One of the pillars of the Dog’s understanding of the world is that there are no simple answers to complex problems. More correctly, there are no effective simple answers to complex problems. This creates a problem in and of itself, since humans and especially American citizens at the start of the 21st century want things to be simple and understandable. When a simple solution is applied to a complex problem, the outcome is invariably more problems and more complexity.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
It is this desire for the simple, easy to understand and digest solutions to our complex world, which acted as a multiplier to the misdeeds of the criminal Bush Administration. The great examples of this are, of course, our military adventurism in Iraq and to a lesser extend Afghanistan.
The shocking lack of understanding of the interlocking nature of world political systems on the part of the Neo-Cons is what got us here. The idea that we could fight wars, covert or overt, and then not take responsibility for stabilizing the nations they are fought is a basic tenant of their beliefs. The Neo-Cons are the ones who spurned the idea of nation building. The Dog suspects this is due to the fact it is hard and complex and requires an understanding and appreciation of the local customs and history.
We see this in our turning away from Afghanistan before the job was done and from the failure to secure Iraq after the fall of the Bathist government of Saddam Hussein. They did not think it would be a problem is there was a corrupt government in Kabul or looting in Iraq. As Sec. Defense Rumsfeld famously said "Thing happen". Which is true, things happen all the time, but a wise person, hell, a reasonably smart person takes the chance of certain things happening into their planning. Neo-Cons do not.
But it not just the Neo-Cons who oversimplify on policy. Chris Mathews (Tweety) has been hammering the "know nothing" point of view about Afghanistan for a couple of days. He keeps bringing up the fact that our new policy in Afghanistan is complex and it does not have a bumper-sticker like other wars where we could cry "Remember the Alamo" or "Remember Pearl Harbor!".
Like many things Tweety says, this is true as far as it goes, the situation we find ourselves in with regards to Afghanistan is complex. The fact there is a Pashtun nationalist movement on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border complicates things. The fact Pakistan has nuclear weapons complicates things. The history between Pakistan and its nuclear-armed neighbor India complicates things. The fact that Al Qaeda still exists and is partnership with the Taliban, on both sides of the border, complicates things.
For Tweety throw his hands up and say it is hard to sell the idea of continued war making in Afghanistan implies we cannot be more measured, more nuanced in our understanding of the problem and the Presidents response to it. This pisses the Dog off no end. If we are willing to assume our fellow citizens cannot grasp complexity, then they will never have to, as everything will be reduced to "Leave! Stay!" and no discussion of the complex solution required for a complex problem will happen.
Last night the President laid out his plans for Afghanistan. These plans are not simple, there are caveats and conditions for them to work. This is the kind of complex solution that is required to solve a complex problem. Sadly, there is no assurance that we will solve this problem with this solution.
The thing is, there is no assurance we would have success of any kind with the simple answers either. The Republican desire to "Stay and win!" ignores the fact of our overextended military. The president has ordered 60% of our remaining reserves to Afghanistan. There simply are no more troops to be added. So, even if we wanted to send an overwhelming force there, the cupboard is bare.
This simple idea also suffers from a lack of a definition of "win". The Dog is not opposed to winning, but he does like to know what it looks like, so he can decide if it is worth the price.
On the flip side, the desire from many on in the Democratic Party to "Leave, now!!" is not really an option either. There are 60,000 troops in country in Afghanistan right now. The time to draw those troops down is relatively long. To do it right it would take about 12 months if we started now. Yes, we could leave in a willy-nilly fashion, but that simple idea would leave a power vacuum, which we would have no control over and could be catastrophic.
Which leaves us with the Presidents plan; more troops to try to buy time, but no expectation of a decade long occupation and counterinsurgency. A focus on getting our opponents to see that it is better for them in the long run to become part of the government, than trying to be victors on the battlefield. A chance for the Pakistanis to get their own Pashtun nationalists under some kind of control. Pressure on the Afghan government to actually act like a national government and not just a city-state in Kabul.
Will all this work? The Dog thinks probably not overall. This is not to say there is not a chance that some of these initiatives will bare some fruit, but the overall outlook is grim. Still, it is a plan that recognizes the complexity of the situation takes a reasonable and responsible look at the resources available and attempts to combine the two into the best chance for success. In this it has it all over any simple one sentence or one word plan.
The other thing we can be assured of is this President is not just going to make up his mind once and then never change it regardless of the changes in the real world. This is yet another problem with simple solutions; they don’t lend themselves to being adjusted as they go along. Whatever you think of President Obama’s war plan, we can all be sure he will keep looking at it and keep thinking about it, adjusting where needed by circumstance.
All this leads the Dog to his final point (yeah, the chorus of "Thank God!" can be heard from here). When we are thinking of the problem of our war in Afghanistan, we should resist the urge to go for the easy answer. There is no doubt in the Dog’s mind that those who want to leave and do it now are making that policy position out of the very best reasons. But being sincere and acting from good motives does not excuse anyone from the responsibility of thinking of the consequences.
There is more to leaving Afghanistan than what will happen to that nation and its people. The way that Afghanistan moves forward will affect the future of many nations not just the U.S. and itself. This has to be put into the planning for any withdrawal. To merely lop off the inconvenient parts of the problem and go for a simple solution only guarantees future complexity and problems.
The floor is yours.