What Price Afghanistan?
"The narrative … has been too negative."
So says Defense Secretary Robert Gates of political and press commentary about the war in Afghanistan. It reminds him of the pessimism of June 2007, before the Iraqi surge began to succeed, said Gates.
But the narrative is coming now not just from critics of the war but stalwart defenders. John McCain says the war effort could be headed for "crisis" and holds President Obama responsible for announcing a timetable for withdrawal starting next summer.
And how optimistic can Americans be when, last month, in the ninth year of our longest war, the U.S. field commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said the Taliban have fought us to a draw.
Eight years ago, the Taliban seemed finished.
Since then, we have poured in scores of thousands of troops, spent $300 billion, lost 1,000 soldiers and seen thousands more wounded. Yet, the Taliban have never been stronger or operated more broadly.
Unfortunately, the narrative the Pentagon deplores is rooted in reality.
The battle for Marjah, said to be a dress rehearsal for June’s decisive Battle of Kandahar, appears not to have been the triumph advertised. The Afghan government and police failed to follow up and take over the Marjah district. The Taliban continue to execute those working with the Americans.
Kandahar, with 800,000 people, is 10 times as populous as Marjah and the spiritual capital of the Taliban.
And we now learn the Battle of Kandahar will not take place in June.
Indeed, it is not going to be a battle at all, but a struggle for the hearts of the people, to persuade them to rise up against the Taliban, work with the Americans, and transfer their loyalty to Kabul and President Hamid Karzai.
The people of Kandahar apparently do not want U.S. protection any more than they want a battle for the city. And how can President win their loyalty when his drug-lord brother, Wali Karzai, is the Al Capone of Kandahar?
As for President Karzai himself, after a Taliban rocket attack on his loya jirga, the national council, this month, he got rid of his interior minister and his intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, in the biggest shakeup of his time in office. Both men had strong ties to the Americans, and Karzai is said to have suspected that their first loyalty was to the Americans.
Shown evidence of the Taliban role in the attack on the loya jirga, says Saleh, Karzai told him he thinks the Americans were behind it.
Karzai, says Saleh, has lost all confidence that the United States and NATO have the perseverance to see the war through, and he is working in secret back channels to cut a deal with the Taliban.
From Harvard researcher Matt Waldman of the London School of Economics, reported in the London Telegraph, comes the explosive charge that Pakistani Intelligence is now fully collaborating with the Taliban.
On June 16, The New York Times reported that Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai massacre, is operating in Afghanistan, attacking Indian aid workers. Like the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba received early support from Pakistani intelligence.
What is going on in Afghanistan?
It appears that Pakistan, by maintaining ties to the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, wants to ensure that if and when the Americans do depart, as Obama signaled we would begin to do next July, Afghanistan will move into Islamabad’s orbit, not New Delhi’s.
For the United States and NATO, however, casualties are rising to the highest levels of the war. June is shaping up as the bloodiest month ever.
While Barack Obama has promised a review of U.S. strategy and policy in December, at the present rate, hundreds more young Americans will by then have given up their lives.
For what?
To succeed in creating in Afghanistan a country where the Taliban have been driven permanently from power and there is no chance of al-Qaeda’s return, we need a government in Kabul and an Afghan army and police that can follow up U.S. military gains by taking control, protecting the population and providing social reforms.
We don’t have that government. We have, instead, a regime that has no confidence we will stay the course and is thus dealing behind our backs with the enemy who is killing our troops.
It is simply not credible that the United States and its NATO allies, some of whom — like the Dutch — are pulling out, can prevail in this war in 12 months so America can begin coming home, as Obama has promised, unless Obama is willing to write Afghanistan off.
If he is, he should tell us now and save those Americans lives.
If he is not willing to see Afghanistan fall, he should tell us what it will take, and how long, to avoid a defeat and win this war.
For saying the U.S. can succeed in the next 12 months in what we have failed to accomplish, at a rising cost in blood and money, for the last eight years, is not credible.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
Read more by Patrick J. Buchanan
- What Should Americans Die For? – May 16th, 2013
- Who Are the War Criminals in Syria? – May 6th, 2013
- Their War, Not Ours – April 29th, 2013
- Is War With North Korea Inevitable? – April 4th, 2013
- Goading Gullible America Into War – March 21st, 2013
KingLouis
June 18th, 2010 at 5:56 am
Will someone please tell me why the heck we are fighting in Afghanistan? No oil pipeline is worth all of this. Making sure Karsai stays warlord of Kabul is not worth all of this. And the idea that a handful of poor Afghans living in a cave was such an extreme threat to us that we had to spend all of this treasure and all of this blood to conquer the whole damn country was always ridiculous. Worst case, have some intel guys keep an eye them and some special forces guys raid them sometimes and bring everyone else home.
Even if the story about mineral riches is true, that's no good reason to be doing all of this. If America accepts that as a reason to stay in this war, then all that says is that America has become a nation of pirates that uses its military to go around the world stealing other nations resources. Is that really the America that our founding fathers shed their blood to create? Hardly not.
These are the scary wars. The ones that go on and on and on for no apparent reasons. The wars that get a life of their own because retreat is not permissible and instead one reason after another is found to keep fighting and fighting and fighting. That's when war becomes a true horror
Good strategy is spending the resources of the nation where its important. No way on earth Afghanistan has been worth all of this. In fact, this is the sort of disastrously bad strategic decisions that squander a nation's treasure on a fool's errand that usually mark the fall of great empires.
What on earth is in Afghanistan that's been worth nine years of this nonsense and all of these lives and all of that money.
KnowNothing
June 18th, 2010 at 6:08 am
What's called in the US press as the 'Taliban' has always been largely the Pushtun tribe. This is one of the major clans of Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan … since the Brits drew the boundary line at the top of the pretty mountains instead of along any tribal areas.
So, to say that there will be a country devoid of any support for the Taliban is largely the equivalent of saying that the country will have no support for members of one of its largest tribes. To expect the Pashtun to support the warlords from other tribes who undoubtedly have little love for the Pushtun is silly.
Yet, that's apparently the US goal. To completely erase any support for one of the largest tribes in the country, even to the point where members of that large tribe now support warlords from other tribes. What total nonsense.
Pakistan has always viewed having Afghanistan ruled by the pro-Russia or pro-Iranian tribes as a threat to its national security. This is why Pakistan has always pushed for the friendly Pushtun trible who's people span the border line to be the rulers of Afgnanistan. Having tribes who ally with their enemies in Afghanistan is something that they don't want.
So, Pakistan has always supported the Pushtun, and thus always supported the Taliban. Pakistan was doing this back in the 90's when the Pushtun took power, and they've never really stopped. The US thought that with money and pressure that they could get the Pakistan government to pursue a course that over the long term they viewed as contrary to their own national security interests. Pakistan might have taken our money for awhile claiming to do this, but it was always unlikely that all covert support had stopped,. And it was never something that could last. Pakistan has a national interest in having the Taliban/Pushtuns in power in Afghanistan. Or at least enough in control of the provinces that neighbor Pakistan, which are also the Pushtun regions, so that Pakistan didn't feel threatened.
The real question is why are we staying there for the next year. None of this will change in that time. We'll get more Americans killed. We'll spend billions more of our tax money when people at home are struggling through the worst economic downturn in the great depression. And if we leave a year from now it will be exactly the same as if we just left today.
ghouri
June 18th, 2010 at 10:20 am
These are hypothsies under which you can decieve your own people. The reality is Afghan Pakhtun are nationalist have nothing to do with Islam. Only a hand full people believe and the west and America claims to be Muslims by name yes but by deed no. A pakhtun before he dies takes oath from childrens to take revenge.
Pakistan will remain victim of US policy and is a victim since 1954 and there is no doubt an unreliable friend.
Naturally New York times is paid for that to publish such stories to get more and more money from state department. They sell US policy to the public but today in the age of Internet every thing has changed.
The whole american policy is being run by pentagone and the whole war in Agghanistan and Irak is for the defence industry which was under srtong financial crisis in 2000. Eisenhower in his speach in 1952 said: The day defence forces and defence industry work together will be sad day for America and now that have come true.
This is a major problem even in developing countries.
Elvis
June 18th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
"Will someone please tell me why the heck we are fighting in Afghanistan? "
Answer: what better place to have an endless war. THAT is the true aim of our bloodthirsty masters. I don't know about you, but this country has been at war as long as I have been alive. It is the status quo of these filthy vulcan pigdogs.
jeff_davis
June 18th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
"We" — meaning the US taxpayer's dollars and the cannon-fodder grunts — are fighting in Afghanistan for ego, careers, and dollars. Egos and careers for politicians and bureaucrats — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gates, and now Obama — ego and careers for the upper echelons of the officer corps — Petraeus, McChrystal, et al — and dollars for the defense sector.
Bush went into Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden (Remember him?). Then, when Osama slipped away, Bush was left with nothing but his Dick Cheney in his hand. From that point, for Bush it was either admit failure — and bring the troops home — or look around for someone else to shoot. Neither Bush nor Cheney, Petreaus nor McChrystal, or Obama for that matter, have the strength of character to confront their own failure, so instead "we" get war to protect egos, war to save careers.
jeff_davis
June 18th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
"…have some intel guys keep an eye them and some special forces guys raid them sometimes and bring everyone else home. …"
That would have been the smart move, but not the move that keeps the officer corps happy or the billions flowing.
"…Even if the story about mineral riches is true, that's no good reason to be doing all of this. If America accepts that as a reason to stay in this war, then all that says is that America has become a nation of pirates that uses its military to go around the world stealing other nations resources. Is that really the America that our founding fathers shed their blood to create? Hardly not. …"
The founding fathers are long dead. The country — the republic of the founding fathers — if it ever existed, is long gone. What you see is what you get.
camus10
June 19th, 2010 at 2:36 am
Buchanan has written a swell column. But.
What needs emphasis is missing. Afghanistan and the Pashtuns live in abject poverty. While pentagon friendly contracts loot the US taxpayers, development has received scant attention. Af-Pak refugees, the displaced have not received the attention they deserve, largely from Nato partners. Civilian deaths are regularly covered up. Attacks on convoys supplying Nato should be a test of local loyalty and our failed efforts at nation building
Novista
June 20th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Hmmm … "avoid a defeat and win this war" …
If you lose a war, you generally know who the enemy is. The last time the U.S. declared war was against Germany and Japan. When America walks away from the 'graveyard of empires', who will sign the peace treaty? The Afghan people, various warlords, the ostensible government,and various cheerleaders on the sidelines?
It looks like the astounding success of the 21st century has been Osama bin Laden's — so I really would like a definition of exactly what winning the war means. In the unlikely event.