THE AFGHAN TRAP: Obama’s Foreign Policy Challenge

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“We didn’t push the Russians to intervene but we knowingly increased the probability that they would... It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."

Zbigniew Brzezinski (Advisor to Former President Jimmy Carter)

A recent issue of Newsweek magazine invoked the 30-year-old analogy of Vietnam to Afghanistan as if it was news. Despite a flawed analysis, it makes for fascinating reading. Perhaps more revealing, however, is the fact that in the seventh year of America’s occupation of Afghanistan such a moderate media voice feels free to “Cry Vietnam!” during an ongoing military intervention.

The authors carefully distinguish themselves from a “tiresome” antiwar left with an unsubstantiated observation: “To critics [of American foreign policy] all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential ‘quagmires.’”

Even a cursory glance at post-Vietnam interventions reveals the fallacy of that assumption. No one ever seriously suggested that American interventions in Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Somalia or Libya were in danger of becoming quagmires. Indeed, even warnings regarding Bosnia-Kosovo were conditioned on a ground invasion that never developed.

In truth the specter of Vietnam was not raised in earnest until the post-911 invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent invasion of Iraq – a chronology that places the antiwar left seven years (and hundreds of thousands of lives) ahead of the moderate corporate media.

So while it is refreshing to see the mainstream adopting the arguments of the left (better late than never), it would be wise to welcome their voices with due caution and a healthy dose of skepticism. Too often when the mainstream preempts the message of the left it is with ulterior motives. They may be using an antiwar argument to reframe the issue as justification for a policy of escalating the war and prolonging the occupation.

There are of course similarities between Afghanistan and Vietnam, the most critical applying to all foreign occupations: Indigenous peoples are not inclined to support foreign powers. Indeed, the people of any nation, strong or weak, united or divided, are ultimately bound to fight against a foreign power and that sense of duty only increases with every year the occupying force remains. In Vietnam as in Afghanistan, the tradition of fighting foreign invaders reaches back thousands of years.

Fortunately, as we have relatively short attention spans, we do not need to reach back centuries or even four decades to find the analogy that will lead us out of Afghanistan on the most direct course possible:

Afghanistan is to America today what it was to the Soviet Union in 1985.

That was the year Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Impatient with the war in Afghanistan, Gorbachev ordered a surge in Soviet troop levels. It was the bloodiest year in the Soviet-Afghan war. If not for Afghanistan, Gorbachev would be an appealing figure in Soviet history. In 1985 Ronald Reagan began his second term as President of the United States.

In 1985 Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent stationed in Dresden (East Germany) and former Director of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush was a breath away from the presidency. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was Deputy Director for Intelligence in the CIA. He would later become Director under President George H.W. Bush.

1985 was a watershed year. It was the beginning of the economic implosion that shattered the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Four years later the world would witness the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

[Insert images of The Wall coming down to the tune of Pink Floyd with an insert of Ronald Reagan delivering his famous line: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”]

On July 3, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing a covert operation to undermine the government of Afghanistan. Robert Gates confided in his memoirs that we began aiding the rebels in Afghanistan six months before the invasion. Under Operation Cyclone, the agency provided massive arms and covert training to the Afghan Mujahideen, a disparate coalition of tribal and holy warriors including Osama bin Laden and what would become known as Al Qaeda.

In 1985 the writing was on the wall. Despite acute economic crises triggered by a collapse in the price of oil, Gorbachev stepped into the Afghan trap. The Afghan insurgency, aided by a coalition of nations including Saudi Arabia, Britain, Egypt, China and Pakistan, exacted a toll in blood and treasure yet yielded no ground. Soviet forces lost over 14,000 lives and over a million Afghans were killed. One third of the population (five million civilians) fled to neighboring Iran and Pakistan.

By 1987 the damage was complete. Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. A “policy of national reconciliation” was implemented to solve the Afghan problem. It failed. In 1989 a bankrupt Soviet Union, unable to pay its debts and unable to feed its people, collapsed as it pulled its last troops out of Afghanistan.

The story that usually follows is largely fiction: That the Americans abandoned Afghanistan leaving the Pakistanis to eventually install the Taliban in power which in turn created a safe haven for Al Qaeda. The truth is we abandoned Afghanistan but we would not have altered the course of events if we had stayed. With or without American presence, there would have been a civil war. With or without our presence, Pakistan would have guided the action. The Taliban came to power because Pakistan gave its blessings, because the people were tired of war and because the Taliban could restore some sense of order.

That is the essential history of the Afghan-Soviet war. It should serve as a point-by-point warning to President Barack Obama. Its message is clear: Afghanistan is a trap.

Like Mikhail Gorbachev, Obama is inheriting a failing Afghan war. Like the Soviet Union, America is facing economic collapse. Like a blind man or a fool, Gorbachev chose to step further in and Obama seems to be making the same mistake.

[Somewhere in a back room of the Trilateral Commission Zbigniew Brzezinski is toasting Bob Gates on completing the circle as Vladimir Putin whispers: “We now have an opportunity to return the favor.”]

It is not coincidental that the decline of the Soviet Empire runs parallel to the Afghan war. The Soviets had reached the economic limits of their military expenditures. The Afghan resistance bled the empire dry with a thousand razor sharp cuts daily. It was a fight they could never “win” and one they should never have engaged.

President Obama still has time to reverse course. We are told that his order for 17,000 more troops in Afghanistan does not necessarily represent a policy of escalation. We are told it is only an attempt to establish order prior to the August election. We are told that the air strikes in the border region and inside Pakistan are to create diplomatic space.

Gorbachev had his own reasons. The Afghan government was failing and the security situation was deteriorating. The Soviets were being tested by a coalition of shadow enemies and could not back down.

Obama should know better. It is entirely possible that every member of the coalition that sponsored the Afghans against the Soviets with the exception of Britain (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Iran, Pakistan) is channeling funds to back the Afghans against America today.

Of course one might argue with good cause that the Soviet collapse in 1989 was far less costly to the world than the collapse of America would be today. Still, at what point might the Chinese, the Russians or the Saudis say: On balance, we think it is worth the cost. [4]

The way out is clear. We must negotiate a settlement with all involved parties on the condition that we will withdraw. We must distinguish between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. (It was not the Taliban that attack us on September 11, 2001; it was not in fact anyone of Afghan nationality.) We must bargain with the Taliban to abandon its most oppressive policies regarding women and Islamic justice. We have the means of persuasion and we must use them. We must engage the Pakistani government and intelligence forces (ISI) for in the end they will hold sway. Again, we have great leverage and must use it.

We must end the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan by the most direct means in order to stop the bleeding and begin the healing. By ending the war and pulling our troops out we will send a message that the change the world heard about last November was not a mirage, shadow or a ghost. Ending the war will open a thousand doors to peace. It will mark the beginning of an age of diplomacy. That is the foreign policy challenge that Obama should embrace.

Failing to end both wars in deliberate and determined fashion would signal a continuation of American policy with unimaginably tragic consequences.

Think of Brzezinski, giddy with glee, writing his president in 1979 that they had managed to draw the Soviets into “the Afghan trap.”

“We [have delivered] the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”

Turns out it was much worse.

Imagine Gorbachev in his last days, thinking back on 1985 and wondering what might have been.

Jazz.

1. Brzezinski as interviewed in Le Nouvel Observaeur, 15-21 January 1998.
2. Newsweek Cover Story 9 February 2009: Obama’s Vietnam by John Barry and Evan Thomas.
3. From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War by Robert Gates (Simon and Schuster 1996).
4. Madeleine Albright on CBS circa 1996.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). HE IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS – WORLD EDITION. THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, PACIFIC FREE PRESS AND CANADA NEWSDAILY. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.