Charles Krauthammer seems to think so, calling Afghanistan a “geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological infrastructure.” Huh. So was it really all about oil, then? Let the man speak for himself:
Of all the arguments for pulling out of Iraq, the greater importance of Afghanistan is the least serious.
And not just because this argument assumes that the world’s one superpower, which spends more on defense every year than the rest of the world combined, does not have the capacity to fight an insurgency in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan. But because it assumes that Afghanistan is strategically more important than Iraq.
Well, actually, the U.S. does not have the capacity to fight two low level insurgencies. Aside from a string of essays appearing in mainstream publications across a wide ideological spectrum—from the Washington Times to Foreign Affairs to The New York Times—all have found the military sorely lacking the resources and support it needs to fulfill its missions in the 135 countries where U.S. troops are deployed. And even this ignores some of the industry rags I read, like Inside Defense (and its associated sub-publications), in which the pleas for more funding just to meet current readiness requirements (to say nothing of replacing things like 45-year old bombers) are non-stop.
Ignoring Krauthammer’s ignorance of American readiness, he thinks that because al-Zawahiri, from his cave in western Pakistan, said the most important fight for Muslims is in Iraq, that therefore the most important fight is in Iraq. Again ignoring the obvious fact that before the American invasion, al-Qaeda was indifferent bordering on hostile to Iraq (in which case al-Zawahiri’s proclamation is more properly seen as opportunistic, rather than strategic), Krauthammer’s thesis fails the facts of recent history. He must have forgotten that one time Osama bin Laden hid out in Afghanistan with the Taliban’s explicit support, attacked American military assets in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, bombed two embassies, bombed the World Trade Center then finally knocked it down eight years later, and punched a big hole in the Pentagon. And that’s just al-Qaeda’s attacks on specifically American targets. Neither Iraq, Iraqis, nor people funded by Iraqis ever did anything of the sort. Yet, to Krauthammer, Afghanistan is the strategic backwater.
To echo one of Krauthammer’s other points: Afghanistan’s non-infrastructure is precisely why it should remain a priority. Furthermore, his characterization of Afghanistan as strategically unimportant is, again, ignorant. In fact, I daresay Krauthammer so vigorously defends the Iraq war because he has rhetorically painted himself in a corner, and is unwilling to admit that all of the original reasons he used to support it—Saddam’s connection to 9/11, his WMD programs—never existed. Nor does he seem to realize that his proposed strategy of fighting in Iraq because al-Qaeda’s leadership says that’s where the real fight is, is strategically stupid. That’s like attacking a bee hive by swatting bees, instead of going after the queen.
The common thread in looking at Krauthammer’s article? Ignorance. Sadly, it’s par for the course these days.
Update: Wonkette attacks this with far more humor.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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{ 12 comments }
No Iraqis attacked the US?
What the hell are you smoking?
Look up Abdul Rahman Yasin my friend. Look up Momdough Salim. There’s countless Iraqi members of al Qaeda and has been since mid 90′s. Get a grip you anti American liberal hack.
I can’t believe you’re serious (I’m a liberal?). Fine, I’ll play.
By your logic we should have invaded and occupied Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well. Yasin (who was an American citizen by birth) was recruited by Ramzi Yousef: a Pakistani operative of al-Qaeda. I suppose we should invade and occupy Pakistan, too, now that I think of it. Not even George W. Bush has tried to draw a linkage between official Iraq policy and Yasin’s involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing.
Same deal with Salim. Being Iraqi doesn’t imply Saddam Hussein’s involvement. By that logic, all American criminals are indictments of the American government.
But seriously, there are countless Arabs who are members of al-Qaeda. I suppose we must invade and occupy all of Arabia, then?
Going back to my last point. Even making the assumption (that not a single government agency will do) that Saddam Hussein and his regime was responsible for sponsoring al-Qaeda—despite copious evidence of hostility between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein—that doesn’t change the fact that the men in charge of al-Qaeda are in Afghanistan or the lawless areas of Pakistan. bin Laden and al-Zawahiri (and by extension, the Taliban they helped to create along with the ISI) are the men we need to focus on, not Saddam Hussein’s leftovers.
Maybe you can use some sources next time you make wild accusations.
To the fellows who think there’s no point to the American involvement in Iraq, just bear in mind Iraq and Afghanistan are fronts in a greater war. Being in Iraq makes perfect strategic sense. You corner the Iranians for one, you deal with that thorn in your side Saddam Hussein, and you give a real focal point for the dispersed, un-uniformed group of Islamic terrorists to zero in on. Iraq is where all the action is at because it’s where most of the American ground troops are, it’s where George Bush has drown the line in the sand so to speak, and the Islamic terrorists know this.
In the Arab and Muslim mind, Iraq is trully the cradle of history. To the modern jihadi the American in Baghdad is perhaps a more infamous act than the Mongol sacking of that city in 1258. Better let a place like Iraq become the sink hole the terrorists dump most of their resources and energy into where you can respond quickly and succintly to things as they change. Look at how the Soviets got tied down in Afghanistan fighting geography and the weather. Instead of playing “Whak A Mole” around the globe and leaving the troops in Afgahnistan to sit and wait for Spring action in Afghanistan, engage the enemy where it is easier to find and defeat them. You could have a million troops in Afghanistan like the Soviets did and you still won’find them, terrain like the pass at Themopalaye can give a small force an infinite advantage.
It is entirely a misnomer the US doesn’t have the resources or the manpower to keep up a fight in more than one front. The Americans not only have the manpower but they have the ability to deliver troops in large numbers anywhere in the world for long periods. They have the world’s largest navy with 12 carrier strike groups, the largest airforce with the ability to keep hundreds of bombers and fighters in flight globally, as well as an amply large, well trained, and willing Army and Marine Corps with no lack of recruits (in fact they have to turn people away from the Marines). They can deliver any degree of military power anywhere in the world for any duration of their choosing. It’s not for nothing they are called a “superpower”.
The Americans do not need to invade places like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia because those governments are basically at war with the Islamic terrorists, just like the Americans. Look at how many gun battles there’s been in Saudi streets with Al Qaeda types or the numerous bombing attempts against Mussharaf, and even so the Americans have been found out to be operating in Pakistan with drones such as that time they shot a missle into a house trying to get Zawahiri.
The idea that there is no justification for the Iraq invasion by the Americans is also a specious claim. Clinton nearly did it in 1998, and subsequently he signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which declared regime change in Iraq as offcial US policy. The untold violations of the 1991 cease fire agreement with the Americans was reason enough. Iraq was a haven for terrorists, from Abu Nidal to a wounded Zaarqawi fleeing Afghanistan. Ask yourself this, if Al Qaeda was only in Afghanistan and not in Iraq and Saddam Hussein was not providing a defacto haven for them, how is it they showed up so soon after the Americans invaded Iraq? Zarqawi’s first bombings and beheadings began in the summer of 2003. How did these largely Arab Al Qaeda members with bounties on their heads get all the way from Pashtun Afghanistan through Shia Iran and into Iraq, meet and then and set up operations right away with former regime elements in a country that had virtually no electricity, phone system, civic order, and all of this with nobody turning them in for the reward in a country where everbody was bascially unemployed?
See my above comment about sourcing. Even the Pentagon thinks it doesn’t have the resources to perform its mission. Where do you get your information?
The rest of your comment demonstrates questionable logic. If in fact Bush was using Iraq as some sort of flypaper strategy, then he was lying about bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East—i.e. he wanted to create a battleground for America vs. Islamism, not stop a dangerous and about-to-have-WMD dictator from destroying civilization.
The flypaper idea may have merit, and frankly other ideas would too, but I do not like being lied to, especially when it involves justifying a war in a democratic country. So either Bush lied about the reasons he went in, or his supporters are inventing post hoc reasons besides the ones he stated in his speeches (Bush wasn’t big on mentioning cease-fire violations, he was big on WMD and Saddam’s expansionist policies, etc). Either case, I don’t buy it.
Further, think about the logic. Saddam is a weak dictator we can topple relatively easily, so let’s collapse his regime, create a chaos zone and hope we can kill as many Islamists as we can. It’s punishing a third party just because he pissed us off—hardly the way to conduct a legal, moral foreign policy.
As for your last bit, you need some good sourcing. From what I’ve gathered, Zarqawi did not like al-Qaeda, and he was far more concerned with Palestine and overthrowing the Jordanian monarchy than he was killing the Americans. From the sources I have here, which include accounts by intelligence officials as well as interviews with & confessions from Zarqawi’s captured operatives, he teamed up with Osama bin Laden only after the American invasion of Iraq.
In fact, Zarqawi’s primary target was apostates, Shia Muslims, instead of Americans. He and bin Laden got into arguments over tactics, but bin Laden needed a high-profile nominally al-Qaeda aligned agent in Iraq once the invasion of Afghanistan had driven him into hiding.
So let’s put that another way: forgetting all the mess about strategic mistakes for the time being, Zarqawi was at best a member of convenience. If the U.S. had never invaded Iraq, he would have remained a non-entity in both international terrorism and Iraq itself.
Oh and Abu Nidal? Yes he killed an American in a wheelchair and yes that is a horriffic crime. He is a terrorist. But he is a Palestinian terrorist, concerned with Palestine and Israel. It should also be pointed out that Nidal died in 2002 BEFORE the invasion, and that he was an secularist for national liberation, not an Islamist for re-establishing the caliphate (as bin Laden is).
To summarize, the people who attacked the U.S. never were in Iraq. They were and are in Afghanistan. Yet Krauthammer, and a group of people of similar ilk, think Iraq was and is the real war on terror(ism)? I don’t get it.
One last thing: SOURCES SOURCES SOURCES. If what you have to say is at variance with commonly accepted events, please provide sources. Otherwise, I will dismiss it out of hand as fake.
Joshua: You need to update your analysis from pre-war to current day. While Iraq was not the most important then, it clearly is now. Its fall into extremist Islamic hands would be far more devastating than Afghanistan. This is not to say that the fight against the Taliban isn’t important, it is, but al Qaeda itself has re-focused on Iraq and so should we. Whatever we want to believe about pre-war intelligence (or lack thereof) etc. isn’t very relevant to how the facts on the ground exist today.
Oh and yes, oil is damn important in this. Why? Petro-dollars go much further to finance terrorism than opium does.
Joe, I don’t care about current day, I care about five years from now. If Iraq remains undermanned, as it is, and if we keep tossing billions of dollars out the window, as we do, nothing will change. It cannot be solved with Iran, and Bush at least is unwilling to work with them because of the nuclear issue—which is important, yes, but Bush needs to make the case why it’s more important to keep nukes out of Iran’s hands than it is to establish some kind of control in Iraq.
Here’s the thing. I don’t worry about al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iran won’t tolerate them. Did you know al-Qaeda is Sunni, and thinks the Shia are apostates worthy of death? And that Iran is Shia? Oh and what about the other 60% of Iraq that is Shia? Think they’ll stand for Salafists to take over the country? No. Our presence there is a lightning rod, and has become counter productive.
Worse still, our presence there has and continues to siphon away manpower and money from what the real mission used to be, which was taking out al-Qaeda’s leadership—they guys calling the shots. And they are 1500 miles east of Baghdad.
Joshua:
1. I’m John, not Joe. Joe is part of my blog title. Common mistake.
2. I’m not defending Bush, the current “Surge” should have been done 2 years ago. He has made plenty of mistakes in this conflict. That being said, the current effort is making progress slowly and should continue. It’s far better than just withdrawing and leaving chaos behind. Bush is gone in January 2009 and how Iraq is resolved is far more important than him or any one man.
3. I know that al Qaeda is Sunni-led, along with predominantly Shi’ite Iran not tolerating them in the end. It will, however, use them as it suits their needs in the meantime which it has done and will continue to do.
4. It matters little whether Iraq is run by al Qaeda (very doubtful prospect) or becomes an Iranian puppet state (more likely). The end result is the same: a major coup for Islamic extremists that represents a far greater threat than Afghanistan.
5. Al Qaeda’s leadership will not be completely eliminated unless we invade Pakistan, which nobody wants to do. Until then we are forced to respond to their attacks in Afghanistan and even with that limitation some progress is happening against their allies at least.
1. My bad. It was late.
2. There is chaos now. What difference would it make, making the Iraqis take responsibility for their fate?
3. Who will use whom for what purposes? They hate each other. They murder each other now, in the streets, even while the Great Satan patrols nearby in armored vehicles.
4. Which Islamic extremists matters greatly. The Iranian regime knows better than to attack the U.S. directly, and has shown signs of moderating for years (like that time they helped us invade Afghanistan to hunt down Al-Qaeda in 2001 then offered to negotiate over their nuclear program in 2003 but Bush thumbed his nose at them).
5. NATO has been killing and capturing Taliban leaders in Southern Afghanistan since 2001. The Taliban aren’t the problem. Their al-Qaeda sponsors are—and it is important to distinguish between the two, as one simply wants Afghanistan, while the other has the broader war to worry about. Getting al-Qaeda will kill two birds with one stone, cutting one of the major supporters of the Taliban, and seriously denting the militias in Iraq.
Furthermore, invading Pakistan isn’t necessary. Free and fair elections, however, are, and as long as the Bush administration pretends like Pervez Musharraf is on our side instead of after his own power, they won’t happen. For decades we’ve deferred to Pakistan and ISI. We don’t have to anymore, and can exert pressure in other ways. Notice, too, how bad the violence got after Musharraf negotiated that autonomy deal for the northwest? That was deeply counter productive, and every one knew it. But he did it to maintain whatever shreds of popularity he had left, and we winked and called him a partner in the war on terror.
1. No prob. As I said, it’s a common mistake.
2. All the difference between victory in Iraq or complete failure, which would much farther in endangering us than Somalia did.
3. And they will continue to hate each other, undoubtedly striking one another when they can. Yet they will also use one another when it suits them. Why else is Iran helping the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, Josh? Because the Shi’ite regime has suddenly had a change of heart about Sunni Islam? I think not. Why does al Qaeda in its propaganda use attacks on Sunni terrorist groups by the West to further its aims? Because they’ve decided to let Imam bygone be bygones? Doubtful.
4. The line about Iran “moderating” is about as accurate as China doing likewise. I call BS on both. Oh they’ll say the right things to the press on occasion to lull people but in the end they are nothing more than the reverse side of the same coin. There are moderates in Iran, but they ain’t part of the regime. As for the 2003 offer to Bush, that was no more genuine than the nonsense put forward by Kim il Jong of North Korea.
5. And al Qaeda targets have been taken out since 2001. While the Taliban’s main goal is to control Afghanistan, it is naive in the extreme to think that they do not also support al Qaeda’s goals as well. Why do you think they supported and sheltered them for so long prior to 9/11, not mention help them now? No, the two are intertwined and both need to be eliminated.
As for Pakistan, that is a problem. Free elections would bring to power an Islamic extremist government which we cannot allow, thus leaving us in the uncomfortable position of having to support a dictator. Have there been problems? Yes. Yet an Islamic regime would present far more difficulties and we’d have even less cooperation than we do now. You really think they’d help us destroy al Qaeda? Hardly.
Iraq already is a complete failure. Again, I fail to see how the removal of western troops could possibly make things worse. So what if some groups consolidate? The moment they stitch together a working regime they’ll have far more responsibility, which will moderate their “kill all that moves” philosophy. It is a civil war. Let them fight it.
Oh, so the request for normalizing trade relations in exchange for nuclear power was fake? Is that why they got angry when Bush gave them the finger? SOURCES HELP when you make claims like that.
Ditto the bit about the Taliban. They have allies of convenience. For the moment it’s an Islamic group that hates the western invaders. So, they ally. If locals on the ground stop supporting them, or doing what they’re told, the Taliban run into just as much of a problem as al-Qaeda does.
As for Pakistan: again SOURCES matter. In the 2002 rigged elections, when the Islamists had everything to gain and nothing to lose, the best they could muster was a pitiful 11%. Nominally secular parties like the PPP poll far higher, and while very imperfect are certainly an improvement over Musharraf’s eradic rule. There is no evidence the Islamists have mass support anywhere except the sparsely populated tribal areas. Plus, if a few get into parliament, then so much the better. Compare Algeria and Turkey: Algeria cancelled elections on the eve of a major Islamist gain and suffered a horrifying civil war. Turkey allowed its Islamists to join coalitions in Parliament and coopted them out of much of their extremism. Don’t be so black and white—it’s not that simple.
If, on the other hand, you have sources that indicate either that a) the Taliban have designs larger than Afghanistan and the training al-Qaeda provides its fighters or b) the higher likelihood now of a radical Islamist party winning Pakistan’s elections, I’d love to see them.
Let me repeat for anyone else commenting here: if you say something that doesn’t match with the common sense of history, reference it. Just like in undergrad.
Naaah, I’ll pass Joshua. It seems clear that it isn’t a dialogue you wish to have, but instead are pissed off at the Bush Administration (understandably so) and are venting. Whatever I offer I strongly suspect you’ll dismiss with some convenient excuse. I find that very unproductive and not worthy of my time. I’ll leave you the field.
I was unaware a request for sources constituted irrational anger and an unwillingness to communicate. Have it your way.