America's Afghan Election
The White House is upset by the Afghan election. Celebrated at first by Obama on the White House lawn as a signal success marking the country's progress on the road to democracy, it now looks like a monkey wrench thrown into the already stuttering engine of our mission there. The turn-out in Taliban intimidated areas was only about 10%. Voter fraud seems to have been endemic. And President Karzai, our wayward protégée, may be further weakened as a result. So Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke flies to Kabul for the umpteenth time and screams at Karzai that he should do an election rerun. Karzai instead bolsters his standing among his own people by thumbing his nose at Washington. Meanwhile, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen decries continued deterioration in the war while calling for the deployment of more American troops.
All this in what Obama calls "a necessary war" to advance vital national interests. Exactly why that is so remains obscure. In the absence of a convincing answer, the growing Afghan fiasco looks to become a tragic comedy. Tragic for the United States, tragic for the cause of containing the spread of violent jihadist organizations, and tragic above all for the people of that war ravaged land. Just as on Iraq, the conclusion that we had to escalate our intervention preceded the assessment of why and how. Three unspoken premises underlie that judgment. All are dubious. First is the notion that the Taliban as well as al-Qaeda itself are our enemy. Their supposed hostility toward us means that they will lend their active support to terrorists targeting America, and may join in themselves. Second, the implication is that their eradication as a political force in Afghanistan is essential to our national security. Finally, the Taliban must be eliminated across the border in Pakistan, too. In short, a grand project for remaking the political life of two countries where favorable views of the United States are in the single digits (6% in Pakistan).
Here is the more complicated reality. The Taliban agenda is an Afghan one. Their credo and program sets no ambitions beyond its borders. No Taliban ever has been implicated in actions outside their homeland. Today, their movement is fueled by a Pashtun sectarianism aggrieved by a government In Kabul dominated by their traditional Tajik and Uzbek rivals whom we installed in power -- except for our Karzai, himself a Pashtun. The Talban's political neutering is therefore an impossibility. Fellow Pashtuns in Northwest Pakistan are pushed into the Taliban fold by American airstrikes that enrage tribes whose members are victims, often innocent ones. Our prodding of the Pakistani leadership to abandon their policy of containment for one of military intrusions in conjunction with American air strikes has led to unprecedented upheaval that is further destabilizing the country's roiled politics. The Islamabad political elite is no more ready to risk civil war by complying with American demands than is Mr. Karzai to kow-tow to Richard Holbrooke at the risk of his political future.
The elementary truth is that we do not have the power (hard, soft or half-baked) to transform the minds and behavior of entire peoples with whom we have no affinity and who view us as aliens. Our own self-declared virtue, good intentions and self-interest do not change that one iota. We should have learned that lesson in Iraq. We want absolute security -- zero threat from the Greater Middle East. We cannot get it -- no matter what we do. Our costly, pointless wars only increase whatever real risk exists.
Gary Hart: Democracy in the Mirror of Afghanistan
The U.S. has an enormous military, political, and economic presence in Afghanistan, trying to bring Afghans the kind of government against which Americans have been screaming in so-called towns meetings.
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Unfortunately, Obama has boxed himself in between two political hazards.
One is the prospect of endless, Vietnam-style war with more and more coffins coming home (are we now allowing them to be photographed?) more and more troops committed -- all to no avail. We'd need hundreds of thousands of troops and at least a decade to occupy and pacify Afghanistan.
The other is to now, after declaring this "mission" worthwhile -- abandon it and absorbing the fury of the right wing and deluded citizens who think we can "get" bin Laden -- as if that would matter now.
Option one leads to Lyndon Johnson time.
Option two is a politically survivable shitstorm that people here will forget quickly, unless there's another 911.
This article really omits the basic points. Is the war a business? Is the war a way to make the people to keep their minds away from their peraonal pronlems?
war is a business. We spend billions of unaccountable dollars with which some people get rich. Also billions didappears. It is also a way to keep people to think about the war than the economy. We, the most powerful country in the world, beating the Taliban and call them enemy? How come a group of defenceess can be our enemy? The writer writes that we can not transform their minds. The Afghans wear jeans instead of their trditional trousers; shave their beard, put lipsteak on, and so on. Is this a trasformation? We can transform their mind if we do it in right way. When I was in Afghanistan, I changed many things but unfortunately the Soviets changed them again.
What's the use of this so-called election. Whatever puppet the US places in power does not even control Kabul, what to speak of the rest of the country.
Well Stated. I wish Obama was listening.
The Taliban can't be defeated until they stop fighting back, and they won't. Unlike us, won't quit and go home. They're already home. And fighting for their homes want it a whole lot more than you do. They've fought for thirty years already. They WILL wait us out. So would you, if you were them.
Jakealoper, there is a difference between cutting and running and reconsidering tactics against the Taliban. I hate the Taliban too. Just because people disagree with you on issues doesn't make them tyrants.
Having the US military in Afghanistan without any clear objective or strategy is dangerous to the American troops.
For all intents and purposes the Taliban are already mostly defeated, militarily. We've had 8 years to get Afghanistan right and we have not been successful so far.
How much more treasure and American blood are going to spilled when the answers for American security don't lie in conquering Afghanistan?
There is a "clear strategy". Occupy Afghanistan.
That's it? For how long? What goals need to be accomplished during the occupation? Where should we focus the bulk of our military might, the cities or the country side? What about elections, public service projects and other necessities that will have to be paid by the American taxpayer?
These are the questions that we as Americans are not asking. Occupying Afghanistan indefinitely is not a change in strategy. We've been doing that for 8 years and so far it hasn't gone so swimmingly.
The writer undermines his thesis before half way done. He claims the Taliban have no interest beyond Afghanistan then goes on about Pashtuns and Taliban in Pakistan. So they do have interests that transcend Afghanistan. Would it be hard to posit that a Taliban run Afghanistan helps install a Pashtun Taliban regime in Pakistan which in turns steps up attacks with India using the usual Kashmir irredentia as a casus bellie. Would he be happy with a nuclear armed Pashutn Taliban state next door to a Hindu state that has suffered under Islamic despoilation for centuries.
The same ilk said the same about Germany in the 1930s: who are we to limit their army, forbid them to militarizethe Rhineland or unity with their southern neighbors, or a defensible border taken from another neighbor? They don't care about the rest of Europe, they only want to rebuild a country that we helped ruin.
"We want absolute security..
Thank you.. Great to see those words in print. Those two sentences go togther for everything, btw, not just threats from the "middle east" (as if that's the only place terrorist are, or might strike from).
Time to 'nad up and live in the real world.
Two points about the Afghanistan adventure which has not improved for the U.S. from after the first few weeks when Al-Qaeda was driven out of its training camps and dispersed. One hopes these points are absorbed especially by the neocons: (1) The U.S. really did lose the Vietnam War. The Afghanistan War, as the war in Iraq, reaffirms that the U.S. is not capable of fighting guerrilla war against strongly committed, capable armed opposition in foreigh countries, particularly in Asia. (2) The attempt at "nation building" without desisive defeat of guerrilla opposition turning the population to the U.S. and all;ies of it is guaranteed to put the U.S. into a no-win situtation. The U.S. simply sets itself up to be exploited by civic leaders and businesspersons in the nation the U.S. is trying to build; and alternately used as an apparent source of strength and painted as a clueless, meddling, intrusive power by political leaders as this suits them.
When the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam in 1975, it was using conventional armored infantry spearheads, with tactical air support, They won because the US reneged on the agreement to provide air support against those spearheads. The Vietcong was wiped out during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Tet was a military victory that was turned into a politcal defeat by your ilk. After Tet, most of the fighters were NV army regulars, not guerillas.
Besides, the North could count on almost unlimited support from the Communist bloc countries as well as leftists and communist in the free world. The Taliban have few outside friends. Do you think the SAM batteries, radar and MIG interceptors defending Hanoi, or even the bulk of their weapons, were made in tunnels from US scrap?
Nice detail. The fact still remains that there are limits to which we can force our will on others. Only when the empire is completely broken will this become fully clear, to some.
Tet was a military victory? For who? At the time it was being sold that VC and NV army could not pull off such an offensive. They were beaten back and took massive casualties but they made the point that they were still potent.
I see you've swallowed the neocon explanation nearly intact. The reason the North Vietnamese armored units with tactical air support (limited because North Vietnamese had hardly any air force) overran South Vietnam was because by that time, U.S. military forces had been pulled out of South Vietnam and the South Vietnames army was neither much motivated nor able to resist the North Vietnamese forces. North Vietnamese troops could have walked into Saigon, but they took tanks because this was quicker--and they were probably tired from chasing retreating South Vietnamese troops for so long. As for the "reneging," the U.S. made any number of assurances to South Vietnam that it would not abandon it. Everyone except a few simpletons knew at the time these were attempts by the U.S. to keep its self-respect bolstered in the pull-out and coming abandonment of South Vietnam after a couple of decades of intervention which never came close to reaching the ends it was supposed to. During this time, South Vietnam was given all the support and war material it needed to win against any combination of guerrillas and conventional forces with supplies from other nations if it had been able to.
The USA does not have a "mission" in Afghanistan.
Bush failed miserably to bring Bin Laden in, and at the end said, "You know, I don't know where he is. I don't think about it much."
This is failure stopped up in all the pipes.
It's over. The US must get out one way or the other, sooner or later.
I guarantee you that when the US does finally leave, Afghanistan will not be one whit different than it is today, or has been for thousands of years.
The only difference will be the number of needless deaths.
"First is the notion that the Taliban as well as al-Qaeda itself are our enemy. Their supposed hostility toward us means that they will lend their active support to terrorists targeting America, and may join in themselves
So they are our allies? Give me a break or some hard proof. Do you think this is all Pashtun nationalism? Is they the kind of people that any civilized person would want to leave in Afghanistan as the leaders? The Taliban and Al Qaeda are our sworn enemies and your equivocating and reducing them to a legitimate separatist movement is contemptible. What about the non-Pashtuns or the Pashtuns who don't want to live under a 7th century barbaric government, tough luck; or women, wear the burqa and stay inside and iliterate I guess?
I hate to sound like a neocon, but some liberals are looking for every chance they can to cut and run
RFK had it right 40 years ago. " Try to change what you can. Don't try to change what you can't. And have the wisdom to know the difference
"Karzai instead bolsters his standing among his own people by thumbing his nose at Washington
If that's the case, a full-scale withdrawal should put him in Barack Obama territory. Let's give it a try.
Yup, more cut and run and let the Taliban take over. Good work!
The "Taliban" live in Afghanistan.
Where do you live?
The amount of thought it takes to parrot "cut and run" can't be measured with an electron microscope.
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