Afghanistan and Lessons Not Learned

One would think by now that we had learned the lesson of Vietnam: i.e., is that you couldn't build and destroy at the same time. We'd come by day with gunships and flamethrowers and clear the Viet Cong from the village and then back to camp at night. Charlie would come back into the village at night and we would go again in the day. We didn't go forward. We didn't go back. We never controlled the area. We kept this up for ten years with 58,000 killed and 378,000 wounded. Then finally gave up.

As we said in World War II: "Be sure you own it before you do anything." Now in Iraq we've done the same thing. This morning they're still blowing each other up. Never complete control. In Iraq we should have announced that anyone with IED equipment or material had until this time next week to deposit it at designated places. After that, those possessing IED material would be publicly hung. Now you own it. Now you can set up schools for girls. But today, we put a picture of girls in school in the newspaper; claim "Mission Accomplished;" and squat, waiting for enough natives to be trained to take over. And the losers are supposed to train the winners. In the meantime, GIs are expendable.

Apparently, the Afghans don't like foreign takeovers or presence. The Afghans didn't like the British, didn't like the Russians, and now don't like us. This week's The Wall Street Journal relates under the heading "Taliban Now Winning" that: "The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U. S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops ...." After eight years, the question is not whether we need more troops, but whether the Afghanistan war is worth the life of one more troop.

General Barrett McCafferty reports on TV that our commitment under the new strategy could take ten to twenty-five years. The problem is not our fighting men and women. It's the command. We have no idea of taking complete control - of owning Afghanistan. It's the policy of "build and destroy." Let's assume that after years of "build and destroy" we have won. Victory is ours. What have we got? Anyone that reads Elizabeth Rubin's report in last week's New York Times Magazine entitled, "Karzai in His Labyrinth," will have to agree that at best we've won a narco state. Rubin reports: "The Afghan president is isolated and distrusted, and even if he is re-elected this month, that's not likely to change."

Afghanistan has never caused the United States any trouble. The terrorists on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. The now terrorists, Taliban, or militants were our allies in Charlie Wilson's war. We all agree that, if alive, Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan. As a kid I remember Sportin' Life in "Porgy and Bess" feeding coke to the longshoremen on the docks. In my eighty-seven years we have not stopped the U.S. consuming drugs and in twenty-five more years we're not going to make warlords like democracy and stop growing drugs. Apparently, we Democrats, like the Republicans, believe that, in order to get reelected, we must keep the war going. More troops? Afghanistan is not worth the life of one more troop.

Comments

[Hontas Farmer]

He forgot to mention the Mongols. They controlled Afganistan for a century. They had to be brutal to do it, and we just aren't as brutal as they were.

[David Gallaher]

"In my eighty-seven years we have not stopped the U.S. consuming drugs and in twenty-five more years we're not going to make warlords like democracy and stop growing drugs."

Did another prominent politician just call the War on Drugs a gigantic failure? If so, this is bigger news than his opposition to the war in Afghanistan. Now, if he could see how the two wars are more closely related than he realizes, we might get somewhere.... Nah! Don't get hopes up.

[greyhound2]

It has been more like 18 years of US involvement in the middle east if you count Bush I Desert Storm. In 18 years in the ealy 1990's and what has been the payoff except more death and misery and heart ache. In Afganistan, you mentioned the Russian experience and that of the British, but you forgot Neapolean, who twisted his ankle there, and Alexander the Great, who marched through on his way to India in 200 B.C. In the 800's, there was also the Islamic Empire which spread into Afganistan and to parts of India.

We have an economy in tatters, drug problems, a disfuntional healthcare system and banks on the verge of collapse, so what do we need two no-win wars for? Afganistan is a worthless piece of real estate populated by people two steps out of the Stone Age and full of lunatics. Sunk cost. After Viet Nam, it was all the rage to make sure the US does not again get itself into another unwinable quagmire. Well, here we are again! Who is running this show anyway?

[jhNY]

Spot-on correct and a real breath of fresh air on this overheated and endless subject. Until our foreign policy ceases to be a stage whereon American domestic political theatre is acted out, for the delectation of our electorate, we continue to lurch from war to war until we have bankrupted the nation, for the purposes of enriching profiteers and vouchsafing the elections of our most cynical-minded politicians-- at the cost of deaths of many young Americans and many, many hapless foreigners who happen to get in our sights. But no Democrat with serious national polical aspirations will stand up against foreign entanglement and endless wars on abstractions for fear of being pilloried in the press as being naive and weak concerning matters of 'national defense.' See Chalmers Johnson piece here a few days back for corroboration and expansion of many of Sen. Hollings' points...

[hiker61]

When will we wake up to the reality of what we are getting ourselves into? I have thirty years service this year and have not regretted a minute of it, but I am finally retiring rather than get mixed up in this upcoming train wreck. Unfortunately, my son who also serves does not have this option and will have to endure a deployment to this mess. Whatever led us to this point is moot, it's Obamas war now and he has pushed the throttle to keep this train going despite all the evidence and information that to achieve his desired objectives is way beyond reach of our manpower and financial capability in this wasteland. Counter to what the POTUS's spouse said about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life, I have never been so fearful and distressed of our future based on the way we are going now.