But let's not panic, ok? This is no Sepoy Mutiny. And although we've lost 4 troops directly attributable to the incident in the violence that has followed, we still haven't reached the body count of our own Moslem-American attacks on US troops from a 2003 incident during the invasion of Iraq and the more recent 2009 incident at Fort Hood.
The fact is, despite this incident, we are doing fine in Afghanistan. We've beaten down the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and are prepared to attempt the same thing in the east. And the north and west simply aren't fertile territory for the Taliban. Those are the places we put our non-fighting coalition allies.
Yet this rioting will no doubt be used to bolster erroneous impressions that Afghanistan is hopeless:
All this media excitement arose from a lack of understanding between strategic intelligence assessments and operational/tactical combat assessments. Both gave a different picture of what was going on and both were accurate. But to those who don't understand the difference between strategic intelligence and combat assessments the information can appear contradictory.
For example, the strategic intelligence assessment of Afghanistan is grim. It has to be if it's accurate. That's because Afghanistan is not a nation but a coalition of tribes and ethnic groups who do not get along. ... There has been a lot of progress in Afghanistan but not enough to satisfy the unrealistic expectations that politicians and their media cheer leaders have opportunistically latched onto.
The military situation is different, if only because the enemy has conveniently concentrated themselves in two provinces (Kandahar and Helmand, where most of the world's heroin currently comes from).
We certainly can't show progress in creating a stable, national government that runs Afghanistan the way France is run from Paris. If that is your definition of success, we will fail.
My confidence in the war stems from the fact that my objectives for Afghanistan are not high:
The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.
Anything more is simply a bonus, and I wouldn't sacrifice lives trying to achieve it. It's nice if we can get it--but don't get your hopes up. Remember that despite cries over the years that Afghanistan is where the "real" war on terrorism is taking place, that is not true. Afghanistan is simply too peripheral in the Arab Moslem world for the real fight to be there. It was simply the first fight because its remoteness made it a haven for al Qaeda to attack us on 9/11. As long as it isn't a sanctuary in the future, we're good.
This isn't the first time that there has been panic in the air over images of ululating rage. The riots are no reason to abandon Afghanistan or to conclude that our fight there has been futile. That's what the Taliban want you to think. But we won't fall for their ploy, will we?
UPDATE: Honest to God, news coverage is idiotic. Why on Earth are news stories describing Taliban attacks as "retaliating for" the Koran burning? The Taliban have been attacking all along, right? And talk of whether we can continue our strategy in light of the riots is ridiculous. Of course we can. I'd bet the Taliban had a hand in the protests to begin with, and eventually they'll die down.
I will offer a caution that we should not have no combat forces in Afghanistan even when we rely on Afghan forces (with or without our advisers with them). If something goes really bad, I want our bases to be fortified zones where any scattered forces of ours can retreat to with American bombers on call to smash up any attack on the perimeters in support of a robust defense line. Once that is stabilized we can figure out what to do next. I think we had plans like that when we were hip-deep in the Balkans just in case there really was an uprising against our presence.
But we aren't anywhere near this being anything but a Taliban propaganda coup. Work the problem, people.
