If you've been reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran's meticulously reported pieces from Afghanistan documenting on-the-ground efforts by the U.S. military to implement its counterinsurgency strategy, you get to a point where they start to sound very familiar. Not because the reporting isn't fantastic but because the larger elements of the story, no matter how much the individual characters change, remain static: Pakistan's approach to the militants on its side of the border remains selective, and the Afghan government is a flawed partner at best. Counterinsurgency requires a legitimate government to protect, and the United States doesn't have one now any more than it did when the strategy was announced. If a car doesn't have a working engine, you can put as many fancy sets of rims on it as you want, but it's not going to move unless you push it yourself. Right now, it looks to me like that's all the United States is doing.
Richard Holbrooke, the administration's chief envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was perhaps more than any other single person responsible for making sure the political and diplomatic elements needed for the American counterinsurgency strategy to work were in place. As an architect of the Dayton Accords that ended the bloody war in the Balkans during the mid 1990s, he held a reputation as a master diplomat who was uniquely prepared to help resolve the United States' seemingly intractable problems in Central Asia. He died yesterday after emergency surgery to repair a ruptured aorta, but according to Chandrasekaran, these were his last words:
As Mr. Holbrooke was sedated for surgery, family members said, his final words were to his Pakistani surgeon: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan."
After years of watching the Beltway develop a belief in the infallibility of America's warrior scholars, it's refreshing to see political elites celebrate someone whose job it was to prevent and end wars rather than simply win them. Perhaps they might honor Holbrooke one last time by listening to him.
(Flickr/CAP)
UPDATE: This is quite a walkback:
As Dr. Jehan El-Bayoumi was attending to Holbrooke in the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, she told him to relax and asked what she could do to comfort him, according to an aide who was present. Holbrooke, who was in severe pain, said jokingly that it was hard to relax because he had to worry about the difficult situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.El-Bayoumi, an Egyptian-American internist who is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's physician, replied that she would worry for him. Holbrooke responded by telling her to end the war, the aide said.
The aide said he could not be sure of Holbrooke's exact words. He emphasized Tuesday that the comment was made in painful banter, rather than as a serious exhortation about policy. Holbrooke also spoke extensively about his family and friends as he awaited surgery by Farzad Najam, a thoracic surgeon of Pakistani descent.
As a joke, Holbrooke's last remarks reflect his own recognition of how difficult the task of ending the war actually was. While It's not really fair to view them as a final desperate plea to withdraw all American troops as soon as possible, it's also clear that the punch line to the joke isn't that he was comfortable with the war going on forever.
