Whither Afghanistan (and Pakistan)?

Posted by Robert Zimmer on 12.01.2009

Obama gambles on new AfPak surge while Cheney grouses; why war bonds are a good idea.

Only hours before President Obama announced the new Afghanistan-Pakistan ("AfPak") strategy in a nationally televised address, former Vice President Dick Cheney trashed the president in a 90-minute interview given to Politico magazine. Despite the fact that Obama has announced a surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, Cheney accused Obama of "showing weakness." This is not only bizarre on its face, but it is even more puzzling given that two of the architects of the Iraq surge in 2007, General David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, contributed heavily to the Obama administration's new strategy to get a handle on the degrading situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Cheney seems to have no self-awareness about the profound irony that if Vice President Gore had criticized President Bush on the same day Bush announced the Iraq surge, Republicans would have screamed "unpatriotic" and called for the former VP's lynching. Cheney's premeditated outburst, apparently intended to hinder the new AfPak strategy from gaining both traction and public support, is a disgracefully unpatriotic and irresponsible act. Forget Darth Vader; Cheney, who gave his interview to Politico over the phone, literally sounds more like Emperor Palpatine every time he talks. The Force is no longer with Cheney, however, a fact about which he is either unaware or simply refuses to accept. He is a tired old man who rants from his Wyoming ranch about grudges that can never be satisfied, obsessed with repairing a political legacy that not even Bush, Rumsfeld, or Condi Rice bothers to speak up to defend.

To the distress of many of my liberal friends, I actually support the new AfPak strategy. It is both a national security and human rights imperative. While true that only approximately 100 Al Qaida remain in Afghanistan, Al Qaida flourishes en masse in the no-man's land between eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, plotting devastation against Western enemies real and imagined. They must not be allowed to continue. The Taliban, who once harbored Al Qaida as brothers, is resurgent in Afghanistan -- a repressive, fundamentalist Muslim alliance that demands the strictest possible interpretation of conservative Islamic law, called Sharia. The Taliban enforces summary executions, no rights for women, and stern prohibitions on a wide range of cultural and educational activities. The government of Afghan president Hamid Karzai holds the capital of Kabul fairly stably, along with a few other major cities, but the Taliban have overrun the rural and more distant expanses of the country. The Afghan people hate the Taliban, but see little choice but to cooperate with them in the profound absence of Afghan police and military personnel. The U.S. military presence (currently at 68,000 troops) is simply not enough to make up the difference.

Like the surge in Iraq, what is essential is that the U.S not get stuck in a quagmire where it is doing the fighting of the native population; the job of the U.S. is to stabilize the country, restore basic civic services, train Afghan troops, and show the Afghan population that there is a legitimate alternative to the Sharia nightmare of the Taliban. The Karzai government has been told that the surge is temporary – the U.S. will begin to withdraw troops in 2011, so the pressure is on them to step up, fight corruption, and convince the Afghan people their government is more viable than allowing the Taliban to once again rule the country, as they did from 1996 to 2001, during which they harbored tens of thousands of Al Qaida warriors. Make no mistake -- if America simply ditches Afghanistan and brings the troops home, that Al Qaida will spread back into Afghanistan like the worst bout of cancer imaginable.

In Pakistan – a nuclear power, let's not forget – the central government is similarly weak and Muslim fundamentalism a very powerful political and cultural force. It is no accident that Al Qaida relocated the nexus of their operational elements to Pakistan. They have worked tirelessly, in some cases with the covert aid of Pakistan's own security forces, to wreak terrorist acts on Pakistan's civilian population, and plot further terrorist acts against the West. (It is also believed that Osama Bin Laden is still at large in Pakistan, assuming he has not been killed, which some believe happened a few years back.) It is not just the fate of Afghanistan that is the critical to U.S. interests – Pakistan too must be saved, or the costs could be grave. If Pakistan's nuclear weapons fall into the hands of Al Qaida, the consequences could be unimaginable.

The best idea in support of the new AfPak strategy is one proposed by moderate Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) and which has, refreshingly, received some initial Republican support: war bonds to pay for the AfPak war effort. Most Americans do not know that taxes were not raised during World War II, for example; instead, the government sold war bonds to raise war revenues, which turned out to be an extremely popular program. For those that don't know what they are, war bonds are simply IOUs plus a modest interest payment. So, for example, if you purchased a $100.00 war bond with three percent interest, you would receive a $103.00 payment from the government in, say, five or ten years. The Roosevelt administration, cognizant of the economic difficulties facing most Americans at the onset of World War II, allowed people to purchase war bonds in very small amounts – $25.00, for example, or ten-cent stamps that could be used towards to purchase of a war bond. 85 million Americans ended up participating, raising $185 billion dollars – which is a staggering $2.3 trillion in 2009 dollars. The U.S. economy roared back to unparalleled prosperity after the war (in part due to the war), and these bonds were paid back. (Interesting factoid: today, the U.S. Treasury is sitting on $17 billion of unclaimed war bond repayments.) War bonds are a terrific idea, particularly when combined with a small surtax on the rich, for a simple reason: the entire Iraq war has been financed with borrowed money, much of it from China. Financial obligations of this magnitude should never be unfunded, particularly by borrowing money from strategic adversaries. It's high time we reverse the Bush administration policy of going to war, enacting tax cuts for the rich, and countless other unfunded mandates (Medicare prescription drug expansion, No Child Left Behind), without a whit of concern for how the will be paid for. Both foreign and fiscal policy sanity must be restored, or our empire will see itself go the way of Rome.

P.S. For those who are still convinced Obama is a Muslim, please now explain why he has ordered 30,000 American troops to combat Muslim extremists.