Rubin: Counter-Insurgency in Afghanistan -- Not a Khost of a Chance

As I have chronicled in this space, administration apologists such as Ann Marlowe and David Ignatius have been claiming Eastern Afghanistan in general and the tiny province of Khost in particular as proof of U.S. success in Afghanistan. (And Registan.net has been dogging their steps.) Marlowe, whose work has been featured in the Washington Post, National Review, Weekly Standard, and Wall Street Journal, claimed in in May that, far from being resurgent, "in the 14 provinces that make up Regional Command East [RC/E] in Afghanistan [the Taliban] are a defeated military force." Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist who mistook a one-week embed for journalism, "reported" that in RC/E "the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy has begun to get some traction."

I guess they had a visit from the Republican good news fairy. I am not so blessed. I have to rely on information. Of course my information is pretty superfluous, considering that the U.S. Department of Defense reported last week that Taliban attacks in RC/E this year were up 40 percent over last year. After rebutting Ignatius on the NewsHour, I have been periodically updating the data on Taliban and other anti-government and anti-international forces attacks in Afghanistan in general and RC/E in particular. Here's the latest, covering the first 25 weeks of 2008 and comparing them to 2007.

First, total number of nationwide incidents by week, 2008 compared to 2007:

Here's the regional breakdown and total statistics (these regions are not identical to the NATO regional commands):

This shows that total incidents are up nationally by 38 percent (991 over 717). Of course this could result from the poor performance of our week-kneed NATO allies, who have no counter-insurgency skills. So let's take a look at RC/E, where the U.S. is applying all the lessons of the Petraeus doctrine:
These data show an increase of total incidents in RC/E from 1,159 in 2007 to 1,521 in 2008, an increase of 31 percent. The 2007 figures include a huge spike in week 23 of 2007, which consisted largely of about 40 small IEDs in Khost aimed to intimidate (not kill) Afghan officials and security forces. Without that one-day incident, the increase of 2008 over 2007 is 36 percent, virtually the same as nationwide.

Of course all of RC/E is not the same: what about Khost province, "the crown jewel in the American counterinsurgency strategy," according to Ann Marlowe? My source reports 269 attacks so far this year in Khost, up 22 percent from last year's total of 220. So the greatest achievement of U.S. counterinsurgency in Afghanistan has been to hold the escalation in violence in Khost to a bit more than half of the national level of increase. This actually speaks well for the U.S. team in Khost: that province directly borders on Pakistan's North Waziristan Tribal Agency, where Taliban leaders Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani maintain their sizable headquarters, including joint training with al-Qaida, without any visible disturbance from the Pakistan military. (Actually, according to Afghan intelligence, so far uncontradicted by the U.S. government, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate organized Haqqani's attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai in April. It is unfair to hold the civilian government in Islamabad accountable for the situation in the tribal areas or the activities of the ISI. More on this in another post.)

But if these results speak well for the U.S. team in Khost, they do not speak well for U.S. strategy. Counter-insurgency is not graded on a curve; not succeeding is failing. So far, that's still where the indicators point. Read more on this article...

Shabby McCarthyism from the Weekly Standard

Shortly after my first post on the Post-Labor Day Product Rollout for War with Iran, I got a call from Michael Goldfarb, author of the blog "Worldwide.Standard.com" at the Weekly Standard. Noting that he had read and admired my scholarship in Afghanistan, he inquired about my sources, asking in particular if I had relied on a person whose reliability was in question. I didn't know the person, and he didn't write anything.

Now, however, Goldfarb has found that the U.S. public agrees with him rather than with me and the rest of the "left." Writing on October 30th about the "NeoCon Nation," Goldfarb drew unfounded conclusions from a poorly conducted survey, and then tarred all who disagree with the rush to war with Iran as "the left."

First, the shabbiness:

He notes that on July 6 of this year, a survey showed that "60 percent of Americans opposed a war with Iran." Now, however, he claims, "a majority of Americans now favor military action against Iran."

The July poll from Angus Reid asked, "If the U.S. government decides to take military action in Iran, would you favour or oppose it?" 63% said they would oppose it.

The recent Zogby poll asked if voters "would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon." 52% said yes.

As anyone with the most microscopic acquaintance with polling knows, these are not the same questions. Iran says it is not building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency (whose record on such matters is far more reliable than that of the Weekly Standard) says it has no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, noting that the rhetoric on Iran of people like Goldfarb "has lost all connection to reality," reminds us that "Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA."

Given these "facts," (sorry to bring that up), a military strike by the U.S. against Iran now and a military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon are not the same thing. The latter is invoked to justify the former.

Now for the McCarthyism:

The reason for this alleged change in public opinion? Goldfarb: "The left has done a terrible job of laying out their case against a strike." Get it? Those against a war with Iran are "the left." People like Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) who has called for "Direct, Unconditional, Comprehensive Talks with Iran." Also US Central Command Commander William Fallon, who confirmed to some mutual acquaintances that he had indeed responded positively to Sen. Hagel's recommendations. Not to mention Fareed Zakaria, whose views have been summarized here by both Farideh Farhi and me. Zakaria is such a notorious leftist, that when the White House asked the American Enterprise Institute to assemble a small group of thinkers to deliberate on how to respond to September 11, Zakaria was one of the dozen or so invitees. I can't find the link right now, but Bob Woodward reported it in Bush at War.

I could go on naming many against war with Iran who are neither leftists nor "libertarians," but just sensible reality-based thinkers about national security who think there are alternatives. But according to Goldfarb and his ilk, we are all "leftists," like those naive appeasers who claimed that the Soviet Union might actually withdraw from Afghanistan....

Maybe I'm getting too old, but I've been through this too many times.

Update: In my haste to finish this post before a lunch with a member of parliament in Islamabad, I left out the main point. In my original post, I reported that the supporters of a war with Iran thought they had to get public support up to 35-40% first. They must have been looking at the Angus Reid poll from last summer showing less than that. Goldfarb refers to this benchmark I reported as context for quoting the Zogby poll, showing they have the support they think they need, provided they can convince the public that a military strike on Iran is necessary to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Hence President Bush's reference to a "nuclear holocaust" caused by a country that is years away from being able to make a nuclear weapon. We are definitely in the danger zone.

Read more on this article...