This long and well crafted letter came in via the web regarding the Ralph Peters article in the November issue of Armchair General.  We are placing it here as an addendum to the regular Mailbag for this month.

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Rebuttal to "Where are the Strategists?"

By Ralph Peters

I disagree with the assessment that Ralph Peters gives of Afghanistan: that "Afghanistan’s no more than a big patch of worthless dirt, but we’re obsessed with controlling terrain".  Afghanistan is critical in our Global War on Terrorism for a number of reasons and the following paragraphs give my opinion as to the importance of Afghanistan.  First of all, we have not won the war yet and war it still is regardless of the political atmosphere.

 Evidently Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other insurgent forces do think Afghanistan is worth fighting for by their re-emergence as a political and military force.  The attitude of the strategic unimportance of Afghanistan typifies the attitude during the Carter Administration.  President Carter could not make up his mind about the importance of Afghanistan even on the eve of the USSR invasion.  The response he provided was to present the Carter Doctrine in 1980 and call it good.  This fence sitting was also evident during the crisis in Iran in 1979.  In this case he also could not answer the question as to whether or not the US should remain a close ally of Iran.  He decided that neither was important enough to US interests with the resulting debacles which we are faced with today.  Evidently, the USSR thought that Afghanistan was important enough to send troops and support the fledgling, emerging Communist regime. Why didn’t we realize the strategic importance of Afghanistan in being able to shake off its feudal system and become a modern nation.  Several times during its turbulent history, attempts have been made by its kings and other leaders to bring Afghanistan to the table of modern nations.  Each time, either internal politics or external politics prevented this from occurring, hence the pleas for help from the 1960’s on.  We chose to ignore Afghanistan up to the point of when Ronald Reagan was the President and only then chose to assist the Mujahedeen at almost the 11th hour in their battle against the USSR.  The US certainly had very little knowledge about either Afghanistan nor Pakistan nor what the ramifications that our assistance would be.

I recently finished reading a book, called "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" and the book pointed out the tremendous success that the British had in counterinsurgency in Malaya.  The facts are that the British had colonized Malaya for decades.  The British had been an intimate part of Malaya and the surrounding regions since the 19th century.  When the British fought in Malaya from 1948 to 1957, they already knew much about the people, their culture and geography of the region.  My point is that the US knew very little about Afghanistan during, before and after the Carter Years.  We knew virtually nothing about the people of Afghanistan, its culture, the relationship with Pakistan and out of hand, decided that it was of little strategic importance to US National Interests.  We not only reduced aid to Afghanistan under the Carter years but ended all assistance during his tenure in office.  In spite of the pleas for assistance from Afghanistan, since the 1960’s.  We had an opportunity to assist Afghanistan in modernizing and would have been farther ahead today if only we had.  If we had built a good relationship with Afghanistan, we would not be in the position we are in today, fighting in a land that we know very little of, a culture we know little of, a language we know very little of and even more importantly, one that knows very little of us.

I agree with Ralph Peter’s assessment that we don’t think in terms of strategic importance, if we had then the relationship that we are currently pursuing with Afghanistan could have had its roots planted decades ago and more importantly in a time of relative peace.  Civil – Military cooperation and operations could have been accomplished under a less stressful environment.  Civil – Military Operations can be accomplished during wartime, evidence is the Philippines War of 1899 to 1902, and Iraq today but it is much more intensive in terms of lives and resources.  I disagree with the assessment by Peters that Afghanistan is of little strategic importance to the US.  It continues to be an important view port into Russia, and is critical to us in our war on terrorism because of its location with respect to the emerging nation of Iraq and the oppressive, probably soon to be nuclear regime of Iran.  

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