Afghan Tet
While their president mulls the question, to fight or not to fight, Americans are fighting and dying in Afghanistan. Eight dead in a major, organized Taliban assault Saturday. Washington Post:
The fighting began early Saturday morning and raged throughout the day in a remote region of eastern Afghanistan in Nurestan province, which borders Pakistan. Staging their attack from steep mountainsides that overlook the outposts in the valley below, on a morning when weather made visibility poor, the Taliban fighters attacked the small American and Afghan bases using rifles, machine guns, grenades and rockets, according to U.S. military officials.
…
In addition to the eight soldiers killed, several others were injured, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, but he did not specify the number. The American soldiers called in ground reinforcements, along with attack helicopter, airplanes and surveillance drones during the fighting. U.S. forces eventually repelled the attack while inflicting “a significant amount of casualties” on insurgents, Smith said.
…
The U.S. military said it was not immediately clear how many insurgents were involved in the fighting. The attack involved Taliban fighters and appeared to be led by a local commander of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgent group, which is run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former mujaheddin leader during the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
…
“Americans always want to fight in Afghanistan,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, who took credit for the attack by telephone. “If the Americans want to increase their troops, we will increase our fighters as well.”
He said the battle began about 6 a.m. Saturday and involved 250 Taliban fighters. He claimed that dozens of American and Afghan soldiers were killed, along with seven Taliban fighters. Mujahid also claimed that the district police chief and intelligence chief were among the hostages, but that could not be confirmed.
One thing we’re not going to get out of this is any kind of accurate count on Taliban dead, which I suspect is a little higher that seven.
Anyway, sounds a little like the Taliban would like to pull off an Afghan Tet. Rack up some bad headlines, drive down the poll numbers and panic Congress while the president dithers. You’ll recall that in the original Tet, the Viet Cong and North Vietnam won a Pyrrhic political victory. Though decimated, severely compromed as a fighting force going forward and having failed to hold any ground, they managed to turn American public and political opinion. And won.
Added element here is the Hekmatyar factor. A sort of an Afghan weathervane who’s always got his own agenda, and clearly is banking on a Taliban surge as the best path forward.
There has been some progress toward deciding whether to fight in Afghanistan or not, though. The president actually met with his Afghan war commander the other day for the first time since he appointed him three months ago, squeezing in some face time on the tarmac at Copenhagen after his unsuccessful round of IOC gladhanding. It ain’t over till its over.
More on the attack from NYT includes these details and background:
The governor of Nuristan province, Jamaluddin Badar, reached by telephone on Sunday, said that 11 Afghan police officers, including the district police chief, had been kidnapped in the strike. He said the attackers did breach the compounds briefly. The American military did not confirm the report.
Much about the attack was still unclear on Sunday, but its broad outlines were eerily familiar. Nine American soldiers were killed in July 2008 in the same province, when 200 insurgents stormed their small outpost in the village of Wanat.
That attack, which has been described as the “Black Hawk Down” of Afghanistan, with the 48 American soldiers and 24 Afghan soldiers outnumbered three to one in a four-hour firefight, is now seen as a cautionary tale for the war here, which commanders say should focus more on protecting civilians.
Locals in the area were furious with Americans for the killing of local medical staff in an airstrike the week before, and commanders believe that for that reason, they were more hospitable to insurgents.
Meanwhile, NYT’s op-ed page is looking at ways ahead in Afghanistan. “10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan: Reform or Go Home.” Interesting that they are using the “V” word. The op-ed’s star-studded cast kicks off with former Australian Army LTC David Kilcullen. There’s a lot about improving Afghan forces, eliminating corruptin and co-opting Taliban fighters and leaders. All of which is great, but as a starting point, I like this one from the Kagans: “Don’t Believe We Can Afford To Lose:”
AMERICA cannot achieve even the minimal objective of preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing safe havens in Afghanistan without a substantial increase in forces over the coming year. The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan’s south is growing. The Afghan and international forces there now cannot reverse that growth. They may not even be able to stem it. That is the assessment of the top American commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
President Obama said in August, “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” Some of his advisers now say the opposite: Taliban control will not lead to terrorist havens. Why not? Osama bin Laden first built camps in the territory of a Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, in the mid-1980s. Relations between Al Qaeda and the Taliban remain close. Even if they do not invite Al Qaeda in, could they, unlike Pakistan, keep Al Qaeda out? The president was right: the triumph of the Taliban will benefit Al Qaeda.
Rejecting General McChrystal’s request for more forces leaves two options. The United States withdraws and lets Afghanistan again collapse into chaos, or it keeps its military forces and civilians in harm’s way while denying them the resources they need to succeed. Neither is acceptable.
That either got buried, or was left as best for second-to-last.
Never mind Tet. Donald Douglas at American Power is having Iraq flashbacks. Me, too.
Neptunus Lex on “the cost of muddling through.” Put another way, you can go through a lot of quarters playing wack-a-mole.
Zinni, via CBS: Quit dithering. OK, that isn’t exactly how he puts it, but quite apart from whatever you decide, how you go about making your decision says something about you. “Indecisive.” Zinni, much beloved by the left when he questioned Iraq, likes McChrystal in this fight, thinks wack-a-mole is a fool’s game. (May have a bit of an axe to grind with Team Obama over the rude treatment re Iraq ambassadorship … when they offered it to him, then stopped taking his calls and gave it to someone else.)
UK Telegraph: Brit Army chief warns of the “terrifying prospect” of failure in Afghanistan.
In an unprecedented intervention, the chief of the general staff described the conflict as “this generation’s war” and added that failure by Nato would have an “intoxicating effect” on militant Islam.
In his first interview as the head of the Army, Sir David told The Sunday Telegraph that if Britain and Nato failed in Afghanistan the risks to the western world would be “enormous” and “unimaginable”.
Big Afghan commentary roundup at Memeorandum. Obamafest at RealClearPolitics, where the general tenor seems to be that the president of the United States, on a number of fronts, is neither winning friends nor influencing people.
Speaking of which, HotAir notes SNL’s cruel jibes at Obama for accomplishing nothing. I’d call that an official turn of the worm.
Malkin points to a relief fund for an American Afghan vet, douple amputee.
Roundup at Mudville, which is also your go-to place for ground views.
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Topics: Afghanistan, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:03 am Comments (2) on Sunday, October 4, 2009
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October 4th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
[...] Crittenden draws Tet comparison: Sounds a little like the Taliban would like to pull off an Afghan Tet. Rack up some bad headlines, [...]
October 4th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
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