Afghanistan: The Danger of Washington's "Experts" on Intervention

On the eve of President Obama's announcement on the next steps for the US in Afghanistan --- expect a public escalation of 30,000 more troops and a lot of rhetoric about non-military programmes and the necessity for the Afghan Government to be free from corruption and to take responsibility for security --- The Security Crank offers a loud, troubling polemic against so-called "expertise" in Washington.

It’s settled: the discussion about Afghanistan is no longer about Afghanistan. It is, instead, now a contest of who can write the most ridiculous article demonstrating their ignorance of the country. This isn’t a small deal: most of the people we’ll highlight below hold positions of great influence, including on General McChrystal’s review team this past summer. But they are all, pro- and anti-war, morons.

Afghanistan-Pakistan Video & Text: US Envoy Holbrooke Briefing (23 November)

It’s important to note that these opinion-mongers are not operating in a vacuum—they have willing accomplices in the media, most of which is utterly subservient to the U.S. military. In a lot of cases, this change is recent: Dexter Filkins, for example, used to write hard-hitting, critical pieces about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, he writes this:

The Pashtuns, who form the core of the Taliban, make up a largely tribal society, with families connected to one another by kinship and led by groups of elders. Over the years, the Pashtun tribes have been substantially weakened, with elders singled out by three groups: Taliban fighters, the rebels who fought the former Soviet Union and the soldiers of the former Soviet Union itself. The decimation of the tribes has left Afghan society largely atomized.

Afghan and American officials hope that the plan to make peace with groups of Taliban fighters will complement an American-led effort to set up anti-Taliban militias in many parts of the country: the Pashtun tribes will help fight the Taliban, and they will make deals with the Taliban. And, by so doing, Afghan tribal society can be reinvigorated.

The Afghan reconciliation plan is intended to duplicate the Awakening movement in Iraq, where Sunni tribal leaders, many of them insurgents, agreed to stop fighting and in many cases were paid to do so. The Awakening contributed to the remarkable decline in violence in Iraq.

I didn’t realize the Taliban were led by a group of tribal elders. Yuck. This reads almost like a press release from ISAF [International Security Assistance Force]: demonstrate one’s understanding of a SAMS course on Afghanistan, then talk about how it’s America’s job to reshape Afghan society into what we think our image of it should have been before the Soviets ruined everything. The arrogance the first pair of paragraphs requires—starting with the assertion that Pashtuns are tribal and form solidarity through kinship and ending with the assumption that we can repeat the Awakening movement in Afghanistan—is really just… wow.

These assertions have been discussed at length in a paper prepared by the Human Terrain System, which practically begs the Army to stop trying to repeat the Sunni Awakening in Afghanistan. “The desire for “tribal engagement” in Afghanistan, executed along the lines of the recent “Surge” strategy in Iraq,” it says, “is based on an erroneous understanding of the human terrain.” The reasoning is that tribes in both countries are structured fundamentally differently, and that Afghans, even Pashtuns do not primarily organize around tribal lines. (More on the tribal militia idea-that-just-won’t-die is here.)

The military has largely ignored this paper—why is that, do you think? Do they not like having their assumptions about a neat tribal solution to all of Afghanistan’s problems challenged? Like this former Taliban official says, no one in the West has done their homework. Well, no one in charge, I should say. To bring up our old theme: they just don’t care.

But it’s not just reporters losing their clinical distance who have been dumbing down the public understanding of Afghanistan. Below are some key concepts the willfully ignorant propagate in order to push whatever pet issue they have, which also happens to either obscure or twist a much broader, more fundamental issue—a children’s treasury of ridiculous assumptions and pet issues.

Pretending the War is Ethnic

Selig S. Harrison is by far the worst offender of the bunch. Without any evidence, and with a history that jumps from Alexander the Great (326 BC) to the British Army (1842) to the Soviets (1979), he says that all Pashtuns are xenophobic zombies who will unite against all outsiders and always win. Harrison supplements this argument by saying that this time, the Taliban’s xenophobia is being driven by a hatred of the Tajik minority lording itself over the Armed Forces, police, and government agencies. Needless to say, his argument is confusing and contradictory, starting with his apparent belief that Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, is a Tajik puppet.

Gareth Porter makes a similar argument: Tajiks are disproportionally more prevalent in the Army, so therefore Pashtuns are culturally compelled to resist the government. Missing in both kinds of argument is a realization that their ideas of what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate ethnic ratios are 100% arbitrary, utterly dependent on which native informant happened to be whispering in their ear at that time. Neither demonstrates any understanding of ethnic relations (the original Taliban wasn’t xenophobic but kafiphobic—mistrustful of all non-Muslims), or why the Taliban actually gains social market share. But the neo-Taliban are a pan-Islamist resistance movement: they reject tribal and ethnic distinctions so long as everyone follows their version of Islam. There’s nothing ethnic about it.

Assuming arbitrary troop numbers will fix things

One of the key offenders here is Leslie Gelb, an otherwise respectable foreign policy scholar. The fact that anyone with his background—that is, with almost no academic or policy experience in Afghanistan of Central/South Asia—would say he’d prefer 15,000 trainers over the 34,000 foot soldiers President Obama is due to approve speaks volumes to the astounding ignorance of our pundit-class. Why would he know? Gelb has argued elsewhere that the troops in Afghanistan are being misused: how could adding more troops into that mix correct that?

SUUUUUUURGE!

You have to love the Kagans [Frederick and Kimberly]. They helped create the Surge in Iraq, which funneled troops into an area already in open revolt against AQIM [Al Qa'eda in Mesopotamia]. And of course, they blame themselves for it working, and not the thousands of Sunni Iraqis who decided to reject the insurgents operating in their neighborhoods half a year before the first surge troop arrived. It wasn’t those dirty browns we’re trying to rule, it was us and our surging, that saved the day!

Anyway, so they’ve been writing weekly op-eds in major newspapers about how badly we need more troops in Afghanistan ever since they realized their impassioned pleas in 2006 for America to ignore Afghanistan in favor of surging into Iraq was in fact a bad idea that needed to be reversed, even though they refuse to acknowledge they were one of the main drivers of said strategic inattention, but still this time their advice is super correct because they clearly got Iraq right because the country is peaceful and everyone really likes living there.

Their latest op-ed is a real gem, however: in a thousand-word explication on the necessity of using troops for political leverage, a lamentation of how the debate has ignored force levels (when in reality the debate has been dominated by a discussion of troop numbers), they can’t bring themselves to mention the Taliban once. I mean, even ignoring the ridiculous assertion that more troops will improve governance, development, education, law enforcement, health care, and whatever else… even ignoring all of that, they say troop numbers will fix Afghanistan but don’t mention why we need troops in the first place.

Somehow, these people are taken seriously. Do you get it?

Healthcare!

I don’t even know what to say: in a world of limited resources, the Obama administration is choosing to emphasize physical security over additional health care spending. This is a tragedy for the Afghans who won’t get health care, to be sure… but is it really undermining the government and the war?

Pee-yew. This is exhausting. I’m sure you get the idea. It is damned tough to find knowledgable people writing about the wars these days. For some reasons, the opinion pages seem dominated by ignorant celebrity-pundits, who of course tell us that we are good and never do wrong and always on the side of Right. Of course we want to believe them—who wouldn’t? But listening to these people both within and outside the government will, quite literally, result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. They are making life and death arguments, and doing so without even basic diligence. I think we owe everyone—ourselves and the world—a tiny bit more effort than that.

UPDATED Iran's Nukes: Obama's Team Buys Time for Engagement

UPDATE 1110 GMT: Cole also has posted the text of the IAEA resolution, which bears out both his analysis and that of EA.

UPDATE 1050 GMT: Another useful analysis, this time from Juan Cole. Cole first offers a detailed background with his "breakout" thesis on Iran's nuclear programme:

Tehran genuinely does not want to actually construct and detonate a nuclear device....But having a rapid breakout capability --- being able to make a bomb in short order if it is felt absolutely necessary to forestall a foreign attack --- has a deterrent effect. So Iran would have the advantages of deterrence without the disadvantages of a bomb if it could get to the rapid breakout stage.

Cole's immediate reading of the current position is hit-and-miss: he's on shaky ground with his analysis that the Revolutionary Guard has vetoed the Supreme Leader's acceptance of an enrichment deal (I don't think anyone except Ayatollah Khamenei knows what he will do), but Cole is invaluable in reading the non-Iranian politics: don't expect BRIC (Brazil-Russia-India-China) to accept a move towards harsh economic measures agianst Tehran.

And Cole's conclusion hits the bull's-eye:

Bottom line: Friday's vote was likely symbolic and a signal to Iran from the international community that there is discomfort with its secretiveness and lack of transparency, and that many are suspicious of its motives. In China's case, it may have been a warning against actions that could harm the Middle Kingdom's burgeoning economy. What it likely was not was a harbinger of tougher international sanctions against Tehran or a sign that BRIC is softening on that issue

UPDATE 0950 GMT: A ray of journalistic light --- Sharwine Narwani offers an excellent analysis, "Eleventh-hour CPR On Iran Nuclear Talks": "Our core problem is not with Iran's enrichment program or it's recently revealed Fordow nuclear plant buried under a mountainside. The central issue clogging up our hotlines is that we do not trust Iran. And they do not trust us."

Looking once more at yesterday's International Atomic Energy Agency resolution on Iran's nuclear programme, it is a most impressive two-card trick by the US Government.

Impressive initially because the first trick is on the media. So far, every major journalist whom I've read or listened to has been taken in by the magician's display of a united "hard line" against Tehran. CNN headlines, "U.N. watchdog urges suspension of Iran nuclear facility", never realising that the 2nd enrichment facility at Fordoo is now just a distraction. The New York Times, in print and in podcast, follows the same sleight-of-hand, adding the flourish that the "sharp rebuke that bore added weight because it was endorsed by Russia and China".

Iran’s Nukes: IAEA Non-Resolution on Enrichment Means Talks Still Alive

How did the White House pull off this trick?

Easily, with a sustained effort in Washington as well as Vienna, to put out the distracting message. Beyond the official statement trumpeting the "broad consensus" behind the resolution, "a senior administration official" added:

What happened in Vienna today is a significant step, and it’s a sign of the increasing seriousness of the international community [and its] growing international impatience....Time really is running out. We hope that the board of governors [vote] reinforces the message that, you know, we’re committed to putting together a package of consequences if we don’t find a willing partner.

How then to uncover the trick and reveal the real strategy of the Obama Administration? Well, the unnamed official offered a sneak peek in those final words "if we don't find a willing partner". At this point, at least some key members of the Obama Administration are still pursuing "willingness".

To be blunt, because that seems to be necessary to knock professional observers out of their wide-eyed daze: the White House has not closed off the talks for a deal of Iran's nuclear enrichment.

Those officials who want a deal, primarily those in the State Department but also I suspect the President, are not willing to give up on months of effort, and they certainly do not want to face both the diplomatic difficulties of pursuing tough sanctions --- watch how quickly it becomes near-impossible to maintain that line of "broad consensus" --- and facing the consequences. It will no longer be a question of losing possible co-operation with Tehran in areas like Afghanistan but of facing possible Iranian counter-moves in the region, including Iraq.

At the same time, those pro-deal officials are fighting a contest against Administration colleagues who just want to go through the motions of negotiations to set up the increased pressure of harsh economic measures. Those colleagues (to find them, go to the National Security Council and follow the path to a Mr D. Ross' office) are the ones spinning newspapers like The Washiington Post that this IAEA resolution is the symbolic step to a sanctions regime which will include Russia and China. (They also are the ones willing to play up the "Israeli military action" that would follow if sanctions are not adopted.)

So the IAEA magic-show pulls out two tricks: it holds the Obama White House together while setting a very real line on the discussions with Iran. The Ahmadinejad Government and the Supreme Leader are being told publicly that "third-party enrichment" has to occur outside Iran; no swaps of uranium inside the country. This is getting close to a take-it-or-leave-it declaration to the regime.

But what if Ahmadinejad and/or Khamenei says "Leave It"? Then, I suspect, you'll see the magic evaporate. For while Ross and others wanting a showdown may get it, I'm not sure they have thought through their next tricks.

Iran MediaWatch: Has "Green Reform" Disappeared in Washington?

UPDATE: Within minutes of posting this, I read an article in The Washington Post which points to an answer to my question:

Two weeks before President Obama visited China.... Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Bader, both senior officials in the National Security Council...traveled to Beijing on a "special mission" to try to persuade China to pressure Iran to give up its alleged nuclear weapons program. If Beijing did not help the United States on this issue, the consequences could be severe.

The Chinese were told that Israel regards Iran's nuclear program as an "existential issue and that countries that have an existential issue don't listen to other countries," according to a senior administration official. The implication was clear: Israel could bomb Iran, leading to a crisis in the Persian Gulf region and almost inevitably problems over the very oil China needs to fuel its economic juggernaut, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier this week, the White House got its answer. China informed the United States that it would support a toughly worded, U.S.-backed statement criticizing the Islamic republic for flouting U.N. resolutions by constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant. The statement, obtained by The Washington Post, is part of a draft resolution to be taken up as soon as Thursday by the 35 nations that make up the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

1. Key personnel in the National Security Council, notably Ross, are hell-bent on getting sanctions as soon as talks with Iran are declared to have broken down.
2. To pursue those sanctions, these officials are prepared to exaggerate to the point of hysteria: "Israe could bomb Iran".
3. To pursue those sanctions, these officials will leak private conversations with foreign powers and sensitive documents to accommodating reporters.
4. To pursue those sanctions, these officials will ignore obvious difficulties: "While diplomats and arms-control experts welcomed China's support of the IAEA resolution, some acknowledged that it is not clear whether Russia or China would go further and agree to new sanctions against Iran."
5. The issue of what is happening inside Iran --- be that "reform", "justice", "human rights" --- is irrelevant to these officials.

Iran: 3 Problems (for the Greens, for the US, for Ahmadinejad)
The Latest from Iran (26 November): Corridors of Conflict

Have "the Greens" disappeared in Washington?

Yesterday's New York Times editorial is an exercise in frustration, bluster, and irrelevance. Its legimitate concern at the oppressions of the Iranian regime falls away into obsession with and distortions of the nuclear issue --- "time is running out"; "Iran’s repressive leaders cannot be allowed to threaten the rest of the world with a nuclear weapon" --- and the knee-jerk call for tougher sanctions through the United Nations Security Council. ( To recap: 1. The Security Council won't adopt such sanctions; 2. They would have little effect on Tehran's position on the nuclear programme; 3. They do nothing to solve the dilemmas of engagement on issues such as Afghanistan; 4. They do nothing with respect to the human rights issue which supposedly concerned the NYT at the start of the editorial.)

Far more interesting is this morning's opinion piece in The Washington Post by Maziar Bahari, the journalist detained for 118 days after the June election, especially if his sentiments are shared by Obama's officials.

After making a striking assertion, "The [Revolutionary] Guards are becoming stronger than the President and the Supreme Leader," Bahari offers an equally striking recommendation,

Can the West, especially the United States, have a dialogue with these people? Yes. Because there is no other choice. The West has to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear program and the stability of Iraq and Afghanistan. Not talking to Tehran doesn't work.

So engagement has to be pursued, even if we don't like the Iranians in charge (including Bahari's jailers).What is most striking, however, is Bahari's treatment of Iranians beyond the Guards, the Supreme Leader, and the Ahmadinejad Government. In contrast to his clear position on engagement, this seems to be a muddled attempt at escapism from his earlier political calculations:

The rumor du jour in Iran is that Obama and the Guards are reaching a deal to normalize relations, in exchange for which America will ignore human rights abuses in Iran. Hence, the opposition movement's slogan "Obama, either with them or with us." The United States has acted against the interests of the Iranian people in the past. Repeating that mistake for tactical gains would be the biggest mistake of the Obama administration.

As for the Iranian people, the more immediate victims of the brutal regime, we have to think long-term. Our anger should be sublimated into something more positive. We have been brutalized to think of the world in black and white. Seeing the shades of gray can be our strongest weapon against those who would jail, beat and torture us.

Given the New York Times flight into nuclear worry and sanctions and the reality of Bahari's engagement --- it is not with the reformists, either as individual figures like Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami or with the grassroots mass of the protest movement, what exactly is the "long-term more positive"?

The Latest from Iran (25 November): Larijani Talks Tough

2030 GMT: El Baradei's Clues. Want to know the state of the nuclear talks with Iran? The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad El Baradei, offers all the necessary hints in an interview with Reuters.

1. Iran's "swap" proposal, exchanging 20% enriched uranium for Iranian 3.5% stock inside the country, is not acceptable. "They are ready to put material under IAEA control on an (Iranian) island in the Persian Gulf. But the whole idea as I explained to them, to defuse this crisis, is to take the material out of Iran. I do not think (Iran's counter-proposal) will work as far as the West is concerned."

NEW Iran : Why Keep On Analysing a “Dysfunctional” Government?
NEW Latest Iran Video: Iran’s Students Speak to Counterparts Around the World
Iran: While the President’s Away…..The Contest Inside Tehran’s Establishment
The Latest from Iran (24 November): A Larijani-Rafsanjani Alliance?

To back his line, El Baradei is playing up uncertainty over the state of Iran's nuclear plans, pivoting on the controversy over the second enrichment plant at Fordoo: "You cannot really use it for civilian purposes. It's too small to produce fuel for a civilian reactor." So while the IAEA has "no indication that there are other undeclared facilities in Iran" or "any information that such facilities exist", Fordoo's existence raises questions about a wider Iranian programme --- questions that El Baradei can use (or create) to push back the "swap" initiative.

Iranian state media has already reacted: "IAEA fails to address Iran nuclear swap concerns". But this pretty much puts an end to Tehran's offer: if El Baradei won't back it, then it's almost certain none of the "5+1" powers will be offering any support.

2. But the talks are still very much alive, resting on a "third-party enrichment" arrangement. The plan would be one in which the IAEA would "take custody and control of the material. We've offered also to have the material in Turkey, a country which has the trust of all the parties.... I am open (to Iranian amendments) if they have any additional guarantees that do not involve keeping the material in Iran."

3. So, for now, El Baradei does not see a move to aggressive sanctions: UN resolutions are mainly "expressions of frustration".

Summary? Ball's in your court, President Ahmadinejad (and Supreme Leader Khamenei). Don't knock it back --- take a modified "third-party enrichment" offer and everyone will be happy.

1955 GMT: The Khatami and Mousavi Statements. Former President Mohammad Khatami has also issued a statement for Basiji week. He used the occasion to criticise both the specific oppression of dissenters --- "These days, honest and truthful people are being oppressed and worse than that all these are being done in the name of Islam and the revolution" --- and the general mismanagement of the Government --- "An unbiased view is that all areas of industry, agriculture, foreign affairs and different managements are in bad shape and all indexes have decline and the country has fallen behind." He continued to emphasise the hope for "a change in the country’s atmosphere" through an adherence to the Constitution".

And to summarise the Mousavi statement (see 1610 GMT): "What shaped Basij in the beginning of the revolution was pure ideas not weapons and military power that raised it to high statures....The goal of Imam Khomeini in creating Basij was to include all or at least a significant majority of the public by not belonging to a particular idea."

Now, however, the Basij "take orders with closed eyes and break tthe arms and legs of their religious brothers and sisters". They need to recognise that those who use lies as "their main political tactic...Following these people is not the righteous path."

At the end of the statement, Mousavi seizes the nationalist mantle and turns the charge of "foreign intervention" against the regime: If terrorising people succeeds, "the country will fall into the hands of foreign invaders".

1905 GMT: Here is Why There Won't Be Tough Sanctions. "The Chinese refiner Sinopec has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company to invest $6.5 billion for building oil refineries in Iran. It is predicted that the two sides will close the deal in the next two months."

1850 GMT: Iranians' Civil Rights Violated (outside Iran). Forgive me for finding this story ironic as wel as serious: "An Iranian NGO (non-government organisation RahPouyan-e-DadGostar) is in the process of logging a legal complaint against the US over its violation of the rights of Iranian detainees."

Without dwelling on the case of Kian Tajbakhsh, the Iranian-American recently jailed for 15 years after a televised "confession" over his supposed role in velvet revolution, I'll note the possible significance that several of the 11 Iranians listed in the report have been connected to possible Israeli and/or US plots to abduct individuals connected with Iran's nuclear programme.

1840 GMT: A month after Iran's Ministry of Education announced a plan to permanently assign a member of the clergy to each school to “fulfill the cultural needs” of students, a religious official has stated that management of Iranian public schools is being transferred to seminaries. Ali Zolelm, the head of the Council of Cooperation between Ministry of Education and the seminaries, saying that seminars have already taken over school management in several provinces and the city of Qom.

1740 GMT: Larijani Keeps Up the Pressure. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, speaking in Tehran, has launched another assault on Iran's nuclear talks with the US, claiming that Washington wanted to deceive the Iranian Government:

Analyzing the U.S. (role) in the nuclear issue shows that there was a trickery in this (deal) proposal (brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency). They (Americans) thought that, using a kind of rhetoric, they can cheat politically," Larijani said addressing a gathering in Tehran, without specifying how the United States has tried to cheat Iran.

1610 GMT: Why Mousavi's Statement (see 1345 GMT) is Significant. An EA correspondent drops by:

Mousavi's latest communique isn't worth noting for its content --- it is a rather stale critique of current basij actions and dubious nostalgic take on the "good old days" of his premiership, when political repression was far higher than now.

What is remarkable is the coordination between Mousavi and Ayatollah Khomeini's bay foundation, run by his nephew Hassan. Mousavi's thoughts regarding the old vs new basij are almost identical to a similar article which appeared yesterday on the Jamaran website, run by the foundation. [Note: Mousavi's latest Internet interview was with Jamaran. -- SL]

This is yet another indicator that Khomeini's family have more than ever thrown their weight behind the reformists, no doubt a significant support in a clannish political system where familial ties are still a key yardstick of political interaction.

1345 GMT: Mousavi and the Basiji Celebrations. Mir Hossein Mousavi has used the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Basiji movement to address the militia in his Statement No. 15. We're looking for an English translation.

1135 GMT: An Outstretched Hand (But You're Still Losers). The Supreme Leader said Wednesday in a televised speech, "Those who are deceived by a smile or applause by the enemy and try to confront the establishment and constitution should know that their efforts are futile."

Ayatollah Khamenei, backing President Ahmadinejad, said the opposition should not be branded as "hypocrites...just because they do not say what we say".

1130 GMT: Inspired by Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir Persepolis, activists have published a Web update on the June election and the protests up to 21 June. All the drawings are from the original memoir except for one --- on the role of Twitter in the demonstrations.

1040 GMT: Trashing Neda. The commander of the Basiji militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, has marked this week's celebrations of his organisation by headlining the "real" story on the killing of Neda Agha Soltan. A "person from America" shot Neda as part of a plot in which the Iranian regime would be blamed for her death.

0930 GMT: The reformist website Rooz Online has published an English-language version of the speech of MP Ali Reza Zakani to which we have paid great attention. The summary is still garbled in places but it seems clear from this version that Zakani's primary targets, are not President Ahmadinejad and his inner circle but Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, and those ministries like Interior and Intelligence whom Ahmadinejad has seen as post-election obstacles.

Specifically, I now think Zakani's references to the eve-of-election polls that indicated a close race between Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi are not, as I first misread (and as Rooz now misreads in its headline), an attack on the President's legitimacy. Instead, they put blame at the feet of Iranian ministries (and implicitly Larijani) who spread the polls and thus fed the notion of electoral "fraud" after Ahmadinejad's victory.

0825 GMT: The New York Times reveals that President Obama, on the eve of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Latin America, wrote a three-page letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Obama signalled his hope that Da Silva would back the US-led Vienna proposal for "third-party enrichment" of Iran's uranium.

More significant than the letter or indeed Da Silva's public response, balancing support for international efforts with a declaration of faith in Iran's "peaceful" programme is the leaking of the news by two Administration officials. This indicates that Washington still considered the discussion with Tehran "live", including Iran's tabling of its still-private response to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

0730 GMT: We've begun this morning by posting a video from Iranian students to international colleagues and a response to a reader's question, "Why do we keep analysing this dysfunctional Government?"

Of course, President Ahmadinejad is not admitting to dysfunction. Instead he is offering the globe-trotting sign that All is Well. After his visits to Gambia and Brazil yesterday, he had a stop-over in Bolivia, where he got a warm reception from a small group of Bolivian Muslims and a show of support for Iran's nuclear position and praise of Iranian-Bolivian links from President Evo Morales. Then it was off to Venezuela and another meeting with Hugo Chavez, a firm back of the Tehran Government.

And, in a signal of hyper-engagement, Iran has revived its application for membership of the World Trade Organization, sending a summary of its commerce policies to the WTO.

"Let America Be America": An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan

Afghanistan: The Great Lock ‘n Load Swindle
Afghanistan: Karzai’s Victory over the US

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Another Sunday, another set of articles and punditry setting out the US can "win" the conflict in Afghanistan. The latest spin is that of the US military supporting a series of local militias throughout the country to defeat the Taliban: this, I presume, is more a signal of Washington's careful distancing from the perceived weakness of the Karzai Government to sell a troop escalation. The New York Times packages the spin as a report by Dexter Filkins, while David Ignatius openly backs the initiative in his opinion piece in The Washington Post, "Afghan Tribes to the Rescue?"

In a guest column for Juan Cole's website, William Polk, a former member of the State Department and professor at the University of Chicago, puts forth an alternative: political and economic steps linked to a measured withdrawal of US troops:

In its war in Afghanistan, the United States has come to a crossroads. President Obama will be forced to choose one of four ways ahead. The choices are cruel, expensive and dangerous for our country; so we must be sure that he chooses the least painful, least expensive and safest of the possible choices.

The first possible choice is to keep on doing what we are now doing. That is, fighting the insurgency with about 60,000 American troops and 68,197 mercenaries at a cost of roughly $2,000 a day per person. That is, we now actually have a total complement of over 120,000 people on the public payroll at an overall cost, of roughly $100 billion a year. We can project a loss of a few hundred American soldiers a year and several thousand wounded. Our senior commander in the Central Command, General David Petraeus, tells us that we cannot win that war.

The second possible road ahead would involve adding substantial numbers of new troops. In General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine, the accepted ratio of soldiers to natives is 20 to 25 per thousand natives.1 Afghanistan today is a country of about 33 million. Even if we discount the population to the target group of Pashtuns, we will must deal with 15 or so million people. So when he and General Stanley McChrystal ask for 40,000, it can only be a first installment. Soon -- as the generals did in Vietnam – they will have to ask for another increment and then another, moving toward the supposedly winning number of 600,000 to 1.3 million. That is just the soldiers. Each soldier is now matched by a supporter, rather like medieval armies had flocks of camp followers, so those numbers will roughly double. Thus, over ten years, a figure often cited, or 40 years, which some of the leading neoconservatives have suggested, would pretty soon, as they say in Congress, involve “talking about real money.” In addition to the Congressionally-allocated outlay, the overall cost to our economy has not yet been summed up, but by analogy to the Iraq war, it will probably amount to upwards of $6 trillion.

Then there are the casualties: we have so far lost about a thousand -- or a quarter as many as in Iraq. Casualties we can count, but the number of seriously wounded keeps growing because many of the effects of exposure to modern weapons do not show up until later. We have no reliable figures yet on Afghanistan. In Iraq at least 100,000 of the one and a half million soldiers who served there suffered severe psychological damage and about 300,000 have reported post-traumatic stress disorder and a similar number have suffered brain injuries. Crassly put, these “walking wounded” will not only be unable fully to contribute to American society but will be a burden on it for many years to come. It has been estimated that dealing with a brain-injured soldier over his remaining life will cost about $5 million. Cancer, from exposure to depleted uranium is, only now coming into full effect. All in all, it is sobering to calculate that 40 percent of the soldiers who served in the 1991 Gulf war – which lasted only a hundred hours – are receiving disability payments. Inevitably, more “boots on the ground” will lead to more beds in hospitals.

General McChrystal has told us that we must have large numbers of additional troops to hold the territory we “clear.” He echoes what the Russian commanders told the Politburo: in a report on November 13, 1986, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev commented that the Russians attempted the same strategy but admitted that it failed. “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan,” he said, “that has not been occupied by one of or soldiers at some time or another. Nevertheless, much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize . . . Without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time.”

The Russian army fought a bloody, brutal campaign, using every trick or tool of counterinsurgency ever identified. The Russians killed a million Afghanis and turned about 5 million into refugees, but after a decade during which they lost 15,000 soldiers and virtually bankrupted the Soviet Union, they gave up and left. General McChrystal says it may take him a decade or more to “win.” But what “winning” means is unclear.

Third, we could marginally increase our troop strength. That is, adding only between 10,000 and 30,000 troops and a comparable number of mercenaries. Not the full complement that General McChrystal has now demanded. This road, according to Petraeus, McChrystal and their acolytes would lead to “mission failure.”

Not meeting the generals’ demands also brings forward the danger to the Obama administration of being charged with putting our soldiers at risk “with one hand tied behind their backs,” a phrase from the acrimonious aftermath of the Vietnam war which even General James Jones, President Obama’s director of the National Security Council, has recently repeated. The potential ugly campaign, against which even Henry Kissinger has warned us, could pose risks to our political culture and even to our legal structure: some military men are already talking about their restiveness in obeying civilian government. “You kind of get used to it after years of service” one Army general said at a convention in Washington last month. Forgetting the constitution, he continued, “We tend to live with it.” Maybe they will or maybe anger will be channeled into a further extension of the military into politics, intelligence and diplomacy.

For the first time that I know of in recent American history, the uniformed military have created what amounts to a pressure group of their own. Generals Petraeus and McChrystal are the leaders but, by influencing or controlling promotions panels, they have fostered the advancement of middle grade and junior officers who agree with them. Some have been brought into a group called “the Colonels’ council.” And numbers of retired senior officers have joined not only in what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” but have become the opinion-makers on foreign policy in the media. Private soldiers and non-commissioned officers have, at the same time, become a major component of the private armies of such groups as Xe (formerly Blackwater) and form an active part of the constituency of the right wing of the Republican Party.

In the dangerous months and years ahead, if this road is taken, we are apt to hear echoes – particularly in the next presidential election --of the post Vietnam rhetoric that the civilians sold out the military. In short, while this option sounds moderate and “business-like” I believe that it is the worst option for President Obama and, more importantly, for the nation.

Or, fourth, we could Get out.

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