Last week, Taliban leader Mullah Omar issued a taunting statement warning America about its prospects in Afghanistan. Here's a choice excerpt:
The former Soviet Union claimed, the Red Army was invincible but faced defeat at the hands of the Afghans and completely disintegrated. Many other countries got independence thanks to that. Today USA, the Britain and their allies are bent on subjugating Afghanistan. They are in a total self-delusion and their brain seems not working normally.
This is a season of historical analogies. The one-eyed cleric is hardly the first to invoke the Soviet debacle in his country. Meanwhile, others are warning that to ignore the legacy of Vietnam would also be a sign that our brains are, uh, not working normally. Certainly there are important lessons to be drawn in both cases. But both come with one major difference from the current situation, which limits their applicability. Call it the superpower factor.
Start with Vietnam. Yes, the analogy sounds spooky: The U.S. fought a diffuse guerilla army which enjoyed a sanctuary across the border. But remember: That conflict invloved not just the Viet Cong but also the North Vietnamese army--a fairly professional and well-equipped force. (It was an NVA anti-aircraft missile which brought down John McCain over Hanoi, for instance.) And the NVA had the backing of a superpower: The Soviet Union, which provided them with a steady supply of weapons and financial aid.
That same superpower--the USSR--had a go at Afghanistan a decade or so later, with famously painful results. But the Soviets, too, were fighting a superpower by proxy. By the mid-1980s, America was pumping aid to the mujahideen, including Stinger missiles capable of shooting down Soviet helicopters--a back-breaker for Moscow. Charlie Wilson and all that, with an assist from Saudi petrodollars. (The Soviets also didn't even attempt a real counterinsurgency campaign, about which I've written here and here and here.) Mullah Omar says the Soviets suffered defeat at "the hands of the Afghans," but it's not clear whether the Afghans could have done it without a whole lot of outside help.
Today, America is the world's lone superpower fighting a Taliban insurgency without anything like the support enjoyed by either the NVA or the muj. That makes for a very different situation. It's true, of course, that the Taliban earn millions through the opium trade, get a steady supply of cash-stuffed suitcases from the Gulf Arab states, and, as the McChrystal report asserts, receive aid from Iran and elements of the Pakistani ISI. The Taliban are clearly a formidable enemy, no doubt. And so this analysis doesn't come close to proving that America can win in Afghanistan. But if our brains are working normally, we'll bear in mind the important limitations of these two increasingly-common historical analogies.
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COMMENTS (5)
Much better historical analogy: The Philippine Revolt following the war with Spain. You've got your guerillas, you've got your suicidal, religiously motivated enemy, you've got your drug cartels, you've got your lack of great power backing. Critical difference: We don't have Teddy Roosevelt.
Much better historical analogy: The Philippine Revolt following the war with Spain. You've got your guerillas, you've got your suicidal, religiously motivated enemy, you've got your drug cartels, you've got your lack of great power backing. Critical difference: We don't have Teddy Roosevelt.
I am also tired of people saying Afghanistan has never been conquered, it has plenty of times. It also has been conquered by a host of people, including the Median and Persian Empires, Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Indo-Greeks, Turks, and Mongols. They have a belief in their own invincibility which simply is not true. I have little doubt if Stalin had invaded after WW2 he would have won, even if it meant killing all of the people. And we don't even have a desire to conquer them.
I also find it interesting that Mullah Omar is making his pronouncements from Pakistan. Yeah, he didn't surrender, he simply ran away and is in hiding now. Some hero. He knows at any moment he is one drone ... view full comment
I am also tired of people saying Afghanistan has never been conquered, it has plenty of times. It also has been conquered by a host of people, including the Median and Persian Empires, Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Indo-Greeks, Turks, and Mongols. They have a belief in their own invincibility which simply is not true. I have little doubt if Stalin had invaded after WW2 he would have won, even if it meant killing all of the people. And we don't even have a desire to conquer them.
I also find it interesting that Mullah Omar is making his pronouncements from Pakistan. Yeah, he didn't surrender, he simply ran away and is in hiding now. Some hero. He knows at any moment he is one drone attack away from oblivion and there is nothing he can do about it. He is a hell of a lot more scared of us than we are of him.
blackton, you left out the Parthians. What are you, some kind of Parthia-hater?
I sometimes wonder if it is not precisely our lack of desire to conquer Afghanistan that prevents us from achieving our aims there. This may be a case where only a willingness to destroy the village would allow the village to be saved. At any rate, such was the stance of the invaders who did succeed in pacifying Afghanistan, and such would have been the attitude of Stalin. Whereas neither we, nor the Soviets before us, particularly want to control Afghan territory. Rather, we want to defeat local armed gangs in order that a central government of our choosing can control the country. Which may be a fool's errand: ... view full comment
blackton, you left out the Parthians. What are you, some kind of Parthia-hater?
I sometimes wonder if it is not precisely our lack of desire to conquer Afghanistan that prevents us from achieving our aims there. This may be a case where only a willingness to destroy the village would allow the village to be saved. At any rate, such was the stance of the invaders who did succeed in pacifying Afghanistan, and such would have been the attitude of Stalin. Whereas neither we, nor the Soviets before us, particularly want to control Afghan territory. Rather, we want to defeat local armed gangs in order that a central government of our choosing can control the country. Which may be a fool's errand: While Afghanistan has been conquered many times through the ages, it has only had something approaching a functioning national state once, and briefly.
Brains working normally.
Can you imagine someone going back over, say, the past 2000 years of human history and giving us some examples of human brains when they are working normally.
Are there anthropological, ethnological, political, ethical, philosophical, psychological etc. components of normally functioning brains we can reasonably assess and then extrapolate into the minds of those who are assessing the conflict in Afghanistan? If so we could pluck out the folks whose brains are functioning as they should be. Surely, they would be the ones to trust.
Uh, good luck to whoever takes on the task.
And what if it turns out the most normally functioning brain is mine? You know, and not yours.
geo ... view full comment
Brains working normally.
Can you imagine someone going back over, say, the past 2000 years of human history and giving us some examples of human brains when they are working normally.
Are there anthropological, ethnological, political, ethical, philosophical, psychological etc. components of normally functioning brains we can reasonably assess and then extrapolate into the minds of those who are assessing the conflict in Afghanistan? If so we could pluck out the folks whose brains are functioning as they should be. Surely, they would be the ones to trust.
Uh, good luck to whoever takes on the task.
And what if it turns out the most normally functioning brain is mine? You know, and not yours.
george
One of the problems with the Vietnam analogy is that we actually did defeat the insurgency in South Vietnam. When Saigon did fall, it was to an NVA invasion force, not the Viet Cong. To apply that analogy to Afghanistan, the only way we could achieve in Afghanistan what we did in Vietnam would be if the Pakistani Army were to subsequently invade Afghanistan and install the Taliban as the rulers there.
One of the problems with the Vietnam analogy is that we actually did defeat the insurgency in South Vietnam. When Saigon did fall, it was to an NVA invasion force, not the Viet Cong. To apply that analogy to Afghanistan, the only way we could achieve in Afghanistan what we did in Vietnam would be if the Pakistani Army were to subsequently invade Afghanistan and install the Taliban as the rulers there.