During my last visit to Pakistan, I had the opportunity to sit down with Asad Durrani, the former chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the shadowy military intelligence unit that helped hide Osama bin Laden and sponsored the Taliban. While Durrani’s regular columns in the Pakistani press are full of vitriol, he was a very polite man, and we enjoyed tea and civil but contentious conversation in the Islamabad Club.
While Durrani is more refined than his predecessor Hamid Gul, he nonetheless reflects the dominant strain within Pakistani strategic thinking. Hence, his recent article in Pakistan’s Express Tribune should raise alarm bells and end any belief in the White House and President Obama’s amen chorus that his drawdown of forces will be seen as anything but complete and utter defeat. As Durrani writes, “The presence of the world’s mightiest alliance in Afghanistan gave us another chance as well: to gang up with the tribesmen, once again, and defeat yet another superpower. That is the chance we did not miss.”
There is an inverse relationship between pretensions of sophistication and the clarity of goals. Decades ago, the concept of victory was simple: To defeat the enemy. But today, diplomats and Democrats convince themselves that rhetoric can substitute for victory, even with fundamental goals left unmet and the enemy unchastened. Alas, national security will never be built on rhetoric alone.
OK. The Pakis and their Taliban patriarchal pre-industrial warrior buds will have free run of the medieval, jerkwater cul-de-sac that is one party's hood and the big-brother sponsor's next-door home-away-from-home. And?
An observation of the results make the case for "simple" quite clear. The most notable engagements in which the US declared war and fought until unconditional surrender resulted in Germany and Japan as two of our most trusted and consistent allies. The nature of human existence has not changed to make such outcomes impossible to repeat. We have abandoned that which worked well in favor of what? It's hard to imagine Iraq or Afghanistan ever having the gratitude, appreciation and respect for the sacrifice of Americans that can still be found in Germany and Japan sixty plus years later.
For better or for worse Mr. Rubin overlooks that unlike WWII neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were fought as wars against national enemies but as wars to l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e national populations that were said to be under the control of evildoers acting contrary to the will of the Iraqi and Afghani people. Alas, when you are supposedly fighting a war to liberate populations defined as soul mates in democracy rather than foes, military strategies used in simpler times to achieve total victory and unconditional surrender–firebombing cities, dropping nukes–isn't quite on. n nAnd victory against Sadaam was actually achieved. Mr. Rubin has temporarily forgotten that the messy bits occurred *after* the victory. And achieving a decisive victory against a sub-set of the Afghani society may or may not be achievable by rotating our overstretched volunteer army through their third, fourth, fifth and sixth tours of duty. Unless Mr. Rubin is calling for that thing we had for our earlier unconditionally victorious efforts, a universal draft. But he isn't. n nbtw, the war against Germany in WWII was built on the sacrifice of 23.4 million Soviet citizens and would never have been possible without the defeat of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad. By Stalin and General Zhukov. Yes, Stalin's diplomacy enabled Hitler w/the Non-Aggression Pact and his blunder invited an attack he was unprepared for, but still, no Soviet Communist eastern front, no victory. n nMr. Rubin has yet to explain how Putin is going to help the United States achieve similar unconditional surrenders today.