The Conference of Losers

NATO wants to adjust to the new realities at the conference*. This reality includes facing up to the fact that the fight against the Taliban is lost.

The Lisbon NATO conference will focus mostly on preparations for the withdrawal of 28 NATO member nations and 19 NATO partners from Afghanistan — a withdrawal which should for the most part be finished by 2014-15.

Publicizing the future withdrawal is basically dumb. It dampens the fighting spirit of the soldiers, who risk dying on the eve of evacuation. It doesn’t motivate the allies who are left behind — in this case the Afghanistan Army. It compels the enemy to take cover and hold back in order to strengthen so that later they will be able to mount attacks of even greater severity. But, be that as it may, the soldiers from the United States, Germany, Malaysia and others are leaving, just as the Soviets and British did, exiting an uncontrollable land. Modern armies can lose against fanatical and insidious enemies, even when such enemies wear sandals.

The problem also is that the size of the original invasion force was not large enough. That failure was mostly about money — as well as the fact that western democracies with their pacifist ideals don’t like to go to war. And even when they do go to war, domestic support is inconsistent. Admittedly, the world has neglected the civic rebuilding of Afghanistan for simple Taliban-fighting. That’s why many Afghan soldiers don’t really know if the thing they are fighting for is in fact a country.

*Editor’s note: the conference referred to is the annual NATO conference, which took place this year from Nov. 19-20, in Lisbon, Portugal.