By Scott Taylor

I recently had the opportunity to watch the new, made for Netflix movie War Machine, starring Brad Pitt. The subject of the film is the U.S. led war in Afghanistan with Pitt playing the fictitiously named Lieutenant-General Glenn McMahon. While the name is changed to provide some Hollywood artistic licence, the movie closely depicts the real life Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal and the events that transpired during his command of the Afghan mission in 2009.

The opening scene has Pitt as McMahon strutting through the airport in Dubai along with his attendant staff officers. The narrator sets the scene, telling us that the war in Afghanistan is going poorly and therefore a new General – McMahon is being brought in to jump start the whole allied campaign. The plotline follows McMahon’s attempts to do just that, up until he is fired and the final scene is his successor and a fresh set of staff officers striding through an airport, full of confidence en route to Kabul to turn things around.

War Machine is a brave diversion from the usual rah-rah, war movie genre, propaganda in that it portrays former Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a powerless puppet of the U.S. . In one dramatic scene McMahon pursuesKarzai right into his private Presidential bedroom in order to get the Afghan leader’s permission to launch a large offensive. Karzai replies that both men know such permission is not his to grant – “but thanks for asking” he tells McMahon.

There is also a poignant moment after the big offensive begins and naturally enough, innocent civilians are killed. True to his beliefs, McMahon flies to the front lines to explain to Afghan villagers – through his translator – that the U.S. is intent on bringing Afghans security, democracy and freedom.

The bewildered Afghan elder replies concisely “Just leave.”

It was refreshing to see that a U.S. moviemaker understands that despite all of our good intentions and ideals, since 2001 the West has delivered nothing but violence, corruption and insecurity to the Afghan people.

Then of course came the real life news last week that the U.S. is committing more troops to Afghanistan, and urging NATO allies such as Canada to do the same. There will be a new commander and a new strategy and this time, by golly, we are going to get it right. U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis admitted to a Senate Committee “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now. And we will correct this as soon as possible.”

Of course, Mad Dog neglected to say how the U.S. will do things differently after sixteen years of futile intervention. The only response seems to always be more troops.

Then we had former U.S. General David Petraeus – famous for his briefly successful, but ultimately failed surge strategy in Iraq – telling the media that we should brace ourselves for a “long-haul, generational war” in Afghanistan.

As if sixteen years isn’t already of generational length, Petraeus went on to point out that the U.S. has had a ‘long haul’ military presence in Korea for more than 65 years. Not mentioned by Petraeus was the fact that Korea and Afghanistan are as different as soap and beans. In Korea, the U.S. fought alongside Korean allies to prevent them being overrun by the North Korean Communist forces. This was successfully achieved in 1953 with the ceasefire agreement establishing a clearly defined boundary between North and South Korea. In Afghanistan the U.S. led intervention never eliminated the Afghan insurgency, and the U.S. trained and equipped Afghan forces are woefully inadequate to fight the war on the their own.

A better analogy would be that of the U.S. failure in Vietnam. If the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan now, the corrupt cabal that they installed in Kabul will collapse just like the South Vietnamese, U.S. backed government did in 1975.

It is for certain that the U.S. would not have spent 65 years in Korea if every day their soldiers were being attacked and killed by fanatical Koreans.

The War Machine Afghan elder had the right answer “just leave”. The Afghan people are hardy survivors who will eventually sort out their own future – even if it does not resemble a western democracy.

By Scott Taylor

On May 25, NATO will host a heads of state summit in Brussels, and at the top of the agenda list will be the war in Afghanistan. The simple truth is that the NATO-trained and -equipped Afghan National Security Forces are losing the war to a resurgent Taliban.

That right folks, after 16 years of being trained, mentored and molded by NATO forces, including Canadians up until 2014, the Afghans need an urgent infusion of more NATO troops or else the Taliban is poised to regain control.

The senior NATO commanders will argue to the heads of state – including Canada’s own Prime Minister Trudeau — that if we, as member states, don’t send reinforcements to Afghanistan, then all of the progress made towards democracy will be lost.

Generals reason that we owe it to all of those NATO soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice to the Afghan cause, including 158 Canadian soldiers killed, to once again pony up more soldiers, more money and more weapons to shore up the government in Kabul.

This would of course be the pack of murderous thugs and crooks headed by the dual leadership of President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, which is considered to be one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet. So much for our success in terms of foisting democracy upon the people of Afghanistan.

For those who care to recall, the 2014 presidential election was so rife with corruption and voter fraud that no clear winner could even be determined. Thus it was a compromise solution that led to the creation of a national CEO position, which would allow Abdullah Abdullah to share power equally with Ashraf Ghani.

Trained, equipped and paid by NATO, the Afghan forces took the lead role in the combat mission against the Taliban in 2014. However, since then they have suffered staggering losses, which have resulted in plunging morale, wide-scale desertions and even wholesale defections to the Taliban.

The Afghan National Security Forces are themselves corrupt and inefficient, with no clear-cut motivation to prop up their corrupt, inefficient West- installed leaders.

One of the biggest problems Afghan commanders are facing is what are known as ‘ghost soldiers.’ These are not sinister unearthly spectres, but Afghan soldiers which are on the books collecting pay and rations but who simply do not exist. There have been occasions when Afghan forces were called upon to resist a Taliban attack and, instead of the paper strength Kandak (a battalion of approximately 900 soldiers), only a handful of demoralized troops were actually available for combat.

It is estimated that the resurgent Taliban have reclaimed approximately 40 per cent of Afghan territory and one can only imagine what the situation would be like were it not for the continued presence of 9,000 U.S. troops and an additional 4,000 NATO soldiers.

Despite their so-called ‘train and assist’ mandate, U.S. Special Forces have often been called in to bolster the Afghan National Security Forces to prevent their complete collapse in combat. One must also add to this mix the overwhelming air armada the U.S. has on station to support operations as well as their extensive fleet of armed unmanned aerial vehicles.

At the upcoming summit in Brussels, the NATO commanders will claim that they need member states to pony up more resources, with the excuse that creating an Afghan army that is self-sufficient takes time.

Folks, a reality check will show that we have been training Afghans for longer than the First and Second World War combined. It is not about training more recruits, it is about motivating them to fight. The Taliban are drawn from the same talent pool as the Afghan Security Forces and, without the benefit of international monitoring and the provision of modern weaponry, have shown themselves to be formidable fighters.

As such, unless there is a sweeping proposal to remove the current Kabul regime and install an interim administration with a clearly defined anti-corruption mandate, Canada should flatly refuse NATO’s request to return to Afghanistan. Remember that Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result.

Let’s stop the insanity.