Livable World Board Member Matthew Hoh on Afghanistan
Patricia Morris | Sep 19, 2011 |
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Video courtesy of the City Club of Cleveland, which is the oldest independent continuous free speech forum in the country, and is renowned for its tradition of debate and discussion. http://www.cityclub.org/
Matthew Hoh is a board member of Livable World, our sister organization, and a former civil servant and foreign affairs officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and Marine Corps company commander in Iraq. On August 26, Matthew Hoh was invited to speak at the City Club of Cleveland on Afghanistan. He spoke passionately about the expansion of the insurgency in Afghanistan and how certain U.S. policy decisions are hurting stabilization efforts in Afghanistan. He questioned the need for and legitimacy of keeping troops in Afghanistan and called for their return.
Matthew Hoh, Livable World, Afghanistan, Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)
Time to Take All American Troops Out of Iraq (by the end of the year)
Patricia Morris | Aug 11, 2011 | 0 
Photo courtesy of thepilot.com
Despite White House promises and a signed agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by December 31, 2011, Pentagon Officials, such as Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have encouraged the Iraqi government to consider allowing a contingency force of roughly 10,000 U.S. troops to remain and train Iraqi security forces.
The Iraqi government would have to make a formal request for U.S. troops to stay past the deadline and President Talabani and Prime Minister Al-Maliki have agreed to begin negotiations. But the verdict could tear the fragile government apart.
Both Sunni and Shi’a blocs in the parliament have spoken out against the troop extension and have warned that it could incite further insurgent violence. Muqtada Al-Sadr, an important Al-Maliki ally and former head of the Mahdi Army- turned politician, wants the U.S. out. On his website, in Arabic and English, he wrote to U.S. forces, “[G]o back to your families who are waiting for your arrival impatiently, so that you and we, as well, lead a peaceful life together.” However, if U.S. troops stay, Al-Sadr threatened to reunite his army, which caused much of the insurgent violence up to 2007, and target the “occupier.”
Isolationism vs. Militant Interventionism: A False Choice
Matthew | Jul 20, 2011 | 0 By John Isaacs and Matthew Reichert
Am I an isolationist if . . .
I support key international institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank that facilitate international economic cooperation and engineer collective action?
I feel safer knowing that the bilateral New START treaty with Russia reduces the global threat of nuclear weapons, and I believe that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a key element in containing the spread of nuclear weapons?
I back the Asian security alliances with Japan and South Korea?
I believe in free-trade agreements that assist American prosperity?
I deem the U.S.-China trade relationship essential to American and worldwide economic stability?
I strongly endorse the democratic movements in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere?
I support a reset of relations with Russia to ensure cooperation on a number of issues?
I hope that the United States undergirds European Union efforts to solve the economic challenges of debt-laden countries such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal?
I back United States and international efforts to negotiate with Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons programs?
I urgently endorse persistent American efforts to ensure a safe, secure Israel existing alongside a free and independent Palestine?
But . . .
I am unwilling to sacrifice American lives to spread freedom and engage in state-building in far away lands where American security is not clearly at stake.
The answer is a clear-cut no . . . but the neo-cons are manipulating the debate over U.S. troops in Afghanistan and around Libya.
McCain Distorts History to Support Claim of Isolationism
Matthew | Jun 29, 2011 | 0 Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has appeared prominently in the news lately for a number of bellicose statements, including grave warnings to fellow Republicans over their reluctance to join him in advocating military force to defend American ideals around the globe.
Senator McCain has identified a dangerous “isolation strain” stemming from “the Pat Buchanan wing” of the Republican party – the same tendency, he claims, that during the 1930’s led the United States to stand idly by as Germany disregarded its Versailles treaty obligations and prepared to conquer Europe.
If the threats we face today are as overt and credible as the rise of Nazism in Germany, then the implications of the Republican “isolation strain” are truly dangerous to American security.
Of course, isolationism as an American ideology has historically been espoused by policymakers for widely varying reasons: from a continuation of President Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances,” to a rejection of Wilsonian idealism and the League of Nations at the end of World War I, to a repudiation of European balance-of-power politics, to outright xenophobia.
Senator McCain’s accusation recalls a harsh brand of isolationism wielded by public figures like Republican Senators Gerald P. Nye and Henry Cabot Lodge. This doctrine spurned not only military intervention on the side of Great Britain and France but also participation in international bodies and alliances with European nations It ignored an overt and credible German threat to the sovereignty of nations and the existence of an entire people. As a result, American foreign policy undermined the promise of collective security manifested in the League of Nations, and was one factor leading to the highly destructive Second World War where over 60 million people were killed.
Senator McCain’s comparison is problematic. The threats to American security posed by a military withdrawal from Libya or Afghanistan are neither overt nor credible.
An (anonymous) American Advisor in Rural Afghanistan: Part VI: A Ruthless Insurgency
Kingston Reif | Jun 22, 2011 | 0 The sixth of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man
As Obama prepares to deliver a major policy speech on Afghanistan tonight, I want to share some thoughts on where we stand from my vantage point. I may have more to say after the speech.
The fighting season is in full swing, but it is much different than last year.
Many of the strongholds that the insurgency enjoyed last year are gone. Once ambivalent, many villages are now showing full-fledged support for their local government officials. And many of the financial resources that propped up the insurgency in years past are gone, due to a poor poppy harvest.
Despite these successes, Taliban insurgents remain as ruthless and inhuman as ever. Last year, the strategy of the insurgency was to primarily attack military bases; implant indiscriminate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in orchards; and create vehicle-borne IEDs to crash into markets, government buildings, and into other vehicles containing key Afghan leaders.
The new modus operandi of the Taliban insurgency? Brutal assassinations that target not only police chiefs and government officials, but also methodically target effective, anti-insurgent maliks (village leaders) in remote, rural areas.
Within the last month, eleven maliks have been killed in my area of operation alone. The malik represents a community’s interests on councils, lobbies government officials for resources, and provides leadership and stability in the face of the insurgency. Two of these men—Haji Irfan and Haji Mohammad Abdul*—were especially good men who ultimately gave their life for a cause that was bigger than themselves: a peaceful Afghanistan.
Those that knew these two men will share stories of their deep character, bravery, and leadership. From an American perspective, this is my small attempt to tell their story and depict their senseless end.
How Much So Far?
Laicie Olson | May 13, 2011 | 0 Go on over to the Center's site now for an updated war spending table. Here's the summary:
By the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that total US spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will surpass $1.4 trillion. This total includes approximately $823 billion for operations in Iraq and $557 billion for operations in Afghanistan.
Funding for the war in Iraq has decreased significantly as troops are withdrawn, leading to a notably smaller total spending request for FY2012. Funding for the war in Afghanistan will begin to decrease slightly in FY2012, signaling a possible downward trend.
Annual war spending peaked in FY2008 at $185.7 billion.
Iraq & Afghanistan, Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY12 (all tags)
Reflections on "Afghanistan War: Containing or Leveraging U.S. Power"
Patricia Morris | Apr 29, 2011 | 2 On Wednesday April 20, the New America Foundation hosted a daylong event, entitled “Afghanistan War: Containing or Leveraging U.S. Power” which I attended.
There were four panels, but the difficult-to-sit-on-chairs got to me after two. Okay, I’ll admit, the last panel was with Ann Coulter, who is both not an expert on Afghanistan and extremely stressful. I made a conscious decision to skip it. However, the first two panels were excellent (see end for a list of the panelists and their affiliation).
At this event, I came to grips with a sad realization: the more I learn about Afghanistan, the more hopeless the situation seems. I can better appreciate the range of consequences no matter what the U.S. decides to do, and find every proposed less-than-perfect.
I’m sure I’m not the only one; it just took me longer.
Official Discomfort with Afghanistan War?
Bridget | Mar 02, 2011 | 0 By: John Isaacs
While key Administration officials continue to vigorously support the war in Afghanistan, there appears to be a less-than-enthusiastic larger view about the war.
Take Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In his recent speech at West Point, he pointed out:
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
That does not sound like a high level official who thinks that the United States military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq were bang up good ideas. Gates is not advocating getting out; he just does not think getting in was smart.
This skepticism was amplified at a February 17, 2011 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. There, Admiral Michael Mullen (USN), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not make the situation in Afghanistan sound exactly rosy.
An (anonymous) American Advisor in Rural Afghanistan: Part V: The Successes of Capacity Building
Kingston Reif | Jan 31, 2011 | 3 
Afghanistan Ag Man in Action
The fifth of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man
In the months since I last posted on Nukes of Hazard there have been many country-wide and provincial-level changes in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal was relieved of command over a Rolling Stone article, which prompted Embassy staffers to rather humorously compare and contrast the affair with that of the movie Almost Famous. President Hamid Karzai attempted to ban private security companies and, thus, change the face of development in Afghanistan. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has moveded into once Taliban-controlled territories. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) has followed suit; and so I have transitioned from an eastern province to an even more kinetic—or combat active—district in Kandahar.
Last November, I saw the last of the 173rd Airborne paratroopers that I lived with for the past year leave on twin Chinook helicopters and head back to their bases in Italy and Germany. With the fighting season over in most of the country and winter in full force, we are fine-tuning our goals and objectives for the new year (or the last half of the Islamic calendar year). Yet at the same time US civilians and Afghan government officials plan for what is to come, we are also taking stock of the previous year. While there is much to be done, we have much to be proud of.
From my perch at the provincial level, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s (GIRoA) Directorate of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock (DAIL) has reignited a lackluster extension service that now effectively takes agricultural education to remote corners of the province, created farmers associations that revived export of Afghan products, increased services to once isolated parts of the province, and weaned itself away from primary dependency on foreign checkbooks and onto the Afghan government for support...
