In the spring of 2009, I wrote a column about the terrifyingly strange bedfellows beginning to collaborate on the war in Afghanistan which Prez Obama was just then kicking into higher gear-- neocon refugees of Bush's Iraq COIN policy and Lefty Obama COINiacs. Bottom line message:
Nearly eight years after 9/11, the United States still has unsecured borders, but it is Afghanistan where we must establish security and clean government -- for our own good.
Why? Frederick Kagan said "we have to establish the legitimacy of the Afghan government (because) that's how you end an insurgency." John Nagl was more emphatic still, stating, "If we ever want to leave, we have to build an Afghan government that can accomplish those goals (of good government) on its own."
If we ever want to leave?
John Nagl, an Iraq war veteran and co-author of the infamous Petraeus COIN manual, is in the news again tonight. Almost exactly three years have passed but it seems that the road Nagl has travelled has taken him no closer to reality.
From the New York Times, his take on the unravelling of the Bush-Obama COIN strategy this week:
“We’ve got this happening at the highest level of the ministry and at the boots-on-the-ground level,” said John Nagl, a fellow at the United States Naval Academy and a former Army officer who served in Iraq. “The American strategy is to hand over responsibility as rapidly as we can to the Afghans, and this is going to require enormous trust between the Afghans and the Americans. And that’s now been violated on both sides, and we did it first.”
Aside from everything else, dhimmitude is revolting.