Not long ago, friend and fellow Sodahead Legion posted the question: Does America have Inexhaustible Military Might?

An interesting discussion ensued. Many of the answers and comments expressed the notion that Iraq was -- and Afghanistan is -- a useless and/or unwinnable war and the less time spent even trying to win it, the better. I hear that sentiment a lot from my friends on the left.

I’m a liberal and, aside from being a politics junkie, a defense/national security geek. So I enjoy researching this stuff, as well as thinking and writing about it. But beyond that, I have a personal interest here. Several of my friends and former students are servicepeople who have done tours in that region. One promising young filmmaker from Denmark who worked with me on his short film will soon deploy to Afghanistan as part of the NATO coalition force.

And some time ago I reconnected with a very close friend of mine and found out that her younger brother was KIA in Iraq in 2006. Petty Officer 2nd Class Edward Austin Koth was a Navy EOD specialist (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), attached to a Ranger team running around Baghdad neutralizing IED’s. One of them went off while he was attempting to defuse it. He joined EOD because he wanted to be a badass but also
wanted to do a job where he was only saving lives and not taking them.

I’m not claiming any special knowledge of the situation beyond what I can glean from the same sources everyone else has access to, nor am I claiming any enhanced moral standing to talk about these issues. I’ve just come to believe that no matter where we stand we’ve got an obligation to think deeply and rigorously about these matters, because the highest-ranking job in a democratic republic is Citizen -- and decisions on war and peace are part of the job.

The question of America’s military might and how far it goes is a good starting point (thanks Legion). Of course nothing is truly inexhaustible, but given who we’re fighting, our assets might as well be, because whatever we think about the merits of our military involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan-Pakistan, our adversaries there can’t beat us in a straight squad-level firefight. We know it and, more importantly, they know it; that’s why in Iraq they chose to melt into the background and use remote-controlled bombs as terror weapons instead. The limiting factor in these wars is political will, not combat mass, and the political will to fight these wars is not inexhaustible; in fact, it’s in seriously short supply.

Vietnam is an overused and not entirely helpful analogy that’s often applied to the Af-Pak war, but it is worthwhile to note that during our involvement in Vietnam there was an event called the Tet Offensive. A naive reading of history says that this was a turning point in the war, but that is not exactly true; at least, not in the way you might think.

The Vietcong launched coordinated attacks against our forces on multiple fronts across the entire theater of war during the holiday Tet, which marked the Vietnamese lunar new year and was also a declared cease-fire. What is less well known is that the VC got their asses handed to them in every single battle during the offensive (though the fighting was intense and protracted -- lasting up to two months -- at Hue and Khe Sanh). The military reality of the war changed not at all during or after Tet; what changed was American political impetus to fight it.

Running out of political will to fight a counterinsurgency war is not that much of a problem in Iraq, because that war is winding down -- but it’s a huge problem in Af-Pak, because whatever your concept of “winning” is, that’s a war we’d better not lose -- for the simple reason that Taliban/ Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan are actively trying to stage a rolling invasion of Pakistan, which they can’t be permitted to do.

The predictable response from my fellow lefties is: who the hell do we think we are to tell people which countries they’re “permitted” to invade? It’s actually a very good question. The answer I’ve come up with is, it doesn’t matter who we think we are, because a plausible endgame here is a bunch of millennialist crazies hijacking the security apparatus of a nuclear-armed state. If that happens, the best case scenario is that worldwide nuclear nonproliferation efforts get a big smoking hole blown in them: a number of Pakistan’s warheads could disappear into the hands of people who have no qualms about using them AND are undeterrable because they’re not state-based.

Worst case is that some of them figure out a way to launch one at India (remember that the Taliban / AQ have a big quasi-religious beef with India over Kashmir) and all hell breaks loose on the Indian subcontinent, in which case half a billion people could die in an afternoon. This scenario doesn’t threaten us directly because nothing in Pakistan’s missile arsenal has the range to reach us -- but no responsible world leader is going to let something like that happen on his watch if he can help it.

That’s why all the right-wing noise about Obama “dithering” is just that: noise. I guarantee you these are the scenarios they’re wargaming in the White House and the Pentagon. They can’t afford to get this wrong, but there are precious few -- if any -- ways to get it right.

Now even though my beloved fellow lefties are often guilty of torturing the Vietnam analogy, they make a valid point when they recall the faulty geopolitical rationales used to justify increasing involvement in Vietnam. Students of history will remember Kissinger and others talking about a Communist “domino effect”. It’s perfectly reasonable, given that history, to call into question the nuclear dominoes AfPak hawks like me cite as the reason we need to finish the fight in a decisive way. So in Part 2 of this post I’ll try to explain why I think this scenario is more credible than the faulty ones that were used to sell Vietnam to the American people.

I’ll also talk a bit about Pakistan’s military infrastructure -- their nuclear arsenal in particular -- and why thinking about it keeps American military planners awake nights.