Perception and misperception in Afghanistan

In their recent NY Times op-ed "The Wars of Perception", co-authors Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney  (a cosmic convergence, to be sure) note that Tet and Somalia, which have gone down as two of the great American post-war defeats, were in fact successes masquerading as failures. The Dominics draw analogies to Iraq, but I would say the lesson is much more applicable to Afghanistan. Unlike Iraq, a lot is going right there. Much of the nation remains stable, and even the recent wave of insurgent activity in the south and east has--almost without exception--resulted in the rout of Taliban forces.

Nevertheless, operations are  recounted with pessimism and insurgent casualty figures are lumped in with those of Afghan and coalition forces (the frequently echoed figure of 1,500 dead this year is comprised mostly of insurgents...)

Now this is not to say that the increase in insurgent activity--and particularly the importation of suicide bombings and other tactics from Iraq--is not a foreboding sign, or to imply that all is going well. But a judicious measuring of gains and losses is in order. In leaping to conclusions about "another Vietnam" we risk another Somalia--in which a largely successful mission is marked an unmitigated disaster (with grave repercussions for the starving Somalis, the butchered Rwandans, and countless others.)

                                                                                            Image: Alex Nabaum

The Wars of Perception
(NYT op-ed), Nov 26. By DOMINIC JOHNSON and DOMINIC TIERNEY: In January 1968, Americans turned on their televisions to find scenes of chaos and carnage as Vietnamese communists unleashed their surprise Tet offensive. It would go down in history as the greatest American battlefield defeat of the cold war...Except that, remarkably, Tet and Somalia were not defeats...

They were successes perceived as failures. Such stark divergence between perception and reality is common in wartime, when people’s beliefs about which side wins and which loses are often driven by psychological factors that have nothing to do with events on the battlefield. Tet and Somalia may, therefore, hold important lessons for Iraq...

Finally, the American news media painted a picture of disaster in Vietnam. Even though communist forces incurred enormous losses, reporters often lauded their performance. As the Times war correspondent Peter Braestrup put it, “To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other — in a major crisis abroad — cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism.”

A similar story later unfolded in Somalia. From 1992 to 1994, the American humanitarian intervention in Somalia saved the lives of more than 100,000 Somalis and cut the number of refugees in half, for the loss of 43 Americans. Back in the United States, however, this noble mission was widely viewed as the greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. By October 1993, approval for President Bill Clinton’s handling of Somalia fell to 30 percent. Only 25 percent of Americans viewed the intervention as a success, and 66 percent saw it as a failure.

Like Tet, the mission in Somalia suffered from overblown expectations. Intervening in an anarchical, war-ridden country was bound to be difficult. But early efforts to provide food and security in Somalia went so well that the project looked deceptively easy. The American public and news media lost interest — until early October 1993, when American soldiers were killed in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” battle in Mogadishu.