A Predictably Sad Plan in Afghanistan — Leaving the Afghan Army without the Equipment, Skills and Infrastructure that It Would Need to Actually Carry Out the Obama Administration’s Hand-Over Scheme — and a Comment on Brain-Clowns and the Institutionalized Lack of Realism that Got Us into this Hopeless Situation

03 August 2012

Introduction — an explanation of the harsh tone of this essay

Our usually self-interested, often profoundly incompetent, leaders:

get our troops killed

weaken America’s chances for an enviable future

shatter the moral standards that used to define the American Dream

make the United States look bad on the international stage

and, with each go round of additional stupidity, invite more of the same.

What follows addresses an example of this and attempts to explain why we let “brain-clowns” lead us into treacherous situations.

Theme — when we listen to thoughtless, self-interested, ignorant or unreasonable people, we act stupidly

That kills people and strangles hope.

This essay starts with an example of a bad situation in Afghanistan.

Then it asks how we got ourselves into such a foreseeably bad mess.

The answer lies in recognizing the incompetence of the people we listen to, when “we” formulate or support specific international policies.

The mistakes we make in choosing deluded policies appear to result from defects in “our” culturally shared view of reality.

To begin — a typical example of the bad situation in Afghanistan

“Smart” is not a word that characterizes American foreign or military policies. American strategic dumbness is so common that it is sometimes not worth commenting on.

But sometimes levels of policy stupidity are so “awesome” that they deserve to be individually highlighted.

The Washington Post recently ran a story documenting the sad state of the Afghan Army, as the United States’ highly competent troops begin to leave that “fake nation” agglomeration of clans to its own devices:

After U.S. soldiers left Combat Outpost Conlon in February — packing up weapons, generators and portable toilets — their Afghan successors rushed to the American barracks and command center, eager to inspect their inheritance.

Months later, it’s a dismal scene. The 240 Afghan soldiers are down to three hours of electricity a day. Almost all of their vehicles have broken down. They don’t have the night-vision goggles needed to guard their base after sunset.

As the Taliban ramped up its attacks in eastern Afghanistan’s Wardak province this spring, the Afghan soldiers here came to a painful conclusion: They were not ready to take on the fight alone. But it was too late — the Americans were not coming back.

Reporter Kevin Sieff goes on with a tale of easily foreseeable woe. Like the fact that the Afghanis don’t have the parts or knowledge to fix broken military vehicles.

And so on.

“Well, Pete — ain’t that them Afghani guys’ fault?”

Not exactly.

Even someone with a quasi-moron’s strategic aptitude should have anticipated that no other nation is going to be able to match American military prowess, without the corresponding industrial and military ethos to support it.

Therefore, a reasonably conscientious near-dumb-head would avoid starting (or escalating) a war in such a place — unless he could guarantee that American troops (or competently delivered material assistance) would remain there to complete the mission, however that was defined.

So, one has to ask — How did “we” get so stupid that even a knowledgeable moron could easily outperform us?

The answer — we listen to (and follow) unrealistic and self-interested people

I have been educated out the wazoo, so I am not blindly anti-elitist. But (being a former farmer, cop, science and medical student) I have profound respect for the restrictions that Reality places on us.

Sadly, many other educated (and unfortunately powerful) people do not respect aspects of the real world that don’t affect them personally.

These talented, but half-capacity/half-dopes run the country in ways that aggrandize their power and wealth, but ultimately defeat the lives of those whom the social contract was (allegedly) intended to serve.

This month, while reading Foreign Affairs, I came across an illuminating example of how brainy, but reality-disconnected people think.

Think of them as brain-clowns. A term that characterizes most of America’s national leadership.

Citation — to the article that exemplifies unrealistic, but nationally influential thinking

Stephen Hadley and John Podesta, The Right Way Out of Afghanistan: Leaving Behind a State that Can Govern, Foreign Affairs 91(4): 41-53 (July-August 2012)

Why choose this article?

Authors Stephen Hadley and John Podesta are not inconsequential people.

Their views and thinking broadly exemplify those of the majority of people who appear to make American foreign and military policy.

According to Foreign Affairs:

Hadley is Senior Adviser for International Affairs at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He was National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush.

Podesta is Chair of the Center for American Progress. He served as President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff.

In 2011, they co-led a bipartisan working group that reviewed American policy involving Afghanistan and Pakistan.

People do not get to these positions by being stupid.

But that does not prevent them from thinking stupidly. Or from misdirecting American policy in ignorant and foolish ways.

Extracts from the cited Foreign Affairs article make my point — about reality-denying incompetence

The Stephen Hadley and John Podesta article is aimed at guiding us to a good way out of Afghanistan. Consequently, it is directly pertinent to the Washington Post clip that I quoted above.

On the positive side and realistically enough, the authors identify a few of the main problems the United States faces in the mess it made of the war in Afghanistan:

[T]he government in Kabul . . . . is deeply flawed and, should the world stop compensating for its deficiencies, in danger of imploding.

[President] Karzai has failed to use his position to advance a reform agenda or to support merit-based appointments of officials.

The absence of transparent and effective systems of justice and law has provided Taliban insurgents with an opening to mobilize domestic opposition to the Afghan government.

But then, Hadley and Podesta come up with pie-in-the-sky solutions that eleven years of combat and diplomatic effort have definitively shown to be unworkable:

[T]he United States and its partners must ensure a smooth presidential transition in 2014 . . . .

These should include the establishment of a credible voter registry . . . and a commitment to the independence and transparency of the Independent Election Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission . . . .

[T]he United States needs to use its diplomatic muscle to support the creation of stronger checks and balances and other reforms that would allow opposition groups to participate on a level playing field.

[T]he United States should encourage the parliament to take on an increased role in overseeing the appointment of government officials and the development and approval of national budgets.

The United States should also channel a higher percentage of its assistance through the Afghan budget, rather than through outside contractors, and the use it as leverage to push government toward anticorruption measures.

[T]he United States must facilitate a political settlement among Afghanistan’s opposing factions.

[T]he Taliban must respect the Afghan constitution, renounce, armed conflict, and sever their ties with al Qaeda.

The whole of Afghan society must be made to feel comfortable with the process of reaching out to the Taliban and whatever results from it.

Leaders of the Taliban and the Afghan government need to demonstrate to their constituents that their interests will be best protected through negotiations, not violence.

“So, Pete, what is wrong with the Hadley-Podesta suggestions?”

If we figured out how to overcome gravity, pigs could indeed fly. But suggesting that this might be so does not get us a wit closer to actually canceling gravity’s inescapable effects.

We already recognize that we want the Taliban to “respect the Afghan constitution, renounce, armed conflict, and sever their ties with al Qaeda.”

The problem is making that happen. Nothing has worked, for the simple reason that the United States, having failed militarily to crush the Taliban movement, has no leverage left.

The same is true for every other one of the authors’ (frankly) idiotic formulations.

If we knew how to “un-corrupt” Afghan society, we would have done it. Saying that we “should” do so gets us nowhere.

Similarly, we all know (again, because military force has failed) that we “must facilitate a political settlement among Afghanistan’s opposing factions.”

The problem is how one accomplishes that, when the core problem is that Afghanis have never been able to do it themselves. And Afghanistan’s peoples have repeatedly proven themselves to be uninterested in having a bunch of quasi-imperialists show them “the way.”

The sad thing is that the Hadley-Podesta essay exactly parallels American wishful thinking in Afghanistan (and virtually everywhere else) for decades.

So, why — if this stupidity is so obvious in retrospect — do we continue to be such pigs-can-fly idiots?

Why we act foolishly

There are two components to why American foreign and military policy is grossly misguided:

The (technical) first addresses why our leaders do apparently dumb things.

The (national philosophy) second explains why we let them do them.

Idiocy Component One — dumb leadership does not cost foolish or incompetent leaders anything

Our leaders do destructive things for two reasons:

They almost always personally benefit from the international stupidities they commit. Either directly or by benefiting their plutocratic masters.

And they never pay a genuinely personal price for being killingly selfish or blatantly stupid, or both.

Meanwhile, the nobler constituents of our culture die or suffer.

Idiocy Component Two — Americans’ overly optimistic view of political and cultural change — and our spiritually misguided perspective on the relevance of military force to solving international problems

We let our leaders act incompetently abroad because we are culturally wedded to unrealistic, grossly optimistic views of how Reality actually works.

We think that the “American Way,” however we define it, is better than anybody else’s way.

Given that this is so, we behave as if we can ignore the history and culture of the situations into which we inject ourselves. We habitually assume that we will escape, without paying the price that Darwin’s lesser creatures ordinarily would pay for being self-destructively idiotic.

This is America’s ignorance-based and brainless optimism at work.

We don’t learn from our mistakes because wealth and military power insulate those of us at home from personal consequences of the nation’s unrealism abroad.

Culturally second, we have inordinate faith in the power of armed force.

If an international problem crops up, surely there is a weapon in our arsenal of people-blasters that will work to eliminate it.

Americans are the NRA’s contribution to violent world peace. We start a lot of mission-lacking fights, end comparatively few, and, in most instances, somebody else pays the comparatively higher price for our strategic and moral lack of sense.

The bottom line is that “we” vote leaders, who reflect our ignorant world views and heavy-handed methods, into power.

An example of capable analysis — from the kind of person that American leadership (and the public) customarily ignores — a history buff who actually knows something

The United States is too brain-endowed to lack wise people. The problem is that we ignore them.

Here is a sample of policy wisdom from history-oriented journalist, Robert W. Merry. It concerns the Middle East.

Thoughtful readers will immediately see the culturally relevant overlap with Afghanistan:

The time has come for the United States to give up on the notion of democracy in the Middle East. It isn’t going to happen . . . and the country is starting to look silly with so many of its intellectuals clinging to a notion that has no basis in reality.

Just look at Iraq, set upon a course that many Americans thought would lead to democracy, and paid for with the blood of more than four thousand American dead and some thirty-three thousand wounded.

What do we see in today’s Iraq? A budding dictatorship moving in the direction of the last one—but with a big difference: this one is dominated by Shiites, a power arrangement that appreciably enhances the regional influence of neighboring Iran, considered by many Americans as their country’s most nettlesome adversary.

Look at Egypt . . . . The lesson there is that it’s impossible to overestimate the willingness of the traditional power blocs to upend any democratic structures or procedures that threaten their position and prerogatives . . . .

Consider tiny Kuwait, where the highest court just annulled the duly run parliamentary elections of February. . . .

And look at Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where any democratic sentiments are quickly quashed . . . .

And yet in the face of all this, and more, many idealistic Americans hold fast to the idea that if we can just provide assistance and guidance and apply sufficient military power against the bad guys, democratic institutions eventually will blossom in the region.

Merry goes on to support his thesis with a persuasive list of facts drawn from history, religion, and culture. In other words, he draws on available data that most Americans like to think have nothing to do with current reality.

My criticism has been harsh — for a reason

For ethical reasons, leadership in deadly force situations has to be competent.

When “my” stupidity and lack of foresight kills and injures my people (or surrounding innocents), it is my fault. I should pay a heavy price. Nothing equals the blood and life they lost because of my mistakes.

This is one aspect of professionalism, where I am uncharacteristically intolerant. Top level leaders and their advisers cannot be allowed to be:

(i) drivel-spouters,

(ii) ideologues,

(iii) Reality-deniers,

(iv) purely self-interested, self-aggrandizers.

If one cannot lead or advise with humility and reality-conscious wisdom, one does not belong anywhere near powerful leadership positions.

On a necessary, but vanished, ethos of leadership

In my estimation, as a former historian, this nation has increasingly lost an ethically respectable ethos to guide high-level civilian and military leadership.

Today, any form of rapacious self-elevation seems to be acceptable. If people die, who cares? Braggadocio, lies, and error-concealment have taken Honor and Competence’s place.

I am not saying that historical standards were consistently and uniformly better. It is just that the American experience spawned proportionally higher numbers of leaders, who more actively bucked the moral darkness that characterizes the human condition.

The moral? — Delusion is not America’s friend

Until we shake the bonds of the ignorance and violence-worshipping aspects of our national culture, we will continue to travel a bloody and self-defeating road.

It would not hurt to begin electing people with real substance into leadership positions. Brain-clowns should get the boot.

PeteFree.com