Afghanistan's haunted battlefields

As HCP columnist Jim Surber told me in a recent e-mail, if Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and the Soviet Union cannot tame Afghanistan – either what it was then, or what it is now – it's highly unlikely that the United States of America can accomplish the task.

In reading about our military's ongoing efforts in Afghanistan over these many years, I stumbled across two interesting perspectives.

One was written by Cornell University history professor Barry Strauss. (See http://barrystrauss.com.)

The other was written more recently by Bing West, a former assistant secretary of Defense and U.S. Marine. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/328693/million-steps.)

Both men possess considerable credentials. Mr. Strauss holds bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Cornell and Yale. He reads – or speaks – eight foreign languages, according to his website.

(He also used to be a newspaper reporter, so he can't be all bad.)

A few years ago, Mr. Strauss surmised: "When it comes to haunted battlefields, Afghanistan is second to none. The specters stretch backward(s) from the Soviets, who failed in Afghanistan in the 1970s, to the British who suffered there in the 19th century, and all the way to Alexander the Great, who conquered Afghanistan long ago but at a terrible cost. Fine books by Steven Pressfield and Frank Holt have recently examined Alexander’s Afghan War – a conflict, as some say, that was the original quagmire. And Alexander was one of the greatest generals in human history. Who are we to surge 30,000 more troops into the graveyard of the great?"

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In addition to serving as a Marine and assistant secretary of Defense, Mr. West also is a co-author, with Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Dakota Meyer, of "Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War."

Mr. West writes in the Oct. 15 edition of National Review: "Afghans will always resort to random xenophobic violence. That explanation aggravates the political problem here in the States. If the Afghan culture causes the murders of our troops by those we are trying to advise, what is our mission?

"This tendency among Islamic tribes hurtling headlong into the ninth (yes, 9th) century cannot be solved in a few months. The frustrating reality is that there’s no remediable root cause for isolated, unpredictable, and devastating acts of treachery."

Mr. West knows of what he speaks. He's been there.

"In mid-September of this year I went back to Sangin to see how things were going. The First Battalion of the Seventh Marine Regiment (1/7) was controlling twice as much territory with half as many Marines, at a cost of six killed and 28 wounded in five months," Mr. West writes.

Is it (the war in Afghanistan) worth it? Do not be too quick to form your opinion.

Mr. West continues: "When you accompany our men on patrol, you cannot help but admire their fortitude. Each grunt — Army or Marine, adviser or squad member — straps on 95 pounds of armor and gear, goes through the checklist of tactical procedures, and steps in line behind the point man with the metal detector. They will walk carefully in single file for the next several hours. Over the course of his seven-month deployment, each one will sally forth about a hundred times, covering six to eight miles in every day or night patrol. He will take over a million steps, never knowing when the sudden blast and puff of black smoke will come, signaling death or maiming.

"In 2011, Kilo Company uncovered — one way or another — about 300 IEDs. Some men patrolled with tourniquets cinched to the outside of their legs, so that they could quickly stop the bleeding if their legs were blown off. Eighteen months later, Bravo Company had found 60 IEDs in the Green Zone. Like the other companies, Bravo had lost personnel, and it was down to 110 men," Mr. West said.

"Ten had been wounded; some had lost limbs. The grunts of Bravo thought they had had it 'easier' than Kilo Company, because they had lost 'only' 10 percent of their comrades. They felt safe enough to carry their four tourniquets in their pockets instead of wrapped around their legs.

"Day after day, year after year, one rifle company after another has slogged through the fields to wrest physical control from the Taliban.

"It’s not just the grinding courage, walking through minefields 100 times. Over the course of his deployment, the average grunt — Marine or Army — carries that 95-pound pack strapped to his upper torso for more than 500 miles. The heavy armor protects him today but takes a structural toll 20 years later. He faces certain pain in middle age. 'If we don’t find a breakthrough in treating degenerative arthritis,' Roy Aaron, a leading orthopedic surgeon at Brown University, has said, 'The effects on these young men will be severe.' We haven’t thought about that."

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Professor Strauss writes: "It would be pedantic to point out that most of Alexander’s 'Afghan' campaign took place outside today’s Afghanistan; most of the fighting took place in the nearby states of what are today Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan. Nonetheless, the war spilled over into Afghanistan, which served Alexander as a base. And the war did not go well.

"It was lengthy and exhausting. Alexander lost almost as many men in one bloody day as he had in the four years it took him to conquer all the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Iran. Alexander found himself driven to massacre civilians in the tens of thousands and to destroy their towns. Exposure to cold, wind, and snow raised his men’s casualty toll. Bandits and warlords proved challenging to an army used to fighting conventional warfare.

"It took a toll on Alexander’s wonderful army, and to what end? Greek rulers survived for 150 years in Afghanistan, and Greek settlements lasted centuries more. For example, Kandahar – today a center of the American war effort – was once known by the magical name of Alexandria…Alexandria-in-Arachosia. But the Afghan war was not worth the price Alexander paid for it. He would have been better off staying in Iran and consolidating the huge empire that his army had already won, an empire that stretched from Egypt and Greece eastward."

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So do we – and other coalition nations – abandon Afghanistan?

Mr. West offers that "Cynics believe that if Mr. Obama is re-elected, within a month he will receive a report from the coalition generals that enables him to bring home many more U.S. troops in 2013 and to pull almost all U.S. units out of combat.

"Our generals would be indignant that domestic politics were postponing military decisions affecting the lives of our troops. Indignation aside, we are drifting. Our fundamental war strategy of partnering has ceased at the district level, where the war will be determined. No general should tolerate the perception that politics are determining life-and-death decisions. Cynicism among our front-line troops lurks only one headline away.

"Mr. Romney is a candidate, not the commander-in-chief. It would be sufficient for him to say: 'We have ceased partnering with Afghan forces on the front lines. That is a dramatic change — so what has changed about our strategy? What have our troops been ordered by the commander-in-chief to do, and for how long? When I am president, I will order our generals to report their best advice and strategy within a week. They’ve been at it for 10 years. I will demand straight answers immediately. A date like 2014 is not magic. The question is, What is gained each successive day as our troops die?'"

Mr. West asks: "Should Americans be the front-line defense and die in place of Afghan soldiers our generals do not trust? Will we risk more of our men because the Afghans are risking fewer of theirs? What is gained, and at what cost?

These are not tactical or military questions. They are the most important policy decisions that any commander-in-chief faces. There is no reason to drift along for two or more months before determining the new direction in Afghanistan. The president should explain now to the American people what his new orders are, and why."

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Professor Strauss concludes: "The Afghan War is sound strategy. It demonstrates our determination that once a country is liberated from Islamist tyranny, it will stay liberated. (The sins of Karzai’s government cannot compare with those of the Taliban.) It guards the flank of Pakistan, a country with a strategic location, the world’s third largest Muslim population (175 million, of whom 95 per cent are Muslim), and, last but not least, nuclear weapons. Afghanistan was peripheral to Alexander but it is central to American interests.

"Our soldiers in Afghanistan will suffer, unfortunately, as soldiers always do. They deserve our sympathy and support. General McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy has a real chance of succeeding. All it will take is the will to win. I hope the American government has that will. I know the American public does."

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With all due admiration and respect for Professor Strauss and Mr. West, I cannot help but wonder just how much longer the American effort in Afghanistan can continue at its current pace.

Our federal government seems intent on managing a lengthy but rather "nice" war of some inconvenience to those families who continue to lose loved ones serving as front-line troops, instead of taking the Truman approach.

Then again, President Truman didn't have to explain his every decision to the 24/7 scrutiny of the various and sundry media that exist today.

The Taliban is a real and present danger as is al Qaeda and other terrorist Islamic fundamentalist groups. How American presidents and Congresses establish policies in the best interest of the United States is the tough question.

"So where do we go from here?" Mr. West asks.

"Abetted by the mainstream press, the White House wants to avoid the question, saying only that there is no change in President Obama’s plan for American troops to be out by the end of 2014. This is neither a mission nor a timeline. It is an end date that hopefully will be changed. We will need support personnel and anti-terrorist units in Afghanistan for many years."

That is, for all military families, a very sad reality.

Rory Ryan is publisher of The Highland County Press.