Avoiding Responsibility

U.S. combat troops will withdraw from Afghanistan sooner than expected. The longer they remain, the harder it is for Obama to sell the campaign as a success.

Two weeks ago, Nicolas Sarkozy seemed to have blown a fuse. He raged about the prospect of an early French withdrawal from the Hindu Kush when an Afghan “comrade” shot six French soldiers in the back. Other NATO partners, including Germany, had experienced similar tragedies; others will surely experience them in the future.

And yet, not one nation raised any questions about the overall strategy. Today, Sarkozy’s moment of rage must be looked at in a different light. Did Sarkozy merely divulge what the Americans had been planning all along? Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced this week that U.S. combat troops (not including special ops and anti-terrorist units) would be leaving Afghanistan sooner than expected.

Panetta caught the other NATO partners on the wrong foot, and because the announcement came as NATO defense officials were meeting in Brussels, the shift was immediately visible. The U.S. about-face was neither expected nor discussed by alliance partners, so the department heads had to put the best face on it they could and proceeded as though the move had been finalized at the Lisbon summit in 2010.

Iraq as an Example

But that’s just eyewash. The final report of the 2010 summit contained the declaration: “Looking to the end of 2014, Afghan forces will be assuming full responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan.” NATO combat troops were to have continued “partnering” with their Afghan counterparts through 2014. Put into plain language, that means NATO troops would patrol and fight alongside the Afghans. Germany proceeded with their strategy on that assumption. According to Panetta’s latest announcement, he hoped to shift the mission of allied forces from combat to a training and advisory role, in which force would be used only in a self-defense situation. Panetta cited Iraq as an example in which U.S. troops had pulled back into a few large fortifications prior to withdrawing their combat brigades.

If the Pentagon sticks to that plan, most U.S. troops will be able to celebrate Christmas 2013 back home with their families and loved ones. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how well that would play during a presidential election campaign, especially since Mitt Romney, Obama’s presumed opponent for the White House, has already taken the bait and sharply criticized Obama for the withdrawal decision.

Of course, Obama is not as naïve as Romney claims and probably has a relatively realistic grasp of the Afghanistan situation. He knows that the longer the troops remain there, the more difficult it is to sell the campaign as a success. He no longer believes that expending more effort there will result in peace. He risked a good deal of political capital with his troop surge; it didn’t have much effect on the outcome. The Taliban is still a very long way from capitulation. They may suffer the occasional battlefield defeat, but their hatred of the infidel is undiminished. And Afghanistan knows it has the most powerful ally in the region in the Pakistani intelligence service. This all may be read in a NATO report assembled from the interrogation and debriefing of 4,000 Taliban captives that also somehow found its way into the public domain.

For the German government, the action of our U.S. friends is an affront. Chancellor Merkel has been using the phrase “responsible handover” like a mantra. German military commanders will tirelessly remind us that even the German Parliament’s insistence on a troop withdrawal by year’s end will depend on the local security situation. This is motivated by a well-meant intention to avoid shirking our responsibilities.

Nothing Left but Damage Control

Yet Germany lacks the means of even partially realizing those noble intentions. When the United States withdraws its combat troops from the northern regions, or if it even reduces the number of combat helicopters, the campaign there will have de facto ended. Handing over responsibility for security in the disputed regions won’t even have begun.

What the United States is doing isn’t a responsible transfer of responsibility; it amounts to running away from responsibility, driven by the perception that further bloodshed there isn’t justified and that al-Qaida has long since found other safe bases from which to operate. The only thing remaining is damage control. Americans and Germans alike have to consider what will happen to those Afghan citizens who went to work for the West as drivers, translators, staff members — all traitors in the eyes of the Taliban. In Iraq, the United States generously gave green cards to their local national employees. And Germany, where Afghans have long been granted asylum, must also be equally generous.