The reality facing the US in Afghanistan and Iraq is not some brainless idiocy hatched in the minds of racists and religious bigots who regard Islam as a global threat.
Afghanistan was never a state in any formal sense of the word. The closest the country ever came to an organizing principle was as a kingdom in the latter 18th century. Before that it was just a region crisscrossed by many races, tribes and peoples locked in endless violence and on a few rare occasions ruled by themselves. The normative state of affairs was to be ruled by foreigners through much of known history.
The US is not facing an insurgency or peoples war of liberation in the classic sense in Afghanistan. Its a stateless region that has been afflicted with nonstop chaos and violence since the overthrow of the Afghan kingdom in 1973. The reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah from 1933 to 1973 is regarded the longest period of stability in Afghanistan's history, a name by the way which wasn't adopted until the Afghan constitution of 1923.
Also way overrated is the so called vaunted prowess of Afghan resistance to foreign domination. Its more myth than reality. Such successes can be counted on the fingers of one hand compared to the multitude of conquests by neighbors and empires, much of it of long dominion and the principal civilizing influence upon the natives. Alexander the Great is often depicted as being defeated by Pashtuns or Afghans, neither of which existed at the time. And Alexander's empire never suffered insurrection simply because it didn't live long enough to endure it. The empire was barely 10 years old and died with its creator in 323 BC.
The only reasons the USSR failed in Afghanistan was because it wasn't ruled by a killer like Stalin. Communism was self-destructing from within and the Soviet regime was destroying its economy and their power by competing in a futile arms race with the US of A in the 1980's. What cinched Soviet defeat by the Mujaheddin was the massive support in aid, money, arms and volunteers from the Muslim world, principally from Saudi Arabia and channeled through Pakistan's ISI. The US supported this effort covertly and the architect of that game was the former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski under the Carter regime. As it happens and is usually the case, everyone else got the kudos and movie credits.
And should anyone presume I believe the 2006, COIN FM 3-24 Field Manual on Counterinsurgency is the last word on the topic, they are gravely mistaken. The field manual, like America is a work in progress and though a good start the manual still contains a lot of 20th century, post WW II flap-doodle that doesn't work and often leads to defeat.
Counterinsurgency doctrine and the surge did not make the grade in Iraq. The new lie. It was the age old diplomacy of politics, money and making deals that resulted in the Sons of Iraq and other "awakening movements," which put paid to the worst of an insurgency that still sputters along today. These techniques have some but limited utility in Afghanistan.
Excluding a-historical reams of - 'shit for brains' - in the field manual is at least one of the notable accomplishments of the authors who composed the manual. There are flaws enough without adding unrelated and superfluous historical analysis to what is already a very complex, emerging form of 21st century warfare no one has a handle on as yet, including the US of A, though we have the most experience than anyone else to date.
Nor is the US by any stretch of the imagination currently facing anything similar to what the Soviets suffered in that country. But if we keep chasing after the counter-insurgency fairy-tale proffered by McChrystal & co we won't be long in suffering it. I have previously posted here:
www.atimes.net/The-Edge/South-Asia/17210...hanistan.html#172111
here:
www.atimes.net/The-Edge/South-Asia/17210...hanistan.html#172113
and here:
www.atimes.net/The-Edge/South-Asia/17210...hanistan.html#172124
Some opinions and more on what the US should be doing in Afghanistan. The following is a recent interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski by Josh Rushing on Aljazeera:
english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009...910176183939643.html
Its not at all coincidental that Obama is taking his time in the policy making process to the great angst of McChrystal and Petraeus, whom Republicans are feverishly hoping will be their standard bearer in 2012. They will be even less happy when the policy opted proves more constrained and limited following the far wiser advise of Brzezinski, Zinni, North, Scowcroft and others who are fervently hated by neocons, Likudniks, Zionists and Israeli firsters, the penultimate @#$-up artists of the 21st century.
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