Gen. Wesley Clark gives the President advice for Afghanistan
By Wesley Clark
August 17th 2009
Much has been done in six months to deal with the ongoing war in
Afghanistan. We have restated that our aim is to eliminate the threat
of Al Qaeda; built a new leadership team, including Special
Representative Richard Holbrooke; reinforced our troop strength and
adjusted our tactics; and have begun augmenting our force with
synchronized diplomatic, political and economic efforts.
But can we explain how all of this adds up to an effective strategy
that will sustain American engagement in one of the world's least
accessible regions?
The American people are growing increasingly wary. In a new
CNN/Opinion research poll, fully 54% of respondents now say they
oppose the U.S.-led fight against the Taliban and their Al Qaeda
allies. Those are striking numbers, and a serious warning to the
Obama administration.
The difficulty here lies less in PowerPoint presentations and more in
the complexities of the war itself. Our real enemy, Al Qaeda, may now
be more entrenched in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. Taking the fight
directly into Pakistan with ground forces risks expanding the
conflict and undercutting a fragile Pakistani civilian government.
The similarities to Vietnam are ominous. There, too, an insurgency
was led and supported from outside the borders of the state in which
our troops were fighting. There, too, sanctuaries across
international borders stymied U.S. military efforts. There, too,
broader political-strategic considerations weighed against military
expansion of the conflict and forecast further struggles in the region.
And there, too, American public support slid away over time as our
engagement ratcheted up and casualties mounted.
Our Vietnam experiences provide powerful lessons in how to explain
strategy and retain public support, so we can ultimately succeed.
First, we must maintain a clear and unwavering purpose - and not
overstate our accomplishments. In Vietnam, we seemed to change our
objectives whenever they were seriously challenged. At one time or
another we fought to halt Communist aggression from the North, to
avoid the fall of the "Southeast Asian dominoes," to prevent a
slaughter should the Viet Cong take over, and to maintain U.S.
"credibility." And we kept promising "light at the end of the
tunnel," until Tet shattered public expectations and support.
So in Afghanistan, we must avoid confusing Americans by citing too
many justifications for our presence. We aren't there to create
democracy for Afghans, stabilize a nuclear-armed Pakistan or deal
with strategic rivalry on the subcontinent. These may be means to an
end, but we must not lose public focus on Al Qaeda. And we must be
cautious in claiming progress.
Second, we must realize that, as we ratchet up our military
commitment against the insurgency in Afghanistan, we will take
increased losses, and this will limit our political staying power. We
must get the balance right between the urgency of the mission and the
costs and risks of actions to speed up our success. In Vietnam it
turned out there were actually extraordinary military measures that
might have been decisive against the North, but we were self-deterred
from taking them until it was too late. We should have gone after the
North by air more heavily sooner; we should have cut off their base
areas in Cambodia and Laos sooner and more effectively.
Our military must seek to find more effective measures against the
enemy headquarters and base areas in Pakistan - and the Predator
strikes are a good start. Let's not wait too long to act.
Finally, we gain nothing by blaming our hosts or their culture. In
Vietnam, we constantly complained about the ineffectiveness of our
allies and engineered the ouster of South Vietnamese leaders. In the
end, we simply ended up owning the problem. In Southwest Asia today,
Americans must recognize that local leaders and their institutions do
not share our own priorities and values. We cannot really build a
nation for other people, and the American public must not expect it.
Instead we will be working quietly behind the scenes to focus greater
regional efforts against Al Qaeda.
Our commitment to defeating Al Qaeda need be nothing like our tragedy
in Vietnam - unless we make it so. Under the Obama administration, we
are off to a good start. Let's learn from America's errors, not relive them.
--
Clark is a former supreme commander of NATO, led the alliance of
military forces in the Kosovo war (1999) and is a senior fellow at
the Ron Burkle Center at UCLA.
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