PUBLIC FORUM DEBATE
January 2010
Dr. John F. Schunk, Editor
“Resolved: President Obama's plan for increasing troops in Afghanistan is in
the United States' best interest.”
PRO
P01. TALIBAN THREAT IS GROWING IN AFGHANISTAN
P02. AL QAEDA THREAT IS GROWING IN AFGHANISTAN
P03. EXTREMIST THREAT IS GROWING IN PAKISTAN
P04. VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN IS VITAL TO U.S. INTERESTS
P05. U.S. CAN WIN IN AFGHANISTAN
P06. AFGHANS CAN BE PERSUADED TO SWITCH SIDES
P07. RECONCILIATION IS AN ACHIEVABLE GOAL
P08. CORRUPTION WON’T THWART RECONCILIATION
P09. MILITARY EXPERTS FAVOR TROOP INCREASE
P10. IRAQ DEMONSTRATES SUCCESS OF MILITARY SURGE
P11. TRAINING AFGHAN MILITARY REQUIRES SURGE
P12. COUNTER-TERRORISM IS INEFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE
P13. U.S. HAS THE RESOURCES TO INCREASE TROOPS
P14. CASUALTIES SHOULDN’T THWART TROOP INCREASE
P15. U.S. PULLOUT WOULD BE DISASTROUS
CON
C01. TALIBAN ARE NO THREAT TO THE U.S.
C02. AL QAEDA THREAT IS EXAGGERATED
C03. AL QAEDA DOESN’T NEED AFGHANISTAN
C04. THREATS TO PAKISTAN ARE EXAGGERATED
C05. AFGHANISTAN IS NOT VITAL TO U.S. INTERESTS
C06. AVOIDING DEFEAT IS AN INADEQUATE RATIONALE
C07. U.S. CAN’T WIN IN AFGHANISTAN
C08. AFGHANISTAN WILL BECOME U.S. QUAGMIRE
C09. RECONCILIATION IS AN UNACHIEVABLE GOAL
C10. CORRUPTION WILL THWART RECONCILIATION
C11. MILITARY SURGE WON’T WORK
C12. MILITARY SURGE IN IRAQ IS IRRELEVANT
C13. TRAINING IS A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
C14. COUNTER-TERRORISM IS A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
C15. U.S. TROOP INCREASE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
C16. COST OF AFGHAN WAR IS UNACCEPTABLE
C17. DEATH & SUFFERING ARE AT UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS
C18. AMERICANS OPPOSE TROOP INCREASE
S-K PUBLICATIONS
PO Box 8173
Wichita KS 67208-0173
PH 316-685-3201
FAX 316-685-6650
debate@squirrelkillers.com
http://www.squirrelkillers.com
SK/P01. TALIBAN THREAT IS GROWING IN AFGHANISTAN
1. THE TALIBAN IS RESURGENT IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/P01.01) William Schneider, NATIONAL JOURNAL, September 11, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Taliban is
resurgent in southern Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in
Afghanistan, contends that the situation is "serious, but success is achievable."
SK/P01.02) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. The Taliban's followers have pushed the Afghan
government and its allies out of large swaths of the countryside and crept up to the gates
of Kabul, bringing an alternative administration and sharia courts to the vacated areas.
The Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar recently offered, ironically, to give safe
passage to NATO forces that choose to leave the country, just as the mujahideen offered
safe passage to Soviet troops two decades ago.
SK/P01.03) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. The replacement of General David McKiernan with General
Stanley McChrystal at the head of U.S. operations in Afghanistan is also intended to
increase force projection there. The United States' allies are under pressure to follow suit,
if not with combat troops, then at least with training and money. All are concerned about
the Taliban's recent success at persuading thousands of young Afghan men to sacrifice
themselves to fight the foreign occupation.
2. TROOP INCREASE IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT TALIBAN VICTORY
SK/P01.04) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. This year has already
proven by far the most costly in terms of U.S. and allied casualties, and the Taliban now
controls or contests increasingly broad swaths of Afghan territory. An intelligence
estimate given to the White House indicates that the number of Taliban fighters in
Afghanistan has nearly quadrupled since 2006 (from 7,000 to 25,000), The Washington
Times reported. In his stark, 66-page assessment of the situation, McChrystal warns that
unless the Taliban's momentum is checked in the next 12 months, the war may be
irretrievably lost.
SK/P02. AL QAEDA THREAT IS GROWING IN AFGHANISTAN
1. TALIBAN ALLOWED AL QAEDA TO CARRY OUT 9/11 PLOT
SK/P02.01) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Mr. McConnell [US Senate
Minority Leader] said he was confident that the Senate would support Gen. McChrystal's
request for more troops. This is not just about nation-building, Mr. McConnell said. "This
is about protecting the United States of America. When the Taliban was in charge in
Afghanistan, al Qaeda was allowed to operate freely, he said. We know they launched the
9/11 attack from there, planned it and launched it from there.”
2. TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED TOGETHER
SK/P02.02) Andrew Coyne, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Yes, al-Qaeda is a worldwide
organization, but there's a reason why its leadership was based in Afghanistan at the time
of 9/11, and why it continues to lurk just across the border in Pakistan. According to
intelligence reports, the Taliban, especially its Haqqani faction, remain intimately
connected with al-Qaeda, with Taliban opium providing an important source of funds.
SK/P02.03) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. Officials in national security organs that are committed to the counterinsurgency
strategy have now pushed back against the officials who they see as undermining the war
policy. McClatchy newspapers reported Sunday that officials have cited what they call
"recent U.S. intelligence assessments" that the Taliban and other Afghan insurgent
groups have "much closer ties to al-Qaeda now than they did before 9/11" and would
allow al-Qaeda to re-establish bases in Afghanistan if they were to prevail. McClatchy
reporters said 15 mid-level or senior intelligence, military, and diplomatic officials they
interviewed had agreed with the alleged intelligence assessments.
SK/P02.04) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Mr. McCain [US Senator]
said that despite reports that al Qaeda's numbers have dwindled in Afghanistan, easing
pressure on the country's Taliban rebels would embolden and strengthen the terrorist
group. They will become inextricably tied, he said. Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell, Kentucky Republican, agreed that the Taliban and al Qaeda must be
confronted simultaneously.
3. AL QAEDA IS CONTINUING TO PLOT AGAINST THE U.S.
SK/P02.05) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Yet virtually all major
terrorist plots against the U.S. or Europe since 2005, including the recent arrest in Denver
of suspected plotter Najibullah Zazi, share a common thread: links to Qaeda enablers and
training camps in Pakistan. One person who thinks that the surviving Qaeda core in
Pakistan still represents the most dangerous threat in the global terrorist pantheon is
Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the federal interagency
body that collates intelligence on terrorists. He recently testified before the Senate that
the Qaeda "core is actively engaged in operational plotting and continues recruiting,
training, and transporting operatives, to include individuals from Western Europe and
North America."
SK/P02.06) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Just eight years into this
long war, with the Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Al Qaeda
helping to unsettle Somalia and Yemen, it seems unlikely that bin Laden is reviewing his
own long-term strategy.
4. AL QAEDA TRAINING CAMPS MUST BE DESTROYED
SK/P02.07) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Before it withdraws its forces, the U.S. will
want to be sure that all al-Qaeda bases have been destroyed and that the group will not be
able to use Afghanistan as a launching pad for further terrorist attacks. In theory, that is
doable. Intelligence officials estimate that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda operatives in
Afghanistan, but for the Taliban to completely renounce their al-Qaeda sponsors, says
Giustozzi, they will have to be provided with alternative sources of income.
SK/P03. EXTREMIST THREAT IS GROWING IN PAKISTAN
1. EXTREMIST VIOLENCE IS INCREASING IN PAKISTAN
SK/P03.01) Adnan R. Khan, MACLEAN’S, November 2, 2009, p. 32, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Meanwhile, the public mood in
Pakistan is approaching near panic levels. Suicide attacks are an almost daily occurrence,
with twin bombings in Islamabad on Tuesday killing seven, including the two suicide
bombers. There is of course no guarantee that Pakistan's strategy in Waziristan will put
an end to the violence. Violent extremists remain entrenched in Punjab and in the
southern port city of Karachi. Another group has emerged on the southwestern border
with Iran-the Sunni extremist group Jundallah, meaning 'the Soldiers of God." It has been
blamed for an Oct. 18 suicide attack on Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Iranian
border city of Pishin that killed 60 people.
SK/P03.02) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. With the Pakistani army
poised to launch an offensive against militants in the south Waziristan region and the
United States distracted by the Afghan elections and strategy review, extremists in
Pakistan lashed out with some of the boldest attacks of the conflict to date. Militants
seized hostages at the Pakistani army headquarters in Rawalpindi, destroyed the World
Food Program offices of the United Nations in Islamabad, and killed scores of people
during a suicide bombing at a market in the Swat Valley.
2. STABILITY IN PAKISTAN IS VITAL TO THE U.S.
SK/P03.03) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Despite whatever future
we might wish for Afghanistan, the United States and its allies have only two
fundamental interests there that are worth waging war to secure," said Stephen Biddle, a
senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is also a member of McChrystal's
strategic advisory team. "Those are keeping Afghanistan from becoming a base for
extremists striking the West, or from destabilizing Pakistan. We tend to talk most about
the former, but the second is the more important interest."
SK/P03.04) Bill Schneider, NATIONAL JOURNAL, November 6, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. What would victory in
Afghanistan mean? "The marginalization of the terrorists so they are reduced to
ineffectual status," Johnson [national security director at Third Way] said. Achieving that
would require the full cooperation of Pakistan, because Qaeda and Taliban extremists
operate out of bases in Pakistani territory. The main reason the United States is fighting
in Afghanistan may be to keep the Pakistanis fighting on their side of the border. They
won't fight unless we do.
3. TALIBAN TAKEOVER WOULD BE A NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE
SK/P03.05) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Certainly Al Qaeda and its
affiliates could find sanctuary in other countries, and certainly the United States doesn't
have enough combat brigades to send on counterinsurgency missions to all of those
places. But Biddle [a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations] believes that Al
Qaeda poses a uniquely potent threat in the Afghan and Pakistani soil of its inception. "A
terrorist and insurgency threat that takes root in Afghanistan is almost ideally suited
geographically to destabilize Pakistan," he said. "In Pakistan itself you have an enormous
country with an active insurgency and a large nuclear arsenal, and serious security
challenges that the United States has very few tools to counter. In such a dangerous
situation we should invoke the Hippocratic oath and at least do no harm. And if the
Taliban were to collapse the government in Afghanistan and take power there, it would
do serious harm to the government across the border in Pakistan."
SK/P04. VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN IS VITAL TO U.S. INTERESTS
1. LOSS IN AFGHANISTAN WOULD INCREASE RISK OF TERRORISM
SK/P04.01) Andrew Coyne, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Besides, you can't look at
Afghanistan in isolation. Pakistan, with its vulnerable nuclear arsenal, is arguably the
gravest security threat in the world today. How much more emboldened will its own
insurgents be if the Taliban triumph in Afghanistan? Or never mind Pakistan: how much
of a boost would a Western defeat in Afghanistan provide to jihadists around the world?
There is no more potent recruiting slogan than "we're winning."
2. VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN IS VITAL FOR STABILIZING PAKISTAN
SK/P04.02) Andrew Coyne, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A "hearts and minds" strategy in
Afghanistan may in part be about democracy and development, but it's mostly about the
understandable desire of tribal leaders to line up with the winning side. Show resolve
now, and they may fall our way; secure Afghanistan, and Pakistan will have less fear of
going after its own Taliban.
3. IMPERATIVE FOR VICTORY NECESSITATES TROOP INCREASE
SK/P04.03) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 7, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If the Afghan War is important
enough that we need to win it, and if counterinsurgency is the only way to do that-conclusions that most members of Obama's national-security team, from Hillary Clinton
to Bob Gates to chairman of the joint chiefs Admiral Mullen, have already reached--then
McChrystal must get his troops.
SK/P05. U.S. CAN WIN IN AFGHANISTAN
1. POPULAR SUPPORT FOR RECONCILIATION IS STRONG
SK/P05.01) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. A focused campaign to win the cooperation of significant
elements within the Taliban can succeed. For one thing, there is popular support for
reconciliation in Afghanistan. In a nationwide poll sponsored by ABC News, the BBC,
and ARD of Germany and conducted in February 2009, 64 percent of the respondents
stated that the Afghan government should negotiate a settlement with the Taliban and
agree to let the group's members hold office if they agree to stop fighting.
2. U.S. HAS SHARPENED ITS COUNTERINSURGENCY STRATEGIES
SK/P05.02) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, May 1, 2009, pNA, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. To succeed in Afghanistan,
Obama will have to coax a harmony of strategy and collaboration from government
bureaucracies noted more for ad hoc planning and infighting, and to carefully orchestrate
a team of headstrong primadonnas to follow the same sheet of music. "The good news is,
we are blessed with a weak opponent in the Taliban, and our military is much more
proficient in counterinsurgency operations today than in 2001," said Stephen Biddle,
senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
3. VICTORY MAY TAKE YEARS BUT TIME IS ON OUR SIDE
SK/P05.03) Andrew Coyne, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Will that take time? Yes. The
textbook example of a successful counter-insurgency campaign, the British operation in
Malaya, took 12 years (1948-1960) to complete. But I'd argue time is on our side. The
Taliban can't win while we're there. And as long as we're there, we can train the Afghans
to take our place. Eventually, they'll reach fighting strength.
SK/P06. AFGHANS CAN BE PERSUADED TO SWITCH SIDES
1. AFGHANS ALWAYS WANT TO BE ON THE WINNING SIDE
SK/P06.01) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. The idea that large groups of armed men bent on killing
Americans and other Westerners can be persuaded to change sides may seem fanciful at
first. But it is not--at least not in Afghanistan. After continuing uninterrupted for more
than 30 years, war in Afghanistan has developed its own peculiar rules, style, and logic.
One of these rules is side with the winner. Afghan commanders are not cogs in a military
machine but the guardians of specific interests--the interests of the fighters pledged to
them and of the tribal, religious, or political groups from which these men are recruited.
Few factors have motivated individual Afghan commanders over the years more than the
desire to end up on the winning side.
SK/P06.02) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. Afghanistan's recent history is replete with examples of
commanders choosing to flip rather than fight. In the most recent civil war, which lasted
from the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet-backed regime in 1992 to the Taliban's capture
of over 80 percent of Afghanistan in the fall of 1998, the heads of mujahideen groups
constantly shifted their allegiances. The Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum was the
Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud's friend first, and then he was his foe. The
Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari fought against the Pashtun headman Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar before fighting by his side. More than the fighting, it was this flipping that
decided major outcomes.
SK/P06.03) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. For all their reputed fanaticism, in other words, Taliban
commanders will leave the movement and shift allegiances if the conditions are right. In
December 2004, the senior Taliban commander Abdul Wahid announced that he had
reconciled with the Afghan government. His move was justified, he argued, because he
had essentially been released from any obligations to Mullah Omar in December 200l,
after Mullah Omar asked him to lead the delegation that would surrender Kandahar to
pro-coalition forces and thereby forsook his exalted position as "Commander of the
Faithful." This rationale allowed Wahid to keep affirming his commitment to building an
Islamic state in Afghanistan even as he announced that the Afghan president, Hamid
Karzai, was his new leader. There are plenty of similar examples of Taliban commanders
who have turned: the Hotak brothers of Wardak Province, who had held senior positions
in the Taliban; Nur Ali Haidery Ishaqzai, the director of Ariana Afghan Airlines under
the Taliban; Abdul Salam Rocketi, once the Taliban corps commander in Jalalabad and
now a member of parliament; and Arsala Rahmani, a deputy minister under the Taliban
turned senator today.
2. IRAQ SHOWS PRECEDENT FOR FIGHTERS SWITCHING SIDES
SK/P06.04) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. For those who think that negotiations are
worth trying and that so-called moderate Taliban can be coaxed to break ranks with their
extremist leaders, there is a hopeful precedent. Starting in early 2007, tens of thousands
of Iraqi insurgents were persuaded to lay down their weapons in exchange for cash and
jobs, usually as part of local militias fighting their former al-Qaeda allies. Building on
that example, General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander of international forces in
Afghanistan, wrote in his recent assessment of the Afghan war that NATO "must identify
opportunities to reintegrate former mid- to low-level insurgent fighters into normal
society by offering them a way out."
SK/P06.05) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Lieut. General Graeme Lamb, a former head
of Britain's special forces who was asked by McChrystal to head the program, which was
announced in September, says insurgents need to be offered security, vocational training,
jobs and amnesty for past crimes. "This is not rocket science," says Lamb. "Insurgents
have been reconciling and reintegrating back into society for centuries. This is about
entering a dialogue where they can see opportunities, because the way you counter an
insurgency is with a better life."
SK/P06.06) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. Fortunately, this also means the undertaking would not be
prohibitively expensive. In Iraq, the U.S. government and then the Iraqi government put
100,000 Sunni gunmen on the payroll, many--if not most--of them former insurgents, for
about $300 a month each. That amounts to $30 million a month, a reasonable amount
given the costs of the war. In Afghanistan, the same amount could be used to give as
many as 250,000 insurgents about $120 a month, which is equal to the average monthly
salary of a low-ranking member of the Afghan National Army.
3. TROOP INCREASE IS NECESSARY TO GET FIGHTERS TO SWITCH
SK/P06.07) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. Although sending more troops is necessary to tip the balance
of power against the insurgents, the move will have a lasting impact only if it is
accompanied by a political "surge," a committed effort to persuade large groups of
Taliban fighters to put down their arms and give up the fight. Both the recent interagency
white paper on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan and Obama's March 27
speech announcing a new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan acknowledged that integrating
reconcilable insurgents will be a key complement to the military buildup.
SK/P06.08) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Persuading fighters to think of laying down
their arms might be the easiest part of a new approach. They also need to believe they
will be safe if they do so. Many Taliban foot soldiers joined the movement simply
because they ended up on the wrong side of a local power equation. As with Jameel in
Wardak province, affiliation with the Taliban offered them protection. So if they are
going to disarm, they need to be confident that the side they are joining will stay and win-otherwise, desertion could be a death sentence. Trouble is, that means making the sort of
guarantee that the U.S. and its allies shy away from. When Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said recently that the U.S. is "not interested in staying [in Afghanistan]" and has
"no long-term stake there," she probably--if inadvertently--caused fence sitters to
reconsider their options. Indeed, Masoom Stanekzai, Karzai's point man on the
reintegration policy, says that for it to work, a U.S. commitment of more troops is
important. "The stronger presence of security forces in an area means that more Taliban
commanders are under pressure," says Stanekzai. "They will ask themselves, 'Continue
and be killed, or join the peace process?'"
SK/P06.09) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Both Afghan and Western officials have
embraced the new terminology: they seek reintegration for low-level Taliban members
who are assumed to be fighting for money or personal grievances, and reconciliation for
Taliban leaders who are motivated by ideology. The plan, according to U.S. officials, will
be undertaken in concert with the Afghan government. "We think that reintegration, if
done right, if done by Afghan leaders and people, helps to create conditions for broaderscale reconciliation," says a U.S. diplomat.
SK/P07. RECONCILIATION IS AN ACHIEVABLE GOAL
1. AFGHANS ARE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THEIR FUTURE
SK/P07.01) Jerry Guo, NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL, November 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Yet Afghans are
increasingly optimistic. In an Asia Foundation survey taken in June and July, 42 percent
said the country is moving in the right direction, up from 38 percent last year, despite
rampant corruption and Taliban advances. The margin for error was about 4 percent, so
this doesn't represent a big spike, but it's still striking that Afghanistan's morale is not
decaying as fast as the world's view of Afghanistan is.
2. BARRIER TO RECONCILIATION HAS BEEN LACK OF SECURITY
SK/P07.02) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. Of all the shortcomings of the Afghan government and its
NATO allies, it is the failure to provide security for ordinary Afghans that has most
prevented large-scale reconciliation in the country. The Taliban have worked diligently to
make the costs of reconciliation prohibitively high. "It is amazing to see how sensitive
and scared everyone in Kandahar is to talk about the Taliban and the government
reconciling," an Afghan scholar researching the reconciliation conundrum told us in April.
"There is no [government] strategy in place to defy antipeace and antireconciliation
attempts." Indeed, so far, the weakness of the Karzai administration and the steady spread
of insecurity across the country's Pashtun areas, in the east and the south, have boosted
the position of those insurgents who favor continuing the conflict.
3. TROOP INCREASE IS NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE RECONCILIATION
SK/P07.03) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. In order for reconciliation to work, ordinary Afghans will
have to feel secure. The situation on the ground will need to be stabilized, and the Taliban
must be reminded that they have no prospect of winning their current military campaign.
If the Afghan government offers reconciliation as its carrot, it must also present force as
its stick--hence, the importance of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but also, in
the long term, the importance of building up Afghanistan's own security forces.
Reconciliation needs to be viewed as part of a larger military-political strategy to defeat
the insurgency, like the one Washington has pursued recently in Iraq: win over the
insurgents who are willing to reconcile, and kill or capture those who are not.
SK/P07.04) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. Finally, it is only if the United States' military surge can
demonstrably stem the insurgents' influence in Pashtun areas that militants there will start
to believe that they might be able to stay alive if they realign with the government. If
these conditions are met, a comprehensive strategy for reconciliation--launched with teadrinking diplomacy that involves both Afghan and international parties and creates a safe
haven for negotiations with Taliban commanders in Pakistan--could help bring stability
to Afghanistan.
4. RECONCILIATION WILL NOT ALLOW AL QAEDA IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/P07.05) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In recent months, Mullah Omar, the one-eyed
veteran Taliban leader, seems to have distanced himself from al-Qaeda. In a September
statement, Omar assured foreign nations that Afghanistan would never again be used as a
launching ground for international terrorism, as it was before 9/11. "We assure all
countries," he said, "that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will
not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others." Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the
Afghanistan Analysts Network and author of a recent book on the war, is convinced that
the Taliban is trying to send a message. "They are presenting themselves as a parallel
government. Even before 9/11 they wanted to play ball. We didn't take them seriously
then, but we should start doing that now."
SK/P07.06) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. The core rationale for the current NATO mission in
Afghanistan is to ensure that the Afghan authorities can prevent the Taliban's al Qaeda
allies from exploiting Afghanistan as a base for terrorist operations. If they want to
extricate themselves from the insurgency and become part of Afghanistan's new deal,
Taliban commanders will have to demonstrate that they have broken with al Qaeda.
SK/P08. CORRUPTION WON’T THWART RECONCILIATION
1. CLEAN GOVERNMENT IS A GOAL, NOT A PRECONDITION
SK/P08.01) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 7, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. All the erstwhile Afghanistan
hawks on the left have made Karzai central to their anti-war case. Karzai's performance is
undeniably a problem, but a strategy of counterinsurgency regards relatively clean,
functional government as a goal, not a precondition.
SK/P08.02) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 7, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Obama administration would
be wise to see Karzai as a flawed partner rather than a punching bag. The threats to cut
him loose prior to the election only pushed him into the arms of exactly the kind of
people we want him to avoid and to isolate. If he cannot rely on us, why would he not
fortify himself politically with the support of key indigenous players, even tainted ones?
If we want Karzai to improve, we will need to work through problems with him rather
than huff and puff with ultimata (pulling out, or drawing down) that we can't follow
through on without damaging our interests.
2. AFGHANS WERE NOT OVERLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE ELECTION
SK/P08.03) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 23, 2009, p. 9, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The great Afghan election drama
ended in a fizzle. After the administration strong-armed Hamid Karzai into accepting a
runoff, his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out, and Karzai was declared the winner.
This was all much ado, for two reasons: 1) Abdullah was in all likelihood going to lose a
runoff anyway; 2) ordinary Afghans surely care more about the government's
performance on the most basic matters--security, corruption, rule of law--than the niceties
of electoral process.
3. SURGE CAN MAKE GOVERNMENT MORE POPULAR AS IT DID IN IRAQ
SK/P08.04) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 23, 2009, p. 9, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The question now is how to
increase the government's legitimacy by improving its performance. That will be
predicated--as so much else in the region--on giving General McChrystal the troops he
needs to implement an effective counterinsurgency campaign. Prime Minister Maliki in
Iraq seemed hopelessly weak and ineffective as well, so long as we didn't have enough
troops in the country to impose basic order. As security improved, so did Maliki. The
same could happen in Afghanistan--if President Obama heeds the advice of his
commanding general.
SK/P08.05) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 7, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Iraqi prime minister Nouri alMaliki had many of the same failings as Karzai while we were permitting his country to
collapse all around him in 2006. Only when the surge improved security did he become a
stronger and more popular leader. No such transformation will happen in Afghanistan
unless McChrystal gets his additional troops.
4. U.S. OBJECTIVE IS NOT TO PROP UP A CORRUPT GOVERNMENT
SK/P08.06) Bill Schneider, NATIONAL JOURNAL, November 6, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Obama strategy is
likely to involve a modest increase in troops. Americans seem fairly certain about one
thing: Security is more important than nation-building. In the ABC News/Post poll, about
two-thirds said that preventing the establishment of Qaeda bases and keeping the Taliban
out of power are high priorities in Afghanistan. Only about one-third gave high priority to
establishing a stable democratic government and promoting economic development there.
President Obama appears to have gotten the message. He seems to be leaning toward a
middle-way approach aimed mainly at security objectives. The United States cannot be
seen as fighting to protect the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The
tainted election undermined the credibility of that government.
SK/P09. MILITARY EXPERTS FAVOR TROOP INCREASE
1. GENERAL MCCHRYSTAL IS THE EXPERT ON TROOP LEVELS
SK/P09.01) Editorial, NATIONAL REVIEW, December 7, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. It is understandable that he
[President Obama] wants to think carefully before almost doubling our force in
Afghanistan, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal has asked him to do. But let's remember:
McChrystal is Obama's hand-picked general, sent to Afghanistan to carry out the
"comprehensive" strategy Obama announced in the spring.
2. IT WOULD BE FOOLISH NOT TO FOLLOW HIS RECOMMENDATION
SK/P09.02) Essay, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. McChrystal's request shouldn't be
finessed or bid down. This isn't a negotiation in the Senate Finance Committee. If we are
to pursue a proper counterinsurgency strategy and not just pay it lip service, McChrystal
must have enough troops to achieve a decisive effect. Anything short of that is folly. Our
troops will continue to make heartbreaking sacrifices--but without the desired result.
SK/P09.03) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Ms. Feinstein, chairman of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, noted that a total withdrawal from
Afghanistan was taken off the table by Mr. Obama in last week's congressional meetings.
Given that, the California Democrat said, if you don't want to take the [general's]
recommendations, then you put your people in such jeopardy. I don't know how you put
somebody in who was as crackerjack as General McChrystal, who gives the president
very solid recommendations, and not take those recommendations if you're not going to
pull out, Ms. Feinstein said Sunday on ABC's This Week.
SK/P09.04) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Sen. John McCain, Arizona
Republican, said the White House would be committing an error of historic proportions if
it doesn't accede to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request for tens of thousands more
troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California upped the
pressure for a major Afghanistan troop surge from the Democratic side, saying it makes
no sense to stay in Afghanistan and not grant the general the forces he says are necessary.
SK/P09.05) David Brostrom, NEWSWEEK, November 30, 2009, p. 42, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But the goal shouldn't be to
achieve success with less. Months before Wanat, Gen. David McKiernan requested that
30,000 more troops be sent to Afghanistan. The Bush administration shunned him. It
shouldn't have--and the current administration should not second-guess Gen. Stanley
McChrystal's request for about 40,000 troops. As the president weighs his options, more
soldiers and Marines die fighting without the resources and strategic vision they need.
SK/P10. IRAQ DEMONSTRATES SUCCESS OF MILITARY SURGE
1. MILITARY SURGE HAS BEEN EFFECTIVE IN IRAQ
SK/P10.01) Essay, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In Iraq, we had troops patrolling
Baghdad but couldn't secure the city until we had enough forces to confront the enemy in
Baghdad's surrounding belts. With enough troops in Iraq, focused on a true
counterinsurgency mission, we could squeeze al-Qaeda, the Sunni insurgents, and the
Shiite militia out of neighborhoods, then out of cities, then out of entire regions of the
country, until they were isolated in a few areas and no longer a serious threat to the
government of Iraq (or to our interests).
SK/P10.02) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In 2007, the surge of
30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq and the wooing of Sunni Arabs away from the insurgency
brought the threat down as the capacity of Iraqi security forces rose. In Afghanistan,
threat and capacity are far from that happy meeting place.
2. SURGE CAN WORK IN AFGHANISTAN AS IT DID IN IRAQ
SK/P10.03) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. But he [Senator Lindsay
Graham] also called a U.S. troop increase a prerequisite to boosting Afghan forces and
making the Afghan government more functional, citing success in Iraq. Once the security
got better because of the surge, the Iraqis stepped up, he said.
SK/P10.04) Andrew Coyne, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Is victory any less probable in
Afghanistan? I'll just say off the top that the debate about Afghanistan nowadays sounds
a lot like Iraq in 2006--just before the surge that quelled the insurrection. Might not a
similar change in strategy change the outlook in Afghanistan?
SK/P11. TRAINING AFGHAN MILITARY REQUIRES SURGE
1. TROOP INCREASE NECESSARY FOR TRAINING MILITARY & POLICE
SK/P11.01) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In the long run, it is
true that "as the Afghans stand up, we will stand down," to adapt the cliche that is, after
many years, finally coming true in Iraq. But that equation is true only over the long run.
In the next few years, at least, getting more Afghans ready to fight requires deploying
more, not fewer, Americans to train them in boot camp, to advise them in the field, and
above all, to fight alongside them. In the near term, training more Afghans is not an
alternative to sending more Americans: Achieving the goal requires more Americans.
SK/P11.02) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As the Iraqi debacle
of 2004 showed, advising cannot be neatly divorced from fighting. Before drawing down,
U.S. forces had to not only build up their local allies but also grind down the threat to a
level low enough that the nascent indigenous units could tackle it on their own.
Americans naturally prefer to focus on the handoff, not the fight. Even the names of the
commands overseeing training for Iraqis and Afghans optimistically signal that goal:
"Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq" and "Combined Security Transition
Command-Afghanistan." But "you never get to that level if you don't improve security,"
said retired Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who led the transition command in Iraq at the height
of the violence.
2. AFGHAN FIGHTERS ARE HIGHLY TRAINABLE
SK/P11.03) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "There's a difference
between Afghans and Iraqis," said Morgan [Lt. Col., 101st Airborne], who has served in
both countries. "The Afghans have been fighting for a long time, and you can see it in
their eyes. They are not afraid to fight."
SK/P11.04) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Such hands-on
learning has made the Afghan national army an effective infantry force, one small unit of
foot soldiers at a time. Of the 90 battalions, or kandaks, fielded to date, the U.S. military
considers only three unready for combat -- one of those is fresh from basic training -- and
28, a third of the total, are rated capable of operating without U.S. support.
3. ACHIEVING RELIABLE AFGHAN SECURITY WILL ALLOW U.S. TO EXIT
SK/P11.05) Fotini Christia [Asst. Professor of Political Science, MIT] & Michael
Semple, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 34, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. The United States is rightly committed to ensuring that
Afghan forces, principally the police and the army, take over responsibility for the
country's security; any U.S. military surge is essentially a temporary fix.
SK/P11.06) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The U.S. military
and the Afghan forces it mentors have come a long way since 2001. There is still a long
way to go. "If we are going to depart Afghanistan," Nagl said, "the only way to do so and
be secure is to have a reliable Afghan security force appropriately sized, working for a
reasonably well-respected, well-supported Afghan government. That's a work of three to
five years and more resources than we have yet put into Afghanistan." He added, "The
alternative is truly to fight a forever war."
4. SIMPLY PROVIDING TRAINING ALONE ISN’T ENOUGH
SK/P11.07) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 23, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. We know that
training the Afghans to defend themselves will require more Americans, not fewer,
because we have tried it the other way. In 2003 and 2004, the United States attempted to
build Iraqi forces on the cheap and to hand over security to them prematurely while
drawing down American troops. When fighting in Falluja triggered uprisings across the
country, the undertrained and undersupported Iraqi units mostly dissolved -- with some
significant exceptions. "When we had U.S. forces, for example in An Najaf, the police
stood there and fought," recalled Brig. Gen. David Quantock, who in 2004 commanded a
military police brigade tasked with training Iraqi cops -- on top of patrolling the highways
and reforming Abu Ghraib prison. "In those stations where there was no [U.S.] presence,
like in Kufa, those stations were lost."
SK/P11.08) Essay, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If Obama is not going to change
strategies wholesale, that leaves the question whether he is going to give McChrystal-who wants at least 40,000 additional troops--the forces he says he needs. The temptation
will be to try to economize, which is what Sen. Carl Levin advocates. Levin wants only
to expand our training of the Afghan security forces. This unworkable approach has
already been tried. The commanding general in Afghanistan whom Obama fired, Gen.
David McKiernan, tried to kill enough enemy leaders to make a difference, to hold off
the Taliban in an essentially defensive approach, and to train up the Afghan army to take
on the fight. This tack was and is failing, just as it failed under Gen. George Casey in Iraq
for years.
SK/P11.09) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In any negotiations, for example, the Taliban
would want to see a timeline for the withdrawal of international forces. The problem
there, Hekmat Karzai says, is that "Afghans know that if the international soldiers leave
we won't have a solid security institution, so foreign withdrawal has to be concomitant
with increased Afghan security forces." But training of the Afghan army and police force
is going more slowly than planned, and U.S. and European instructors are in short supply.
It will be several years before Afghan troops can defend the country on their own.
SK/P12. COUNTER-TERRORISM IS INEFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE
1. LIMITED COUNTER-TERRORISM ALTERNATIVE WOULD FAIL
SK/P12.01) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. When McChrystal was
asked whether he could support the narrower counter-terrorism strategy favored by Vice
President Biden that uses armed Predator drones and Special Forces units to target Qaeda
leaders in Pakistan, his reply caused a furor. "The short answer is no," he told an audience
at a London think tank. Such a narrow focus would lead to "Chaos-istan," said
McChrystal, who was later quoted in Newsweek warning against half-measures. "You
can't hope to contain the fire by letting just half the building burn."
SK/P12.02) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "The argument that you
can just focus on counter-terrorism strikes with Predator drones and Special Forces
operations ignores the fact that if you were going to search the planet for the single most
qualified person to execute such a plan, you would pick Stanley McChrystal, and he
doesn't think it's feasible," said Frederick Kagan, a counterinsurgency expert at the
American Enterprise Institute who was influential in helping to craft U.S.
counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq. Kagan notes that McChrystal, as the head of
clandestine Special Forces and CIA hunter-killer teams in Iraq, bagged the most-wanted
Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
SK/P12.03) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The effectiveness of
armed Predator drones also depends on benign airspace and nearby bases to increase their
"loiter" time over unsuspecting targets, and both are supplied by a willing Pakistani
government and security services. Finally, and most important, the dramatic increases in
successful strikes and thwarted plots point to improved intelligence-sharing between
Western and Pakistani intelligence services. All of those advantages could potentially
disappear, experts say, if friends and foes see the United States as backing away from its
commitment to the stability of Afghanistan. Regional powers and their proxies would
almost certainly interpret such a strategic shift as a signal that Afghanistan is once again
in play and that the United States cannot be counted upon.
SK/P12.04) Jamie M. Fly [Executive Director, Foreign Policy Initiative],
NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 21, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. The strategy Vice President Biden now offers, like many
others he has advocated over the last three decades, is unsound. To borrow his own words,
it would be dangerously wrong. It is divorced from reality and America's most basic
national interests.
2. COUNTER-TERRORISM INEFFECTIVE WITHOUT TROOP INCREASE
SK/P12.05) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Anthony Cordesman is the
longtime national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, and is one of a group of outside advisers brought in by Gen. McChrystal last
summer to help develop his counterinsurgency strategy. "A lot of these proposals for
shifting to a counter-terrorism strategy or handing security responsibility to Afghan
forces are primarily arguments for not increasing U.S. troop levels as opposed to real
options, because they are decoupled from the realities and complexities of the situation
on the ground," he told National Journal. "How are you going to target insurgent or
Qaeda leaders when their networks are dispersed and they are deeply embedded in cities,
and it's impossible to identify them without boots on the ground gathering intelligence?
What schedules, plans, and density of assets are you going to put behind building Afghan
security forces?
SK/P12.06) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Current military thinking
holds that once insurgencies reach a critical mass in unstable societies, counterinsurgency
tactics of "clear, hold, and build" are required to win back public support for the
government by providing persistent security, economic development, and basic services.
Or, as the adage goes, the military has to drain the swamp in which insurgents swim
beneath the surface. Those counterinsurgency imperatives were written into official
military doctrine by Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the Iraq surge and head of the
U.S. Central Command. They are featured prominently in war college curricula and are
taught at military training centers. More important, counterinsurgency concepts now
inform the combat experiences of a generation of U.S. military officers. According to a
senior officer in the Special Forces, which along with the CIA are primarily responsible
for targeting terrorists, counter-terrorism operations are extremely difficult to conduct
without the presence of ground troops to gather human intelligence on the whereabouts of
bad guys and to protect the populace from reprisals for their cooperation. In that sense,
such strikes are an important enabler of a wider counterinsurgency campaign, helping to
keep terrorist or insurgent leaders off-balance to buy time for strengthening indigenous
security forces and government institutions.
SK/P12.07) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "In Pakistan it's important
to remember that the nexus of terrorist and extremist groups have three major goals,"
Strmecki [special adviser on Afghanistan to the Defense secretary between 2003 and
2006] said. "They are plotting attacks against the West, seeking to restore the Taliban to
power in Afghanistan, and undermining the stability of Pakistan. We have to combat all
three threats simultaneously, because as soon as you focus on any one at the expense of
the others, the extremists will gravitate there. That's the problem I have with people who
just want to focus on counter-terrorism -- you cannot neatly divide this threat."
3. IRAQ DEMONSTRATES NEED FOR TROOP INCREASE
SK/P12.08) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "We actually tried the
counter-terror approach for years in Iraq, where we had enormous numbers of classified
forces hunting bad guys with the support of 150,000 U.S. conventional forces," Kagan
[American Enterprise Institute] said. "And even though we killed hundreds of bad guys in
conditions far more conducive to counter-terror operations than anything you'll find in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, violence continued to go off the charts until we faced a
calamity. We learned the hard way that counterinsurgency tactics are what you need to
defeat an enemy like this."
4. VIETNAM DEMONSTRATED FAILURE OF HALF-MEASURES
SK/P12.09) Essay, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Comparisons to Vietnam
inevitably are in the air. There are two lessons Obama should learn from Vietnam: Only a
counterinsurgency campaign that secures the population can defeat a guerrilla force, and
half-measures, no matter how seductive in the political moment, will fail on the ground
and waste domestic support for the war.
SK/P13. U.S. HAS THE RESOURCES TO INCREASE TROOPS
1. U.S.MILITARY IS MEETING RECRUITMENT GOALS
SK/P13.01) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, September 18,
2009, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. At every level,
from soldiers completing their first term of service to midcareer sergeants to senior NCOs,
the number of service members who re-enlist each year has risen since 2003, climbing
faster than what the Army says is necessary to keep the force growing.
SK/P13.02) Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., NATIONAL JOURNAL, September 18,
2009, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. A high-quality
prospect, in Army recruiting, is a person who has graduated from high school and scored
above average on the standardized Armed Forces Qualification Test. Both of these
measures peaked in 1992, when a recession, the recent victory in the Persian Gulf, and
the downsizing of the force allowed the Army to be more selective than before or since.
After 9/11, patriotism and recession drove both quality measures back up, but they started
to decline as the economy recovered and the Iraq war imploded. The trend lines bottomed
out in 2008 and have been on the rise again because of a weak economy and a less deadly
Iraq. The final figures for 2009 will be better yet, said Maj. Gen. Donald Campbell, chief
of the Army Recruiting Command: "I think we're going to be on an upswing for the next
couple of years."
2. NEW TROOPS CAN BE DEPLOYED IN SIX MONTHS
SK/P13.03) Gordon Lubold, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR,
November 20, 2009, p. 2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The
more forces Mr. Obama sends, the harder it will be to deploy them quickly. But Mr.
O'Hanlon[Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution] says it can happen. "There is a
complexity here, there are reasons that it can get harder and slower, but the basic
proposition of getting 30,000 to 40,000 more forces there is a job we can basically get
done in six months," O'Hanlon says. "We've already done it before." There are also as
many as 2,800 "enabling forces" in Afghanistan already operating in supporting roles security and construction, for example, that will ease the blow of deploying more forces
in the coming months, according to the Pentagon.
3. TROOP MORALE IS HIGH IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/P13.04) Martin Fletcher, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded
Academic ASAP. Lieutenant-Colonel Kimo Gallahue, 2-87's commanding officer, denied
that his men were demoralized, and insisted they had achieved a great deal over the past
nine months. A triathlete and former rugby player, he admitted pushing his men hard, but
argued that taking the fight to the enemy was the best form of defense. He said the
security situation had worsened because the insurgents had chosen to fight in Wardak
province, not abandon it. He said, however, that the situation would have been
catastrophic without his men. They had managed to keep open the key Kabul-toKandahar highway which dissects "Wardak, and prevent the province becoming a launch
pad for attacks on the capital, which is barely 20 miles from its border. Above all,
Colonel Gallahue argued that counter-insurgency--winning the allegiance of the
indigenous population through security, development and good governance--was a long
and laborious process that could not be completed in a year. "These 12 months have been,
for me, laying the groundwork for future success," he said.
SK/P14. CASUALTIES SHOULDN’T THWART TROOP INCREASE
1. CASUALTIES ARE MUCH LOWER THAN THEY WERE IN VIETNAM
SK/P14.01) Jacob G. Hornberger [The Future of Freedom Foundation] & Patrick
J. Buchanan, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November
2009, p. 28, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The 68,000
Americans who will be in Afghanistan at year's end are an eighth of the forces in
Vietnam when Richard Nixon began to bring them home. Vietnam cost the lives of
58,000 Americans. The Afghan war has cost fewer than 1,000. U.S. casualties in
Afghanistan are as yet only a fifth of the U.S. losses in the Philippine Insurrection of
1899-1902.
2. MAKING THE WORLD SAFER MEANS LIVES ARE NOT LOST IN VAIN
SK/P14.02) Paul Wells, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As I write this, October is the
fourth month in a row in 2009 with a higher death toll. The casualty rate has grown for
six years running, but the human cost is still sustainable-as long as it leads to a safer
Afghanistan, to a South Asia that isn't a hive of Islamist extremism, and to more secure
Canadian and Western homelands.
SK/P15. U.S. PULLOUT WOULD BE DISASTROUS
1. U.S. PULLOUT WOULD LEAVE AFGHANISTAN IN CHAOS
SK/P15.01) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. [Hekmat Karzai:] "If we are going to initiate
dialogue, it should not be so the West can immediately leave Afghanistan, saying, 'Look,
now they have come together. They have developed a solution Afghans are happy with,
so we can back off.' If you did that, this country would collapse back into chaos. We have
to do this because we want to make sure there is a lasting peace."
SK/P15.02) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "The larger issue that
doesn't get talked about in this debate on strategy is the fact that any indication that the
United States is thinking about bugging out exacerbates our two biggest problems in the
region, which is the Pakistani government's reluctance to crack down on the Taliban, and
corruption in the Afghan government," said Andrew Krepinevich, a counterinsurgency
expert and the president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in
Washington. "If the Pakistani security services think we're leaving, they will start cutting
deals with the Taliban again as a hedge against India and Iran's influence in Afghanistan.
Similarly, if [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai thinks we're heading for the exits, he'll
never crack down on corruption because he'll need to cut deals with warlords to play
them off against each other."
2. CONSEQUENCES WOULD BE DISASTROUS FOR THE U.S.
SK/P15.03) Essay, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 14, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Obama has told congressional
leaders that he won't embrace the most disastrous of the alternative strategies: beginning
to draw down our troops and waging a counterterrorist campaign targeting top terrorist
leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the air. This would instantly hand the Taliban
much of the south, likely cause the collapse of the Kabul government, and create a
Hobbesian nightmare--a civil war and fleeing refugees--that would destabilize Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda would be strengthened on both sides of the Durand line. General McChrystal
spoke the truth when he said in London that the counterterrorism option would create
"Chaos-istan."
SK/P15.04) Jacob G. Hornberger [The Future of Freedom Foundation] & Patrick
J. Buchanan, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November
2009, p. 28, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The
consequences of a U.S. withdrawal today would be far greater than if we had never gone
in, or had gone in, knocked over the Taliban, run al-Qaeda out of the country, gotten out,
and gone home. Instead, we brought NATO in, put tens of thousands of troops in and
declared our determination to build an Afghan democracy that would be a model for the
Islamic world, where women's rights were protected. After inviting the world to observe
how the superpower succeeds in taking down a tyranny and creating a democracy, we
will have failed, and we will be perceived by the whole world to have failed.
SK/P15.05) Jacob G. Hornberger [The Future of Freedom Foundation] & Patrick
J. Buchanan, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November
2009, p. 28, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. While there
was no vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan before we went in, we have invested so much
blood, money, and prestige that withdrawal now--which would entail a Taliban takeover
of Kabul and the Pashtun south and east--would be a strategic debacle unprecedented
since the fall of Saigon.
SK/C01. TALIBAN ARE NO THREAT TO THE U.S.
1. ONLY THREAT TO THE U.S. IS AL QAEDA, NOT THE TALIBAN
SK/C01.01) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Advocates of a narrower
approach argue that current strategy needlessly conflates Al Qaeda with the Taliban
militants who offered it sanctuary before 9/11. Although the groups maintain links to this
day, Al Qaeda remains the only entity in the witches' brew of violent extremist groups in
the Afghanistan-Pakistan region that specifically targets the homelands of the United
States and Europe for terrorist attack. Its goal is to coerce the West into withdrawing
support from "apostate" regimes in the Muslim world. By contrast, the hydra-headed
Taliban insurgency mostly aspires to gain power and influence regionally in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
2. TALIBAN LINKS TO AL QAEDA HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY WEAKENED
SK/C01.02) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. The Central Intelligence Agency's former national intelligence officer for the
Middle East, Paul Pillar, expressed doubt that the Taliban's relations with al-Qaeda are
tighter now than before the Taliban regime was ousted. "I don't see how you can say
that," Pillar told IPS. "If you look at the pre-9/11 relationship between the Taliban and alQaeda, in many ways it was far more extensive."
SK/C01.03) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. In the civil war between the Taliban regime and its Northern Alliance foes from
1996 through 2001, Pillar [Central Intelligence Agency's former national intelligence
officer for the Middle East] observed, "bin Laden's Arabs and money" represented a far
bigger role in supporting the Taliban than the one al-Qaeda is playing now. "You can say
that there are more groups which have relationships with al-Qaeda now, but I don't see
any as close as that which existed before 9/11," said Pillar.
SK/C01.04) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. U.S. national security officials, concerned that President Barack Obama might be
abandoning the strategy of full-fledged counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, are
claiming new intelligence assessments suggesting that al-Qaeda would be allowed to
return to Afghanistan in the event of a Taliban victory. But two former senior intelligence
analysts who have long followed the issue of al-Qaeda's involvement in Afghanistan
question the alleged new intelligence assessments. They say that the Taliban leadership
still blames Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda for their loss of power after 9/11 and that
Taliban-al-Qaeda cooperation is much narrower today than it was during the period of
Taliban rule.
3. TALIBAN WOULD NOT ALLOW AL QAEDA BACK IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/C01.05) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. One of the arguments for an alternative to the present counterinsurgency strategy
by officials, including aides to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, is that the Taliban
wouldn't allow al-Qaeda to re-establish bases inside Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal
reported Oct. 5. The reasoning behind the argument, according to the report, is that the
Taliban realizes that its previous alliance with al-Qaeda had caused it to lose power after
the Sept. 11 attacks.
SK/C01.06) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. But John McCreary, formerly a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency,
wrote last week on NightWatch, an online news analysis service, that the history of
Taliban-al-Qaeda relations suggests a very different conclusion. After being ousted from
power in 2001, he wrote, the Taliban "openly derided the Arabs of al-Qaeda and blamed
them for the Taliban's misfortunes." The Taliban leaders "vowed never to allow the
foreigners--especially the haughty, insensitive Arabs--back into Afghanistan," wrote
McCreary. "In December 2001, [Mullah Mohammad] Omar was ridiculed in public by
his own commanders for inviting the 'Arabs' and other foreigners, which led to their flight
to Pakistan." McCreary concluded, "The premise that Afghanistan would become an alQaeda safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of
understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan
history."
SK/C01.07) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If the Taliban did
eventually regain control, the group might prove reluctant to offer sanctuary to a greatly
diminished Al Qaeda. "First of all, Al Qaeda has been almost completely decimated, and
if its remaining members came out of hiding in Pakistan and moved to Afghanistan, they
would be easier to target," said Marc Sageman, the author of Leaderless Jihad and a
former CIA officer who served as liaison to the Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviets
in the late 1980s. Pointing to the insurgents' hit-and-run ambushes and roadside bombings,
he doubts that the disparate groups fighting under the Taliban banner could march on
Kabul as a coherent military force. Sageman also notes that the Taliban needed seven
years to seize power after the Soviet Union left in 1989.
SK/C01.08) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Fortunately, pulling U.S.
troops out of Afghanistan will not make al-Qaeda stronger. If the Taliban regain power,
they may conclude it is too risky to let Osama bin Laden return. But even if they did, a
backward and landlocked country like Afghanistan is a poor location from which to
attack the United States, which is why the 9/11 plot was conducted out of Hamburg,
Germany.
4. TALIBAN WOULD NOT ALLOW AL QAEDA TRAINING CAMPS
SK/C01.09) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Even if the Taliban took
power and offered sanctuary to Al Qaeda, you wouldn't see the re-emergence of large
terrorist training camps and bases for the simple reason that the Western powers would
destroy them as soon as they were built," he [Marc Sageman, the author of Leaderless
Jihad and a former CIA officer who served as liaison to the Afghan mujahedeen fighting
the Soviets in the late 1980s] told National Journal. "So for all those reasons, if our
primary goal is to protect the U.S. homeland from transnational terrorists, I don't see any
value added by a large counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan."
[NOTE: Do not use this Brief in conjunction with Brief #C09, as they are contradictory]
SK/C02. AL QAEDA THREAT IS EXAGGERATED
1. THERE ARE ALMOST NO AL QAEDA FIGHTERS IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/C02.01) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. General Jones told CNN interviewer John King Oct. 4 the presence of al- Qaeda
in Afghanistan today is "minimal," adding the "maximum estimate" is 100 foreign
fighters. One official critical of the White House position quoted in the McClatchy story
suggested the number might be as high as 200 or 250. Both figures appear to be
consistent with the estimate by Western officials of a total of only 100 to 300 foreign
fighters in Afghanistan cited in The New York Times Oct. 30, 2007. Of that total,
however, only "small numbers" were Arabs and Chechens, Uzbeks, or other Central
Asians, who are known to have links with al-Qaeda, Seth Jones of the RAND
Corporation told Voice of America the following month.
SK/C02.02) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. The bulk of the foreign fighters in Afghanistan are Pashtuns from across the
border in Pakistan. Those Pashtun fighters are recruited from religious schools in
Pakistan, but there is no evidence that they are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Just this month,
U.S. intelligence has increased its estimate of Taliban armed insurgents to 17,000,
compared with 10,000 in late 2007. Even if all foreign fighters were considered al-Qaeda,
therefore, 250 of them would represent only 1.5 percent of the estimated total.
2. AL QAEDA HAS BEEN DECIMATED FINANCIALLY
SK/C02.03) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. A summer 1998 Taliban offensive was fought with hundreds of new Japanese
pickup trucks--Massoud claimed a total of 1,200 vehicles--bought with bin Laden's
money. Today, however, al-Qaeda is cash-strapped and has very few foreign fighters in
Afghanistan, whereas the Taliban appears to be well-financed. The U.S. Treasury
Department's expert on terrorist financing, David Cohen, said al-Qaeda is "in its weakest
financial position in several years" and "its influence is waning," the BBC reported
Tuesday.
SK/C03. AL QAEDA DOESN’T NEED AFGHANISTAN
1. AL QAEDA DOESN’T NEED AFGHANISTAN FOR SAFE HAVEN
SK/C03.01) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Moreover, al-Qaeda
doesn't need lots of territory or elaborate bases to plot attacks and other conspiracies; all
it needs are safe houses in various parts of the world and a supply of potential martyrs.
Al-Qaeda clones already exist in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere; so denying its founders
a "safe haven" in Afghanistan will not make that network less lethal. If al-Qaeda is our
main concern, fighting in Afghanistan is increasingly a distraction.
SK/C03.02) THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, October 20, 2009, p. 8, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Paul R. Pillar challenges the
notion that the war in Afghanistan is necessary in order to deny terrorist groups like alQaeda a safe haven. There are numerous unstable countries where al-Qaeda could
establish safe havens, and the U.S. cannot secure them all. Besides, a safe haven isn't that
crucial for terrorists, The most important preparations for 9/11 took place in German
apartments, Spanish hotel rooms and U.S. flight schools. "International terrorist groups
have thrived by exploiting globalization and information technology, which has lessened
their dependence on physical havens," says Pillar, former deputy chief of the
counterterrorist center at the CIA.
2. AL QAEDA COULD TAKE SANCTUARY ALMOST ANYPLACE
SK/C03.03) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "We are conducting
successful counter-terror operations in Pakistan without significant boots on the ground,
as we have in places such as Somalia and Yemen, both of which could just as easily serve
as a future sanctuary for Al Qaeda as Afghanistan," former CIA analyst Pillar said. "The
bigger issue is whether the presence or absence of a physical sanctuary for terrorist
groups makes that much of a difference in terms of protecting the American people from
terrorist attack. In my view, it doesn't make enough of a difference to justify a long and
costly counter- insurgency campaign."
SK/C03.04) Paul Wells, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But more than that, I'm nearly
certain Afghanistan isn't relevant, in the sense that any other nook in the world could be
an incubator for a terrorist attack. Pakistan, obviously. Saudi Arabia, where most of the
9/11 terrorists came from, or Hamburg, where they met and plotted. Or the street where
you live.
3. TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN ARE IRRELEVANT TO AL QAEDA THREAT
SK/C03.05) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In short, U.S. victory in
Afghanistan won't put an end to al-Qaeda, and getting out won't make it more dangerous.
And if the outcome in Afghanistan has little effect on the threat al-Qaeda poses, there is
little reason to squander more American blood and treasure there.
SK/C04. THREATS TO PAKISTAN ARE EXAGGERATED
1. THREATS TO PAKISTAN ARE EXAGGERATED
SK/C04.01) Manan Ahmed [historian of Pakistan], THE NATION, November 9,
2009, p. 18. Let us return, however, to earlier this year. Was Pakistan really in danger of
falling into the hands of the Taliban-a danger averted only by the assault on Swat?
Reading the reporting from the region (the Pakistani army is operating under a media
blackout) and published testimonies from displaced citizens, the clear answer is no. The
Taliban operating in the north and southwestern regions were and are still an amorphous,
ill-defined lot, ideologically and politically diverse from jihadists to secular
subnationalists to tribalists. There was no logical path by which they would have been
able to overwhelm a nation of nearly 180 million, a standing army of more than 600,000,
vibrant mega-cities and an established civilian infrastructure.
SK/C04.02) Manan Ahmed [historian of Pakistan], THE NATION, November 9,
2009, p. 18. Similarly, the history of Pakistan was given short shrift in the rush to declare
it a faltering state about to become a radicalized, failed state. Even cursory analysis
would show that the citizens of Pakistan, given the few opportunities, have kept
conservative Islamic parties to less than 10 percent of the seats in any election. This even
though Pakistan endured a decade of the Islamization policies of Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who
did his best to radicalize and militarize his citizenry in an effort to wage jihad in
Afghanistan and India. Yet Pakistan emerged from that dark era and embraced the largely
secular policies of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
2. TALIBAN WON’T GET CONTROL OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
SK/C04.03) Steven Simon [Sr. Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on
Foreign Relations], FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 130, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. According to Bruce Riedel, the leader of the
60-day policy review, the Taliban "smell blood, and they are intoxicated by the idea of
ajihadist takeover in Pakistan." That idea, however, might be more a delusion than an
achievable goal. The Pakistani army is big, is well equipped, obeys orders, and can fight,
and the Pakistani intelligence service, notwithstanding its Machiavellian tendencies, is
not likely to transfer nuclear weapons to the Taliban.
SK/C05. AFGHANISTAN IS NOT VITAL TO U.S. INTERESTS
1. AFGHANISTAN WASN’T THE CAUSE OF 9/11
SK/C05.01) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. Those who profess to be in the know insist that the fight in Afghanistan is
essential to keeping America safe. The events of September 11, 2001, ostensibly occurred
because we ignored Afghanistan. Preventing the recurrence of those events, therefore,
requires that we fix the place. Yet this widely accepted line of reasoning overlooks the
primary reason why the 9/11 conspiracy succeeded: federal, state, and local agencies
responsible for basic security fell down on the job, failing to install even minimally
adequate security measures in the nation's airports. The national -security apparatus
wasn't paying attention - indeed, it ignored or downplayed all sorts of warning signs, not
least of all Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against the United States. Consumed
with its ABC agenda - "anything but Clinton" was the Bush administration's watchword
in those days - the people at the top didn't have their eye on the ball. So we let ourselves
get sucker-punched. Averting a recurrence of that awful day does not require the semipermanent occupation and pacification of distant countries like Afghanistan. Rather, it
requires that the United States erect and maintain robust defenses.
2. AFGHANISTAN IS NO MORE VITAL TO THE U.S. THAN VIETNAM WAS
SK/C05.02) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United
States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not
only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few
exceptions, Afghanistan's importance is simply assumed - much the way fifty years ago
otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in
ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand
up to even casual scrutiny.
3. CIVIL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN DOESN’T AFFECT U.S. INTERESTS
SK/C05.03) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Even if the United States
and NATO withdrew from Afghanistan on an indeterminate timeline, and the country
reverted to the state of civil war that characterized it in the 1990s, some experts believe
that the threat to the U.S. homeland would remain largely unchanged. In this view, the
Taliban would most likely prove just one of a number of militant groups fighting for
power in a faction-riven Afghanistan.
SK/C05.04) Current Comment, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 4, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. It also could not have been
welcome news to President Obama that a senior foreign-service officer, Matthew Hoh, a
Marine veteran of two tours in Iraq, resigned on Oct. 26 in protest of the U.S. policy in
Afghanistan, the first State Department official to do so. "I fail to see the value or the
worth," Mr. Hoh writes in his resignation letter, "in continued U.S. casualties or
expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35year-old civil war." According to Mr. Hoh, the "Taliban resistance" the United States is
purported to be suppressing actually breaks down into hundreds of small local groups,
who perceive themselves as fighters not for the Taliban or an even more distant Al Qaeda
but against the current occupiers, the United States and Afghanistan's central government.
SK/C06. AVOIDING DEFEAT IS AN INADEQUATE RATIONALE
1. THE U.S. IS SIMPLY TRYING TO SAVE FACE
SK/C06.01) Jacob G. Hornberger [The Future of Freedom Foundation] & Patrick
J. Buchanan, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November
2009, p. 28, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If there were
no Americans in Afghanistan today, and the Taliban were on the verge of victory, how
many of us would demand the dispatch of 68,000 troops to fight to prevent it? Few, if any,
one imagines. What that answer suggests is that the principal reason for fighting on is not
that Afghanistan is vital, but that we cannot accept the American defeat and humiliation
that withdrawal would mean.
2. IT MAKES NO MORE SENSE THAN INVADING MEXICO WOULD MAKE
SK/C06.02) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building,
why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to
the United States, our southern neighbor - a major supplier of oil and drugs among other
commodities deemed vital to the American way of life-outranks Afghanistan by several
orders of magnitude. If one believes that moral considerations rather than self-interest
should inform foreign policy, Mexico still qualifies for priority attention. Consider the
theft of California. Or consider more recently how the American appetite for illicit drugs
and our liberal gun laws have corroded Mexican institutions and produced an epidemic of
violence afflicting ordinary Mexicans. We owe these people, big-time. Yet any politician
calling for the commitment of sixty thousand U.S. troops to Mexico to secure those
interests or acquit those moral obligations would be laughed out of Washington-and
rightly so.
SK/C06.03) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. Any pundit proposing that the United States assume responsibility for
eliminating the corruption that is endemic in Mexican politics while establishing in
Mexico City effective mechanisms of governance would have his license to pontificate
revoked. Anyone suggesting that the United States possesses the wisdom and the
wherewithal to solve the problem of Mexican drug trafficking, to endow Mexico with
competent security forces, and to reform the Mexican school system (while protecting the
rights of Mexican women) would be dismissed as a lunatic. Meanwhile, those who
promote such programs for Afghanistan, ignoring questions of cost and ignoring as well
the corruption and ineffectiveness that pervade our own institutions, are treated like sages.
The contrast between Washington's preoccupation with Afghanistan and its relative
indifference to Mexico testifies to the distortion of U.S. national security priorities
induced by George W. Bush in his post-9/1 1 prophetic mode - distortions now being
endorsed by Bush's successor.
SK/C07. U.S. CAN’T WIN IN AFGHANISTAN
1. INCREASE IN TROOPS DOESN’T GUARANTEE VICTORY
SK/C07.01) Jacob G. Hornberger [The Future of Freedom Foundation] & Patrick
J. Buchanan, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November
2009, p. 28, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But what if
Obama approves McChrystal's request and puts another 20,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops into
the war? Certainly, that would stave off any defeat. But what is the assurance it would
bring enduring victory closer? The Taliban have matched us escalation for escalation and
are now militarily stronger than at any time since the Northern Alliance, with U.S. air
support, ran them out of Kabul.
SK/C07.02) Bill Schneider, NATIONAL JOURNAL, November 6, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Counterinsurgency is the
"big war" approach aimed at fighting the Taliban. It encompasses the political strategy
that Gen. Stanley McChrystal recommended when he wrote, "The conflict will be won by
persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy." This option would require,
McChrystal says, at least 40,000 additional U.S. troops. The risk is that a big increase in
U.S. troops would provide more targets for the insurgency and bolster its members'
resistance to what they perceive as foreign occupation. Most of the violence in
Afghanistan has been directed at U.S. forces.
2. NO FOREIGN POWER HAS EVER WON A WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/C07.03) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it's also likely to prove
impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires.
SK/C07.04) Stanley Hauerwas [Duke U.], NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER,
November 13, 2009, p. 12, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP.
I would be much happier with a whole reconsideration of our involvement there--not as a
war, but as a police function, and how the police might intervene to arrest bin Laden. I
know that sounds utopian, but just try thinking you're going to win a war in Afghanistan.
I can't imagine anything more utopian than that. Ask the British. Ask the Russians. It's
never going to happen.
3. U.S. CAN’T WIN NO MATTER HOW MANY TROOPS ARE SENT
SK/C07.05) Rachelle Marshall, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, November 2009, p. 7, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. A number of analysts say the war is un-winnable no matter how many more
troops are sent. According to Afghan scholar Tamim Ansary, the insurgency is "fueled
more by rural resentment, tribal nationalism and Afghan xenophobia than by any global
ideology." As a result, Ansary says, "The Americans now find themselves fighting not
extremists in Afghanistan but Afghans in Afghanistan."
SK/C07.06) Daniel Dombey, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, December 1, 2009, p. 2,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Other analysts also suggest that a
continued war in Afghanistan may be too much for the US to bear. Paul Kennedy, the
author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, cites examples stretching back to "the
Romans deciding that going back into the Teutonic forests again was not worth it". He
says: "The Afghan business might fall into that category of wars where even the greatest
of the great powers began to sense it was unwinnable."
SK/C07.07) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Finally, America's odds of
winning this war are slim. The Karzai government is corrupt, incompetent and resistant to
reform. The Taliban have sanctuaries in Pakistan and can hide among the local populace,
making it possible for them simply to outlast us. Pakistan has backed the Afghan Taliban
in the past and is not a reliable partner now. Our European allies are war-weary and
looking for the exits. The more troops we send and the more we interfere in Afghan
affairs, the more we look like foreign occupiers and the more resistance we will face.
There is therefore little reason to expect a U.S. victory.
SK/C08. AFGHANISTAN WILL BECOME U.S. QUAGMIRE
1. U.S. COMMITMENT WILL BE MUCH LONGER THAN WE EXPECT
SK/C08.01) Jonathan Rauch, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 30, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Five scholars, two
disciplines (economics and anthropology), one conclusion: Richard Holbrooke was right
when he wrote in 2008, before taking on the job of special representative for Afghanistan
and Pakistan in the Obama administration: "The conflict in Afghanistan will be far more
costly and much, much longer than Americans realize." For Americans, the hard part is
not surging, it's staying. The hardest question that Obama faces as he decides whether to
double down in Afghanistan concerns political sustainability over here, not military
strategy over there.
2. AFGHANISTAN WILL BECOME A REPEAT OF VIETNAM
SK/C08.02) Current Comment, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 4, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. President Obama's long-awaited
decision on Afghanistan may not answer all of Mr. Hoh's brave but career-ending
questions, but it should at least offer more than a general plan for muddling through in an
ancient land that shows signs of developing into a Vietnam-style quagmire for the United
States.
3. OBAMA’S EXIT STRATEGY IS FATALLY FLAWED
SK/C08.03) Daniel Dombey, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, December 1, 2009, p. 2,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Mr Bacevich [Professor of
International Relations, Boston U.] says Mr Obama's likely emphasis on an exit strategy
only highlights the contradictions of the whole approach. "We are not going to make
large long-term commitment to Afghanistan for 20, 30 years and that is probably what it
needs," he said. "We don't have the money, we don't have the will, and therefore the
notion that we are going to hang in there, that we are going to fool people that we have
the money or the will just strikes me as frankly silly, it's not serious."
SK/C09. RECONCILIATION IS AN UNACHIEVABLE GOAL
1. TALIBAN FIGHTERS WON’T BE PERSUADED TO SWITCH SIDES
SK/C09.01) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Even if Saudi Arabia or others stepped into the
financial breach, not all Afghans are convinced that the Taliban leadership can be easily
peeled away from al-Qaeda. A senior Afghan security official points to a recent attack on
the U.N. compound in Kabul that was planned and financed by al-Qaeda but executed by
the Taliban. The war has brought their causes closer together, he says. "Now the real
Taliban is no different from the real al-Qaeda. They are not a bunch of hungry guys
fighting because al-Qaeda is paying them. They will never accept our vision of a stable,
democratic Afghanistan."
2. TALIBAN WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP AL QAEDA OUT
SK/C09.02) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. President Obama says we
have to prevent Afghanistan from becoming "an even larger safe haven from which alQaeda would plot to kill more Americans." But defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan isn't
the key to thwarting al-Qaeda. Indeed, even if our counterinsurgency and nation-building
efforts exceed all expectations, the Afghan government will still have only limited
authority over much of the country and will be unable to prevent al-Qaeda cells from
relocating there.
SK/C09.03) Paul Wells, MACLEAN’S, November 9, 2009, p. 22, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The minimal aim, I suppose, was
to ensure that Afghanistan did not become the incubator for another terrorist attack
against the West. That's a pressing aim if it is achievable and relevant. I'm not sure it's
achievable: today, after eight years of combat, large parts of Afghanistan are outside
ISAF control and are now being used for terrorist training bases.
[NOTE: Do not use this Brief in conjunction with Brief #C01, as they are contradictory]
SK/C10. CORRUPTION WILL THWART RECONCILIATION
1. CORRUPTION IN THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT IS MASSIVE
SK/C10.01) Rachelle Marshall, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, November 2009, p. 7, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. President Karzai had already undermined the government's credibility by gaining
the support of criminal war lords with offers of protection from prosecution, cabinet
ministries, provincial governorships, and other favors. His chosen vice president,
Mohammad Qasim Fahim, has a long history of drug trafficking and as defense minister
regularly used a military cargo plane to transport drugs abroad and bring back cash.
SK/C10.02) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. Following Obama's expected speech to the nation about his plan, General Stanley
McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, will testify before Congress with
other members of Obama's national-security team. They'll have to convince skeptical
Americans--as well as NATO allies at a Dec. 7 meeting--that Afghan President Hamid
Karzai is a solid partner in the war effort. That's a daunting task given the allegations of
corruption enveloping him, including a disputed August election that gave him a second
five-year term.
2. ELECTION FRAUD WAS OUTRAGEOUS
SK/C10.03) Rachelle Marshall, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, November 2009, p. 7, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. Compounding Obama's problems was Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election,
which exposed a system riddled with corruption. On Sept. 8 the Afghan election
commission declared President Hamid Karzai the winner over Abdullah Abdullah with
54 percent of the vote. But almost simultaneously a U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints
Commission that investigated over 700 cases of vote tampering reported "clear and
convincing evidence of fraud" and ordered a recount in at least three provinces. The vote
rigging was less than subtle. In the Shorrabak district of Kandahar province, tribal leaders
accused Karzai's brother Ahmed of shutting down the district's 45 polling places. Police
then stuffed the ballot boxes with 23,000 votes for Karzai. In Karzai's home province of
Kandahar 350,000 ballots were turned in, even though Western officials said only about
25,000 people had voted.
SK/C10.04) William Schneider, NATIONAL JOURNAL, September 11, 2009,
pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Last month's
presidential election in Afghanistan was supposed to solidify popular support for the
Karzai government. Instead, it raised issues of fraud and mismanagement and threw a
shadow over that administration's legitimacy. Americans are fighting and dying for a
government that steals elections?
3. CORRUPTION MAKES RECONCILIATION IMPOSSIBLE
SK/C10.05) Aryn Baker, TIME, November 30, 2009, p. 46, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But even those who back the plan worry that
Karzai's corruption-riddled government is so detested that money and jobs will not be
enough, on their own, to woo fighters to switch sides. "Paying the low-level [Taliban]
may work temporarily, but it won't solve the main problems," says Ishaq Nizami, the
former head of the TV and Radio Directorate under the Taliban regime. "There is so
much corruption and no laws. In many areas the Taliban have been able to bring security
and justice, which the government has not done. Even if some fighters turn, they will turn
back again when they understand that their lives are not better." For reintegration to work,
in other words, Afghanistan needs to have a government worth fighting for. So far it does
not.
SK/C11. MILITARY SURGE WON’T WORK
1. MILITARY SURGES HAVE ALREADY TAKEN PLACE
SK/C11.01) Fareed Zakaria, NEWSWEEK, November 2, 2009, p. 20, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The number of U.S. forces in
Afghanistan in January 2008 was 26,607. Over the next six months, the Bush
administration raised the total to 48,250. President Bush described this policy as "the
quiet surge," and he made the standard arguments about the need for a counterinsurgency
capacity--the troops had to not only fight the Taliban but protect the Afghan population,
strengthen and train the Afghan Army and police, and assist in development. In January
2009, another 3,000 troops, originally ordered by President Bush, went to Afghanistan in
the first days of the Obama presidency. In February, responding to a request from the
commander in the field, Obama ordered an additional 17,000 troops into the country. In
other words, over the past 18 months, troop levels in Afghanistan have almost tripled.
2. THESE SURGES HAVE FAILED TO WEAKEN THE TALIBAN
SK/C11.02) Fareed Zakaria, NEWSWEEK, November 2, 2009, p. 20, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Advocates of a troop increase act
as if counterinsurgency is applied physics. General McChrystal's team, having done the
mathematical calculations, has apparently arrived at the exact answer. There is no room
for variation or middle courses. It's 40,000 troops or no counterinsurgency. This is absurd,
as is best demonstrated by the fact that senior military officers had assured me at various
points over the past year that with the latest increase in troops (first to 42,000, then
68,000), they finally had enough forces to do counterinsurgency.
SK/C11.03) Rachelle Marshall, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, November 2009, p. 7, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. In Afghanistan, the infusion of 20,000 more U.S. soldiers last July has failed to
weaken the Taliban. Admiral Mullen described the situation in late summer as "serious
and deteriorating," and the senior adviser to the U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley
McChrystal, predicted that heavy fighting would be necessary for the next two years,
followed by an American-NATO military presence for the next eight years. That estimate
may be too optimistic, considering Afghanistan's mountainous terrain, its infinite number
of places to hide, and an enemy fighting on its own territory.
SK/C12. MILITARY SURGE IN IRAQ IS IRRELEVANT
1. SURGE IN IRAQ CAN’T BE REPLICATED IN AFGHANISTAN
SK/C12.01) Maryann Cusinamo Love, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 11,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In the current policy
debate, Afghanistan is repeatedly and erroneously compared to Iraq. People who ought to
know better argue that an additional surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan will quell the
rising violence there and allow the Afghan government to take over, as supposedly
happened in Iraq. U.S. military forces invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan; the comparison
between the two should end there.
SK/C12.02) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Underlying the growing
skepticism of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan are worries that the U.S.
military has defaulted to an unsustainable and expensive paradigm of nation building.
Given the strategic stakes involved once U.S. forces invaded Iraq, and the Bush
administration's much-touted emphasis on spreading democracy as an antidote to the root
causes of terrorism, a counterinsurgency campaign may have been the only viable
alternative in Iraq circa 2007. Given the evident strain on U.S. ground forces and decline
in public support, however, it doesn't necessarily follow that counterinsurgency will work
in the much less hospitable environs of Afghanistan in 2009, or in the next ungoverned
space the terrorists decide to occupy.
2. IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT
SK/C12.03) Eric T. Olson [operational commander of all coalition forces in
Afghanistan, 2004-2005], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, March 17, 2009, p.
9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The beefed-up effort has been
fueled by the belief that the successful surge in Iraq can be replicated in Afghanistan. It
can't. I speak from experience: For a year, I was the operational commander for all
coalition forces in Afghanistan. Later, I was the deputy director of the Iraq
Reconstruction Management Office. The conditions that favored success in Iraq are
conspicuously lacking in Afghanistan.
SK/C12.04) Eric T. Olson [operational commander of all coalition forces in
Afghanistan, 2004-2005], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, March 17, 2009, p.
9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Iraq is like New York State:
both feature mostly urban populations with dominant capitals. Pacify the Big Apple and
you pacify the whole state; pacify Baghdad and you pacify Iraq. But Afghanistan is more
like Alaska: both have rural populations with capital cities far removed from large,
mountainous regions. Baghdad alone accounts for 7 million Iraqis - about one-quarter of
the population. In Afghanistan, barely one-tenth of the population lives in the five largest
cities. Because Baghdad is the political and socioeconomic center of the nation, the
calming effect of the surge there reverberated across the country. But there is no such city
in Afghanistan.
SK/C12.05) Maryann Cusinamo Love, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 11,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But Iraq had functioning
central governance and a modern economy before the U.S. invasion; afterward the United
States "merely" tried to reconstitute and recreate these. The Afghan case is quite different.
Afghanistan is not a failed state, but a fictional state. As in many regions of the world,
there has never been a sovereign state here in practice, but only in unexamined Western
default assumptions. Afghanistan never had a strong central government or economy.
Afghanistan is the world's sixth poorest state, with one of the worst infant mortality rates.
Afghanistan is not industrialized and lacks infrastructure.
SK/C12.06) Maryann Cusinamo Love, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 11,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Afghanistan supplies over
93 percent of the lucrative global market in opiates. Heroin is one of the world's most
valuable commodities, more valuable than oil or gold by many orders of magnitude. The
opium trade accounts for an estimated 97 percent of Aghanistan's gross domestic product.
These illegal narco-profits fund local and regional warlords, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda
terrorists based across the border in Pakistan, and they challenge attempts at legal
governance. Fighting the opium trade is dangerous; deaths of poppy-eradication workers
in Afghanistan increased sixfold in 2008. If the United States wanted to pay these fighters
not to fight or grow opium, the drug-money inflated price tag could be beyond the reach
of the recession-depleted U.S. budget. The United States does not have a good record in
fighting wars on drugs.
3. SURGE IN IRAQ IS NO SUCCESS
SK/C12.07) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. Given the embarrassing yet indisputable fact that this was an utterly needless
war - no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, no ties between Saddam Hussein and
the jihadists established, no democratic transformation of the Islamic world set in motion,
no road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad - to describe Iraq as a
success, and as a model for application elsewhere, is nothing short of obscene.
SK/C12.08) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. Much has been made of the United States Army's rediscovery of (and
growing infatuation with) counter insurgency doctrine, applied in Iraq beginning in late
2006 when President Bush announced his so-called surge and anointed General David
Petraeus as the senior U.S. commander in Baghdad. Yet technique is no substitute for
strategy. Violence in Iraq may be down, but evidence of the promised political
reconciliation that the surge was intended to produce remains elusive. America's
Mesopotamian misadventure continues. Pretending that the surge has redeemed the Iraq
war is akin to claiming that when Andy Jackson "caught the bloody British in the town of
New Orleans" he thereby enabled the United States to emerge victorious from the War of
1812. Such a judgment works well as folklore but ignores an abundance of contrary
evidence.
SK/C12.09) Maryann Cusinamo Love, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 11,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The United States did not
disarm or demobilize insurgents in Iraq but bought them off; it paid the Sons of Iraq and
the Awakening movements not to fight. With U.S. forces pulling out, these programs are
ending, but the Iraqi government is not eager to hire these former fighters, who number
over 110,000. This is why many, like Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq,
believe the worst violence in Iraq may lie ahead.
SK/C13. TRAINING IS A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
1. TRAINING AFGHAN FORCES TO FIGHT IS MOST IMPORTANT
SK/C13.01) Editorial, COMMONWEAL, September 25, 2009, p. 5, PROQUEST
RESEARCH LIBRARY. Sen. Carl Levin (D'Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, wants the U.S. military to concentrate its resources on training Afghanistan's
own security forces before the president agrees to send more combat troops. Levin says
we should plan to train 250,000 Afghan soldiers and 160,000 police officers by 2012.
2. TROOP INCREASE IS NOT NECESSARY
SK/C13.02) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Senate Armed Services
Committee Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, said he doesn't support sending
more combat troops to Afghanistan now. Instead, he said, more focus should be placed
on strengthening the Afghan army and encouraging low-level Taliban members to
abandon the militants. There are many ways to show resolve in addition to more and
more combat forces, including many more trainers to get the Afghan forces to be a lot
larger and a lot stronger, Mr. Levin said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. Mr. Levin said
more U.S. trainers are needed to make Afghan security forces more effective, but added
that the U.S. needs to find a way to get the heavily Pashtun Taliban fighters to switch
sides. The surge that will really work in Afghanistan is a surge of Afghan troops, he said.
SK/C14. COUNTER-TERRORISM IS A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
1. COUNTER-TERRORISM IS A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
SK/C14.01) Jamie M. Fly [Executive Director, Foreign Policy Initiative],
NATIONAL REVIEW, November 2, 2009, p. 21, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING,
Expanded Academic ASAP. Earlier this year, Biden lost the first round when President
Obama rejected his advice and decided to send 4,000 troops to Afghanistan beyond the
17,000 he had already authorized, but the vice president has now resumed his advocacy
for a "counterterrorism" approach. This approach would narrow U.S. goals and rely
primarily on Special Forces, drones, and an increased effort to build up the Afghan
National Army to reduce the U.S. footprint in the country over time. By contrast, the
counterinsurgency approach, favored by General McChrystal, Gen. David Petraeus, and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would focus on increasing the Afghan people's sense of security
and thus their support for the government in Kabul.
SK/C14.02) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "On Afghanistan I cast my
lot with the 'go home ... sort of' school," Steven Metz, a professor of national security
affairs at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, recently wrote on National
Journal's National Security blog. "I've long held that an approach to counterinsurgency
that is contingent on re-engineering societies that do not desire it is folly. That is, I
believe, more true in Afghanistan than anywhere I can think of. If the true strategic
objectives are to prevent Afghanistan from providing bases for terrorists who might
attack the United States or the West, and to prevent Pakistan nuclear weapons from
falling into their hands, there are much more efficient and effective ways to do that than
attempting to re-engineer a medieval society. We could, in other words, develop a
counter-terrorism strategy that is acceptably effective and efficient."
2. COUNTER-TERRORISM OPERATIONS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL
SK/C14.03) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Certainly, U.S. counterterrorism operations have scored a string of successes against Qaeda and Taliban leaders
in Pakistan. Just since January 2008, U.S. air strikes in Pakistan's tribal and border
regions have reportedly killed 15 top-tier Qaeda and Taliban leaders and 16 second-tier
commanders. Dead senior leaders include the head of the Pakistan Taliban, Baitullah
Mehsud; senior Qaeda commanders Abu Laith al-Libi and Mustafa al-Jaziri; Qaeda
weapons of mass destruction expert Abu Khabab al-Masri; and Osama bin Laden's son
Saad.
SK/C14.04) Steven Simon [Sr. Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on
Foreign Relations], FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 130, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Thus, if the core concern is terrorism,
Washington should concentrate on its already effective policy of eliminating al Qaeda's
leadership with drone strikes. In what amounts to a targeted killing program, the United
States uses two types of unmanned aerial vehicles--the Predator and the faster, higheraltitude Reaper, which can carry two Hellfire missiles and precision-guided bombs--to
attack individuals and safe houses associated with al Qaeda and related militant groups,
such as the Haqqani network. Most of these strikes have taken place in North or South
Waziristan, as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory. There were about 36 against
militant sites inside Pakistan in 2008, and there have been approximately 16 so far in
2009.
SK/C14.05) Steven Simon [Sr. Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on
Foreign Relations], FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 130, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Among the senior al Qaeda leaders killed in
the past year were Abu Jihad al-Masri, al Qaeda's intelligence chief; Khalid Habib,
number four in al Qaeda and head of its operations in Pakistan; Abu Khabab al-Masri, al
Qaeda's most experienced explosives expert, who had experimented with biological and
chemical weapons; and Abu Laith al-Libi, the al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.
Some 130 civilians have also been killed, but improved guidance and smaller warheads
should lead to fewer unintended casualties from now on.
3. COUNTER-TERRORISM CAN DESTROY AL QAEDA
SK/C14.06) Steven Simon [Sr. Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on
Foreign Relations], FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 130, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The logic of this strategy is straight-forward.
"In the past, you could take out the number 3 al Qaeda leader, and number 4 just moved
up to take his place," says one official. "Well, if you take out number 3, number 4, and
then 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to revive the leadership
cadre." In consequence, "the enemy is really, really struggling," says one senior U.S.
counterterrorism official, who notes "a significant, significant degradation of al Qaeda
command and control in recent months." These same officials say that al Qaeda's
leadership cadre has been "decimated" and that it is possible to foresee a "complete al
Qaeda defeat" in Pakistan.
SK/C14.07) Steven Simon [Sr. Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on
Foreign Relations], FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July-August 2009, p. 130, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. It is also important to note that it is now more
difficult for attackers to enter the United States than it was in 200l. The U.S. customs and
immigration services are more alert. A consolidated, if still flawed, watch list now exists.
Both the intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies are better at sharing
information and highly attuned to the threat. This is not to suggest that the United States
is invulnerable. Al Qaeda has a well-appreciated protean quality and has reconstituted
itself after harsh blows in the past. But it means that the more efficient measures for
defending against a devastating terrorist attack are killing al Qaeda's operational
leadership in Pakistan and continuing to improve homeland security--as opposed to
nation building in Afghanistan.
SK/C14.08) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If al-Qaeda's founders
have to hide somewhere, better in Afghanistan than anywhere else. And hide they will,
because Afghanistan won't be a safe haven. Bin Laden could operate somewhat freely
there before 9/11, because the United States wasn't going after him all-out. Those days
are long gone. The Taliban will not be able to protect him from U.S. commandos, cruise
missiles and armed drones. He and his henchmen will always have to stay in hiding,
which is why even an outright Taliban victory will not enhance their position very much.
SK/C14.09) James Kitfield, NATIONAL JOURNAL, October 16, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Can the United States and
its allies really keep Al Qaeda and associated groups at bay with a narrower counterterrorism strategy? Certainly, Al Qaeda has failed to launch a follow-on terrorist
spectacular on the United States since 9/11, or against Europe since the Madrid and
London bombings of 2004 and 2005.
4. U.S. TROOPS ARE NOT NEEDED FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM
SK/C14.10) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. General Petraeus, now commanding United States Central Command,
recently commented that "the mission is to ensure that Afghanistan does not again
become a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and other transnational extremists," in effect "to deny
them safe havens in which they can plan and train for such attacks." The mission
statement is a sound one. The current approach to accomplishing the mission is not sound
and, indeed, qualifies as counterproductive. Note that denying Al Qaeda safe havens in
Pakistan hasn't required U.S. forces to occupy the frontier regions of that country.
Similarly, denying Al Qaeda safe havens in Afghanistan shouldn't require military
occupation by the United States and its allies.
SK/C14.11) Andrew J. Bacevich [Professor of History & International Relations,
Boston U.], COMMONWEAL, August 14, 2009, p. 13, PROQUEST RESEARCH
LIBRARY. It would be much better to let local authorities do the heavy lifting. Provided
appropriate incentives, the tribal chiefs who actually run Afghanistan are best positioned
to prevent terrorist networks from establishing a large-scale presence. As a backup,
intensive surveillance complemented with precision punitive strikes (assuming we can
manage to kill the right people) will suffice to disrupt Al Qaeda's plans. Certainly, that
approach offers a cheaper and more efficient alternative to establishing a large-scale and
long-term U.S. ground presence - which, as the U.S. campaigns in both Iraq and
Afghanistan have demonstrated, has the unintended effect of handing jihadists a
recruiting tool that they are quick to exploit.
SK/C15. U.S. TROOP INCREASE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
1. U.S. TROOPS ARE DESTABILIZING THE ENTIRE REGION
SK/C15.01) Current Comment, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 4, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In a marvel of understatement, Mr.
Hoh calls the Karzai administration an "unreliable partner" and writes that our
Afghanistan strategy is destabilizing the entire region while making little progress toward
its primary goal of protecting the West from the terrorist conspiracies of Islamic
extremists. Mr. Hoh has thrown away what had been a promising diplomatic career in an
effort to force his countrymen to ask some hard questions about Afghanistan: What are
we achieving there? Do we have the ruthlessness and patience to stay in this fight? With
our nation printing money to pay its bills, can we really afford to maintain this long war?
2. U.S. TROOPS ARE INCREASING TERRORIST RECRUITMENT
SK/C15.02) Sean Lengell, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2009, p.
A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Mr. Levin was supported in
his opposition to sending more U.S. forces by Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts
Democrat, who has called for a definitive end date for U.S. military involvement in
Afghanistan. Mr. McGovern warned on the ABC show that enlarging our military
footprint in Afghanistan would be a mistake and be counterproductive [because] .. the
larger our military footprint, the more difficult it is to achieve reconciliation. And, quite
frankly, it's been used as a recruiting tool by the Taliban.
SK/C16. COST OF AFGHAN WAR IS UNACCEPTABLE
1. AFGHAN WAR HAS COST THE U.S. BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
SK/C16.01) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The United States has
spent more than $223 billion on the Afghan war since 2001, and it now costs roughly $65
billion annually. The actual bill will be significantly higher, however, as these figures
omit the replacement cost of military equipment, veterans' benefits and other war-related
expenses. Most important, more than 850 U.S. soldiers have already been killed and
several thousand have been seriously wounded. And we are not close to winning.
SK/C16.02) Maryann Cusinamo Love, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 11,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The United States has
spent over $228 billion in combat operations alone in Afghanistan, with billions more to
be spent on aid and veterans' payments for decades to come.
2. FUTURE COSTS ARE STAGGERING
SK/C16.03) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. How much the extra troops would cost is in dispute. Orszag [head of the Office of
Management and Budget] pegs it at $1 million per soldier per year, which works out to
an additional $30 billion a year for 30,000 more troops. The Pentagon says it's half that.
But a new study by consulting firm Deloitte makes clear that fighting inside a landlocked
country where the Taliban has shut down much of the meager road network has
drastically inflated even routine costs. The average U.S. trooper in Afghanistan requires
22 gal. (83 L) of fuel a day--but the cost of buying a gallon of fuel and shipping it to the
deepest corners of the country averages $45. That's nearly $1,000 a day per soldier.
SK/C16.04) Stephan M. Walt [Professor of International Affairs, Harvard U.],
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. 24,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Obama administration
admits that the challenges are "daunting," and a recent pro-war report from the Center for
American Progress said success will require "prolonged U.S. engagement using all
elements of U.S. national power" for "as long as another 10 years." Success also requires
creating an army and police force larger than the Afghan government can afford, which
means Kabul will need U.S. assistance indefinitely. The bottom line: Staying in
Afghanistan will cost many more dead American soldiers--and, inevitably, Afghan
civilians--and hundreds of billions of additional dollars.
3. TROOP INCREASE WILL DESTROY U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY
SK/C16.05) Editorial, THE CAPITAL TIMES (Madison, WI), November 28,
2009, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Obey [Chairman,
House Appropriations Committee] is offering what could well be the most effective
congressional challenge to Obama's plan. The Appropriations Committee chair argues
that the expanded mission is simply unaffordable. Surging more troops into Afghanistan
will "wipe out every initiative we have to rebuild our own economy," says Obey, who
explains that if Obama goes for an expanded war: "There ain't going to be no money for
nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan.”
SK/C16.06) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. Back on Capitol Hill, Obey [Chairman, House Appropriations Committee] is
concerned that increased spending for Afghanistan could doom Obama's efforts to
improve the U.S. economy. He says the domestic initiatives of both Harry Truman and
Lyndon Johnson stalled because of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Says Obey: "We
don't want that to happen again."
SK/C17. DEATH & SUFFERING ARE AT UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS
1. THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS AND AFGHANS HAVE DIED
SK/C17.01) Maryann Cusinamo Love, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 11,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. U.S. troop levels have
increased from over 5,000 in 2002 to more than 68,000 today. Over 38,000 NATO troops
also serve. More than 1,500 military service members have died in Afghanistan since
2001 (over 900 of them Americans). Afghan civilian casualties are estimated at over
5,000 since 2006; totals since the war began may be double that.
SK/C17.02) Current Comment, AMERICA, November 16, 2009, p. 4, GALE
CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. October proved a cruel month in
our eighth year of war in Afghanistan. Fifty-eight Americans were killed, the worst
monthly loss of life since the beginning of the war.
2. TROOP INCREASES COULD DOUBLE U.S. CASUALTIES
SK/C17.03) Gareth Porter, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. Beyond the financial cost is the danger: more troops would need more fuel, which
would require sending more supply convoys into harm's way. The study [by consulting
firm Deloitte] warns that stepped-up operations in Afghanistan could more than double
the 5,400 U.S. casualties already suffered there (including 927 killed) by 2014.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL & EMOTIONAL DAMAGE IS SKYROCKETING
SK/C17.04) Martin Fletcher, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded
Academic ASAP. American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply
disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two U.S. battalions that have spent nine
months on the front line in the war against the Taliban. Many feel that they are risking
their lives--and that colleagues have died--for a futile mission and an Afghan population
that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on
this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul. "The many soldiers
who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in
a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families," said Captain
Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division's 2-87 Infantry Battalion.
SK/C17.05) Martin Fletcher, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, December 2009, p. S10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded
Academic ASAP. The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the
soldiers' private lives. "They're killing families," he [Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th
Mountain Division's 2-87 Infantry Battalion] said. "Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is
off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect
families for the rest of their lives."
SK/C18. AMERICANS OPPOSE TROOP INCREASE
1. VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS OPPOSE TROOP INCREASE
SK/C18.01) Bill Schneider, NATIONAL JOURNAL, November 6, 2009, pNA,
GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In last month's
CNN/Opinion Research poll, the public said by 59 percent to 39 percent that they oppose
sending more troops to Afghanistan. That represents a pretty wide margin.
2. MAJORITY OF AMERICANS BELIEVE AFGHAN WAR NOT WORTH IT
SK/C18.02) Rachelle Marshall, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST
AFFAIRS, November 2009, p. 7, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic
ASAP. A Washington Post-ABC poll in late August showed that more than half of those
polled said the Afghanistan war was no longer worth fighting. People are asking why
Americans should go on dying in a country where they are not wanted, and in support of
a government despised by its own citizens.