US “combat operations” in Afghanistan are officially scheduled to wind down in 2014. And media attention is now turning toward speculating (i.e. relaying contending institutional preferences between the White House and the Pentagon) on the level of US troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Current estimates, in case you still care, are that US troop levels will be roughly around 10,000 assisted by a couple thousand NATO troops — assuming, of course, that President Karzai agrees to prolong the suspension of his country’s full sovereignty. For next year, however, it is likely that at least 60,000 US troops will remain through the fighting season.
The notion that “combat operations” will be wrapped up by 2014 while US forces shift toward an advisory “support role” reflects a typically deceptive use of an innocuous sounding phrase like “support role” that the public has come to accept uncritically from our military leaders and policymakers. Regardless of what US troops actually do in their “support” capacity, it is clear that the narrative arc — despite the salacious demise of one of the story’s chief architects and protagonists — is still oriented toward reassuring Americans that the decade long war is nearly over and that Afghanistan has been miraculously stabilized. This noble lie may be necessary for extricating the bulk of US/NATO/ISAF forces from this war, but it is also dangerous given the way that myths about the successful use of force create their own reality over time.
The organizations that fight under the banner of the Taliban have not been defeated. In case you completely tuned out of this war, it is worth repeating: The surge in Afghanistan did not work. (To be precise: neither the 1st “quiet surge” of 2008 under Bush nor the 2nd “really, really well hyped surge” of 2009-12 under Obama worked in Afghanistan.) In fact, insurgents still manage to pull off about 100 attacks per day in a country which is just slightly smaller than the state of Texas and is stocked with 66,000 US soldiers, 37,000 NATO/ISAF forces, 200,000 Afghan National Army troops, 149,000 Afghan National Police, etc.
Meanwhile, the old warlords, who were never successfully co-opted and marginalized by the government of Afghanistan, are threatening to rearm. Opium cultivation is up… way up. And on the international assistance front, the EU has suspended aid to Afghanistan due to corruption. I could go on, but you get the picture…
There are no corners left to turn in Afghanistan, and the Taliban is certainly not gasping its last breath; the US and NATO have failed to stabilize the country – which would have required a Pak-Af strategy instead of an Af-Pak strategy to begin with. The US public may be eager to declare victory and move on … a mass strategy of self-deception that makes perfect sense given the lack of American and European interests in the country … but no amount of spin should be allowed to make the war in Afghanistan seem like a success in academic, policy making, or strategic enclaves.
Vikash, I’m not sure there are many in the “academic, policymaking or strategic enclaves” who do believe that Afghanistan is a success. My sense from talking to a wide range of folks in the U.S. military and at NATO is that for the past several years everyone has been looking for a way to “declare victory” and go home. We long ago shifted from “security = governance” to the more limited objective of “security governance,” to the much more ambiguous “security” as the precondition for withdrawal. Public opinion polls also suggest that the public is under no illusions that this is a success.
Jon, Thanks for your comments. I think I will have to reply in segments, so please allow me to start with your last sentence first.
I think there has been a general negative shift in public attitude toward the war in Afghanistan over the last few months. However, poll results are actually varied and complicated particularly if we narrow the question to whether the war has been a “success.” If we look at the CBS/NYT poll of 3/21-25/12 shows 59% believe the war has not been a success. However, if we look at the NBC/WSJ poll of 2/29/12-3/3/12, then we have 57% of respondents saying the war has been “very successful” (9%) to “somewhat successful” (48%). Notably only 18% thought the war has been “very unsuccessful” which is actually a _decrease_ from the same question asked in 2006 (24%) and 2009 (23% and 27%). (My hunch is that the CBS/NYT poll is probably more accurate b/c of its larger sample size, but polling data is not my area of expertise. My point is merely the trite observation that the way the question is asked and the range of options seems to matter somewhat.)
Now if we change the question to how well the US military is doing, the Pew Research Center found in October 2012 that 40% think that the US is doing very well (8%) or fairly well (32%). This is a decline from a peak in January of this year when 55% thought that the US was very (10%) or fairly well (45%). Notably though the current attitude is similar to 2009… in other words opinion has not been steadily declining but appears to go in waves.
Similarly, the CNN/ORC poll shows that 37% thought the war was going very well (1%) or moderately well (36%) for the US in March of 2012, which was a dramatic decline from May 2011 when 61% thought it was going very well (5%) or moderately well (56%), but the 2012 poll results actually seem to be very similar to opinions back in March 2007 and May 2009.
One explanation here may be that the death of Bin Laden last May led to a spike in support and numbers are now returning to similar levels of support pre-surge. If that is the case, I am not sure the public really is well informed about the bigger picture in Afghanistan.
We may be squabbling over minor points, but my own reading of the totality of the polling data is that there has been a long skepticism of the war — a slight uptick in support after the surge and Obama’s claim that this was “the good war” — but the overall trend is very solid opposition to the war and to the American effort there. Support has clearly declined from 2009 levels. I don’t see a whole lot of evidence that any sizable portion of the population would believe a narrative that Afghanistan is a success. For example, the bell-weather question from the ABC News/WaPo on whether or not Afghanistan is worth the fight shows that it’s now been more than two years since a majority believe it is. It’s now a solid 66% that say it is not — that’s a very big number for that question. Likewise, for the past two years CNN/ORC has found consistently that well over a majority oppose the war — with 70% opposing the war back in March. These numbers are also striking by almost all historical polling standards. Pretty rare to see that level of opposition when the forces are still deployed.