plenty of people who see what is natural, normal, or unavoidable as somehow justified. I do not. Even inevitability is not justification. Norms are made to constrain behavior that is outside of morality. If all things which are natural were moral, we would need no norms.

However, when analyzing policies, we need to first figure out where we are, and understand the conditions which we can change, and most importantly the ones that we cannot change. The US's reaction falls into the cannot change category. It was certainly sub-optimal, as all emotionally informed state reactions are, but it was completely unavoidable. As an observer, which when dealing with things like national character we all mostly are, I see no point in fretting over things which we cannot change in any meaningful way .

That said, as we go through history and learn from mistakes it is possible that we as individuals can shape future reactions in more effective ways. To do that however, we have to understand that things like culture are not going to change quickly, if at all, and that goes both ways.

What I often hear from European writers and scholars (and I apologize in advance for the hasty generalizations) and the American left is that we have to be cognizant of things like Pashtun culture in dealing in AF. That is 100% correct, and I have told it to anyone who will listen. However, we need to be just as cognizant of our own culture, when dealing with our own and our allies policies. When someone says "Those dang A-rabs just need to stop doing what they are doing, and be more like us" they are rightly mocked and laughed at, because Middle Eastern culture is the product of thousands of years of history. However, many times we forget that similar forces that have shaped Arabic or Pashtun or Chinese culture have also shaped American culture and German Culture etc. It is just as unlikely to get AF to act like the US as it is to get the US to act like AF for the same reason.

That said, there is a whole other discussion to be had about what should have happened. When dealing with policy we live in "The Land of Is" where everything I just discussed applies, and we have to just accept the way a lot of things are. Such is the plight of the warfighter in general, who often can only influence as far as he can shoot. However, another discussion entirely is the normative one, which exists in "the Land of Ought". In that discussion we can talk about what should have happened, and what we should do without the policy constraints. Both discussions are useful, but "Is" and "Ought" are no where near each other, and trying to mix them together is like trying to Landnav in New York using only a map of Paris.

[William F. Owen]

First off, I hope that neither Fuchs nor Wilf has taken offense to anything I have written. I am a firm believer in dialog, preferably strong dialog, between people of differing opinions, because that is the only way that you can figure out the truth. I appreciate having such an able proponent of the "typical" European point of view on this forum, and hope you will continue to keep us informed and honest. Anything I have said which was taken as hurtful I assure you was intended only in the spirit of affection that exists between those who embark on challenging tasks together, and if it was taken in any other way, I apologize for presuming on your good natures.

No apology necessary from my side. However, just because I cut a dash, as suave, good looking, incredibly charming English chap, it may be a mistake to assume I think like one or would welcome the description of being "European" or even worse, of being "typical." . I am a long way from either!

[Fuchs]

Same for me, I'm quite proud about my habits of thinking outside the box and questioning mainstream positions.

'European' is my access to information and experiences, not my opinion.
My criticism of Germany is about as fierce as the one of the USA.

[Entropy]

I define justified or not, successful or not based on the net effect. An action that does not lead to a better end result than inaction is neither justified (at least ex post) nor successful.

The Afghan war is not just one action though but a series of actions, like all wars. As I said originally, I think the invasion itself was both justified and necessary given the previous failed efforts to stop AQ through other means. Since the invasion, however, a lot has happened and many things have changed. The original rationale for the invasion - destruction of a clear and present threat - is gone and now the rationale is primarily focused on how to prevent that or similar threats from returning. That's why I said in my original post that I don't think the war we're in NOW is one of necessity, at least as currently being prosecuted, since it's really not the same war as 2001-2002. I've made the point many times on this forum and elsewhere that I don't believe that building a highly-centralized government in Afghanistan, as we are now attempting to do, is likely to succeed in the long run.

If you are critical of how the US responded to 9/11, it would be interesting to hear what you believe was a viable alternative. Personally I think there were few alternatives and most of those were unviable.

[Fuchs]

If you are critical of how the US responded to 9/11, it would be interesting to hear what you believe was a viable alternative. Personally I think there were few alternatives and most of those were unviable.

First of all I would have made clear that terrorism is mostly a problem of internal security. Police, federal police and intelligence agencies are the main defence against terrorists.

Diplomacy needs to activate such assets in other countries to improve security also for traveling nationals.
Diplomacy can also be employed as a countermeasure to terrorist propaganda in order to reduce their recruitment success.

Finally it was appropriate to use overt violent action against terrorists who don't hide ("terror camps"). This level of activity needs to be low, though. An over-use would just drive all into hiding and probably achieve even less than little action.

The most important part was to remember the old wisdom; maximize allies, minimize enemies. A nation with decades of containment experience should have chosen the path of political containment instead of needlessly inciting potential enemy recruits with stupidities like OIF or "self defence" of F-16's at 15,000 ft against AK shots on marriage parties.

It was right to exert pressure on Pakistan in order to reduce the support for the Taliban.

Finally, it would have been wise to communicate that 9/11 was a disgraceful crime by words, action - and in cooperation with others (especially non-secular authorities).

The extradition was secondary in comparison to the containment of the wannabe holy war idiocy.

--------------

Honestly, at that time with my limited available info I expected that raids and covert action would be necessary and effective.
My emphasis on the political dimension grew later when I learned about stupid religious / political reactions.

On the other hand, I would probably have prevented the whole mess if I had been in power during the 90's, as I was always against a military involvement in the Persian Gulf area and also opposed to the perverted no-fly zones and associated skirmishes once the brief uprisings in Iraq were over. The same goes for the excessive and perverted economic sanctions on Iraq.

[Abu Suleyman]

'European' is my access to information and experiences, not my opinion.

My criticism of Germany is about as fierce as the one of the USA.

Agreed. I think that in this case I was using European as a short hand for a type of criticism which is common in Europe, although by no means exclusive thereto.

[Ken White]

First of all I would have made clear that terrorism is mostly a problem of internal security. Police, federal police and intelligence agencies are the main defence against terrorists.

Agree but recall that the US has a significant problem in this due to its geography, size, population and the diversity of that population. While even for the US, your statement is correct it unlikely that the measures you state will be adequate and therefor other measure will almost certainly be required.

...Diplomacy can also be employed as a countermeasure to terrorist propaganda in order to reduce their recruitment success.

True but for several reasons mostly attributable to a non-thinking Congress our Diplomacy efforts have been less than they should have been.

Finally it was appropriate to use overt violent action against terrorists who don't hide ("terror camps"). This level of activity needs to be low, though. An over-use would just drive all into hiding and probably achieve even less than little action.

Totally agree. The problem is that we neglected the development of doctrine, training and equipment required to do this in spite of indications the requirement existed. Much but not all that neglect was due poor focus and a failure to realign after 1989. Money saved was slight so there's no real excuse for that -- but it is the reason the option taken was so taken; there were few real alternatives available to the US Government even though there should have been.

Finally, it would have been wise to communicate that 9/11 was a disgraceful crime by words, action - and in cooperation with others (especially non-secular authorities).

True -- we have a bad tendency to overreact to stimulation...

On the other hand...The same goes for the excessive and perverted economic sanctions on Iraq.

If you meant Iran and /or Iraq, I agree with that whole paragraph. Shame no one asked us...

[Zack]

@Entropy

I still don't understand exactly why you think Afghanistan was a war of necessity at the beginning. I don't see the security connection between Taliban/AQ presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan and US national security. Like I said in my original post, we were not attacked by insurgents using small units tactics, or even explosives (knowledge of which could have been gained at a camp in Afghanistan). The money that funded the hijackers was not earned in Afghanistan either. So AQ's unmolested (generally) presence in Afghanistan did not contribute financially or by allowing the training of personnel. The only relation to the operation they had was command and control (a big maybe) and ideological. I certainly don't buy the second one as a casus belli, and it seems to me that the cells that carried out the attacks were fairly autonomous (as were previous attacks on US soil), and the planning that did take place, was in Western Europe. So I see a tenuous connection between AQ/Taliban presence in Afghanistan/Pakistan and 9/11 at best.

Even if there were a strong connection between the two, it seems we haven't done much to address the "reasons" we went there. AQ and the Taliban remain relatively safe across the border, free to plan attacks as they wish. OBL is nowhere to be found, and we have helped the AQ recruiting machine immensely.

Where is the strategic logic in all of that? I am interested in what our involvement there has done for us, not Pakistan, India, or Iran.

[Entropy]

Zack,

I think AQ in Afghanistan was much more important to the ultimate success of the 9/11 attacks than your comments would indicate. Despite a variety of diplomatic, criminal and military attempts to thwart AQ attacks over the years prior to 9/11, AQ retained a significant capability to train, facilitate and fund attacks against Western targets, especially the US. Efforts to contain AQ failed. I would therefore argue that military intervention was necessary to deal with the threat posed by AQ.

Now, we might quibble with what form that intervention should have taken, but I think intervention was necessary.