The War in Afghanistan Then and Now

|Peter Boettke|

As everyone now knows, President Obama has committed the additional troops to fight the war in Afghanistan.  In what conceivable world is this a winning strategy?*

It might be useful to remember the Soviet War in Afghanistan as we assess the US effort since 9/11.

Can we now all agree that the differences between the Bush welfare-warfare state and the Obama welfare-warfare state are rhetorical only?

Why is it so hard to learn from the past?!

---------------

*Required reading on why the end game will most likely not turn out well for Afghanistan, Christopher Coyne, After War, and Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy on why it will not turn out well for the US economy.

Comments

[Pietro M.]

Democratic choice is like the choice among music genres in Blues Brothers: "In this club we play all kinds of music: country and western." :-)

[Dave Prychitko]

There is a difference between country and western! Am I the only one who sees this?

[Mario Rizzo]

Below I link the warnings of a Soviet general with experience in Afghanistan:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/01/afghanistan.soviet.lessons/index.html

[Rich Carpenter]

"In what conceivable world is this a winning strategy?"

> In the reality of the military planners and various bureaucrats involved it is a winning strategy. Military planners--usually staff grade officers--are always said to "plan for the last war/battle", meaning that they lack forward-looking planning. They would rather rely on previous engagements to design their strategy and implement their plans. The Obama administration is basically invoking "the last war" (i.e.: the operations in Iraq, speciffically the surge of troops and its effects) and hoping that a similar plan altered to fit the socio-cultural climate of Afghanistan will work.

"Can we now all agree that the differences between the Bush welfare-warfare state and the Obama welfare-warfare state are rhetorical only?"

> The answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

"Why is it so hard to learn from the past?!"

> Simple answer: because then people would have to admit their mistakes and risk damaging their reputation. Personal self-interest wins out over admiting fault.

[Tyler Watts]

I think it all boils down to a failure to have watched the classic movie, The Princess Bride. If they did see it, they discounted the exceedingly wise advice of the villain Vizzini:

"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line"!

Oh, and Dave, you're not the only one to realize the country/western divide; western encompasses the likes of Marty Robbins and Riders in the Sky, and would never succumb to the pop-music infiltration that modern country is undergoing- v. Taylor Swift, Keith Urban and the like. When people ask me what I like, I usually say "cowboy" music just so there's no confusion.

[K Sralla]

Come on Dave! Not everyone has spent quality research time hanging around Billy Bobs in Fort Worth.

[anon]

I am planning at some point to buy and read the "After War" book.

Like many people I approved of the brief overthrow operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. I later saw my own arguments for overthrowing both of those 2 as rather stupid. I ended up becoming more sympathetic to so-called realist writers about IR, because I thought their way of explaining things best fit my view about the real-world events for which US and Canadian taxpayers are billed.

In 2007-2008, I was surrounded by passionate pro-Obamist supporters. I was amazed at how many of them believed that electing Obama would cause the US military to leave the Middle East more quickly, and behave differently there, than they would with McCain or Palin, or with Bush or Cheney remaining in office indefinitely. I never believed this.

I was also astounded at how many pro-Obamist supporters had completely different criteria for discussing Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember thinking, "If you guys applied your Iraq reasoning to Afghanistan, what would you conclude?". The Taliban didn't have a nuclear weapons program. The Taliban was not responsible for 9/11.

I also was astounded at how many Obama supporters actually believed that the Taliban was responsible for 9/11, or that 9/11 was planned in Afghanistan. According to this guy

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth

The 9/11 plot was organized in Hamburg, Germany.

[Pietro M.]

I have no idea. I'm not Elwood. :-)

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