Cut and Run!

There’s one thing about blind loyalty: If you don’t stay alert, you may well be the last one out of the burning building when all the others have already slipped out the back door. Since the death of Osama bin Laden, pressure is building across all political factions in America to declare victory and bring an elegant conclusion to the war in Afghanistan.

In Germany, on the other hand, the withdrawal debate is following the usual ritual. The Left party and the Greens instinctively shout, “Out of Afghanistan,” while the government doesn’t want to make waves for the military mission there. Both sides owe the country coherent reasons for their positions instead of arguing about moral sensibilities.

Well-Digging Isn’t a Military Objective

The ongoing rationale is to “improve the situation for the people” — a harmless, apolitical sermon preached by none other than Ulrich Kirsch, head of the German Armed Forces Association. But ensuring that little girls are able to attend school and digging wells for water can’t be military objectives for which it’s worth risking the health and lives of our young people, especially when it thus far has produced no satisfactory results because our troops already have enough on their plates with staying alive under growing enemy pressure.

Osama bin Laden was the reason for starting the war in Afghanistan and could therefore serve as the reason for ending it. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has already deleted that from his memory bank and argues German security interests: We went to Afghanistan to prevent it ever again becoming a global terrorist center. If that was a valid reason, then today we should be marching into Pakistan and a few other countries.

Asymmetrical Warfare Is Fought with Selective Strikes

Terrorism is asymmetrical warfare. A war against terror is more likely to be effective if it is waged asymmetrically as well — that is to say, against selected targets as was done in Abbottabad. Invading entire countries that cannot be pacified and controlled regardless of how many troops and how much money are invested appears to be an unproductive waste of human life and resources.

This discussion has been ongoing on the other side of the Atlantic for some time. If there seems to be a change in strategy coming from the United States, Germany should be careful to not miss the train while it fruitlessly debates how to deal with all the Osamas of the world; otherwise, it could easily happen that the German army one day finds it is left to “stabilize” Afghanistan all by itself.

Germany Wages War with the Parking Brake On

None of the original conditions — neutralizing bin Laden and the “War on Terror” — applies as a justification for continuing the war in Afghanistan. That the United States, Great Britain and Germany continue to cling to it is indicative that there are other interests in play. With Britain and the U.S., they may be of a geostrategic nature; for lesser powers like Germany, there are no such interests to be found in Afghanistan. The only explanation possible is that Germany lacks the backbone to stand up to the demands of others.

The half-hearted result of this pliability is Germany’s attempt to sell its own people on the idea that armed technical assistance is an expanded humanitarian mission. That is an utter failure. Germany is waging war, albeit most of the time with the parking brake still set. But it has no idea why and for what reason.

Still, our foreign minister recently assured us there are camps in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions where terrorists are being trained to threaten Germany and Europe.

Fighting the Enemy within

Westerwelle’s desperate attempt at updating reveals a truly grotesque double blindness to facts. First, the widespread occupation of Afghanistan has proven to be totally inappropriate for the mission of eliminating the training camps. Secondly, the main threat comes not from these Afghan terrorist camps, but from the Islamist environment rampant nationally in which homemade jihadists are raised before they get their final polishing at a training camp in the Hindu Kush.

If the intention is to really do something to improve security in Germany and Europe, the first step is to limit immigration from Islamic nations and to turn away agitators, fanatics and fundamentalists at the border to destroy their organizational and personnel networks, along with the parallel societies from which they recruit, rather than spending billions to build military installations at the other end of the world.

Again, to do so would require backbone. The German political class not only lacks the courage to take issue with its allies when interests clash, but it also lacks the determination to fight the enemy in its own backyard. For fear of conflict, we avoid the small disagreements of today and thus risk much greater turbulence in the near future.

As a result, we will continue to put young soldiers’ lives at risk in symbolic operations like Afghanistan and waste billions more in public money that we might soon desperately need for more important things.