(cc photo: Balazs Gardi)
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution is what you might call a part of part of foreign policy elite, constantly churning out op-eds and TV-ready soundbites about current and pending US wars, and generally being taken seriously.
And today, on the Washington Post‘s op-ed page (1/3/14), you can find his byline under the (print edition) headline: “Three Reasons for Optimism on Afghanistan.” To the usually hawkish O’Hanlon, the gloomy assessment of the Afghan War “requires rebuttal,” because there is a “case for hopefulness on Afghanistan.”
This sounds familiar–and it definitely should have sounded familiar to Post editors, since the paper has run a stream of very similar pieces from the same author. “Don’t Give Up on Afghanistan” was the headline of his Post op-ed back in July (7/12/13), which argued that problems with the Afghan government are “no reason for the United States to threaten to pull the plug on all it has invested in Afghanistan.” And, O’Hanlon stressed, “Virtually all other Afghan political leaders I know very much want the international community to stay.” (What do Afghans who aren’t “political leaders” have to say? A recent poll commissioned by the US State Department found only 40 percent were looking for a presidential candidate who would keep foreign troops in their country—New York Times, 12/29/13.)
Michael O’Hanlon: hope pusher (cc photo: CSIS)
Or in February (2/10/13), when O’Hanlon wrote in the Post that outgoing NATO commander John Allen’s tenure “brought stability and steady progress to the mission in Afghanistan,” and was a time that “should give hope to those depressed about the war effort.”
In a June 3, 2011, column, O’Hanlon wrote that “evidence is mounting that our military strategy is working—and rapid troop drawdowns this summer and fall are not consistent with the plan.” He added that “the Afghanistan campaign is on a much better track.”
On June 26, 2010, O’Hanlon’s column was headlined “Reasons for Hope on Afghanistan”—not to worry, the reasons back then were different than the reasons to be optimistic today. O’Hanlon explained that critiques of the Afghan War “paint only part of the picture, and they are often more wrong than right unless they are presented with greater nuance.”
And in 2009 (11/16/09), O’Hanlon wrote a piece headlined “A Blue Line in Afghanistan: Police Give Reason to be Optimistic.” He explained that “little attention is being paid to a promising dimension of our efforts to foster reform—a much better approach to building the Afghan police force.” That effort is “a key reason there should be more hopefulness about our mission.”
This record isn’t as laughable as, say, Tom Friedman’s famously predicting—for nearly three years—that the next six months would tell whether the Iraq War would be a success or not (FAIR Media Advisory, 5/16/06). But it is certainly curious that the Post thinks it necessary to print so many stay-the-course op-ed pieces on the Afghan War by the same person—while public opinion continues to drift away from that position.
O’Hanlon was a key advocate of the Iraq War; once that looked bleak, he co-wrote an op-ed for the New York Times (“A War We Just Might Win,” 7/30/07) that attempted to argue the US troop “surge” was bringing victory within reach. The piece was treated—bizarrely—as the work of Iraq War critics who reluctantly backed an escalation of the conflict (Extra!, 10/07)
And O’Hanlon has been clear that he views marshaling US support for a longer Afghan War as important. In one of his other Post columns (7/10/12), he wrote, “We need to reestablish our leverage with clear, credible and consistent messaging from US and international voices.” O’Hanlon is certainly doing his part—thanks to whoever keeps publishing him at the Washington Post.
From Extra!’s “SoundBites,” June 2008:
The Censorship of Michael O’Hanlon
Pro-war, pro-surge pundit Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution complained to the New York Times (3/24/08) that he “hardly receives Iraq interview requests anymore”: “I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war…in the first years,” said O’Hanlon. “Now it’s less than one a day.” Thank goodness for CNN (3/29/08), which heard his complaint and immediately called the thinker and “invited him to tell us why voters continue to care about Iraq.” The blog ThinkProgress (3/31/08), meanwhile, pointed out that in a recent seven-month period, O’Hanlon published 13 op-eds in four of the U.S.’s most influential newspapers. It’s tough being so silenced.
What can we expect from Brookings given the pool of its donors.
Intelligentsia figures penning inane propaganda to justify US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan are frequently published in corporate media rags like the Washington Post? Who would’ve guessed?!
Great exposé.
“We need to reestablish our leverage…” oh how sad is that. We need to leave Afghanistan alone so that the PEOPLE living there can reestablish schools, hospitals, colleges, homes, farm land without bombs, clean water and, oh yes…a life with a future for them!.
“Turning the corner,…… turning the corner, turning the corner…: wow, Mr. O’Hanlon…that much turning turns into an eternal pivot and we all know where that leads:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
O’Hanlon is just another warmongering asshole stenographer. D.C. is full of them.
“the usually hawkish O’Hanlon” – SCOFF!
O’Hanlon is Karzai’s pet dove. He is no hawk.
BEWARE-SELF-HARM – John Kerry – “America’s commitment to the independent sovereignty of Afghanistan”
BEWARE-SELF-HARM – Michael O’Hanlon – “But if the Afghans don’t want to listen, in the end, it’s their country and we no longer have special privileges”
No, actually, we would NOT have to withdraw from Afghanistan. We could resume OCCUPATION without any deal whatsoever!
It is all too commonly misunderstood that in the absence of a signed deal that might be taken to imply that this would allow somehow the officers of the Afghan state to arrest our forces and subject them to Afghan national justice.
No, that’s a misunderstanding which shows only how subservient the international political class has become to Karzai and to the Afghan state.
If the Afghan national forces come to arrest our troops, we don’t submit. We arrest them; if needs be we point our guns at them; if needs be we shoot them; if needs be we declare war on the Afghan state. It’s an occupation so we don’t need a signed deal! Understand yet?
Well even if you understand you can be sure that US Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have simply no comprehension of what it means not to have their BSA signed. They are out of their depth and should be replaced by the president.
We need a new strategy which defeats the Taliban (and Al Qaeda) by applying the Bush Doctrine versus those states which sponsor those terrorists – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Applying the Bush Doctrine versus Afghanistan alone makes as little strategic sense as it would have if we’d applied Cold War doctrine to say Cuba alone but not against the Soviet Union and its Eastern European client communists states!
It is a military fundamental that you don’t win a war by funding your enemy but rather you win a war by bankrupting your enemy, cutting off the resources the enemy needs to sustain its army.
We should apply massive pressure to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, up to and including war if necessary. Something fairly dramatic is needed to show the state sponsors of terrorism that their plan for a secret war against us with no chance of any blowback has utterly failed and they are looking down the barrel of a real war with us.
Don’t pay Karzai or whoever is the next Afghan President anything, never mind billions of dollars in military aid, for his (or her if the next Afghan president is a woman) agreement on security.
No aid whatsoever should go through Afghan government coffers. This should apply to economic, humanitarian and military aid.
By funding Karzai and the warlords, NATO and the US have made it very difficult for the honest politicians of Afghanistan who answer to the Afghan people, not to the warlords, to replace Karzai and the warlords as the established Afghan state, to give NATO and the US a well-run Afghan state partner with which we can work to rid Afghanistan of the warlords.
If that means that no agreement with any Afghan president can be reached, so be it. We revert to being an army of occupation with the authority of NATO.
Taliban prisoners should always have been kept in NATO-ISAF jails, accountable to us, NOT and NEVER AGAIN in Afghan state hands.
The fact of the Taliban prisoners that Karzai has already released, never mind the rest, the fact that Taliban fighters have been seen patrolling with the Afghan National Army and the fact of the green on blue or insider attacks on our soldiers from that Afghan army are further proof, if any were needed, of the utter folly of funding an Afghan state which we can have no political control over.
We should only ever fund our own military, police, prisons, economic development and humanitarian aid so that we know the money is being spent appropriately in accordance with the wishes of our taxpayers not the wishes of some foreign corrupt politicians.
We should fund our own guys and simply hire any additional Afghans we need to work for us for our money, sure, but always in future following our orders!
Don’t sign anything which commits us to any peace talks with the Taliban.
If we need an Afghan force to secure our supply lines as we drawdown then re-organise the Afghan forces into 2 parts.
1) An Afghan national army commanded by the Afghan president which Afghans pay for out of their taxes. We pay nothing for this.
2) An auxiliary Afghan force run as part of NATO-ISAF, commanded by our generals, which gets our billions of dollars in military aid spent on it.
Quit trying to buy Afghan politicians’ friendship with money. It’s corrupting.
The AfPak Mission on the internet is about war on terror military and security strategy for NATO and allied countries with ground forces in action in Afghanistan and air and airborne forces including drones and special force raids in action over Pakistan.
The AfPak Mission helps implementation of the Bush Doctrine versus state sponsors of terror and is inspired by the leadership of Condoleezza Rice.
The AfPak Mission approach to the Taliban is uncompromising.
There should be no peace with the Taliban.
The only “good” Taliban is a dead Taliban.
Arrest all Taliban political leaders and media spokesmen.
Capture or kill all Taliban fighters.
The AfPak Mission identifies useful content across multiple websites.
On YouTube, the AfPak Mission channel presents playlists of useful videos.
The AfPak Mission forum offers structured on-line written discussion facilities and the forum is the rallying and reference centre of the AfPak Mission, linking to all other AfPak Mission content on the internet.
The AfPak Mission has a Twitter, a Flickr and a wordpress Blog too.
You are invited to subscribe to the channel, register with the forum and follow on twitter, flickr and the blog.
AfPak Mission Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission
Forum http://scot.tk/forum/viewforum.php?f=26
Twitter http://twitter.com/AfPakMission
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/afpakmission/
Blog http://afpakmission.wordpress.com/
Pentagon and NATO strategic incompetence has allowed a Pakistani stranglehold on NATO-ISAF ground supply routes while the same Pakistani military given $10 billion since 2001 is actually SUPPORTING, RECRUITING, TRAINING, SUPPLYING AND DIRECTING THE TALIBAN against our forces.
Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism and the Taliban against us yet our military chiefs and our defence secretaries seem in denial about this.
So the Pakistan military is responsible for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers yet gets billions of US dollars. Other NATO countries also pay Pakistan instead of making Pakistan pay for its acts of war against us. Where’s the sense in that?
Watch the “SECRET PAKISTAN” videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSinK-dVrig
Looks like part 2 has been embedded in my previous post so, here’s hopefully is part 1
SECRET PAKISTAN – Part 1 – Double Cross
Jesus dude, get your own blog. Nobody’s reading all that.
yed,
I have my own AfPak Mission blog though it’s only a taster for my AfPak Mission forum which has a lot more content than the blog. The link to my forum is available as the “Website” link on my name “Peter Dow” which heads my posts here.
If I post other links here, my comments get held for moderation so readers can use those links.
However, it seems YouTube videos are allowed so this video mentions my AfPak Mission blog, forum, twitter and YouTube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eH8eJAuhVw
It’s not getting a blog or a forum or a channel or a twitter that’s the problem, it’s getting people to read it that’s the problem.
Maybe the YouTube link has to come last before the forum will embed it?
Dear Peter Hart,
I am all in favor of a frank discussion about the bad media habit of continuing to publish material from people who have historically been 100% wrong about what they are talking about.
However, can you boot this Peter Dow nutcase off of here? He isn’t doing any discussion relevant to the topic. He seems to be wanting to start a discussion of the US deciding to try to be a more successful military occupier by going after more counties?…..but that isn’t what we are talking about……or is it?
War,s were no solution and American,s made blunders as they follow only their interests. We are at verge of world desaster due to american policies. We can always find solution on negociating tables and not in battle field as hatred creates hatred.
American,s follow only Israeli interest and destroyed whole of middle east and Afghnistan and Pakistan. They always support their enemies and destroy their friends.
Another graduate of the Richard Perle school of foreign relations in which, ‘Any war is a good war.’
While we may not be able to rewind the tape of timee and undo stupid, we should be able to stop repeating it.
But that doesn’t mean that mavens such as Hanlon and his mentor will curl their stripey feet and shrivel under the housewreck. Not when there’s a hope that the Wizard might get them back to Oz, or some suckers to fleece at the Post.
Well it is humorous to me that some on this sigh(Gloriana) seem to believe that peace and love will return the minute we are gone.The truth is the murderous Taliban will flow in behind us with their monstrous sheria law.I for one do not believe the government of Afghanistan will be strong enough to fight this back.And there in lies the truth.We were attacked on Dec 7th 1941.We had a smaller army than Brazil,and few ships.Only a handful of carriers for instance.Four ears later we had millions of men under arms and an 800 ship navy with dozens and dozens of carriers.My point is after a decade and more,and billions spent in training and arming our “friends “there….. the Afghans may not be able to even defend themselves from the Taliban rabble that hide in the Pakistani mountains..We are left with few choices.Permanent stationing/occupation in a foreign land,or a simple realization that these people may never want true freedom.Not in the sense that our constitution would afford them within their land.So deeply engrained into their minds is this slavish mentality to their Islamic whip masters….It just may never be possible. Do we throw in the towel admitting we are trying to drag kicking and screaming a stone age mentality into a modern world?Whatever we do we must do something.Letting the years roll away as we waste a treasure in blood and money is not cutting it.It is is called coming up with an out game.Creating a doctrine.DO SOMETHING
michael e,
What we must do first, above all, is UNDERSTAND. That is to say, you all must understand because I understand already.
If you all continue to misunderstand, and often at times it seems to me that people REFUSE to understand, you will stumble along inefficiently.
A problem understood is a problem for which a good solution can be sought. So try to understand by learning from those few who like me already understand.
It’s not hard to understand, you just need to read what I’ve posted, follow the links, watch the videos, ask questions, get answers. Understanding will come but you have to seek knowledge.
1) We are at war. Whether we wish to recognise that we are at war, nevertheless our enemies are at war with us so we do ourselves no favours by being in denial about being at war.
2) The enemy hides his intentions, uses military deception, represents the war effort to us by use of proxy irregular terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
3) The enemy commanders are powerful elites who control states who they are directing in war against us. Those states and commanders are – Pakistan and their generals and former generals – Saudi Arabia and the royal family, to name just two of those states but it includes a much wider number of Arab and Muslim states..
4) Our enemies have chosen Afghanistan as a place to lure us to fight their irregular force we know as “the Taliban”.
5) To our enemies, what the people of Afghanistan want, what “these people” as michael e says, want is something for them to determine. Those leaders are used to controlling opinion in their own countries and they seek to control it in Afghanistan too.
6) The people of Afghanistan will not be allowed freedom. If we leave them at the mercy of the neigbouring countries then Pakistan and others will rule Afganistan, rule the people like subjects of the Pakistani empire.
michael e,
There is a wide variety of choices of different tactics to employ to win this war and free not only Afghanistan but the whole world from the acts of war of our enemies.
However, you do need the strategic insight to fight the state sponsors of the Taliban and terrorist. You need to know that we have to fight Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others.
Once you understand this context of war then you appreciate that fighting our war in Afghanistan alone is futile and pointless.
You understand that aiding Pakistan and trading with Saudi Arabia is self-defeating.
There’s a million possible different acts of war we could take against our Pakistani and Saudi Arabian state enemies but you must first begin with an understanding that we are at war with them, even if we choose to be in denial about it, they are at war with us.
michael e,
We already HAVE a doctrine which is called the BUSH DOCTRINE but it doesn’t mean – “do what President Bush did”.
So maybe the name of the Bush Doctrine is confusing people. It was named after President Bush but he never understood it, only read some of the lines of it out. Someone else must have written it for him.
The Bush Doctrine tells us to take acts of war to remove enemy states who have been sponsoring terrorism against us. Since that includes Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, then the Bush Doctrine alone is enough to allow us to prosecute war against both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
But, you know, don’t go asking former President GW Bush about the Bush Doctrine because he only ever though it applied to the Taliban state of Afghanistan and the doctrine never said that. It never said “only Afghanistan”.
Like I have said before, it makes as little sense applying the Bush Doctrine to Afghanistan only as it would have made little sense in applying the Cold War doctrine to Cuba alone but never to the Soviet Union, the Eastern European communist states, China and the rest.
Well peter I cant argue with your points because they are salient points to be sure.I understand that in a manner these countries are at war with us.I don’t think it would rise to the status of a declared war, but I do think that we can attack our enemies in a simple way.Make them irrelevant.Remove ourselves from the middle east tit of oil.Develop our own energy.But I think you are correct.We must clearly see the truth- in that they do in fact HATE us.Once we know that.We can talk more honestly about our “friend and enemies” in the middle east.