American (Double-Reverse) Gorbie
Weird, paradoxical Wall Street Journal article about SecDef Robert Gates’ Afghan war flashbacks notes some of the fundamental differences between the U.S. and Soviet experiences — legitimacy, broad international support, orders of magnitude difference in civilian and military casualties — but only pays passing lip service to the most relevant one under the circumstances. Gen. McChrystal is not fighting a Soviet-style Afghan war, something Gates of all people is in a position to understand. And as you get into the article, it becomes apparent Gates was looking for assurances on a question he must have already known the answer to.
The article makes a lot of superficial similarities to the Soviet misadventure and includes some nostalgic griping of Kabulis longing for the Pax Sovietica they enjoyed inthe 1980s. True to the genre, the article’s doom-and-gloom ”last war” comparison skips one war … Iraq … which would render this analysis nonsense.
But the most significant weird and paradoxical similarity between the two conflicts may be buried in these graphs and is entirely overlooked, which is too bad, because it would have made it interesting, and maybe even Cassandra-like (double-reverse) visionary:
Afghans who compare the two campaigns acknowledge the differences, yet argue that these aren’t always in America’s favor. An examination of this debate over the Soviet experience offers an insight into what American troops are up against — and the issues President Obama must weigh as he decides the course of an unpopular and costly war he didn’t start.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev also faced a troop-increase request during his first year, for a war he had inherited. Soviet generals in 1985 asked for tens of thousands more soldiers to bolster their 100,000-strong contingent, roughly the same size as the current Western force in Afghanistan.
OK, so Obama is like an American Gorbie, reluctantly playing along with generals for now but on the verge of throwing in the towel on a hated, corrupt, oppressive, warmongering regime?
Unfortunately that point, like most of the others raised in this article, is not seriously explored. It might actually make a more meaningful ironic predictive model for a handwringing cautionary article of this sort than Gates’ worries about the strategic nature of a coalition escalation.
The article somewhat misleadingly describes the United States as “prodding reluctant allies.” NATO’s European leadership has been highly supportive of an escalation and in recent news reports, key European allies have indicated they are ready to provide more troops if America commits itself to Afghanistan … while wondering loudly what the holdup is.
The author compares the apparent weakness and corruption of the Karzai government to the apparent strength of the Soviet-backed Afghan regime, but with only a passing reference to the fact that one is a highly participatory if flawed work-in-progress and the other was imposed top down, fails to grasp the most fundamental difference between the two.
Which gets us back to the Obie-Gorbie thing, and the dangerous double-reverse relevance of the Gorbachev experience at a time like this in American history. Given that Obama appears to view America’s role in the world with the same horror that Gorbachev viewed the Soviet Union’s. Given that Gorbachev recognized his oppressive regime could not survive the domestic and international challenges building up against it, and decided to surrender to freedom. And given that Obama, lurching toward debacle in mid-term elections with the prospects of a 2012 electoral disaster, with Afghan surge casualties inevitably rising before they fall again, may feel that capitulation to oppressive enemies abroad is the best path to victory at home.
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Topics: Afghanistan, Obama, Russia, history, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:16 am Comments (2) on Friday, November 27, 2009
2 Responses to “American (Double-Reverse) Gorbie”
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November 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
…may feel that capitulation to oppressive enemies abroad is the best path to victory at home.
Which will leave us to yet more man-caused disasters, until, finally, there’s an even more spectacular 9/11 moment. And Jimmy Carter can die knowing he wasn’t the worst president in American history.
November 27th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
VietNam Redux must have lost its resonance.