The Deadly Afghanistan Dilemma

A rocket lobbed into Bagram Air Field north of Kandahar Monday hit the C-17 US military plane that had brought US General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Afghanistan for meetings with Afghan and coalition leaders.
The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, saying it hit the plane through “pinpoint” targeting. A US military spokesman says that Bagram is hit by rockets or mortar on average twice a month and that the rocket hit was a lucky shot.
The very fact of the attack seems to me to be far more important than whether it was a lucky or pinpoint hit.
Afghan military and police personnel have in the recent past, ominously, killed 40 coalition personnel, 23 of them Americans. These attacks have come from people who are supposed to be allies working with and receiving training from the coalition to be able to take over the job of protecting Afghanistan when the coalition withdraws at the end of 2014.
Whether these attacks are the acts of disgruntled Afghans who believe they have been wrongly treated by coalition personnel, or whether they are the work of infiltration by the Taliban into the heart of the coalition's on-the-ground forces, the problem is real and has serious consequences.
First, in any war zone, when insurgents prove that they can strike with impunity at the center of the established authority, the political ramifications are significant. Civilians begin to ask if they are safe with the government, or if they would be better off choosing the insurgents while they have the chance to do so without being targeted themselves. The government itself begins to doubt that it can prevail and probably starts to think about what kind of a deal they could make with the insurgents in order to maintain at least some of their power and privileges.
On the military side, soldiers on the ground begin to wonder if their mission was ill-conceived, whether their commanders understand the real problem, whether they have a fair chance while they go about their tasks or are sitting ducks in a confrontation without a face. These elements played a role in the US endgame in Vietnam, and it could now be beginning to be influential in Afghanistan.
And, back home in America, citizens, and especially military families and their supporters, begin to wonder whether the strategy in place is correct, whether they should re-enlist or move on into civilian life, whether the commander-in-chief and his military advisors are competent.
And, when the American President and Generals continue to insist that the strategy is correct, that the 2014 withdrawal announcement was appropriate and has not given aid to the enemy, then those 23 lost lives become symbolic of an even greater mistrust that begins to build up in America over Afghanistan in general and against any politician who supports staying the course.
Bailing out. Leaving the field. Letting the Afghans fight it out themselves. Coming home so that no more young American soldiers are put in an invisible harm’s way for no good reason. Call it what you will.
I don’t know where we are along this curve, dear readers, but I feel sure that there are military in the Pentagon studying the problem and that a White House unit is trying to figure out how to minimize the political damage.
And, it seems to me that predictability is the enemy of victory in wartime. If the enemy knows what you are going to do and when you are going to do it, how can you possibly win?
General Custer learned that lesson with his life and the lives of most of his men at the Little Big Horn. Do we have to learn the same lesson all over again 150 years later in a barren country that has never been united, let alone at peace - even with itself.