Why We're Failing In Afghanistan

When it takes seven bone-jarring hours to drive just 90 miles over war-scarred dirt roads from Kabul to the troubled Helmand Province in southwest Afghanistan, the complexity of the intertwined U.S. diplomatic and military missions becomes clear pretty fast.

As bullets flew to overthrow the Taliban-controlled government in 2001, a coalition of international diplomats, nongovermental agencies and the United Nations embarked on an ambitious but often disjointed and underfunded reconstruction process coordinated by a dizzying array of acronym-laden groups and a largely disinterested Bush administration.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[FrozenNorthObserver]

Stunning! Not a single word about the almost constant US killing of civilians in airstrikes and ground operations which is one of the main things that just continue to aggravate the population to the point of picking up arms. Which cost the lives of NATO troops who are not from the US. By the way Canada has suffered the greatest losses of all Nato per troop strength. 103 dead out of 2500 troops(1-25), Brits have 132 dead out of 8500(1-64), US 402(1-63) out of about 25000-30,000

[nogimmicks]

The only real solution is the following:
- recognize that Taliban is a prevailing national party (unfortunately) and promote/stimulate national unity
- pull out of Afganistan completely, let those people rebuild their country.
- pursue international law enforcement operations (not indiscriminate bombing) in specific cases.

[vagabondstory]

because everyone in washington for the past 8 years have had their heads up their @sses
http://www.vagabondstory.com

[GhiaccioPronto]

no I'd say we backed the wrong side 30 years ago

[netzwerg]

Ambassador Neumann wants NATO to make more of a commitment to the effort in Afghanistan. However, many NATO countries are finding that it is not to their advantage to have their militaries serve the foreign policy purposes of the United States. American influence is on the wane because of the failure of U.S. policies. It is so in many parts of the world. For example, Latin America is easing out from under the pressure of the U.S. The economic center of gravity has moved away from the all-but-bankrupt U.S. to the East. The first order of business for the new American administration should be to put the U.S. on a sound footing and to rebuild what has fallen into decay: infrastructure, education, economy.

[PPatt]

Isn't this kind of like saying there was a failure in governing? ...like the glorious attributions to this amorphous "rebuilding" that never really seems to happen and just ends up being a big slush fund the boot on the ground can use to bribe local strong-men, war lords and tribal chieftains, are just empty words?

Somewhere between the faux can-do attitude in a Bush speech and the actual miserable failure is the truth and one hell of a lot of cognitive dissonance by each and ever citizen who refuses to put 2 + 2 together to get 4.

This is the same kind of diplomacy that has led us into cozying up to dictators by giving them billions and even WMD like poison gas and chemical agents and then turning on them when we looked bad for having done so. It is the same kind of can't-do attitude that looks at the problem and when faced with getting our owns hands dirty quietly whimpers "Let's don't and say we did", though the political reality that requires being able to say something was done compels our elected leaders to use the conservative cure-all of outsourcing which simply means hire someone else to do it without oversight.

Yes, this is a failure to govern and the fish rots from the head.