Tom Ricks: We Should Really Be Fighting The 'Afghan-Pakistani War'

Two things that need to be said about this. The Afghan war isn't either. That is:

* It isn't a good war
* It isn't an Afghan war

What do I mean by that? First, I find the "good war" term offensive. I find it hard to use that word to describe anything that maims and kills innocent men, women and children. All wars have an element of evil in them. That said, this one was better than most. I thought that invading Afghanistan in late 2001 was the right thing to do, and I still do.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[arvay]

Unfortunately, we muffed our opportunity to kill Bin Laden and the Taliban leadership in the debacle at Tora Bora.

We had the opportunity to apply a proportionate response to 911. Having failed, we made the mistake of setting up the corrupt and ineffective Afghan "government."

This war is already lost, and any amount of force we apply now will merely inflame the region and create precisely the disaster we seek to avoid, a radical, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Let's not have any illusions. The return of the Taliban will result in re-imposition of Sharia law and backwardness on moderates and especially women in Afghanistan. It will be part of our shameful legacy of failure, but there's no way to prevent this without committing forces we don't have. Good luck to Petraeus bribing and arming local tribes, but things that worked in one place aren't likely to work elsewhere. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I doubt that I am.

The main thing for us would be to assure that the reconstituted Taliban state does not host any more attacks against us. There's some evidence that they were initially reluctant to support Al Qaeda's attacks, and may not want to endure another American retaliatory attack. Maybe we can negotiate such an arrangement.

This new situation would improve Pakistan's ability to crush their fanatics, without being seen by their people as tools of an American occupation of Afghanistan.

[Ergon]

FYI, the largest 'Tribe' is the Pashtun, which comprises 60-65% of the Afghan population, and 16% of Pakistan's. Do you suggest arming them? They support the Taliban, and that is why they control the country, and that is why you're using air strikes and artillery.
Think Viet Cong. Think Vietnam.

[mamacat]

I disagree with the statement in the title that we should be fighting the "Afghan-Pakistan" war. That to me is idiotic.

We should have ignored the Taliban (who were not involved in 9/11 and didn't have the power to oust Al Qaeda from Afghanistan even if they had wanted to), gone in and destroyed and killed the Al Qaeda fighters in Tora Bora, and then gotten back out. Why is that so difficult to understand?

[gde]

Having read the article, I would say Ricks is quite clueless about why things are going poorly for US forces in Afghanistan. He doesn't understand that they are highly trained, but trained to do the wrong thing in so many circumstances. Also, while they are capable of being brave when forced to by circumstances, they kill too often out of cowardice and incompetence, forcing civilians to be far braver than they are. When they couldn't do IFFN, they decided it was unimportant so they just kill to incite terrorism, giving them job security.

[lungfish]

I thought the Afghanistan invasion was for the purpose of getting Osama bin Laden. I don't see Ricks even mentioning that.... we wouldn't be in a predicament with a further destabilized Pakistan (US backing of Musharef did not help us) and Afghanistan and we wouldn't need to stay and fight like we apparently do now...
This is a continuing chapter in a major mistake.
80 nations lost people in the 911 attacks and those nations could have put together a terrific police force and just waited for ObL to raise his head and then take them regardless of the Taliban. The fact is that the Taliban would have handed over bin Laden if we had provided proof of his complicity in 911. Instead we said "so you won't hand him over... we're coming to take him"....
and now we are in a situation where the stakes are ridiculously high and getting more challenging all the time.
If we didn't want the Taliban in power we should have kept our promises to the Mujahadeen when they finally drove the USSR out of their country....but, like we did after the first Iraq invasion, we walked away from our promises and the country went on another path, probably a reactionary one....

[stringer]

Can I actually agree with this one? The problem is George Bush and Dick Cheney, who don't understand global balance of power dynamics or understand the difference between real threats (Pakistan, Iran) and people we merely dislike because they are atrociously horrible (Saddam Hussein), decided to invade IRAQ instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, driving out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, weakening Pakistan and leaving a bulwark against Iran in the region.

So now we're stuck with what we're stuck with.

My guess is Ricks is right and we will soon learn just HOW much we've lost by losing focus on the REAL threat (Al Qaeda) and focusing on Iraq instead. The neo-cons will continue to obfuscate and refuse to admit any wrong. And we'll all have to deal with it.

[steamboat]

Tom, where you been? Pres. Obama is promising 30,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

[wadenelson1]

Is this guy a PhD or something? The Average American has known this was was a disaster for at least 3 years.

[PSM42]

Excellent point - consider yourself an honorary Doctor of whatever you would like, for that. Though you might not consider it a compliment and if it was the same PhD as that guy, you would be right.