From the Desk of Carl Levin Sen. (D. MI)
WASHINGTON D.C. – The following is a speech as prepared for delivery today by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., to the RAND Corporation’s event “U.S. Policy in Afghanistan: Basic Questions, Strategic Choices.”
Mr. Ambassador, thank you for your kind introduction, and thank you for your years of service in very difficult places.
I’ve spent the last several months advocating for a series of proposals on Afghanistan. I’d like to quickly outline those proposals and my reasons for them, and then talk about why the strategy review President Obama is now leading is necessary.
A fundamental question is whether stability in Afghanistan is in the United States’ security interest. Some have argued that our attention should be focused next door on Pakistan, since after all that is where Al Qaeda’s principal leaders are hiding out. But instability in Afghanistan would not only threaten the security of the Afghan people. It could also, if the Taliban control significant territory, provide sanctuary to forces seeking to destabilize Pakistan, a nuclear power, and to attack us or our allies again.
So our interests there are significant. While Gen. McChrystal says correctly in his assessment that “[T]he insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution. This is their war,” we can be helpful to their success in a supportive role.
A second fundamental question is whether we follow a counter-insurgency strategy, a counter-terrorism strategy, or some blend of the two. I agree with Gen. McChrystal on the need for a counter-insurgency strategy with a focus on protecting the Afghan people. Gen. McChrystal himself has said that what’s getting most of the attention these days – troop levels – is of less importance than the need for a fundamental change in our military strategy to a counter-insurgency campaign that makes the security of the Afghan people paramount. “The key takeaway” from his assessment, the general writes, “is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.” And Gen. McChrystal said explicitly in his assessment: “Focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely.” The media is sure missing the point. I’m confident the president won’t.
In furtherance of a counter-insurgency strategy, my recommendation has been that we and our NATO allies take urgent steps to accelerate the growth and capability of Afghan forces before we consider committing any additional U.S. combat troops to Afghanistan, beyond those now in place or on their way. I have proposed an increase in the Afghan army and national police to about 400,000 troops, roughly doubling their current numbers, and that this be completed by 2012, a year earlier than now planned. Meeting that goal will require a substantial new commitment of U.S. and NATO trainers and other enablers, such as logistics support and intelligence assets.
It will also require a major infusion of new equipment. The National Defense Authorization Act that President Obama signed yesterday opens the way to transfer useful equipment now in Iraq, currently scheduled for return to the United States, to Afghanistan instead.
While building up Afghan forces, we should attempt to dramatically reduce the number of insurgents by working with Afghan leaders to peel away low-level militants, many of whom have little loyalty to the extremist ideology of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Offering these fighters jobs and amnesty for past acts could sharply reduce the size of the insurgency, just as the “Sons of Iraq” effort did in Iraq. One hundred thousand young Iraqis who formerly fought against us switched sides when offered a very modest sum, mainly to help provide security in their own home villages. The National Defense Authorization Act permits the use of Commanders Emergency Response Program, or CERP, funds to pay for such a program, and British Gen. Graham Lamb has been assigned to help plan it. A plan to reintegrate the reconcilable Taliban in Afghanistan is long overdue.
We must also make a commitment to, and substantial investments in, the improvement of Afghan government performance as well as the expansion of economic opportunity for Afghanistan’s people.
That, briefly, is the course I have recommended to the president. Let me explain why.
There is consensus on the need to rapidly expand the size and capability of Afghan forces so they can take responsibility for their nation’s security. Gen. James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, put it this way: “If I could change only one thing in the south of Afghanistan it would be to have more Afghan troops.” A Marine company commander in Helmand province in south Afghanistan put it this way: “(The lack of Afghan forces) is absolutely our Achilles heel.” When I visited a forward operating base in that same province in August, U.S. Marines outnumbered Afghan soldiers by a five-to-one ratio. We need to quickly reverse that ratio.
While their performance has been far from flawless, the Afghan army has proved effective and determined. Troops already in the field are ready to fight: As of August, roughly one-third of Afghan army units were rated as capable of taking the lead in combat operations; another third could plan and conduct operations with coalition support; and a final third could partially conduct those functions and needed more active coalition assistance. These soldiers constitute their country’s most trusted public institution. Opinion polls show the Afghan army has the strong support of the Afghan people, and is vastly more popular than the Taliban, whose support is in single digits. Placing the Afghans in the lead is sound counter-insurgency strategy because it places the security of the Afghan people in the hands of those they trust most.
By contrast, expansion of our own combat presence could feed a Taliban propaganda machine that seeks to portray the forces arrayed against them not as a home-grown domestic effort to prevent the return of a detested extremist regime, but as the effort of a foreign occupier. As Fareed Zakaria has written, “More troops injected into the current climate could provoke an antigovernment or nationalist backlash.”
I believe there is a second area of broad agreement, beyond the need for vastly and rapidly strengthened Afghan forces. On our September visit, Gen. McChrystal told us that he believes we must demonstrate a commitment to success, with a show of resolve, so as to communicate to the Afghan government, the Afghan people, the Taliban and al Qaeda that we will not abandon Afghanistan.
This assessment rings true to most observers, including this one. Certainly, our commitment to Afghanistan was insufficient in the years following the fall of the Taliban and the launch of our invasion of Iraq. Gen. McChrystal’s predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan, who took command of NATO forces in 2008, made it abundantly clear that he needed significantly more resources – troops and otherwise – to accomplish his mission. As Gen. McChrystal pointed out in his assessment, “Our campaign in Afghanistan has been historically under-resourced.”
With that backdrop, it is little wonder that some of the Afghan people have come to doubt our commitment, and that the Taliban and al Qaeda have managed to take the initiative.
But that brings us to a conundrum. While we need to demonstrate renewed commitment, if we do so by focusing on more and more U.S. combat troops, we endanger the very success we seek.
Solving this puzzle is hard, but not impossible. We already have a thoughtful model to follow. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently outlined his nation’s approach to Afghanistan. The British model begins with a major, publicly delivered commitment to intensified training, mentoring of and partnering with Afghan forces, including establishment of a new academy to train 900 junior officers and noncommissioned officers each month. It commits resources as well: new equipment such as more and better mine-resistant vehicles and more modern helicopters, an increase in flights of unmanned aerial vehicles, and additional funding.
And it includes a small commitment of additional British troops – to 9,500 total, an increase of about five percent. But – and this is crucial – even that small additional number of troops is contingent on major commitments by the Afghan government, a new contract between that government and the international community, in which Afghanistan would commit to the major expansion of the number and use of its security forces; to take action against corruption; and to a more inclusive political process that includes outreach to reconcilable elements of the insurgency and greater local control of Afghan affairs. Prime Minister Brown’s commitments are also contingent on international support from NATO.
The British model demonstrates renewed resolve, by dedicating significant new resources, by committing to the counter-insurgency strategy and by demonstrating enhanced capability, while at the same time minimizing the perception of a foreign occupation. The few additional combat troops are a small part of a broad list of actions demonstrating resolve, without the negative effects of a much larger Western combat presence.
NATO Secretary General Rasmussen has made a similar case. He recently said, “Our populations, Afghan and international … want to see the beginning of transition to Afghan lead. That means, from a security point of view, Afghans taking the lead responsibility, province by province, with international forces in a supporting role.”
I believe if President Obama were to stand alongside Prime Minister Brown and leaders of our other NATO allies, and announce a NATO Afghan Initiative following the British model, he would win the support of the American people, their representatives in Congress and the Afghan people whose future hangs in the balance, even if he decided not to include a large combat troop increase.
Those are the steps I propose, and the reasons for them.
Given the stakes, one would think the efforts of the president as commander in chief to gather all the facts, to consider all the options, and to hear from advisors with differing recommendations, would be applauded. Instead, we have media coverage that anticipates – perhaps eagerly – a conflict between President Obama and Gen. McChrystal. Fueling the drama, there are some in Washington who are willing to toss cheap and easy lines about presidential “dithering,” or alleging the president is “afraid” to reach a decision, in an effort to push him to immediately, indeed automatically, endorse recommendations from a general who is highly capable, but whose focus is understandably more narrow than that of Secretary Gates or President Obama.
This pressure on the president goes beyond mistaken. It creates a political environment is not just poisonous; it is dangerous – it creates growing pressure for decisions before the president has considered all the options, when what the nation needs and the troops deserve is careful, thoughtful deliberation. The wrong decisions could endanger far more lives than taking the time needed to deliberate and reach the right decisions.
History teaches us that in matters of national security, hasty decision-making and undue deference to one or two advisers can pave the road to disaster. If we could travel back in time, don’t we think President Kennedy would tell us he wished he had taken the time for his own deliberations, rather than immediately accepting his military advisers’ recommendation to undertake the Bay of Pigs invasion? After President Bush took the time to deliberate before he decided upon a surge in Iraq, he decided not to follow his field commanders’ recommendations against the surge.
Regardless of one’s view on the correct policy for Afghanistan, we should condemn the efforts to hem in the president with inflammatory rhetoric to a rapid timetable for decisions. In the end, these decisions are the president’s alone. I don’t know what or when the president will decide on Afghan strategy and resource issues. I do believe this: We have a president who, on matters of war, the security of our nation and the well-being of our brave men and women in uniform, is, in the words of Harry Truman, “pressure-proof.” We should all hope so.
