Afghan Expert

I'm often perplexed by what I hear and read from "experts" about the war in Afghanistan.  Given that most of it fails to comport with my experience here, I have come to appreciate one of Upton Sinclair's purported quotes:  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

Now, I certainly do not claim to be an expert -- I merely convey what I see and hear.  However, should you wish to get in on the gravy train that is defense contracting, you may want to stroll on over to the Ghosts of Alexander and learn how you too can be an expert on the war over here.

To his list, I would add:

-invent metrics that don't really measure anything significant, but appear to do so.
-employ the term "clear, hold, build" as much as possible.
-envision and explain Kandahar as equivalent to Anbar in Iraq without actually saying it.

While you enjoy these tips, I'm headed east to see a murder trial and talk to some Afghan judges and prosecutors.

Math

Imagine:  It is late at night.  There is very little moonlight and a cold fall wind is blowing in from the north.  You hear a dog bark, and then a scream.  You rise out of bed to look out the window and see what appears to be a home robbery across the street.  You are not in shape to go help due to a recent injury, but your teenage son is fit as a fiddle and can handle a gun.  Should you send him over to help?  Of course, your moral side says you should help a neighbor, but you fear for your son.  The robbers have guns too and your son could die.  Is the risk worth it?

Now imagine you are the leader of a free country.  You’ve inherited a war wherein the original enemy is essentially defeated, but now face decisions of a humanitarian concern.  Indeed, the former head of your CIA and current Secretary of Defense (let’s call him Leon Panetta) recently stated that America’s enemy du jour, Al Qaeda, has a key leadership of less than two dozen people most of which are no longer in Afghanistan.  As Al Qaeda has been consistently beaten down in the past several years, attention has turned to counterinsurgency or COIN.  But is it worth it? 

COIN is method of “fighting” that focuses more on winning over the local population than killing the enemy.  This form of warfare places military members at greater risk while simultaneously placing restrictions on the means of warfare.  The hope, apparently, is that if we give the local population enough stuff, they’ll like us and either point out the bad guys for arrest and prosecution or convince the bad guys that Americans really aren’t that bad.  It’s a sort of Full Metal Jacket approach (paraphrasing the movie: “inside the heart of every Afghan is an American trying to get out”).  It’s the height of ethnocentrism and it apparently guides our war effort.  To know us is to love us, right?

So here we are pursuing a strategy of buying love, affection, and support.  We’ve asked our soldiers and Marines to perform a function not typically considered part of warfighting while placing them in greater danger (I recently saw a story about Marines taking agriculture classes at a southern California university; Marines, for cryin’ out loud, our nation’s shock troops, learning to grow corn!).  This scenario leads to a consideration of “gruesome math.”   

Since Al Qaeda is no longer a real threat (and never really was an existential one) and we are making Afghanistan our own little money pit, we must be here to save Afghans, right?  Some say that if we leave, violence will ensue and many Afghans will die.  I have no doubt about the veracity of this argument.  Many tribes are rearming in the aftermath of President Obama’s drawdown announcement.  If it’s one thing Afghans know for sure, it’s that pacifists die in this country.  So this sounds like a wonderful cause, preventing the deaths of some unknown number of Afghans.  But what does the math say?

In the roughly ten years that we’ve been in this country, we’ve lost roughly 1660 Americans according to at least one source.*  That’s an average of 160 per year, 13 per month, or 3 per week.  In other words, every two days here an American dies.  They die for an effort to save an untold number of Afghans.  Therefore, saving an unknown number of Afghans must be worth the deaths 160 Americans per year to our political and military leaders.  But, when do we reach the tipping point?  How many American lives per month is too much in the equation?  And if we do in fact reach that point, do not the previous lives lost also become too much?  In other words, I pose a question to those who say we should stay to protect Afghans (as opposed to eliminating an existential threat): Can you look a mother, sister, wife, or child in the eye and say their son, brother, husband, or father had to die so that some unknown Afghan(s) could live?  Or more bluntly: How much is an American life worth in terms of Afghan lives?

Now some reading this will certainly be offended at my ability to analyze this issue dispassionately.  But we’ve done this before.  Look at Rwanda or Darfur.  Some within the international community begged the US to intervene.  We chose not to do so.  Why?  No strategic interests you say?  How is that calculation any less gruesome than the one I just made?  That calculation places interests such as oil (or lack thereof) above human lives.  I think those situations are the same as now.  Then, we made a calculation that American lives were not worth risking.  Today, they are.  Why?  I have no idea.  I’m simply confused.  I have no answers – and that is what makes this so hard. 

*http://icasualties.org/oef/

A Matter of Justice

I was nervous.  I had been waiting for this day for some time and it had arrived.  But, somehow, its arrival was not comforting.  I am not normally nervous on meeting important people, but, on this day, I was meeting the most important man in the world.  He held my future in his hands.  I was meeting with the father of the woman I wanted to marry and would ask him for his blessing (it’s what we do down South).  As I was still in college, I really had nothing to offer except potential (I hoped he would think).  Now that I have a daughter, I can begin to understand what he must’ve thought.  Deep down, no one is ever really good enough for a father’s daughter.  Intuitively, I knew this then.  Fortunately, he was able to settle; something a father here was unable to do.

Apparently, the custom here does not require the suitor to receive the blessing of the father, or perhaps it was ignored in this case.  In any case, two young people in love decided that a life together was what they desired most.  Like a young Romeo and Juliet, these two lovers were also from different tribes.  Thus, they eloped, were married, and returned with a fait accompli.  The father, however, was unwilling to accept the matter.  He called the local police and filed a complaint alleging adultery.

Adultery being a serious crime here, the police sprung into action, arresting the couple.  It was at this point that a deal was proposed; whether by the police or the prosecutor I am unsure.  In any event, each of the accused was told that the charges could be dropped for a payment of 50 thousand Afghanis (a little more than $1000).  However, this amount was much more than either could pay, so the case was bound over to the court.

During the preparation of the charges, the court determined that her age must be ascertained prior to any hearing on the charge of adultery.  The young lady was then sent to a local hospital wherein a test akin to a rape kit was administered to determine her age.  The specifics of this test are unknown as, to my knowledge, western medicine has no test wherein exact age is determined by examination of the vagina.  In any event, the age was set at 19.  This determination meant that the girl would receive a much harsher sentence, something the father had not accounted for.  Thus, he paid a small sum to have the test done again and his daughter was again subjected to this “medical” humiliation and had her age determined at 16. 

Having now “scientifically” determined the girl’s age, the court turned to the matter of adultery.  The question before the court was whether the couple was legally married or not.  Now even my non-lawyer friends, having received tutelage in law from shows such as Law and Order, realize that in order for a conviction, the prosecutor bears the burden of proving the lack of a marriage.  Not so here.  The court immediately ordered the couple to prove their marriage.  They complied by showing the equivalent of a marriage license from a religious figure in a neighboring province.  This was deemed insufficient and the couple was ordered to produce the man who performed the marriage.  As is often the case here, the couple did not have a defense attorney to procure the testimony of the one who performed the marriage.  Thus, the couple was convicted.  My understanding is that the man’s family was able to raise enough money to secure his release.  The girl received a sentence of 18 months and remains in jail as you read this.     

After nearly ten years and billions of dollars, this is the face of Afghan justice.  So I ask you, are we winning?

A Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

I owe Senator John Kerry an apology.  During his failed Presidential election campaign, there was much talk about his opposition to the Vietnam War.  I joined the chorus of folks criticizing that opposition. After serving (or perhaps during his tour) in Vietnam, he came to understand the futility of it all.  Rather than simply follow along with the rest of the myrmidons, he chose to voice his opinion.  Although I still do not condone how he chose to do this, I can now understand his opposition better.

Futility, I think, also best describes the mood here.  As I travel around, speaking to folks on the ground, the mood is quite somber.  This is in stark contrast to high-level briefings I’ve attended.  While war-supporting talking heads in the media spout talking points for the military-political counterinsurgency cabal, the facts on the ground continue to cast doubt on our ability to see this through to an end worthy of the effort.  Briefings in Kabul accentuate the positive, facts on the ground are a bit more realist in perspective.  For example, there has been much talk of late regarding the military successes in the south.  This success is not in doubt as many good men and women have paid for that success in blood, sweat, and tears.  However, the south is only a small part of the picture. 

While Taliban and associated groups are being hunted down or run off in the south, they are making a resurgence in the Afghan heartland – the few provinces surrounding Kabul.  A recent report from the International Crisis Group indicates that this resurgence is due, in part, to collusion between corrupt Kabul government officials and insurgents.  From these provinces, insurgents are able to stage attacks on Kabul to exercise psychological control over the capital.  Although secondary to physical control, psychological control is crucial to long-term insurgent goals because it demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the Kabul government.  This, combined with endemic corruption, sets up an end-game for post-American departure.  Once the Americans leave, the locals think, no one can prop up the ineffective Karzai government so we must shift from passive acceptance of the Taliban to active support.  This is completely within Afghan cultural norms – await a winner and then throw your support that way.

Perhaps John Kerry recognized this during his generation’s seemingly never-ending war.  I have now begun to see this with my generation’s war as well.  I see a strategy wherein money seems to be the answer to all problems.  We continually pour money into this country only to have, by some estimates, nearly 4 million dollars per day leave the country earmarked for deposit into the Dubai accounts of corrupt Afghan officials.  We continue to measure success in metrics that have no real bearing on the ground truth.  Make no mistake here; I do not protest the effort as a whole like John Kerry did so many years ago.  I firmly believe in the application of military force to remove threats to our country when negotiations or the like fail to achieve our objectives.

I subscribe more to a Clausewitzian view of war in this respect (Carl von Clausewitz is a, some would say the preeminent, military strategist).  War cannot be made bloodless; it must consist of violence directed toward the enemy to put him in a situation that is more unpleasant than the sacrifice you ask him to make (i.e. what you are trying to compel him to do).  Instead, we are trying to buy our enemy.  Sure, the COINistas (adherents of counterinsurgency as a panacea) will say we’re engendering support from a passive population, but this really isn’t the case.  As mentioned above, the passivity of the locals here disappears as they calculate a winner.  Our money is being used to buy influence with corrupt officials and locals who see that we are soon leaving and the Taliban will remain.  Thus, our enemy and our “allies” are nearly one and the same.  I see this now and it is quite disheartening. 

Generals get on television and tell us we can’t kill our way to victory.  They are the COINistas.  Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, they continue this line of thinking as if repeating it enough will make it true.  Meanwhile, Americans (and Canadians, and Norwegians, and Germans, etc.) are dying.  I get it now Mr. Kerry, I do.  War is about killing – killing a lot.  It is about the controlled application of violence to the extent that your enemy is either utterly destroyed or is in such fear of that occurring that he will surrender to avoid it.  If we are not willing to apply this amount of force (or if the situation doesn’t call for it) then we should not use our military.      

So why are we doing this?  A friend of mine here said that we’re doing it because we’re doing it.  What did he mean by that statement?   Well, inertia is a powerful thing.  Once something as big and powerful as the military-political complex gets going, it’s hard to turn it around I guess.  So the war machine keeps doing the same thing over and over, despite the lack of real results, just to perpetuate its existence.  Like the self-licking ice cream cone it exists just to enable itself.   I thought about this quite somberly as I listened to Senator Lindsay Graham tell a crowd at the US Embassy in Kabul that we’d never leave Afghanistan.  God, I hope he’s wrong.  I hope the Afghanistan war machine really is like that self-licking ice cream cone and ultimately consumes itself.   

Daydreaming

There I was again, like so many other times before.  The inside of a helicopter, regardless of type, is like a cocoon.  The hum of the rotors is loud at first, but becomes surprisingly mundane, beckoning you into a mental slumber.  When I find myself in this situation, or one like it in which movement and conversation is restricted, I often retreat into my mind.  Being a long way from home, I think of the same thing always – different aspects, but always the same thing.  As the rotor blast became white noise and the back-and-forth shaking began to take on a crib-like feel, I checked out mentally and went to another, better time and place.

It was hot that day, as it always is during the summer in Georgia.  I had spent the day with a fraternity brother getting ready for yet another party.  Mainly this preparation consisted of purchasing food, tapping a keg, and playing volleyball.  As the summer sun disappeared into the western sky, I went inside to clean up before the guests began to arrive.  It had been a good day and the night was sure to be good as well.  I just didn’t understand at the time that that night would be life changing.

Later, as I stood in the kitchen, a friend approached and asked if I would like to meet her friend as she pointed to the living room.  Looking across the room, I saw her for the first time.  She was strikingly beautiful.  Her long dark-red hair was pulled slightly back so as not to obstruct her face.  She held a Dixie cup in her hand (filled with Coca-Cola no doubt) and appeared to be having a good time as well.  Her sundress, a blue and yellow floral pattern if memory serves, swayed slightly as she moved gently to the sound of the music.  As she took a drink, she looked in my direction and our mutual friend motioned her over.

I didn’t hear our friend make the introductions because I was mesmerized by her eyes.  She had the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen.  Sky blue is not only a cliché description, but also not entirely accurate.  As you look into a partly cloudy, summer sky focus on the edge of the clouds – that space where the cloud and the sky seems to merge into a color that is neither blue nor white but both.  Her eyes were that color.  I didn’t really know what to say, but I knew I needed to keep her talking because I wanted to keep looking into those beautiful eyes.

I must have said something funny because she laughed and then smiled (not in a pity-like way, but as if I was actually being charming).  The smile matched her eyes.  It was radiant and genuine.  I knew then that I would be content if I could just make her smile and laugh.  I spent the rest of the night out on the porch with her, just talking.  After the typical college “what’s your major” kind of questions, we spent the rest of the evening talking about our hopes and dreams. I didn’t know it then, but her dreams would become mine and mine would become hers.

Reality sinks in as the helicopter lands and I’m back in Afghanistan rather than at a fraternity party long ago.  That meeting occurred 18 years ago today.  I married her almost two years later.  She doesn’t believe me, but I did actually have to catch my breath when I first saw her enter the church in her flowing white wedding dress.  She still looks that beautiful.  She still has the same smile and the same laugh.  And I still live to see her do both.