From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Jul 20 2010 - 07:44:32 EDT
President needs to talk to Powell
By JIM COOGAN
July 20, 2010
...Powell's assessment of Somalia as it was in 1993 is also applicable.
"From what I have observed of history," he writes, "the will to build a
nation originates from within its people, not from the outside. Somalia was
not an African version of a Western state. Almost no institutions of law, no
credible central government, and no authority existed there apart from clan
leaders. ... The Somali factions were ultimately going to solve their
political differences their own way."..
Since before he took office, President Obama has kept a line open to Gen.
Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell has given
advice to the president on a variety of issues including, reportedly, the
decision to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Now as the countdown begins on the president's self-declared, one-year
deadline to start pulling troops out of Afghanistan, one can hope that
General Powell is still on speed dial. Obama needs a pragmatic sense of
direction from a non-ideologue, who is long past career ambitions, to avoid
falling into the trap that doomed the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
There will be a lot of pressure on the president to double down on the
American investment of blood and treasure already made in Afghanistan.
Generals in the field will tell him that they just need a bit more time -
that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hawkish foreign policy
experts will see withdrawal as defeatism. Conservatives will make the usual
charges that the president is weak.
So getting advice from someone who commanded troops in Vietnam, was part of
the leadership that saw the triumphant end of the Cold War, and who planned
the successful 1990 expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, would be both wise and
prudent.
Actually, President Obama can just read Powell's 1995 autobiography, "My
American Journey," to understand that keeping troops in Afghanistan even a
day beyond next year's exit deadline is not going to change much of anything
there in the long run.
Powell has always been of the mind that no leader should start a war without
carefully planning how to go in and, more importantly, how to get out. In
his book, Powell assesses the use of American military power over a wide
range of post-WWII interventions.
"When the nation's policy was murky or nonexistent - the Bay of Pigs,
Vietnam, creating a Marine "presence" in Lebanon - the result has been
disaster," he wrote.
And the general is very clear about the mistakes made in Vietnam. "In
Vietnam, we had entered into a half-hearted half-war, with much of the
nation opposed or indifferent, while a small fraction carried the burden,"
he said.
Of Yugoslavia's disintegration into ethnic chaos in the early 1990s, Powell
writes, "The harsh reality has been that the Serbs, Muslims, and Croatians
are committed to fight to the death for what they believe to be their vital
interests. ... No American president could defend to the American people the
heavy sacrifice of lives it would cost to resolve this baffling conflict.
Nor could a president likely sustain the long-term involvement necessary to
keep the protagonists from going at each other's throats all over again at
the first opportunity."
Substitute Pashtun, Tajiks, and Hazaras for the feuding parties in the
Balkans region and it doesn't take much to see Afghanistan. Powell's
assessment of Somalia as it was in 1993 is also applicable.
"From what I have observed of history," he writes, "the will to build a
nation originates from within its people, not from the outside. Somalia was
not an African version of a Western state. Almost no institutions of law, no
credible central government, and no authority existed there apart from clan
leaders. ... The Somali factions were ultimately going to solve their
political differences their own way."
Again, when substituting Afghanistan for Somalia, the parallel is more than
clear.
Obama should keep to his withdrawal schedule. Afghanistan is a quagmire.
There is no clear or achievable objective and the American public, for the
most part, neither understands nor supports the mission there.
Colin Powell lives in the Washington, D.C., area so it's not a long-distance
call. It's time for the president to pick up the phone and talk to the
general - or at least sit down and read his book.
Jim Coogan is a Cape Cod Times columnist. Reach him at P.O. Box 1181, East
Dennis, MA 02641, or e-mail him at coogan206@gis.net.
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