Will Afghanistan be Obama’s Waterloo?

Obama faces a serious challenge of his own making in Afghanistan. He has claimed the war as his own, and is now facing an uphill battle for credibility and meaningful advancement in his efforts there. Potentially and despite assurances to the contrary, he may face requests for yet more troops to throw at a conflict without an identifiable success metric or easily imaginable exit strategy. Afghanistan, beyond the economy and health care reforms, is a challenge he has chosen and that may well prove to be the Waterloo of his Presidency. Already the dogs of war are raising the specter of more men being required to feed the counter-insurgency efforts.

The top officer in the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen, has raised the possibility of sending more US troops to Afghanistan on top of the 68,000 approved by the Obama Administration, warning that Americans should brace for higher US casualties... Admiral Mullen has flatly denied there is a cap on the US commitment in Afghanistan, which was identified by Mr Obama as a priority. "There is not a ceiling on troop levels," Admiral Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday. US flags sending more troops to Afghanistan

One can easily argue that circumstances beyond his control dictated the other imperatives that Obama confronts. On entering office, he faced a moribund, abused, structurally unsound, criminally deregulated, and rust-bucket economy in free-fall. While valid questions surround his policies to address this, the priority came to him as a hot potato issue from the previous Administration. Obama's desire to fix America's health system is perhaps also a fiscal imperative; a ticking time bomb left by previous regimes to explode on Obama's watch. One could equally as well argue that rationalizing America's heath system is a moral and ethical priority. Most informed observers know it is well past time to radically correct one of the most expensive and inefficient medical systems in the developed world from a dismal global ranking of 37^th (and just below the Moroccan medical system), up to a standard of affordability and rationality consistent with America's economic standing. These challenges are domestic issues that could dictate Obama's reelection chances, but it is more often the foreign policy legacy that historians use to deliver final judgment on a Presidency.

For example, many view Bill Clinton as a sound steward of an American economy in growth, despite his self-destructive  sexual peccadilloes. However, it was by his reluctance to act in Rwanda, the deaths of American servicemen in Somalia, and the bombings of Europeans in the Bosnia War that his Presidential legacy may be sealed. Similarly, the Bush Administration is forever tainted and scarred by its misadventure in Iraq. Bush, who some see as a tragic fool of history,  persecuted an unnecessary war that cost over 4,000 American and countless Iraqi lives, and removed a vital Sunni counterbalance to Iran leaving them free to pursue regional hegemony.  Bush's "unitelligent design" in Iraq also allowed Al Qaeda to fine tune their insurgency and IED techniques for use in later conflicts, such as Afghanistan. Bush and his Iraq legacy will be a price that the US will have to pay for generations, and that may well see instability and another unwanted nuclear power in the region. Further, the fact that a flawed man and lame duck President undertook such an Imperialist disaster seemingly seeking to outdo his father in an attempt for parental approval, assisted by a Vice President demonstrating paranoid and delusional tendencies, and a Secretary of Defense apparently desirous of a Christian crusade to reclaim Mesopotamia, sees Iraq, Guatanamo and the other foreign ventures of the Bush Administration as a stain on the morality of the country.

Obama, in following the withdrawal timetable he inherited from the debacle, while attempting to maintain a nominal Iraqi nationalistic agenda and preserve a fragile and foreign democracy,  is again following a priority dictated by others, not of his own making. It is therefore in Obama's policies in Afghanistan, perhaps, that the analysts will take the man's measure. It appears to many commentators that it is in Afghanistan where Obama may be facing a Waterloo of his own making.

Obama is relying on legacy personnel for policy advice on the issue. This may be to his detriment. General Petraeus, the militaristic Machiavellian behind the scenes, is a major determinant in the current Afghanistan agenda. Petraeus rose to public fame by promoting the ‘surge' in Iraq. However, many believe he was but heeding the wisdom of his Australian adviser, David Kilcullen, in undertaking such a surge and the hiring of Sunni militia to, albeit temporarily, preserve the peace. Kilcullen was never a fan of the Iraq War. He once famously said in a quote in the American Independent that the Iraq war was "fucking stupid". The Bush Administration called him to task for his comments and demanded he apologize. He responded in a typical Australian tongue-in-cheek and laconic style by issuing an ‘apology' statement that said, "I can categorically state that the word ‘fucking' was said off the record".

Tom Barnett, the American author and futurologist, has said that the Australians may not compare favorably to the US in terms of military might, but often outperform in the areas of ‘Sys Admin' as he terms it; the civil efforts required to rebuild a post-conflict society.  It is in this Sys Admin area that Kilcullen will now advise the Obama Administration in relation to Afghanistan. Kilcullen has made his views clear as to what he believes are the strategic errors in the campaign to date and the dire consequences in country as a result. Kilcullen has been vocal and consistent in his criticism of the US drone strategy. It appears as though the newly appointed military commanders in Afghanistan may finally be getting that message.

The biggest change under General McChrystal is the instruction to reduce civilian casualties. A "tactical directive", issued at the start of Thrust of the Sword, says that winning the support of the Afghans overrides all else. "We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories-but suffering strategic defeats-by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people," he says. This may increase the danger to troops; but the greater risk is to push Afghans into the arms of the Taliban.

A classified passage sets out how air strikes will be curtailed. But on the ground, his officials say, the share of firefights involving close air support has already fallen from 35% to 17% in the past month. During the summer of 2007 an average of 22 tonnes of ordnance was dropped on Helmand every month

The war in Afghanistan: Into Taliban country | The Economist

Obama needs to listen carefully to the message that Kilcullen is vocalizing. Efforts to resolve what was at least initially a poorly planned and petty tactical war of revenge, have gone from bad to worse in Afghanistan. While there are indeed humanistic arguments for intervening in Afghanistan to prevent the social strangulation of freedom that the Taliban represents, this in itself is not enough to justify continued American and NATO involvement. The US could target many other equally as repressive regimes.  Some of these have more strategic value, and ironically are currently included in the US friends list, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Obama has gotten himself embroiled in a long war as Kilcullen explains, and one that has to date been faulty in both design and execution. The unacceptable levels of civilian casualty and the inconsistent focus have had dire consequences among the morale of the locals.

[According to Kilcullen] ...what the West risks throwing away is the "support of the vast majority of the people. They may not like some of the things we do, but they do not want the Taliban back. But let's not be complacent, in the three years since 2005 we have seen a 500 per cent increase in violence in the country, support for the legitimacy of the government of [President Hamid] Karzai is pretty weak. It is no exaggeration to say this is a critical year in Afghanistan. If we don't get it right this year then we may not succeed. But the good thing is that the American's are now focusing on Afghanistan. It may be late, but they are focusing."

Kilcullen, another one of Petraeus' boys from Baghdad, declares that McChrystal is the ideal man for such a difficult mission. "He realizes that this is not just a military matter, it is a matter of governance and reconstruction. We now have more troops in south in Helmand and Kandahar. This gives us the opportunity to build, to some constructive, on our military gains. I really don't think that NATO can afford to miss this opportunity."

Kilcullen was among those who persuaded the US administration that one cannot hope to solve the situation in Afghanistan without getting involved in Pakistan. "What will happen in Pakistan is absolutely critical. There are sections of the military and the security apparatus which are a rogue state within a state. They have a long history of supporting the Taliban, we have an elected government in Pakistan but they have no control over these elements".

And the future? "We are looking at ten years at least in Afghanistan, and that is the best case scenario and at least half of that will be pretty major combat. This is the commitment needed, and this is what people in America and Britain should be told, and they should be told that there will be a cost involved."

David Kilcullen: The Australian helping to shape a new Afghanistan strategy - Asia, World - The Independent

It is doubtful that the Afghanistan conflict will be resolved within the potential two terms of an Obama Presidency. The conflict will continue to be costly in terms of casualties, costs and diffusion of limited Presidential focus. The definition of what a successful outcome for Afghanistan would look like is poorly defined by the current (and previous) Administration, as we have discussed at length in previous editions. Whether the US public has the stomach for a long-term commitment to a war of dubious strategic value is questionable. Whether Obama post-honeymoon period has the political capital, strength of purpose, and mandate to continue unchecked operations in Afghanistan is also dubious. It is also unclear whether a joint Petraeus/ McChrystal architecture can resolve the impasse in Afghanistan, even assisted by Kilcullen's expertise.

Afghanistan is a much more complex conundrum than Iraq, which itself made America adopt an expedient and messy exit methodology rather than a longer-term strategic solution for the country and region. Iraq almost stretched the American armed forces beyond breaking point (and some say did mortal damage to the morale of the British in Basra), but the situation in Afghanistan will be far worse. It may well be unrealistic to expect America to enjoy any better results than the other foreign armies that have had their backs broken on that battleground before - the Russian and British Empires being prime examples. Obama has drawn his line in the sand, and whether it proves to be his Waterloo, as many predict, only time will tell. His legacy may well rest on the inhospitable mountains, poppy fields, and dry, dusty plains of a land that has denied any other nation a victory in the past. In this, Obama would need to better the lessons of history, and as any scholar knows, such an achievement is rarely granted to a mere mortal.