Considering the last conqueror to actually hold Afghanistan was Alexander the Great, the country has made a tradition of being a sort of graveyard of empires. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump has committed to yet another troop surge in the unwinnable war.
In the modern era, the British have invaded Afghanistan three times. During each incursion, the empire’s military won significant victories on the battlefield, only to later suffer nearly double the casualties of the Afghans. Faced with the immovable resolve of Afghan fighters, they were forced to repeatedly retreat from the region in disgrace.
The former Soviet Union implemented a bloody regime change and spent nine years embroiled in conflict with Afghan factions. Many Westerners incorrectly attribute the failure of the brutal Soviet occupation to a supply of American stinger missiles. In reality, the Soviets took unsustainable heavy casualties for nine straight years.
Insurgent fighters engaged the Soviets in a protracted guerilla conflict that brought the war to a stalemate. Despite a 100,000-troop presence, the loss of life and cost of war prompted Mikhail Gorbachev to withdraw. These history lessons have fallen on deaf ears as President George W. Bush and President Barrack Obama underestimated the Afghan resistance.
The Cost of War
Since 2001, Coalition forces have suffered more than 3,500 fatalities of which 2,400 were Americans. Another 20,000 U.S. soldiers have been wounded. The highest number occurred during Obama’s so-called surge years between 2009-2012. The total loss of life since the beginning of the war is conservatively estimated at 200,000.
The price tag on the country’s longest war has exceeded $1 trillion in Afghanistan, and more than $2 trillion in the Middle East all told.
During Obama’s widely publicized “strategic withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, fighting grew increasingly fierce. Insurgents and radical Islamic terror groups such as ISIS and the Taliban recaptured 60-70 percent of the territory. The failed policy mirrored that of presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon who never fully committed to the Vietnam cause.
That Washington-micromanaged conflict touted an eventual exit strategy that filled the enemy with confidence. Knowing the Americans would leave, they needed only to escalate the bloodshed and wait to capture territory.
Unlike foreign invaders, the Afghans have learned their history lessons well. No occupying army has managed to hold the country in more than 2,000 years and beating the Soviets, British and Americans the first go-round have engrained a culture of war into the people. Generations after generations are born into battlefields, with one which outlasted both the Bush and Obama surges. In the final days of the Obama administration, the president ignored the ground losses in Afghanistan, and basically dumped the mess into Trump’s lap.
Surge 3.0
As a candidate, Trump touted winning in Iraq and getting out of Afghanistan. Americans who live stateside cannot appreciate the significant difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. The people, culture and terrain are dissimilar.
Iraq may have been ruled by the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, but it had political structure and order. Afghanistan is a multi-tribal free-for-all where warlords and factions routinely fire on foreigners and opposing clans alike. Chaos rules the day, and radicals are waiting in the wings to seize control. Perhaps Trump understood the inevitable outcome and preferred to cut American losses the same way British and Soviet leaders did — the same way Obama pulled American forces and watched the radicals take over.
Although military leaders have persuaded Trump to move forward with a modest troop surge of 4,000-8,000, the Commander-in-Chief has a policy of not telegraphing strategy. Some media outlets have surmised that National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster advocated for up to 80,000 additional boots on the ground. To call such an escalation “folly” would be an understatement. As Prof. Ehsan Ahrari at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College statedin his article, “Lose Now or Later: America’s Uneasy Choices in Afghanistan,” military escalation would “only postpone America’s certain defeat.”
For all practical purposes, the Trump surge will mark the sixth Afghanistan invasion in the modern era. The Afghan resistance is already 5-0. Hopefully, Trump’s escalation comes with a radical change in conventional strategy.
~ Conservative Zone
