Former President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, is back. In an interview with Vice News, Wednesday, Rhodes gave his views on President Trump’s new strategy on Afghanistan.
First, Rhodes changed the history of why America went into Afghanistan in the first place.
According to Rhodes, the justification for war was “to get Bin Laden, we’re going to get the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, and try to make sure there’s not an al Qaeda safe haven where they can carry out 9/11 style attacks again. That’s the objective we went in to achieve. Frankly, we’ve just about achieved that objective.”
Wrong.
In his September 20, 2001 address to a joint session of Congress, President Bush warned that the Taliban would be destroyed if they failed to hand over al Qaeda terrorists: “The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate.” The Taliban’s defeat or at least marginalization was always right there in the mission statement.
Rhodes, of course, has good reasons to make subtle changes to this history. Doing so allows his former boss, Barack Obama, to justify his decision to scale down the use of force against the Taliban. And that matters, because the dramatic drawdown was the main reason for the Taliban’s recent revival.
And there’s another issue here: Talking about defeating al Qaeda and saying “frankly we’ve just about achieved that objective,” Rhodes is engaged in the same creative history that defined Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign. While al Qaeda has largely relocated to Pakistan, groups like the Islamic State remain a real and present danger in Afghanistan to this day. And were the U.S. to continue with Obama’s drawdown strategy, their empowerment would continue. Rhodes must get this reality, but pretends he does not. As he puts it, “I don’t think it’s in our national interest to add to an already trillion dollar war to bite off more than we need to chew in Afghanistan.” He adds, “I think what’s frustrating to me is that we have not learned the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan in the way that I feel we should have.”
Rhodes then goes back to the false choice between total war or total withdrawal. “We cannot become the police of these countries…I worry that when we get into these wars, there’s a logic of always staying there in perpetuity, that extends beyond the national security interests of the United States or our economic interests here at home.”
Again, there’s a lot to take apart here. First off, note that Rhodes thinks the lesson of Iraq is to withdraw rather than stay in. This is a curious lesson to draw. Prior to Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, the security situation in that nation was fairly stable. U.S. forces were not taking many casualties, and Iraqi politics was gravitating towards consensus. When we withdrew, Iranian elements took power in the vacuum. The backlash against this among the Sunni minority is what gave the breath of life, or at least substantial popular support, to the Islamic State. As a result, we had to go back in.
Another issue with Rhodes’ comment is his harping about “trillion dollar” expenditures and a lack of investment for “our economic interests here at home.” As I’ve noted, this liberal valuation of wars through the prism of accounting sheets is both morally putrid and strategically incontinent. If a war is worth American blood, surely it is worth American treasure.
Rhodes is also deceptive when he says Trump’s policy makes America “the police of these countries.” This is not what U.S. forces in Afghanistan are doing. Instead, with the exception of some units forward deployed into air strike controlling roles, the vast majority of U.S. forces are — and will be after Trump deploys more of them — engaged in training and support roles in logistics, aviation, intelligence, and tactical-strategic planning.
Still, Rhodes isn’t yet done. He also continues to think Obama was clever to announce a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan: “I completely reject that criticism that giving a timeline of sorts allows the Taliban to wait us out. They live there, they’re Afghans.” Again, Rhodes is reshaping reality here. He knows that the issue is not that the Taliban would wait us out, but that Afghan tribal leaders and independent warlords would cut deals with the Taliban against the government, because they know the U.S. won’t have their back.
That was why, in December 2009, as Obama told West Point cadets he would begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2011, many of the future Army leaders decided to go to sleep. Obama’s words were the height of strategic incompetence.
In that vein, Rhodes ended his Vice interview with a particularly immoral contention, stating that we should tell Afghan allies that “we’ve done our part and now it’s time for them to do theirs.”
This belies the thousands of casualties Afghan security forces continue to take in defense of their nation. And the thousands of Americans who have given their life for the cause of our nation’s security. Given realistic objectives, and a focus on better supporting Afghan security forces rather than sending U.S. forces back into frontline combat, Trump is right to do more in Afghanistan.
Rhodes, as usual, is wrong.
