Was This Trip Necessary?
Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan
By Scott Horton
The Libertarian Institute, 2017
By Richard Morchoe
Scott Horton, author of Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, begins the last section of the book thus: "The occupation of Afghanistan is not just America's longest foreign war. It may also have the distinction of being both the least supported and least opposed war in our history." Nineteen years on, it is a zombie conflict with its think tank and military supporters coming up with little rhyme or reason to be there other than to be there.
The people may not be following all that closely, but there is a constituency doing well, the suppliers of the war material are passionately supporting our sojourn over there.
Horton's Fool's Errand could be assigned as the text of a college survey course on our involvement even before the events of 911. The book is exhaustively documented and foot noted. Mr. Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute as well as editorial director of Antiwar.com. He hosts Antiwar Radio Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California, and also a podcast, the Scott Horton Show from Scott Horton.org.
As he is associated with Antiwar.com, it would not be difficult to observe that he probably looks at our Afghan involvement with a critical eye, if the title, Fool's Errand did not give it away.
Full disclosure, your reviewer has contributed content to Antiwar.com and has a slight acquaintance with Mr. Horton.
It is not easy to make sense of the long engagement in Afghanistan, maybe because it can't make sense. A cliché analogy would be it is a hall of mirrors and that is as good as any. We have lurched from one bad decision to another.
It goes without saying that the events of 911 did not just happen out of the blue. George Bush's comment about hating our freedom does not hold up, as a read of Scott's book would demonstrate. The lack of reason is accentuated when the rationale that we have to "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is used. Even when an attack happens in the "homeland” (e.g. the Boston Marathon Bombing) the answer does not change.
So, what did cause certain denizens of the Islamic east to carry out the attack on the Twin Towers and set off almost two decades of war?
Scott Horton cites University of Chicago professor Robert Pape who undertook a study of Islam to figure out the cause of suicide terrorism. He was shocked when he found out that it was not religion that led to the attacks, but reaction to foreign occupation.
People of other faiths would also resort to self-destruction as part of their resistance. Not so long ago, the Tamils, who are not Muslims, fought a long war of liberation against the Sri Lankan state and would use the tactic.
Pape and his grad students built a database "of every suicide attacker on earth since 1980." The findings; these are not losers who have given up on life. "The single most significant factor in determining whether someone would commit an act of suicide terrorism was the presence of foreign combat forces on the attacker’s territory."
It would have been a good idea to think about how Arabs and Muslims might react to our troops on Saudi soil or the first war against Iraq. Nah, just go with hate us for our freedom as motive.
Anyway, no matter the motive, the attack of 911 was, murder most foul. The United States had every reason to demand the extradition of the perpetrators and if refused, take military action to apprehend them.
But, as Scott writes, there was a fly in that ointment.
The Taliban were, and one must assume, still are, serious about their religion. They were, however, not in love with al Qaeda. Three months before 911, Mullah Omar gave an interview to a western journalist in which he expressed his displeasure with bin Laden.
Granted, the Taliban refused to just hand over their guest, but they knew the man was a hot potato and they needed at least a fig leaf of accommodation to drop him. They offered to turn bin Laden over to a third country. We wanted him and that was that.
Were the Taliban just stalling? Horton looks at the words of Milton Bearden who had been the CIA station chief running the covert war in the 1980s, "We never heard what they were trying to say. We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up'..."
That the Taliban was trying to dance away from bin Laden never made the news at the time. Even if they were being cute, it is undeniable that the Bush administration would settle for nothing but absolute compliance.
We could not take yes for an answer.
Horton goes into much detail, but suffice it to say in the words of Lincoln, "and the war came."
Even after the war started and, supposedly, finished, elements of the Taliban were trying to come to terms with the new regime and were rebuffed. It should not have been a surprise when later on they would go back to war.
We were "nation building," but it did not seem to be going well. Our lack of popularity among those we were uplifting was noted by journalist Chris Sands. The insurgency may not have been an honorable enterprise, but Sands observed, "when civilians are killed by the Taliban in Kandahar, locals still blame the [U.S.-supported] government instead of the Taliban, who are "rarely the subject of the people's fury" in such circumstances."
The project seemed to be meandering such that Karzai, the president, was referred to as the Mayor of Kabul as the writ of the government did not seem to exceed the boundary of the capital.
What to do? How about a surge, i.e. more troops?
This one would be different from the Iraq endeavor. It would be baked in a think tank oven by "COINdistas." COIN refers to Counter Insurgency warfare and it had its stars.
There were old neocon retreads as a supporting cast, but new faces were not wanting such as the Aussie COIN theorist, David Kilcullen. General James Mattis, who would later become known for a role in the Trump administration, wrote the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, but the guy who really made his brand, such as it is, was General David Petraeus.
Petraeus was the man with a plan. He and his confreres "promised Obama that with the plan they could have the Taliban sitting at the table, ready to concede to American terms within 18 months–by July 2011."
That that did not happen was hardly an impediment to Petraeus. He always claimed his escalation was working, with constant gains, albeit "fragile" and "reversible," which means not actual gains.
No matter that the resistance continued to grow, Dave's rep grew as well, until he and his amanuensis and mistress, Paula Broadwell, were caught sharing classified material. He was slapped on the wrist with a misdemeanor conviction that might have been a felony for someone else. Petraeus has not slunk away in disgrace, but is doing well. You've heard of the term, "empty suit." This guy was an empty uniform.
What is the point of it all? Maybe there are riches beneath the soil, but the U.S., and certainly its people will not profit from them. The Afghans will continue to extract wealth from the land in the form of opium, but your average Afghani will not become rich.
The Greek historian Herodotus related how the Spartan king, Pausanias, after the battle of Platea, contrasted the luxury of the captured Persian king's table as set for dinner and his own poor "spartan" supper. Pausanias commented that the Persians had "come to rob us of our poverty."
Taliban members must think us that stupid.
History does not stop so, I reached out to Scott as to where we stand now. He was kind enough to respond:
"Despite the fact that Donald Trump did not believe in the war in Afghanistan, in 2017, he sent more troops, and massively increased airstrikes, killing tens of thousands of people. He did so while at the same time successfully negotiating a withdrawal deal with the Taliban. The terms are that the U.S. will withdraw all combat forces by May 2021, as long as the Taliban agree not to allow international terrorists on their territory.
Joe Biden opposes this deal. He still wants to implement his plan from the Obama years: a garrison of thousands of "counter-terrorism" forces stationed there indefinitely.
Biden may or may not seek regime change against any more secular governments, but he certainly plans on continuing the "war on terrorism," which means war against troublesome radicals anywhere the U.S. military and CIA drone forces can find them from Nigeria to the Philippines.
In the seemingly unlikely chance that Trump is declared the winner of the election after-all, there will still be enormous pressure on him to cancel the deal and stay under the pretext of al Qaeda's return or the dangers of Afghan "ISIS."
Either way, the American people are going to have to insist that the deal is seen through and the U.S.'s role in that tragic war, and the rest of the terror wars, is finally brought to an end."
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