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In case you haven't noticed, the "debate" about Afghanistan going on inside the White House (thanks for the transparency) has already been decided, and the answer is: we're staying. The remaining question being considered is: how many troops? The question not being considered, if leaks are any indication, is why?
If there's any consistency to the foreign-policy mistakes of America in the post-World War Two era, it's the saga of brilliant men deciding upon wars in countries they barely understand, countries whose history they ignore--at our peril. That was the story of Vietnam, of Iraq, and it's now being repeated. It's also the story of a policy becoming hostage to notions of our "credibility" as a world power, as if being trapped in a debilitating struggle with enemies who aren't leaving (and who know we are) is good for the ol' image.
But, and I'm anticipating two-thirds of your comments, I'm "just" a funny person. You bet. That's why I pay attention to the people who know what they're talking about on this issue, and here's one of them--Matthew Hoh, who had the guts Colin Powell wishes he'd had, who resigned his State Department job rather than continue to promote a failing, misguided, doomed policy. Read Hoh's online chat. He's not kidding.
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To: "The Soviets were winning before America intervened
The Daily Beast article states:
This heroin bomb then does collateral damage back home. The returning soldiers brought home a heroin problem to Russian cities that grew exponentially during the past two decades. This past March, Russia’s anti-narcotics bureau announced that the country had become the planet’s “No. 1 heroin consumer.”
Today’s Taliban-fighting Americans were yesterday’s mujahideen-fighting Soviets. They saw how heroin helped disable a foreign fighting force more than 20 years ago. And that lesson isn’t lost on them.
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In Greek tradgedies, ego/hubris was the sin the Gods punished the most. Some estimates were that 15-20% of soldiers came back from Viet Nam addicted to China White. What are the drugs that Afgans grow and make: opium/heroin. We're going to invade a country where we're not wanted, prop up a corrupt regieme, kill a whole country of guerilla fighters and "win". Sound familiar? I guess we never learn.
Pride comes before a fall. Balance the equation.
"Then again it is also important to realize the opium crops are key to regional security and the provision of economic alternatives is necessary to keeping these farmers from returning to the poppy trade."
Maybe these farmers want to grow poppies. Maybe they think it's their country and realize they have no allegience to a corrupt US puppet government (think Viet Nam). Maybe they've been growing them for generations and feel it's their right. Maybe they think it's really none of our business.
Ya, they can grow marigolds for the floral trade at say $1 a bushel when they could grow poppies at prices orders of magnitude higher which they've been doing for hundreds or thousands of years.
I
Part 2
I see no reason for nations to act differently. Some will argue that our nation will lose respect if we admit that we have no right to be in Afghanistan, apologize for the suffering, death, and destruction we've caused, offer to make amends, and withdraw all of our troops. Some might see this as weakness and a disquieting formal admission that our troops died in vain. Well, they did die in vain and I can think of no valid reason why more lives should be sacrificed to save face and avoid admitting we were wrong. Redefining success as something less than defeating the Taliban is playing word games that fool no one. It's an arrogant and self-defeating strategy that is the essence of weakness and it provokes contempt and resentment toward us.
Although we have a general duty to rebuild what we have destroyed, we should allow the people in Afghanistan to decide what they want us to do. They might not want us to modernize their country, for example. Big box stores like Walmart, fast food restaurants, and showers that electrocute people may not be at the top of their wish list. We need to listen and stop deciding what's best for others.
This course of action also happens to be the best defense against terrorism.
To: The Afgan war did hardly anything to the Soviet Empire.
The Daily Beast article states:
This heroin bomb then does collateral damage back home. The returning soldiers brought home a heroin problem to Russian cities that grew exponentially during the past two decades. This past March, Russia’s anti-narcotics bureau announced that the country had become the planet’s “No. 1 heroin consumer.”
Today’s Taliban-fighting Americans were yesterday’s mujahideen-fighting Soviets. They saw how heroin helped disable a foreign fighting force more than 20 years ago. And that lesson isn’t lost on them.
----------
In Greek tragedies, Ego/Hubris was the sin the gods punished the most. Remember the drug addicted soldiers that came back from Viet Nam? Estimates were 15-20% addicted to China White. What are the drugs that Afganistan produces: opium/hero
Pride comes before the fall. Balance the equation.
Hi,
Policy of Afghanistan and Pakistan is not what is not what issue right.
Fact #1: we have a small amount of troops there that are ounder maned and out numbered.
Fact#2. Because of this....th
Fact #3. this is because Obama has FAILED to make A decision that is: Black & White for over two months....
He has Two Choices Only:
#1. Send 40,000+ troops and equipment today.
#2. Pull out ALL out troops now.
How hard is this? Its NOT over 2 months hard.
These kids are getting killed Unnecessar
This is WRONG on any level...we
These Troops have need "backup for months...a
He is to busy being a: 24/7/365 "SERIAL CAMPAIGNER"
It is an Obsession with him...its all his being doing the last 5 years+
http://ira
"The Real Truth Is Always The Real Truth" ~~ Even if you choose to not believe it.
Peace,
Dan
Cowboy Bush went into Afghanistan without a clew of the consequences. We have changed the regional power and when our troops are withdrawn someone will fill that void. I for one am glad that we have a man in control who thinks. The troops that he deployed when he first took office are not yet in country because it takes time to train and move thousands of troops and support the last thing thetroops need is to spend a winter in the mountains. Your facts are wrong too.
The news media is busy clucking about the new election in Afghanistan as if that will change things dramatically. In fact, after the election, Karzai will still be a man of questionable character, his brother Ahmed, will still be involved in drug dealing and corruption will still be endemic. The country will still be comprised of 40,000 villages of illiterate people. The country will still have no infrastructure to speak of and their economy will still be narco based. Afghanistan needs more than change. It needs a transformation that would require billions of dollars and a protracted occupation from ten to twenty years. We need to extricate ourselves from this quagmire as soon as possible.
As I look back over the last eight years, all I see is an investment in stooopidity that keeps compounding itself. If this compounding was interest on a dollar, it would have become a million bucks by now.
Bin Ladin invested in the specific (and relatively inexpensive) training of 20 al quaeda operatives, for the purpose of terrorizing the US and destroying it's financial base. And, as Matthew Hoh pointed out, did the most important phase of the training on US soil.
Bin Ladin's investment has paid off handsomely. We have a still-terrorized nation that argues for more pointless occupations, further straining our weak economy, and thousands of both dead and mained American and allied soldiers.
It's time to admit who really is winning this "war on terrorism," and quit pretending there is a military solution. It is, and always has been, a matter for an international criminal task force.
Everyday we waste spending more of our much needed capital and blood in these senseless occupations, the more Bin Ladin's investment in our knee-jerk and ignorant reaction to his planning, compounds in his favor.
These is no credibility to be won in continuing a failed policy expecting a different result. To continue is to not only lose credibility, but also to continue bleeding a currently very enemic nation. A medieval doctor could do no worse.
Oops. I meant to say maimed soldiers, and also anemic nation.
Is it not clear that Afghanistan extremely relevant to US security policy? Never mind that the Taliban seeks to invade Afghanistan and establish a totalitarian society but they harbor many smaller groups involved in transnational terror. Furthermore is that we see a massive rise in poppy crops which left unchecked would not only result in the funneling of billions of dollars to people who wish to wage war on the West but create massive problems in our own society with heroin addiction. I'm sure everyone here can agree that heroin is a scary and dangerous drug.
Hoh is absolutely correct about our previous misguided policy but it is foolish to throw out the baby with the bath water. We currently have a strategy for success which only recently the president has decided to ponder on (many people forget he agreed full heartedly in months prior).
With a successful strategy, the Taliban and its aligned organizations will no longer be a threat and the poppy production will be greatly diminished. As for Afghanistan the society will likely revert into the federal society that it was before the communist takeover (which was a successful for of government btw) unless Karzai continues his rule which is another turning point for Afghanistan.
You said,
"Never mind that the Taliban seeks to invade Afghanistan and establish a totalitarian society but they harbor many smaller groups involved in transnational terror. Furthermore is that we see a massive rise in poppy crops which left unchecked would not only result in the funneling of billions of dollars to people who wish to wage war on the West but create massive problems in our own society with heroin addiction. I'm sure everyone here can agree that heroin is a scary and dangerous drug."
The Taliban is not an outside force "seek[ing] to invade Afghanistan. Most of the Taliban is made up of Pashtuns, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan.
The Taliban does not "harbor many smaller groups involved in transnational terror." There are many insurgent groups from various villages and valleys throughout southern Afghanistan who fight alongside the Taliban but do not consider themselves to be part of the Taliban. Pakistan has its own Taliban which is only loosely affiliated with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Both groups fight the governments in their respective countries. They are not involved in "transnational terror." There are less than 100 Al Qaida members in Afghanistan and no terrorist training camps.
Karzai's brother is a CIA asset and important player in the heroin trade, as is the CIA. If our cities become inundated in heroin, which is unlikely, the CIA will have played a larger role in making that happen than the Taliban.
The Afghan war will do to America what it did to the Soviet Empire.
It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
The Afgan war did hardly anything to the Soviet Empire. That is a fallacy. The cost was moderate and the casualties were relatively low for a ten year war. The real cost came in building thousands of aircraft, tens of thousands of tanks and hundreds of ships in the arms race which dwarfed the Afghan War budget altogether.
It was not lost on me that Mr. Holbrook offered him a juicy job which he took for a couple of weeks before he got out of that too. They just did not want him to go public with this. Too late now, they pretty well painted themselves into a corner. If Pres. Obama will not stand up to the Military all will be lost for the foreseeable future and his re-election most certainly be scuttled.
I agree. We need to get out. This thing is a nightmare spinning out of control. More people will die unnecessar
I'm prepared to let Obama make whatever decision he wants to make, as long as he meets the goal of bringing our troops home within his first term. So I say:
All U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Election Day 2012... or Obama loses my vote.
Anybody with me?
Just remember that the war in Afghanistan is only starting NOW. Bush and the neocons didn't fight it for six long years, while they coped with their idiotic invasion of Iraq. It was Bush's total passivity towards the Taliban and Bin Laden for six years that allowed them both to make their spectacular, and quite grim for us, comeback. Until the American people truly face up to the nuclear threat we are fighting against in Afghanistan--the first real nuclear threat this country has ever faced (obviously, the Soviet Union had no wish for mutual suicide)--they won't grasp the gravity of the stakes. The gravest since the Civil War. And, in some respects, potentially even graver than that. Nuclear attacks, folks, would be very, very bad. It would be worth virtually any American sacrifice to prevent them. If you think the war in Afghanistan is "expensive" and "wasteful," Imagine what the disappearance of New York City would cost.
See Harry Shearer's Profile
When did the Afghans get nukes? I missed that episode.
I haven't heard such talk since Condi Rice and Dick Cheney warned us that the smoking gun in Iraq might turn out to be a mushroom cloud.
You may be just a funny person but you are also correct. Conservatives and liberals alike can agree that being there without a clear goal is ludicrous. It has nothing to do with protecting our country and everything to do with strategic planning that does not involve active combat with no exit.
Obviously the "why" of the war was to evict the Taliban - who had been given 2 chances to simply turn over bin Laden which they rejected, by the way - and to destroy as much of al Qaeda, including bin Laden, as possible. We had to settle for eviction and the killing of Mohammed Atef, AQ #3. That's not so terrible considering Afghanistan is a landlocked quasi-country located 9,000 miles from US territory.
People seem to forget in this most recent debate that Afghan people really did celebrate when the Taliban evacuated. Do you imagine the Afghans would rather live under the Taliban again? That's not exactly a "reality-based" expectation.
Which begs the ultimate question: why are we still there? Why are we staying there? The obvious answer is that, in the absence of another effective counterforce, the Taliban will certainly retake Afganistan.
Which raises Hoh's interview. He says Al Qaeda will not come back into Afghanistan because they 'will not' associate themselves with nation-states anymore. That's interesting - according to the latest they govern from Quetta, part of the nation of Pakistan. If Hoh means they will operate only from ungovernable places such the Pakistani FATA, well, how many of those do you think there are in the world? Most of them are in AfPak, actually. Of course there's Somalia and Yemen, too, but does anyone believe if we leave Afghanistan the gloriously victorious Taliban will evict the also-glori
We attacked Afghanistan because Big Oil and the Taliban couldn't make a deal for the pipeline. These two entities were in Houston, in 1999, trying to come to an agreement. Why do you neglect this fact in your"analysis"?
I can only respond with a question: why are there still so many people with Soviet propaganda 2.0 in their heads where thought should be?
I appreciate you bringing this up bcz kuther forgot to mention it.
So you are suggesting we build some bases and keep 150K + soldiers there indefinitely?
That's $100 Billion a year forever in extra taxes. Why would we even consider that as an option?
One would think the U.S. would be better at guerrilla fighting or the so called insurgents. Was our nation not founded on this type of fighting?
Our best and brightest politicians cannot figure out a way to fight unconventional forces. The military could but an innocent could be hurt in the process.
Our forces seem to make the local people madder rather than happy with the peace we promise them.
We wonder why so many of these people straddle the fence. Is it that much of a stretch to see the position a person puts himself in if he aligns himself with a country that maybe gone tomorrow but his enemies will certainly be around. Why it takes so long for their police and armies to get up to speed. We forget even the mighty U.S. cannot stop graft and stop such things as drugs flowing into the U.S.
We buy supplies, info, build whatever and leave lots of money. Will this money go to the avg citizen or to leaders who fatten their bank accounts and buy weapons to fight us and oppress their own people
We should stay out of any unconventional war unless we understand its history, its people and their traditions. If we cannot fight effectively than we can not accomplish anything.
If certain people must die for peace to happen we should use black ops teams with the authority to kill on the spot.
We were guerillas and as you recall we won against the most powerful army in the world. Viet Nam also taught us that throwing hundreds of thousands of men and bombs into a country does not guarantee success.
Then why do we not become guerillas again. We are now like the Britsh at our own independen
I ask you this. Did we try to win Vietnam?. Did we give every effort.
Or was our congress along with our Presient playing politics.?
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