An old joke from Cold War days goes like this:
While briefing his admiral, a brisk young captain refers to the Soviets as “the enemy.” The admiral interrupts: “Captain, the Soviets are our adversary. The Air Force is the enemy.”
So it seems to be between the Army and the CIA.
Late Tuesday night, the New York Times published a stunning story. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the drug-dealing brother of Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai, has collected money from the Central Intelligence Agency for most of the past eight years.
The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home. . . .
Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the CIA and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city …. Mr. Karzai also helps the CIA communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban.
The news in the Times story is not the information — Wali Karzai’s CIA ties have been widely rumored inside Afghanistan for years. The real news is the sourcing of that information to senior military officers, culminating in this on-the-record doozey from the chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan, Maj.-Gen. Michael Flynn: “The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.”
What we have here is the Army’s shock-and-awe attack on the CIA’s relationship not only to Wali Karzai, but to his brother the president as well. Here’s Maj.-Gen. Flynn again:
If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves.
Flynn’s big “if” clause is clarifying. Behind the Army-CIA dispute over Wali Karzai is a bigger and more consequential battle over two radically different approaches to the Afghan war.
The CIA has long been identified with what has come to be called a “counter-terrorist” strategy, which seeks to identify the people inside Afghanistan who are deemed harmful to US interests — and then kill or otherwise neutralize them. Reliable real-time information is indispensable to the success of such a strategy, and everyone agrees that Wali Karzai has information to sell. With such a strategy, other considerations, including good government for Afghanistan, fall to second or third place behind the supreme imperative of eliminating anti-American elements.
The counter-terrorism approach appeals to many conservatives because it unsentimentally puts vital American interests first. And it appeals to some liberals (reportedly including Vice President Joe Biden) because it costs less in money and lives than a big war to stabilize the whole country.
The only drawback: We’ve been following that course now for eight years, over which time Afghanistan has become more unstable and more dangerous.
The alternative is the strategy the Army used with considerable success in Iraq and that it now wishes to try in Afghanistan: “counter insurgency” or, as Flynn terms it, a “population-centric” approach. With that strategy, the security of the civilian population is the supreme strategic goal; the elimination of terrorism is a byproduct; and effective governance is an indispensable preliminary.
The corruption of Wali Karzai – and, for that matter, of his brother the president — actively impedes such a strategy. The Times quotes a former Afghan official who states a widely held view: “This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice.”
Counter-insurgency is often costly and usually slow. On the other hand, it has a good record of success, not only in Iraq. It is frequently claimed that guerilla wars are unwinnable (except by guerillas). But the most authoritative study calculates that government forces win as often as they lose. Among the successes: the US-led suppression of the Huk insurgency in the Philippines in the 1940s and 1950s, the British suppression of a communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s, and operations in Venezuela, Oman, and Central America.
So there’s our choice: either we make a big investment aimed at securing peace — or we pay a local bad guy to kill even worse guys. It’s the Army approach or the CIA approach. President Obama reportedly has almost made up his mind. It’s generally expected that he’ll split the difference between the two paths. That outcome will be described as a compromise. In reality, it’s dithering leading to a muddle.
Originally published October 29, 2009 in The Week.
8 responses so far
1 MI-GOPer // Oct 29, 2009 at 8:39 am
David, the real shocker isn’t that various groups in Afghanistan are playing hardball with peoples’ lives in Afghanistan… it’s that Flynn came so close to truth with this very, very apt line:
“The real news is the sourcing of that information to senior military officers, culminating in this on-the-record doozey from the chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan, Maj.-Gen. Michael Flynn: “The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.””
That’s a great bumber sticker line to argue why we shouldn’t allow Obama a 2nd term. The only way to clean-up the widespread corruption in Washington is to get rid of Obama and his Democrat Thugs.
2 ottovbvs // Oct 29, 2009 at 9:20 am
mi-goper // Oct 29, 2009 at 8:39 am
““The real news is the sourcing of that information to senior military officers, culminating in this on-the-record doozey from the chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan, Maj.-Gen. Michael Flynn: “The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.””
That’s a great bumber sticker line to argue why we shouldn’t allow Obama a 2nd term. The only way to clean-up the widespread corruption in Washington is to get rid of Obama and his Democrat Thugs.”
………..More moderation and rationality from the Republican activist
3 ottovbvs // Oct 29, 2009 at 9:35 am
…….We followed that strategy with success in Iraq……so why are hundreds still being killed in bomb attacks, a very bad one the other day, despite the fact we have 120,000 troops still in Iraq?…….the fact is both countries are in an awful mess and we’d need to find some way of disengaging from both of them with the least damage to US interests………..The big investment David mentions?……..is he aware of the ratio required of troops to indigenous population that are required to fight a counter insurgency campaign (Petraeus’ numbers not mine). It would require a force of around 600,000 men for Afghanistan’s population of 33 million……..Is David willing to sign off on that number for what could be a period of decades?…….The problem with the armchair generals they either are unfamiliar with the facts or prefer not to mention them preferring to indulge in a bit of presidential trashing regardless of the fact that his predecessors dawdled away for seven years whatever admittedly small chances of success we might of had there…….. The fact that the Karzai Brothers are corrupt and incompetent and one of them seems to be being paid by both sides should demonstrate just what a mess we are trapped in………there is no conceiveable reason why we should be sending young Americans to die to prop up the govt of this pair.
4 MI-GOPer // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:04 am
ottoBS whines: “More moderation and rationality from the Republican activist”.
And you give us your daily dose of New Majority Village Idiot.
Every day that goes by and more US & NATO troops are killed in Afghanistan, the Taliban is emboldened. Every day Obama the Ditherer continues to act like the Celebrity in Chief instead of a Commander in Chief, our men & women are placed in Harm’s Way without the support and materials they need to complete their mission.
Obama lied to get elected. This isn’t what he thinks is a “Necessary War”… this was the war he couldn’t oppose during the election and still win.
Obama is as big a coward as Slick Willy and JimmineyCricketCarter. Democrats have always been against the military, against projecting America’s might to advance freedom and liberty abroad. I would have thought that Obama and his Thugs would have found more in common with a vote frauding, drug-dealing, corrupt Afghanistani president… Karzai is just another Obama with a little fashion sense.
5 ottovbvs // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:10 am
mi-goper // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:04 am
“Karzai is just another Obama with a little fashion sense.”
……..So you agree we shouldn’t waste any more effort trying to prop up these jerks.
6 balconesfault // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:34 am
Every day that goes by and more US & NATO troops are killed in Afghanistan, the Taliban is emboldened.
Shouldn’t we have thought about this … oh … like 7 years ago?
7 ottovbvs // Oct 29, 2009 at 6:53 pm
6 balconesfault // Oct 29, 2009 at 10:34 am
“Shouldn’t we have thought about this … oh … like 7 years ago?”
………You mean 8 years ago…….having invaded the country Bush and Cheney forgot it so they could concentrate on their idee fixe of Iraq which had something like 170,000 troops at its peak while Afghanistan at the time had around 25,000………Personally I’ve never believed you could fix this place but even if there was a minute chance for maybe a year after they invaded the country Bush and Cheney threw it away……..now we have another Bush/Cheney debacle on our hands……..which the president is trying to figure out how to fix while the right carp and Cheney, who had his thumb up his bum for seven years, accusing him of dithering……..he is a total slimeball
8 SFTor1 // Nov 2, 2009 at 5:09 am
MI-GOPer,
could you please state for the record why we are occupying Afghanistan?
(This is not a rhetorical question. I would like to hear your reasons.)
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