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 t
has to rank among the most amazing, foolish, and revealing things
said about the U.S. war in Afghanistan so far.
A senior military
planner told the Washington Post yesterday that the U.S.
won't establish a base in Afghanistan because: "We don't want
to be caught at this point with the appearance of Americans holding
ground."
This gets to
the nub of the problem: The U.S. wants to fight a war against the
Taliban without actually appearing to do so. Hence, the collection
of half measures and incremental steps that has characterized the
effort. And while we try not to appear to be ferociously fighting
a war, the Taliban has no such compunction, as the Abdul Haq episode
last week demonstrated.
As
we put it in NR this issue, "It is unclear whether
the assassination of Abdul Haq by the Taliban amounts to the catastrophic
setback in the south that some have portrayed it as being. But its
symbolism was disturbing: The Taliban killed an opponent, perhaps
with their bare hands, while we sent an unmanned drone aircraft
— too late — to assist him."
The sensitivity
to appearances is meant to appease our allies, but it really has
the opposite effect of stoking their opposition to the war. The
best argument that Gen. Musharraf can muster in making the case
for a cessation of bombing is that it hasn't worked. Which is exactly
what he told Tommy Franks the other day.
The Pakistanis
are playing a double game that is common in politics: resisting
a given course of action, then when your resistance helps foil the
action, declare it a rank failure.
Here's a rough
domestic analogy. Democrats ridiculed the first President Bush's
no-new-taxes pledge, and eventually badgered him into abandoning
it. Then, they attacked him for breaking his promise.
Pakistan and
most of the Arab world wants to sucker us into letting the Taliban
off the hook, then announce: "Well, sorry guys, you couldn't
defeat the Taliban — war over."
This is why
the Ramadan bombing phase is absolutely essential to the enemies
of the United States: It's the wedge for what will be a much broader
political case against the war itself, as ill-conceived and unsuccessful.
In this respect,
the strategic advice that the U.S. has been getting from British
Defense Minister Geoff Hoon about how to handle Ramadan is shamefully
stupid. Apparently Hoon's idea is that by occasionally stopping
our bombing of the Taliban, we will keep them guessing about when
we might bomb them next, thus knocking them off balance.
The Taliban
will then, the theory must go, be confused into submission.
But the only
way to get the Taliban to submit is to kill them. And it is difficult
to try to kill an enemy and simultaneously appear not to try to
kill it. The administration should stop trying to resolve this contradiction,
because even as a matter of P.R. its current straddle is a mistake.
One reason
bin Laden and co. have such contempt for American arms is that they
think we worry about things like the appearance of holding ground.
And the reason the Pakistanis are balking at the war is that there
is little appearance of progress on the ground in Afghanistan.
We should simply
fight to win, and let the appearances fend for themselves.
Another
Awareness Week
President Bush's
micro-initiatives during the war have been decidedly mushy. But
they took a slight turn for the better yesterday when he announced
an effort to get schools to invite a veteran to speak during the
week of Veterans Day. Good idea, and a long overdue one. But the
Bushies still haven't managed to shake the stilted language of sensitivity
training and public health. Bush yesterday said he was going to
declare the week of Nov. 11 "National Veterans Awareness Week,"
as if veterans were a communicable disease or oppressed minority.
Dreadful. Where are Bush's expert wordsmiths when you need them?
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