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Are We Winning or Losing in Afghanistan?

By Michael Crowley | @CrowleyTIME | October 27, 2010 | +

To follow up on Mark’s Afghan update, we are in a strange phase of the war right now where news accounts–sometimes within the same outlet in the same week–paint contradictory pictures of whether we’re winning or losing. A few days ago we were hearing that peace talks with the Taliban were growing more serious, in part because we were decimating their leadership. Now we’re hearing that the Taliban is doing more or less fine, thank you very much.

Bear in mind that this recent tone of optimism comes in advance of a December White House review of the war effort, and also soon after the arrival in Kabul of General David Petraeus, who has a proven knack for winning over the media. That doesn’t mean it’s false, but it provides some context.

Anyway, two posts worth reading on this subject come from longtime Afghan war skeptic Michael Cohen and CNAS’s Andrew Exum, who writes an irritated open letter to the Washington Post (which has generally done great reporting on the war):

Dear Sir or Madam:

As one of your readers, what in the world am I supposed to make of an article in yesterday’s newspaper claiming that the United States and its allies are kicking the holy crap out of the Taliban, and another article today that claims that, no, actually, U.S. and allied operations are not having much of an effect at all on the Taliban’s ability to conduct operations?…

Can you see how this is confusing?… Here’s a radical proposition: why don’t you direct your reporters to pool their sources, work together, and write an article that highlights the conflicting assessments rather than write two articles taking each set of sources at face value? Because I shouldn’t forget to read the newspaper one day and miss the news that we’re winning. Or losing.

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  • CP in FL

    Losing. This has been today’s edition of simple answers to simple questions.

  • michaelfury

    We will never be able to declare victory until we locate and destroy Osama’s Afghan nanothermite lab.

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/silence-gives-consent/

  • newfreedomblog

    No one “wins” in Afghanistan. Didn’t you know that?
    .
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324122/Russian-troops-return-Afghanistan-Gorbachev-warns-Nato-victory-impossible.html
    .
    But, the Russians are coming back again!!

  • pintortwo

    “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting… This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”
    .
    - Gen David Petraeus (link)

  • pintortwo

    “NATO commanders” told (NYT reporter) Gall that they are making “deliberate progress.” Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the British commander of NATO forces in the Kandahar offensive, says, “We now have the initiative. We have created momentum.” Lt. Col. Rodger Lemons, who commands Task Force 1-66… says that “a lot” of the Taliban “are getting killed.” In my day we called those sorts of remarks “condemnation by faint praise.”
    (…)
    (T)he Helmand operation is going down just like the rest of the offensives we’ve conducted in Afghanistan since March 2009 when President Obama’s national security “Chess Masters” came up with their own original plagiarized version of the clear-hold-build strategy. The Taliban… are avoiding a direct confrontation with a superior force, moving on to strike undefended targets, while our generals… continue to adhere to a doctrine that’s been a proven failure since Vietnam.
    .
    - US Navy Cmdr Huber (link)

  • pintortwo

    Are we winning in Afghanistan? We built bases, right? -with more on the way? So, yes. The Long Warriors believe we’re winning as long as we keep fighting and building more:
    .
    The concept of the “Long War” is attributed to former CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid, speaking in 2004. Leading counterinsurgency theorist John Nagl, an Iraq combat veteran and now the head of the Center for a New American Security, writes that “there is a growing realization that the most likely conflicts of the next fifty years will be irregular warfare in an ‘Arc of Instability’ that encompasses much of the greater Middle East and parts of Africa and Central and South Asia.”
    (…)
    In this perspective, Iraq is only an immediate front, with Afghanistan and Pakistan the expanding fronts, in a single larger war from the Middle East to South Asia. Instead of thinking of Iraq like Vietnam, a war that was definitively ended, it is better to think of Iraq as a setback, or better a stalemate, on a larger battlefield where victory or defeat are painfully hard to define over a timespan of five decades.
    .
    Understanding the Long War

  • grape_crush

    Here’s a radical proposition: why don’t you direct your reporters to pool their sources, work together, and write an article that highlights the conflicting assessments rather than write two articles taking each set of sources at face value?

    Very well said. Less stenography, please.

    Are We Winning or Losing in Afghanistan?

    As an aside, having to ask that question at all doesn’t indicate a high degree of success for the Afghan venture.

  • pintortwo

    Interesting article Newfree. We’re considering receiving “more than 20 helicopters” and “more goods, including weapons” from Russia for their “collaboration on a missile defence system” and for “Nato to accept (Russia’s) occupation of Georgia”. Ugh.

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