By John Isaacs and Usha Sahay Executive Summary: As the United States and NATO contemplate the end of the combat mission in Afghanistan, officially scheduled for December 2014, a number of commentators have argued in favor of slowing down the withdrawal of the 68,000 remaining U.S. troops. Such arguments maintain that the majority of troops […]
Debating the Forgotten War: Election 2012 and Afghanistan 2014
America’s past, present, and future wars received little attention in the October 16 presidential debate at Hofstra University, with the only foreign-policy question focusing on the attack on the US mission in Benghazi. Of course, a 90-minute debate must inevitably leave out many issues, but Joshua Foust of the American Security Project nonetheless made a good point when he tweeted, “I remain amazed by the idea that 4 dead Americans in Benghazi should be a campaign issue but not 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.”
For those interested in how the election will affect those troops (the number is actually closer to 68,000), the most direct discussion actually came in the vice-presidential debate. Martha Raddatz asked what HuffPost reporter Joshua Hersh described as his “dream question”:
Now, we’ve reached the recruiting goal for Afghan forces, we’ve degraded Al Qaida. So tell me, why not leave now? What more can we really accomplish? Is it worth more American lives?
But, as Hersh also said, it’s too bad neither candidate answered. Instead, Biden and Ryan doubled down on their tickets’ positions on Afghanistan, which lead to misleading and sometimes contradictory statements from both sides. Ryan began, “We agree with the administration on their 2014 transition.” But later parts of his answer seemed to contradict that. Ryan criticized the concept of a timeline even as he endorsed it, saying, “we don’t want to broadcast to our enemies, ‘put a date on your calendar, wait us out, and then come back.’” Then he continued to vacillate even more, explaining, “we do agree with the timeline and the transition, but what we — what any administration will do in 2013 is assess the situation to see how best to complete this timeline.”
Taken together, Ryan’s statements sound like code for “we don’t agree with the 2014 timeline.” Vice-President Biden jumped at the chance to draw a sharp contrast with the Romney ticket on this point, stubbornly maintaining, “we are leaving. We are leaving in 2014. Period.” But where Ryan’s statements were contradictory, Biden’s were misleading at best, because we won’t really be leaving in 2014.
What Biden meant was that combat operations will end in 2014, and the forces directly associated with those operations will be withdrawn. But an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 U.S. and NATO troops will remain in Afghanistan in a (technically) non-military capacity for many years beyond 2014.
The Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed by President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May, provides for US forces to continue using Afghan military bases after 2014, “for the purposes of combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates, training the Afghan National Security forces, and other mutually determined missions to advance shared security.” Moreover, the agreement commits the United States to “seek funds, on a yearly basis,” after 2014, “to support the equipping, advising, and sustaining of the Afghan National Security Forces, so that Afghanistan can independently secure and defend itself against internal and external threats, and help ensure that terrorists never again encroach on Afghan soil and threaten Afghanistan, the region, and the world.”
Training Afghan forces, combating al-Qaeda, performing other vaguely defined security missions, and getting funds from Congress to do it all – in short, it sounds like the US role post-2014 could end up looking a lot like the US role pre-2014, just with fewer troops.
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The end of combat operations is, of course, an important shift, but U.S. troops will certainly continue to be in harm’s way, and American taxpayers will certainly continue to fund the troop presence. That’s why Biden wasn’t being fully straight with the debate audience when he flatly stated “We will leave in 2014.” In fact, just a few days after the debate, on October 16, Josh Rogin reported that the State Department and the Kabul government are set to begin negotiating the long-term presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
But Martha Raddatz actually didn’t ask about Afghanistan after 2014. She asked about what will happen before 2014, raising a question that has been on the minds of many on the left and right in recent weeks: “why not leave now?” Back in September, Nukes of Hazard reported that two ordinarily hawkish Republicans, John McCain and Bill Young, had suggested that the US should end Afghanistan operations earlier than 2014, although they later appeared to back away from that position. Lt. General David Barno of the Center for a New American Security, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, has also recommended an accelerated drawdown.
And on October 14, the New York Times threw in the towel, dedicating its entire editorial page to their view that it is “Time To Pack Up.” Acknowledging that this was a change of opinion for the Times, the article argued that the high costs can no longer be said to justify our meager, transient gains:
Some experts say a secure withdrawal would take at least six months, and possibly a year. But one year is a huge improvement over two. It would be one less year of having soldiers die or come home with wounds that are terrifying.
The call for an accelerated drawdown has been relatively muted so far, except from a few members of Congress, but the Times’ about-face lends legitimacy to the argument, and will certainly make more Americans ask the question that Raddatz asked the vice-presidential candidates.
And of course, we all know which two people should be on the receiving end of that question. Afghanistan is, indeed, on the list of topics for the October 22nd foreign-policy debate. Obama and Romney may not be asked, as Biden and Ryan were, to explain why we should stay until 2014 (and if they are, they may sidestep the question). Regardless, this is a question that deserves to be debated far more than it has been, and the candidates’ answers will certainly shed light on how they hope to end – or extend – America’s longest war.
What the 2,000th American Death in Afghanistan Means: Taking Stock of an Eleven-Year War
On Saturday, September 29, the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan edged over 2,000, when an exchange of fire between American and Afghan soldiers resulted in the deaths of two Americans and three Afghans. Pentagon press secretary George Little dismissed the significance of the 2,000th death, calling it an “arbitrary milestone.” This might be true, but the incident undoubtedly comes at an important crossroads for the US-led effort in Afghanistan. It occurred just two days after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced the resumption of normal partnered operations between American and Afghan forces, and less than two weeks after the official end of the US troop surge. And moreover, this upcoming weekend will mark the eleventh anniversary of the start of the war, America’s longest to date.
For all of these reasons, it’s worth examining what happened on Saturday and what it says about the state of things in Afghanistan. According to the New York Times, the incident was sparked by a mortar shell attack on American troops, who, assuming that Afghan forces were responsible, responded by firing rockets and killing several Afghan soldiers. NATO officials initially reported that the mortar shell incident was an insider attack by Afghan soldiers, but later suggested that insurgents may have been responsible. Regardless of the specifics, as Time’s Mark Thompson points out, “the bottom line remains the same: supposed allies are killing one another.” The incident indicates the continuing inability of American and Afghan forces to trust one another: insider attacks in 2012 have claimed the lives of 53 NATO coalition forces, if Saturday’s incident is counted. Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times notes that, in another troubling sign of the divide between the supposed allies, American forces who visit Afghan Army outposts now “keep their body army on and their weapons loaded.”
But more importantly, the weekend’s deaths highlight the coalition’s seemingly haphazard approach toward partnering with the Afghan forces. On September 16, NATO command called for a restriction on joint operations below the battalion level, a decision that apparently surprised both our British allies and commanders on the ground in Afghanistan. Then, last Thursday, September 27, came Panetta’s announcement that partnering efforts were back to normal. Yet, as Wired’s Spencer Ackerman noted later that same day, little had actually changed. The bureaucratic restrictions on lower-level joint operations remain in place: the operations still need two-star general approval, which means that in many cases they won’t take place. Saturday’s clash was an example of the effects of the new restrictions, because it occurred in the midst of an operation that ordinarily would have been a joint American-Afghan effort, but due to NATO’s new policy, was being carried out by Americans alone. The New York Times’ Rod Nordland suggested that this may have played a role in precipitating the attack, although Deputy ISAF commander Adrian Bradshaw denied it when asked.
What happened on Saturday is important, and not just because American deaths reached a particular number. The number of casualties, and the circumstances under which those casualties occur, are direct products of unwise US and NATO decision-making. The sudden suspension of joint operations is one example, but President Obama’s recently concluded troop surge is another, bigger instance of our failed policy in Afghanistan. When additional troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of the surge, as Wired’s Ackerman suggested earlier this month, NATO policy never properly prioritized the training of Afghan troops,. Similarly, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of a new book on the Afghanistan debacle, argued that the surge encouraged Afghan soldiers to “hang back and let the Americans do the fighting.” These are just two ways in which the surge seems to have hindered, not helped, America’s efforts. The surge may technically be over, but every day we’re seeing more tragic evidence of its ineffectiveness – which means that every day, policymakers and voters should be taking a hard look at the true costs of war, and the casual dismissal of those costs in our mainstream political debate.
Top Republicans Call for an Accelerated Afghanistan Withdrawal
UPDATE (Friday, 9/21): Senator McCain later backed away from these initial remarks, releasing a statement on September 20 in which he explained: “I have said that no option should be taken off the table in such a discussion, including a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops. However, I continue to believe that would be the worst possible course of action.” Read the full statement here.
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Endorses Afghanistan Study Group Report
On September 15, the board of the Council for a Livable World and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation endorsed the August 16th report from the Afghanistan Study Group. The report, entitled: A New Way Forward—Rethinking the U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan, argues that the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is not vitally essential to […]
