I have to admit that I don’t have a very strong opinion about Afghanistan. I don’t understand the situation at all, I understand that, unlike Iraq, there may have been good reasons to go in, and I also understand that those reasons may or may not have anything to do with whether or not the United States should stay there and that staying there costs a lot of money and demands a huge sacrifice from our servicemen.
In any case, I was impressed with this speech about why we should get out, from my Congressman, Eric Massa:
aimai
Congratulations for having Eric Massa as your Congressman.
aimai
Zifnab
Ditto. We need more of that guy.
Seebach
So, when Afghanistan is still an ongoing war in 2012 and 2016, what does it mean for domestic politics?
The Grand Panjandrum
If indeed it is necessary to continue the war in Afghanistan then the burden must be shared. By all of us.
Bring back the draft. Lets see how long the war remains vital to our immediate national security interests.
soonergrunt
I’m at work, so I can’t see the video of the Congressman’s speech.
Also, I’d use up my whole lunch hour and then some to articulate why I don’t think we should leave Afghanistan. I’ll come back to this subject this evening, assuming that I don’t spend more time with my kids or play with my dog, or get distracted by something shiny.
This is a pretty emotional subject for a lot of people. I’ll try to remember, and I ask that everyone else remember as well, that our disagreements are honestly held, and that we honor each other by airing them.
Morbo
@Seebach: It means we’re still
throwing lives away so Washington Post columnists can be satisfied with the size of their dickswinning in the battle of wills.DougJ
This is a pretty emotional subject for a lot of people. I’ll try to remember, and I ask that everyone else remember as well, that our disagreements are honestly held, and that we honor each other by airing them.
I agree.
JackieBinAZ
My son leaves that shithole in 10 days. It’s been a long fucking year!
Spiffy McBang
I don’t disagree with the guy, but this rhetorical device of saying “2,950 days” over and over is pretty tiresome and unnecessary. There are an awful lot of useful things he could say in such limited time without beating that point into the dirt.
geg6
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I couldn’t agree more. It is the lack of a draft that allows shit like Iraq and Afghanistan to drag on and on, with no one in power suffering a damn bit from it, either personally or politically (with a damn very few exceptions).
I’d also like to see the draft as something with no deferments whatsoever. If you are married, have kids, in college…I don’t give a damn. So are all the reservists and National Guardsmen who have served ad infinitum over the last 6 years. If you’re disabled, you can do community service of some kind.
Bring back the draft and say goodbye to never ending war. And that’s a guarantee.
The Grand Panjandrum
@JackieBinAZPlease thank your son for his service. Will you let us know when he has returned safely?
Shell
What’s the deal with Bitsy? Is the final decision coming soon?
Bad Horse's Filly
@JackieBinAZ: Thank you, your family and him for his service. When one member serves, the entire family serves.
The Grand Panjandrum
@geg6:
I agree wholeheartedly. No CO’s either. They can serve as medics and chaplains assistants.
RedKitten
All I know is that our country will be some damn glad to get our troops out of there. The whole situation feels as though we were at a bar with a friend who got sucker punched, and after wading into the fray and taking a few lumps, we looked around, only to see our friend at the bar across the street, sucker punching someone else. So it’d be rather nice if you either a) came back and helped us finish the fight, or b) gave us your blessing to get the fuck out of there.
GuyFromOhio
@soonergrunt:
Wisdom.
FWIW, Massa replaced Bush-bot Randy Kuhl in a predominantly rural District in “mid” Western NY. It was not an easy task, and I supported him for both campaigns (he lost the first in 2006 by a whisker). Rep Massa is an honorable veteran and would not pick his position lightly. Agree with him or not, we do well to understand what it is he has to say, and his motivation for speaking so.
PeakVT
@The Grand Panjandrum: Draft? How about just raising taxes to pay for the war? $2.00/gal surcharge on gas ought to do it. The Repukes would become isolationists overnight.
Seebach
I’d be amenable to staying if I actually believed we would do any of the things required to “win”. But because we will never end the drug war, provide generous foreign aid, or support true democratic reform in the Middle East… what are we left with doing? I suppose we could carpet bomb Waziristan with nuclear weapons until we’re sure the Taliban is ground to dust. And I’m sure that wouldn’t have any negative consequences.
bago
Slightly OT, but I just made the front page of Wonkette! woot!
stickler
Yeah, there’s the whole problem with that word, “win.”
Just like back in the Vietnam era. What the hell does “win” look like in Afghanistan, and is what we are doing going to help get us there? What will that “win” cost, in blood and treasure? Is that cost worth the value of the “win?”
Nobody has a fecking clue what the answers to those questions actually look like. So we stay, more of our boys die, we kill more Afghans, and we burn vast piles of money (that we’ve borrowed from China).
What a disaster.
Ian
We unfortunately lost the “war” in Afghanistan back in December 2001, when U.S. military commanders who did not want to endanger the lives of their servicemen and women, used the Northern Alliance and other warlords troops to try to take the Torah Bora region. Because of the lack of equipment and U.S. support the warlords troops were unable to pin down and defeat a large segment of militant fighters who escaped to Pakistan. Among them was believed to have been Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
Everything since then has been about trying to build a new government, an endeavor that has failed completely. Hamid Karzai’s brother is a drug lord. The election process is rigged. The government routinely flouts human rights and has some aspects of Sharia enshrined in its constitution. The sooner we call it a day with this mess, the better.
dSquib
Well… I don’t doubt the guy’s good intentions, and I agree that the mission in Afghanistan is pure folly, I can’t help but sense a slight resentment towards the Afghani people here, not just Karzai, when decrying that we are fighting to install a “Jeffersonian democracy” while they will not. I’m sure he wouldn’t downplay the loss of life on their side, and the economic toll it has taken on them, and he deliberately used his 5 minutes to focus in on the waste and loss of life incurred on the American side, but there’s nothing wrong with Afghanis not wanting to fight and die for Jeffersonian democracy. I’m not sure they know what Jeffersonian democracy is. They certainly didn’t ask for the Americans or anyone else to come on over and pop it in place for them. I think they mostly see it as an occupation, much the same as any other experienced by them or any number of countries in the middle east in the past. And whether that is an accurate assessment of what’s going on, you can’t blame them for thinking that, particularly given their history, and you can’t blame those who want the US to leave on that basis.
Seebach
Just like back in the Vietnam era. What the hell does “win” look like in Afghanistan, and is what we are doing going to help get us there? What will that “win” cost, in blood and treasure? Is that cost worth the value of the “win?”
I assume it’s the same way we would win in Iraq:
Create a secular Afghani democracy that is pro-globalization and pro-Israel.
Except there are problems.
An Afghani democracy is unlikely to be secular, pro-Israel, and open to Halliburton profiteering.
A secular, pro-Israel, and pro-Halliburton Afghanistan will need a dictator. So we can install a Saddam Hussein of Afghanistan.
Yay.
jwb
@The Grand Panjandrum: Can we start by drafting the teabaggers and putting their energy to useful work?
dSquib
I’d like to see some kind of assessment or estimation of what a post US pullout Taliban would actually look like. I read it was estimated only 10% of what constitutes the Taliban are considered the “hard core” and the rest are more or less just a regular anti-occupation force. Theoretically, most of those 90% go back about their everyday business, though many are no doubt Taliban “sympathisers”.
flukebucket
I can’t wait for soonergrunt to get finished playing with the dog and the kids.
I say we get the hell out of there and give the money we save to Greg Mortenson. What he is doing over there is more apt to change the region than anything the military will ever be able to do.
But we are going to stay. There is no doubt in my mind about that. Not only stay but just like John’s vegetable soup we are gonna kick it up a notch.
Seebach
Nobody ever answered by question on how the fuck we would have a secular, democratic, pro-Israel, pro-Globalization Iraq, either. I wonder if that was a sign.
dSquib
Obama just needs to declare victory and leave. Fuck it. The neocons would be too baffled to object. And why not? No one has an answer to what victory actually is, so I say it’s entirely up in the air. The first person to define it with any force gets to keep the word. He could define it as occurring on even the flimsiest of grounds.
Woody
All the king’s horses, or all Obama’s men, will not put Afghanistan ‘together’ again.
The only “national interest” that is satisfied there, other than profiteering by the military/industrial complex, is the stationing of USer tactical military aircraft where they can keep under their gun and bomb-sights, the Chinese, Russians, and the Indians, all of whom have easy, local access to the great, trans-Caspian mineral/energy basin which we, being located the best part of a world away, do not have but, in the spirit of the Great Game and energy hegemony we need to have forces somewhere around there. Afghanistan, being a “failed” State was/is ideal. for this purpose, as a land-locked aircraft carrier.
Seebach
No one has an answer to what victory actually is, so I say it’s entirely up in the air.
Obama needs to capture or kill bin Laden. That will drive the right absolutely batshit. Then, he can declare victory and leave. I think that’s the only way we can get away with it.
stras
Reinstating the draft should totally solve everything, because as we all know, the United States never got into endless, bloody quagmires back when it had a draft.
MikeJ
Sorry, there’s no way the Republicans are going to let a Democrat declare victory in anything. They’ll fight it tooth and nail and point to the way he’s decimated the US military. It won’t matter if any of it is true. Some people say one thing. Some say another. Who can tell what the truth is?
RedKitten
I really have to watch less TV. I was watching A Baby Story (don’t judge me), and it was about this woman whose husband died in Iraq while she was pregnant. It was heartbreaking to see her giving birth to her baby, on what should have been a joyous occasion, and to see her crying the entire time because her husband would never, ever see that beautiful baby boy.
Fuck the politicians who are so goddamned cavalier about sending people to fight and die. Fuck them sideways with a rusty tire iron.
Seebach
I would honestly prefer that Osama be captured so we can put him on trial and restore the American justice system, but I could accept killing him, putting his head on a pike, and shoving the pike up Lieberman’s ass if it would get the right and the media to shut the fuck up and die in a fire.
Splitting Image
I’ve been feeling for quite awhile the the longer we all stay in Afghanistan, the more it turns into Iraq. Remember how the main argument against going into Iraq was that the real enemies were in Afghanistan and it was stupid to open up another front somewhere else if Al Qaeda wasn’t there?
The longer Al Qaeda is based in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan, the less justifiable it seems to remain in Afghanistan without going into Pakistan. Granted they share a border and Afghanistan has to be part of the solution to all of this, and granted that going into Pakistan presents its own teeny little problems, I think that a “surge” in Afghanistan won’t accomplish much more than the “surge” in Iraq. At best we’ll help stabilize a country that would be more stable by far if we were out of it completely.
ruemara
This war was over when Kharzai declared himself victor a few days ago. We went there to “help set up a democracy” and wound up creating 2 corrupt islamic republics that will be teetering on the edge of civil war for the next 15 years if a strong warlord doesn’t come in and make it a dictatorship again. Absolutely Afghanistan is a failure and so is Iraq. The fact that we also have killed easily a hundred thousand men women and children along with several thousand american servicepersons makes it a friggin tragedy.
Declare it whatever, but just leave.
geg6
@stras:
It’s all fine to snark, but we didn’t have endless, bloody quagmires when we had a draft that was a real draft. The draft during Vietnam was filled with all kinds of outs for people with resources (college deferments and cushy stateside reserve and NG postings) and that war was, by and large, much like this one because it was mainly the poor and working classes who fought it. So it was never a real draft. Reinstate the draft as it was during WWII and we wouldn’t see these neocon military adventures over nothing happen.
ET
As time has gone by I have become more ambivalent.
If we hadn’t gone to Iraq we might have been able to affect change. But we did and we have to deal with the situation we have and not the one that we may wish for. The attention and resources went to Iraq while Afghanistan was allowed to deteriorate from a certain level of neglect. A year or so ago I would have been more about staying in longer, but I am not sure at this point that is good for a host of reasons. I wonder if that is what is going at a high level at the White House. A lot has changed in a year, conversely a lot hasn’t changed – both mean (at least to me) that the situation is becoming untenable.
Xanthippas
I don’t think that’s right. It’s the lack of a draft that allows us to get into these wars in the first place without much forethought; only the people who’ve already signed up, and the people who will sign up because they confidently believe the war is just and will be short-lived, will suffer. Public opinion has turned sharply against the war in Afghanistan as more people have begun to pay attention to it. The problem is political inertia makes it all but impossible to bring a swift end to any war that isn’t going well.
dSquib
But just as it was never necessary to invade and bombard an entire country to go about that, it is not necessary to remain in Afghanistan to do it. I’m not even convinced it’s much of an advantage.
The idea of Obama capturing Bin Laden is just delicious, though. The right would find a way to criticize him in the process of course, even if he caught Osama bare handed, dragging him out of his cave into the light of day. But I’m pretty sure there would be a deafly silence from them for a good couple of… days.
MikeJ
Kharzai didn’t declare himself victor. The independent election commission noted that nobody was running against him and thought holding an election in those circumstances was a waste of time and money.
stras
What I always love about these “let’s bring back the draft” proposals is that the people pushing them always say that this time – THIS time – boy, there’s not gonna be any loopholes! All the rich kids and the well-connected senator’s grandkids will all end up the same as all the kids from the ghetto! And I have to wonder if these people have actually thought about this for more than two minutes.
In any draft you’re going to have medical deferments at the very least, because there’s always going to be people with actual medical conditions such that they can’t effectively go running around shooting things. And you’re going to have desk jobs, because the military is a giant bureaucracy, and like any giant bureaucracy it requires many, many desk jobs. And the people who hand out those deferments and desk jobs are going to be susceptible to pressure from people with money and power, as they’ve always been susceptible to pressure from people with money and power. And so any future draft will work just like the old one, where people with money and connections end up protected, and people without it get screwed.
Saying you’re going to have a draft without loopholes, that affects all classes equally, is kind of like saying you’re going to have a war that only kills bad people, or a death penalty that only kills the guilty.
geg6
@Xanthippas:
Well, I kinda see them as the same thing. We wouldn’t get into stupid wars in insane places that are objectively and obviously going to be quagmires that drag on and on. And the fact that no one but the poor and working class who volunteer suffer the consequences is just more motivation to allow it to drag on and on and on.
Maude
Has anyone read about what happened to the British soldiers? Read it and weep.
I don’t see any sense in having combat soldiers there. The military personnel involved with reconstruction are targets and get killed.
I wonder if it is just too late to do anything. Bush f’d it up so badly that I don’t think any good can come of staying there.
We could be saying the same things we are saying today, 10 years from now.
stras
It’s all fine to snark, but we didn’t have endless, bloody quagmires when we had a draft that was a real draft.
You’ve heard of this thing called “the Korean War,” right?
Russ
It may be a big mistake to just pull all together.
< a href=”http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/10/senate-testimony-the-importance-of-pakistan.html”New Yorker
Russ
Well, I messed that post up all together.
Corner Stone
@bago: Are you “Randy C.”, or are you the sign with pubic hair on it?
dSquib
It’s quite amazing really. An entire war just playing in the background for, about 7 out of its 8 years of duration. At least there was the “domino theory” in Vietnam, weak as it was. Now the escalators have a little something with the Pakistani nukes angle. But in terms of bigger picture and so on, and given that talk of bin Laden kind of dried up after it got too embarrassing, just what so-called “necessity” was the war running on for most of this time exactly?
Xanthippas
And BTW, I still support the war in Afghanistan…barely.
I think we were justified in invading and ousting the Taliban, and establishing a viable Afghan state seemed a necessity otherwise Al Qaeda and the Taliban would return. And it seemed possible for awhile, didn’t it? The Taliban were hated, and it seemed there were just enough centers of power that could be cobbled together into something approaching a legitimate government.
Today though? Well, we’re fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan while Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban has turned western Pakistan into a handy base camp by which to launch attacks into Afghanistan and at the heart of Pakistan. It seems absurd to imagine putting together a legitimate government in the wake of the fraudulent elections (and our Kabuki theatrics with Karzai.) And defeating the Taliban is out of the question. At this point the best, absolute BEST, we can hope for, is a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban that excludes Al Qaeda from Afghan soil. Which I think is worth fighting for, but I’ll admit that I have no idea what the hell we’re supposed to do after that.
Invade Pakistan??
Brachiator
I was somewhat disappointed that Massa’s speech didn’t really get into questions of foreign policy or national interest, but was more about numbers, and not always relevantly so. He mentioned that the US was only involved in World War I for 584 days, but we entered the war late, after other nations had suffered large numbers of casualties, so it was a faulty comparison on many levels.
That said, I suppose we could pull out of Afghanistan since it is unclear that we could satisfy the minimum of objectives.
We want bin Laden, but he is probably in Pakistan.
If we pull out and the Taliban take over again, there is no guarantee that they will not become a haven again for Al Qaeda or another group. I’m not even sure that bribes would work. Diplomacy? I don’t think so. Covert operations? You don’t want to know.
On the other hand, should the Taliban take over again, I do not doubt that they would re-introduce the religious reign of terror and extreme intolerance that marked their previous regime. They promise this with their own words in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan that they are attempting to control.
And while Afghanistan may not directly be our responsibility, to let this happen again certainly would give lie to the fantasy that we Americans have any claim to a moral high ground, but instead are little more than a bunch of spoiled and pampered children who only care that life is good for us, and who love to indulge in navel-gazing displays at how exquisitely “sensitive” we are to the sufferings of others, while refusing to offer any practical help if it might be messy.
John Redworth
face it, this war is a lose-lose for Obama no matter what happens. If he pulls the troops the right will claim he is another “yellow belly Jimmy Carter” and if somehow the problems in that place get fixed it will be attributed to the steady support by the GOP over the “yellow belly terrorist loving damnocrats.” Somehow Bush will be seen as the brain behind the victory.
Seebach
One obstacle to the emergence of such a Pakistan is the deeply held view within the Pakistani security services that the United States will abandon the region once it has defeated or disabled Al Qaeda.
Maybe Pakistan’s security services should have thought of that before creating the Taliban. In all seriousness though, they’re right. Even if we did win, we’d bail without solving any other problems.
Are there any alternatives to staying forever, though? I love Atrios’ metaphor of shitting the bed. It’s very hard to unshit the bed.
stras
For those who still defend the continuation of this war, I’d like to know what they think the US and NATO are supposed to be accomplishing. What is the mission in Afghanistan supposed to be? It’s certainly not to establish a stable democracy in Afghanistan, because that’s absurd. But if the notion is to set up a stable, “Western-friendly” puppet dictatorship – well, that’s pretty much a pipe dream, too. Is the goal to “eliminate the Taliban”? What does “eliminating the Taliban” even mean? Is the goal to kill every single Taliban leader, and anyone who might replace him? How do you do that without killing all of the Taliban, everywhere? How do you do that without basically ethnically cleansing the Pashto in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
We’re playing a global game of whack-a-mole here, and it’s insane, and it’s costing thousands of human lives, and in the end it’s only going to generate more blowback and more fuel for future terrorist attacks. If the U.S. government really wants to protect its citizens, it should just stop killing people.
Rick Taylor
If we cannot come up with a clear coherent compelling reason why we need to be there, then we shouldn’t be there.
Corner Stone
@Seebach:
Ahh! The time-tested Hancock method of dispute resolution. I like what you did there.
Xanthippas
Power-sharing with the Taliban. Problem is, I’m not sure the Obama administration knows or will admit to that yet.
MikeJ
I was listening to an interview on the beeb the other day in which they said that there were only about 750 hard core taliban, another 5000 that were sympathetic to them but not fanatical about it. The balance didn’t care either way. Bored young men who wanted something to do and wanted to make some money.
So yeah, with good enough intel you could probably kill off those 750.
dSquib
There you have it. And we should leave immediately. No dithering. How does the burden lay on those who simply don’t think we should be half way across the world fighting a war to prove that everything that will come after will be a-ok, when the situation with us THERE is unbelievably shit, and there is no reason to think we can stop any of the bad things that we are told will happen if we leave.
We leave, if someone can think of a real strategy whereby we can achieve all these lovely goals for Afghanistan then fine, let’s hear it. And if you don’t have one right now, we’ll still be listening after we leave.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Brachiator:
Is it our business how the people of Afghanistan are ruled? I think it is a damn shame they live in that cesspool of ignorance and hate but it really is not for us to determine how they govern themselves.
The US has a long and sordid history of interventionist policies that have not served us well. We had such an interest in Afghanistan after the attacks of 9/11, but the last administration botched that as well. I see no compelling argument for continuing our military presence there. I wish the people of Afghanistan well, but they must sovle their own problems.
dSquib
A start would be to unwind the general perception that “the Taliban” as we understand it in its current insurgent incarnation is some homogenous bloc, with absolutely perfectly aligned ideology and interests.
Fergus Wooster
Hate to be this guy, but:
1) An Afghan is a native of Afghanistan.
2) Afghani refers to either a) foreign jihadists – mostly of Arab background – joining the mujahedin cause in Afghanistan, or b) a particularly wicked strain of cannabis indica.
Afghans get really pissed off when referred to as Afghanis.
Nutella
The U.S. extraordinary rendition program, which is the nice name for our contention that we can and will kidnap, torture, and kill anyone anywhere in the world and that we will be ‘disappointed’ if the Italians, for example, object to us kidnapping people off the street in Milan, pretty much killed any claim to a moral high ground for us. We’re thugs.
MikeJ
@Fergus Wooster: Is a caring friend of the afghanis a kind bud?
Xanthippas
I agree, but by Taliban I do mean those who are loosely aligned under the Taliban banner (and I think anybody who pays attention to the war realizes that’s what the term means.) But also, I think a power-sharing arrangement would take into account those loosely aligned interests.
I should say that the term “power-sharing” really only means giving up on the idea that we can completely exclude the Taliban and the interests they represent from power. I support it because I’m not interested either in simply propping up Karzai or his successors long enough to claim victory and leave, as such a government would almost certainly fall to the Taliban at some point, or be so weak as to be useless.
bago
@Corner Stone: I would be Randy C. behind the phone.
Russ
The Taliban, as told by a released reporter captured by the Taliban, are now very involved in the AQ movement and are lead by some pretty viscous characters. Meaning, if we leave Afghanistan, who knows what horrors they will inflict on the locals, especially minorities like the Haraza, that have been in doing a lot of our dirty work. As also reported by long time reporter, Amed Rashed, the Taliban is a growing phenomena, and is inflicting other countries more and more with their radical policies.
The Moar You Know
Given that the last two administrations have provided us, the American people, with enough information and justification so that a relatively well-informed person such as yourself can say “I don’t understand the situation at all”, would you be willing to go there to fight and die?
Would you be willing to send others to do the same?
Would you be willing to spend the nation into billions of dollars of debt obligation, not understanding the situation at all?
I thought not.
I would like to see us leave that empire-destroying pit of hell tomorrow, but am willing to change my mind if someone can provide me with a really good reason for us to be spending blood and American lives there.
I look very much forward to what soonergrunt has to tell us. I would like to submit that it be front-paged.
DBrown
@Brachiator: You can’t really believe your nonsense that “to let this happen again certainly would give lie to the fantasy that we Americans have any claim to a moral high ground …” Please, when have we ever been anything but a self interest country? We have invaded and installed numerous dictators (most central American countries!, Philippines and this ignores our current murderous invasions), and military controlled police states (South Korea, Vietnam); then add causing the murder of a number of heads of states so our companies could make more profits (see Iran, Chile). Cheney was just one more in a long tradition. While the USA is not like the really bad countries of the past but still, we are none-the-less really lousy bastards that have killed many hundreds of thousands just to make a profit for big oil or other corporations. Get real. Your idea about the US is a fantasy.
licensed to kill time
@Fergus Wooster: An Afghani also is used to refer to the currency of Afghanistan. I traveled there in the late 60’s and 70’s, had some leftover money and used it once at an Afghan restaurant in LA, buried it in the tip money. You should have seen the faces of the staff – the whole kitchen came out and wanted to know where we got the Afghanis, they were thrilled!
May I say that Afghanistan was an incredibly beautiful country, very similar to New Mexico in climate, geography and some of the architecture (mud/adobe and wooden windowsills). The people were friendly and not crazy Islamonuts at all; they had respect for “People of the Book” if you were Christian or Jewish. I would very much like to see it returned to peace and a measure of sanity, though I have no idea how that can be achieved after the Hand of Bush that absolutely screwed up every goddamned thing he ever touched with it pointed in their direction. I hope he rots in hell.
dSquib
I think one major problem that makes people hesitant to call for withdrawal, is that by now we know of the Taliban’s absolute brutality at its peak, its absolutely unflinching intolerance just to people even enjoying life. It shouldn’t be downplayed just how messed up these people are and have been. You instinctively think of how you like to think you would react, say, if you saw someone clubbing a woman for showing too much of her face in public, and you felt you had the power to stop it, but this hardly translates to the reality of how we can and cannot deal with Afghanistan. For me, morality is not relative, but moral responsibility is relative to one’s power to act. The truth is, there’s very little we can do directly to quickly end the suffering of Afghanistan, except possibly facilitate refugee movements OUT, and try to increase the flow of trade and wealth into the country, and to set an example by not killing people. None of which is terribly satisfying and guarenteeing of any instant payoff, but in this case it’s really all we can hope to do, at least, without doing something worse than even the Taliban could achieve.
RedKitten
True. I have a hard time saying the word “Afghan” without thinking of my friend’s slightly dotty grandmother, who kept inadvertently calling “afghans” (the knitted quilt) “africans”. Hearing her say, “Oh it was such a cold night I had to sleep with two africans!” never failed to delight.
soonergrunt
Something’s happened on Fort Hood. 3 shooters, 7 dead, 12 wounded last I checked.
Brachiator
@Xanthippas:
I have not seen anything anywhere that suggests that the Taliban are remotely interested in sharing power with anyone, or that any group that we support would be strong enough to hold their own against them.
And by the way, I note that the Taliban are not a monolith.
Heck, we’re not seeing any power-sharing in Iraq despite our attempts to nudge the Shia, Sunni and Kurds in that direction.
The Grand Panjandrum – Is it our business how the people of Afghanistan are ruled? I think it is a damn shame they live in that cesspool of ignorance and hate but it really is not for us to determine how they govern themselves.
It takes an astounding degree of blindness to suggest that people who succumb to dictatorship are somehow “governing themselves.”
I don’t necessarily see neo-isolationism as a solution.
And funny thing about “cesspools.” Sometimes what festers there can threaten you if even they are not in your back yard, so it is often worth the risk to attempt to clean them up even if they are not directly your responsibility.
El Tiburon
You have no opinion, huh?
Easy come, easy go.
Like, whatever, dude.
So we can’t get you to decide what you think of invading and occupying yet another brown country that really did nothing to us; killing their civilians including women and children; having our service-members die; alienating yet more people who will vow to kill us all for our deeds; wasting billions of more dollars.
You just can’t seem to get off the fence on this one, huh?
Well, hey, go get a Starbucks and get back to us when you’ve come up with something.
Alright, okay then.
geg6
@stras:
Please, the length of the Korean War compared with that of Vietnam and Afghanistan? Korea was a nanosecond in comparison.
Korea 1950-1953
Vietnam 1964 (Americanization)-1975
Afghanistan 2001-???
Korea was not an endless quagmire. It was a quagmire, but 3 years is not endless.
Fergus Wooster
@MikeJ:
Very kind indeed. Noted for fluffiness and red hairs.
liberal
@Brachiator:
Shorter Brachiator: let’s occupy the whole world.
Jody
I remember telling people back in the day that invading Iraq was a horrible idea, because we needed to focus on Afghanistan, and that a two front war would be disastrous.
One particular response that sticks in my head was “It’s not two fronts. They’re both in the Middle East, stupid.”
My mind is still reeling from that one.
liberal
@Brachiator:
LOL! Practical?
You’re obviously totally clueless about how many US servicemen it would take to actually, truly pacify Afghanistan, based on standard figures for that kind of operation.
Did you know Afg has a larger population than Iraq?
Trinity
OT – 7 dead, 12 injured in Fort Hood shooting
tde
How much will it cost us to stay there for 10 years?
Funny that people are so concerned about the cost of the proposed healthcare bill but don’t make a peep about the cost of occupying another country on the other side of the world.
liberal
@Splitting Image:
Now that’s an understatement.
auntieeminaz
@The Moar You Know: I second the suggestion that soonergrunt’s perspective be front-paged.
LD50
@Russ:
That explains the sticky situation we’re now in.
LD50
@liberal:
Not according to Wikipedia. They claim 31 mil for Iraq, 28 mil for Afg.
Still, I’m surprised that they’re that close.
Can’t touch Iran’s 74 million.
Wile E. Quixote
@brachiator
So speaks another neo-conservative fuckhead. Seriously, this is the ultimate fallback argument used by every neo-con fuckhead when you discuss reducing American military presence in another country “Oh noes, neo-isolationism. Oh noes! Aiyeeeee.”
Next From Brachiator: Munich, appeasement, Hitler, Bear DNA, Where’s the Birth Certificate?
Do you have anything to offer other than stupid metaphors and endless support for getting US troops killed in AfPak?
LD50
@MikeJ:
Perhaps, but it’d probably take 15 years, in which time new people would have taken the places of all the ones who’d been killed.
Chickenhawk Generals
Let’s not forget how well Afghanistan went for the Soviet Union while WE were supporting the “Freedom Fighters” – i.e. The Taliban – till the Soviet’s left and we lost interest that is.
They don’t call it “The Graveyard of Empires” for nothing
Median
Persian
Alexander the Great
Seleucids
Indo-Greeks
Turks
Mongols
Britain
Russia
USA?
HumboldtBlue
DougJ may agree, I don’t.
You don’t have any argument to back up staying in Afghanistan that every chickenhawk war-cheerleading fuckwit has already trotted out, including my liberal Congressman.
Every single military excursion is based on economics, Folks may claim that we have established some sort of Jeffersonian Democracy in a land that neither wants or knows what the fuck it means.
Afghanistan , like Iraq, are just pawns in the great big oil/energy game and that means protecting American and Saudi oil/energy interests. All this vacuous bullshit about Democracy and nation-building is just that — unfettered bullshit. Large American oil and energy interests want their cut of profits paid for in the blood of American and Afghani human beings.
As that wager-shirking fucknut T. Boone Pickens said, Americans died for Iraqi oil now give the goddamned oil contracts to him and his buddies.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Trinity: This is horrible, I’m just reading about it now. But my second thought, after OMFG what’s going on? was, and forgive me if this is cold, but there goes the “these things wouldn’t happen if only everyone was armed” theory.
Seebach
Possibly true. But the best way to clean up a cesspool isn’t necessarily to defecate into it, and add a few gallons of DDT.
geg6
@Seebach:
This.
Little Macayla's Friend
Reposting my question from yesterday’s thread since it was at the end. And because the book with the first title isn’t a search return at Amazon, and the second is dated Oct. 20th, 2009.
Has anyone read “Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice” (in G.B.)?
Different title in a later ed. in U.S. – “A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malalai_Joya
I’m interested the most in the Afghans’ (and Iraqis’) opinions of the occupations.
/from trying to catch up on Juan Cole.
She is also the subject of sanitized U.S. CNN vs. international CNN interviews:
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/20…..of-2-cnns/
Includes comments.
Brick Oven Bill
There is no reason to have a troop presence interacting with Afghanis. Keep a remote air-base only. This is to prevent the Islamists from becoming too organized, and to deter the Russians from moving into Iran.
This war was escalated because of a debating tactic used in the primaries by President Obama. This war makes no sense.
Install and back a dictator. Or just pull out, leave a vacuum, and let that part of the world consume itself.
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
@ruemara:
.
With sorrow, fixed.
Zifnab
@Wile E. Quixote:
Yeah, remind me again when not flying halfway around the world to colonize a pair of hostile territories in a quixotic effort to end international terrorism became “isolationism”.
Really? Does anyone spouting this crap have even the shred of foreign policy experience necessary to know what “isolationism” means?
Talk to me about isolationism when we discuss repealing NAFTA. Or slap a tariff on Chinese imports. Freak’n ignorant wankers.
Brick Oven Bill
Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
-Sun Tzu
Jennifer
OT, but teabaggers arrested for refusing to leave Nancy Pelosi’s district congressional office.
Even MOAR schadenfreudelicious, they were arrested for protesting at the office she doesn’t even work out of – the Speaker’s office is in the Capitol.
*and* I expect to be given full credit for “schadenfreudelicious” in the BJ lexicon.
MikeJ
What hath Alan Moore wrought?
LD50
@Brick Oven Bill:
Wow. In BoB’s brain, it’s still 1972.
HyperIon
@dSquib wrote: I’d like to see some kind of assessment or estimation of what a post US pullout Taliban would actually look like.
Me, too. But in Iraq no one ever estimated what that pullout could look like either. Every time there’s a new blast in Iraq I wonder if that’s what we were to fear or was it something worse? There hasn’t been a bloodbath there YET. Of course there could be one tomorrow, I guess. But we sure heard rightwingers predict it. Is that what the mil folks thought also?
The most recent deaths of Brit soldiers in Af/Pak are being blamed on infiltration of the Afghan police by insurgents….just like has happened in Iraq. Both conflicts are great reminders of the many ways wars can go wrong.
I agree with commenters above. If this IS an existential threat, re-instate the draft. Because if we stay, we ARE going to be there for a while and exactly where are the troops supposed to come from? I’ve pretty much given up hoping someone will define victory in Af/Pak.
Special bonus comment: I just got back from visiting my elderly parents. My 87 year old retired Air Force master sergeant father is now vehemently against the war in Afghanistan. He is also demented and so cannot remember how supportive he was of Vietnam. Now he rails against that war also. He voted for GWB twice. People are strange.
Elie
I would love to reinstitute the draft and totally agree with that —
That said, I believe that part of the problem is not just Afghanistan, but its nuclear capable neighbor, Pakistan, which is also being more and more “invaded” by a different but related sector of the Taliban. I believe that some of the issue is how far can we withdraw from Afghanistan as a means of staying close to what is happening in Pakistan. I agree that we may have no choice but to walk away from Afghanistan, but how do we stay engaged with what is happening in Pakistan?
I fully know that we would not — could not ever invade Pakistan. That said, it is a high risk for governmental instatility and possible take over from the Taliban. While I am not freaked out by a fundamentalist run government per se, it would be idiotic to ignore the real risk that the Taliban would present should they overwhelm Pakistan’s government. Right now that is an open risk.
I don’t have the knowledge or experience to know all of what is happening in Afghanistan/Pakistan — but I dont think that just leaving is the obvious answer in light of an unstable Pakistan. If Pakistan was stable, I would feel comfortable about a withdrawal. Pakistan is what sticks us to the region
YellowJournalism
@Jennifer: The description of the way the protestors spread rumors and started tearing up pages of the bill sounded like a riot scene from the episode of the Simpsons.
YellowJournalism
@Jennifer: That should read “an episode”. I miss the edit function.
And “schadenfreudelicious” sounds like a yummy new flaor at Baskin Robbins. Probably one with all kinds of nuts in it.
licensed to kill time
@YellowJournalism: Or “Rabble rabble rabble! ” from South Park.
licensed to kill time
@YellowJournalism: Rabblerabbleripple would be a good flavor,too. Packed with fudge.
SiubhanDuinne
@soonergrunt: @Trinity:
Casualties have gone up. 12 dead, 31 wounded now. I’ve seen nothing but headlines so far.
linda
afternoon slaughter porn … gosh, if only those people had access to guns, they could have fired back…. oh wait … ft hood.
tweety feeding the meme of the possibility that it’s muslim sympathizers; and their in house fbi speculator noting that there’s been recruiting of active duty soldiers.
Jen R
@Bad Horse’s Filly: You’re not alone.
MikeJ
Not one person noting Guy Fawkes Day? The day you’re supposed to blow up the parliament. And possibly the Funkadelic.
HyperIon
@Xanthippas wrote:
jesus, i hope that’s snark.
Jamey
Like Va. Tech, if only the people at Ft. Leonard Wood were armed, the victims could have gone all WOLVERINES!!!1! on that gunman’s ass … oh, wait …
srv
I have a bridge in Cambodia to sell you.
We are the destabalizer. Our very presence is causing unrest in Pakistan. Pakistan is by every measure worse off than they were 8 years ago.
That said, the 100M+ non-Pashtun in Pakistan are not going to run away screaming and leave their nukes behind. The Pakistani Army barracks sweepers outnumber the Taliban.
We are spending ~1M per troop in Afghanistan. Gen. Jones has said he doesn’t believe there are more than a few hundred active AQ in the region. This is just beyond insane.
Obama screwed up, tough campaign talk, said he wanted a counter-insurgency effort in March, and was then gobsmacked when McCrystal came back with that bill. He can’t win, so he’ll decide to not “lose.”
Until his continuation of batshit insane policies makes Condi’s nightmares come true. Policy will breed the next OBL, and he will be a lot smarter than the one whose bones are rotting in some cave.
Of Bugs and Books
@LD50:
“@Brick Oven Bill:
to deter the Russians from moving into Iran.
Wow. In BoB’s brain, it’s still
19272 BCE.”HyperIon
@dSquib: I think one major problem that makes people hesitant to call for withdrawal, is that by now we know of the Taliban’s absolute brutality at its peak,
IIRC we are after al-quida (sp) not the taliban. and there are at least two kinds of taliban: those in Afghanistan and those in Pakistan.
Women are being circumcised and raped and killed in many countries at this very moment. And there is not much the american military can do about it. Sad but true IMO.
Chuck Butcher
@linda:
You complete dumbass, firearms are more tightly controlled on such a base than in your town. Let’s drag stupid shit into a tragedy just to … drag stupid shit in.
Chris Dowd
There were no “good reasons” to go into Afghanistan whatsoever. It- like Iraq- is an illegal war of aggression. The Taliban government of Afghanistan, after 9/11- in which the United States asserted that Osama Bin Ladin was behind the attacks- asked the US government for evidence of his involvement as per standard (and ancient) diplomatic operating procedure before extradition. It should be noted that the Taliban said they would hand over OBL if such evidence was made available. And we are not talking about evidence that would convict him in a court of law- but reasonable evidence of his participation. The United States did not offer up a shred of evidence and invaded (an invasion that had been planned before 9/11 by the way.)
After 9/11- the US made a promise that it would eventually release a 9/11 dossier that would purport to show the clear evidence of OBL and “Al Qaeda” being behind the attacks. That dossier has yet to be released and OBL is still not officially wanted for the 9/11 attacks by the FBI.
Later- after US troops were on the ground in Afghanistan- a poor grainy “video tape” was “found” just laying around “a house” of a person who looked like OBL talking of his involvement in 9/11. That tape has always been in dispute as to if it even was OBL at all (see for yourself on youtube if it is OBL). It goes without saying that most of the world doesn’t think it is OBL at all. And it speaks volumes that this tape is never replayed by our media – basically ever.
And what we have seen since 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan should raise alarm bells among any normal person with a smidgeon of common sense and some historical perspective. What we have seen is the US government set up a torture and kidnapping and secret prison regime in which hundreds (if not thousands) of “suspects” have been tortured into confessing to all manner of elaborate plots. We know that the US government has been holding upwards of a dozen of the alleged “masterminds” behind the 9/11 attacks for going on 7, 8, and even 9 years now- all of whom had been tortured and held in mind altering isolation. They still- have yet to be tried- and when they are- it will be in under a special system of “justice” just for them and their trials will be secret.
Stalin’s torture regime was able to get his lifelong revolutionary buddies and rivals to admit to being British spies and betrayers of “the Motherland” in open show trials after only a few months of “enhanced interrogation” tactics. They were not held for years as in the case of the 9/11 “masterminds” but months. And it should be noted that the NKVD interrogation tactics (what we called torture before 9/11) were copied almost point by point by the Bush adminstration to be used on their terror suspects.)
After being held that long – the 9/11 “masterminds” are more than likely completely insane (Jose Padilla went nuts after only 3 years of isolation and torture) and or totally under the control of their captors- broken men who would say anything they were told to on the ring of a bell.
And here we are- going on a decade after 9/11 and the only person convicted of any involvement in the 9/11 attacks is a half a retard with a history of mental illness- and the rest of the “suspects” have the minds of jello and the spines of jelly fish after years of torture and isolation- and their “trials” will be under “military tribunal” not open to the public.
No- nothing smells about any of this at all and I am a “Truther” for thinking so.
Yes- I know not accepting the US government’s word on 9/11 (the worst security failure in the history of this country for which not one official resigned, was fired, or even reprimanded) makes me a laughing stock and a freak. But only in bubble land America- cause the rest of the world looks at the United States and it’s actions regarding that day and sees a country behaving like it has something to hide.
Jennifer
@MikeJ:
In honor of Guy Fawke’s Day, I’ll repeat the homage I penned a year ago today, in the schadenfreudelicious aftermath of the previous day’s elections:
Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
The rout of the wingnut lot.
I can see no reason why a rout so pleasing,
Should ever be forgot.
Jamey
#chuckbutcher
Let’s drag stupid shit into a tragedy just to … drag stupid shit in.
Sure, why not. You just did.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Conscription’s a good way to build a big army, but not necessarily an effective one, especially for a military like ours that’s so reliant on high technology. The days of putting someone through six weeks of basic, sticking a rifle in their hand and pointing them at the enemy are gone. I strongly doubt we’ll ever see a draft again.
Much as I would love to see the doughy pantload sweating under his body armor, it’s better to focus on keeping these jackholes from dictating policy in the first place.
Elie
srv
I hear and don’t necessarily disagree with your point.
I am skating on pretty thin ice in terms of knowledge of the issue, but my understanding is that the Taliban in Pakistan are different from the Pashtun Taliban who they would have nothing in common with and definitely oppose if they invaded Pakistan…
I am unfortunately ill prepared to share you the links to back up my point, so I therefore assume that you know what you are talking about when you seem so certain that we would have nothing to be concerned about in regards to a Taliban takeover of Pakistan and/or that the Pakistani are highly motivated and likely to not let that happen..
I totally agree that the United States further destabilized the region with its presence. Am not clear that complete withdrawal now, after downstream effects of the aggrevated role of the Taliban and other players now makes it a clean withdrawal. Again, I am not arguing that we should just stay, just asking do we have to be a bit thoughtful about how to leave and what are the considerations with that. Not sure you want to say that its easy breezy with no considerations at all — or do you?
Jon H
srv wrote: “We are the destabalizer”
Well, not exactly. I mean, we probably are having that effect, but Pakistan has been unstable since it was founded.
“Pakistan is by every measure worse off than they were 8 years ago.”
Sure, but they had a military coup *10* years ago.
Even if we weren’t in Afghanistan, even if we were studiously ignoring Pakistan altogether, they’d still be unstable.
General Winfield Stuck
@HyperIon:
I think we can look at the situation that existed just before we went in to Afghan. at least to get a clue as to what it might look like.
Afghan. is complex ethnically, but not so much sectarian as most are Sunni on all sides. And while there is a broad ethnic mix, only the Taliban as a group, or a large faction of their Pashtun ethnic tribe would square off against a loose coalition with the other ethnic Afghans. who don’t espouse the Taliban’s strict interpretation, (misinterpretation) of Islam.
Remember the Northern Alliance held roughly the northern third of the country, with very little material support from anyone. And while the Taliban controlled most of the country including Kabul and other large cities, they largely did so with much support from the Paki ISI.
With my limited knowledge, I would guess a similar alignment if we pulled out, or at least if we stayed on our bases. So it is not out of the question that a new N. Alliance could hold their own against the Taliban with our support materially. And it currently doesn’t seem like the Pakis would be so eager to support the Taliban, at least on their side of the border.
But the region of Pashtun tribal territory located in Afghan will likely stay under Taliban control, and if AQ returns, that would be the only welcoming territory, maybe, theoretically. If this were to happen along these lines, it begs the question.
Would it be that bad to have AQ in a manageable area to counter.
MikeJ
@Jamey:
Huh? He corrected the mistaken idea that everybody’s walking around armed on a military base. I don’t see where he dragged anything else into the story.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chris Dowd:
This thread is bringing out the crazy. Geesh.
Xanthippas
This. No doubt there are those among the Taliban who would resist power sharing at all costs, but we don’t need to bring all of them around.
More despair than snark.
Tsulagi
@SiubhanDuinne:
One of the shooters has been identified as Major Malik Nadal Hasan. Not good.
Elie
Tsulagi
Uh oh…
linda
@Chuck Butcher:
***firearms are more tightly controlled on such a base than in your town***
clearly not this time.
scav
peak wingnut is going to jump another order of magnitude. shit shit shit. as if it’s not bad enough all in itself.
Cat Lady
Toxic love of guns
Grievances and resentments
Poisoning us all
SiubhanDuinne
@Tsulagi: Oh shit oh shit oh shit, this has bad written all over it.
BDeevDad
@Tsulagi: Atlas Juggs is already going ape shit. I refuse to link to her
Elie
scav and Siubhan
Everyone hold onto your hats!
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeJ: I remembered earlier today it was Guy Fawkes Day (even recited the little poem about it) but actually didn’t make a connection to Fort Hood until you pointed it out. (Not sure the shooters did either, of course.)
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue:
That is unfair to soonergrunt. You have not seen his (her?) arguments yet, so you cannot judge them. Moreover, the point being made was that this is a topic on which people of good will can have disagreements. If, having seen his opinions posted here, you think soonergrunt is not arguing in good faith, well then, fire away. Finally, based on soonergrunt’s earlier posts reflecting longterm and ongoing military service, I think lumping him (her?) in with chickenhawks is distinctly off-side.
General Winfield Stuck
The guy was an MD shrink, apparently. What a strange twist.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elie: I’m a-holdin mine. You can almost write the scripts for Dobbs, Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Palin, Hannity, Malkin, Coulter, Erick Son Of, Bachmann, and most of the Georgia congressional delegation, can’t you?
srv
@Jon H: I agree that Pakistan is not a viable nation, and never has been. We are making it worse, which is what a lot of people (particularly those in Pakistan) predicted.
You make it sound like that is a bad thing. I’m all for the military running Pakistan until they grow up or break up into the 5 or 6 countries they really are.
As for Elie’s comment, the US military and administration are largely responsible for aggregating every non-US loving Pashtun into “Taliban” terrorists, whether they be affliated with tribes on either side of the border. This is what National Security wonks do, like how the Iraqi insurgency was all AQ.
I trust the ISI to have learned their lesson of not paying attention to AQ and Khan and to enact the appropriate controls once we have gotten out of their hair. We can support all the non-Pashtun and non-“Taliban” Pashtun in Afghanistan with a Counter Terrorism force a fraction the size of what we have deployed.
And leave Pakistan to the Pakistanis.
Omnes Omnibus
@BDeevDad: You are brave to even go there to look. I certainly wouldn’t.
Nellcote
@Tsulagi:
Since Tweety has finally completely lost his mind, I was checking out Shep Smith at Fox. Color me surprised but he refused to name the shooter (so as not to gin up rumours) until he got the official word from the military.
RedKitten
@Tsulagi:
Aw shit…I can totally see where this is going to go.
Seebach
Brilliant. I certainly hope this individual realized he was going to bring the wrath of the right wing down onto American Muslims. Brilliant strategy.
Chris Dowd
Yes- I’m “crazy”.
Let’s suppose China suffered a major terrorist attack a decade ago in which a couple of their new sky scrappers were blown up and 3000 of their people were killed. Then- China- without offering up a single shred of evidence to anyone- invades the oil heartland of central asia- say Iran- asserting some “terrorists” being sheltered by that country were behind the attacks. They find a “tape” just “laying around a house” and offer that up as their “evidence”.
Then- China goes on a world romping kidnapping spree in which they abduct hundreds of people and torture them- or have an allied state torture them for them. Then, ten years later- after holding these “suspects” for most of that time- China announces that they have created a brand new system of “justice” just for those suspects and they will be tried. But the trials won’t be open to the public.
Of course I would believe the Chinese government without question. Who wouldn’t? You’d be “crazy” not to.
BDeevDad
@Omnes Omnibus: Knew she’d be going off even before I saw the name. Stayed for less than 0.4 seconds.
General Winfield Stuck
Did the major support Obama and dems and vote for them?
What was the shooter relationship to Acorn?
Where is his goddamned birth certificate?
Here comes the Mother of All Wingnut Wanking Blog Storm.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chris Dowd:
I bet you check your shitter every morning for explosives.
HumboldtBlue
No this isn’t. This is American imperialism plain and simple. We are killing fellow human beings for the enrichment of oil and energy interests, nothing more, nothing less.
And I don’t give a flying fuck how long he’s served in the military, I earned my Expert Infantryman’s badge as well. Either you’re going to argue that we have free rein to kill whomever we choose no matter the reasoning or you argue that we don’t.
This isn’t some grand fucking metaphysical experiment, it’s making war on men and women who are no threat to this nation. Even though the men who flew two planes into the WTC managed to kill nearly three thousand of our fellow human beings it was the actions of Congress and that fucknut President that passed the egregious Patriot Act and then launched two ill-advised wars that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more, and for what? Profit.
SiubhanDuinne
@Seebach: With you on that!
General Winfield Stuck
@HumboldtBlue:
To a degree, I don’t disagree with applying your comment to Iraq, and maybe other places, but
Other than some pipeline issues, I don’t know that Afghan holds much natural resource wealth, though I could be wrong about that. But In this case, I don’t consider it a economic war, if it was that, we wouldn’t have turned our back on it when the Soviets left. Your argument just doesn’t apply here, though there are other reasons to question our staying there doing what we are now doing.
Chris Dowd
Yes- I mean who wouldn’t trust a government that has tortured over a 100 people to death (that we know of) and refuses to hold anyone accountable. Countries that all but enshrine torture, kidnapping, and assassination in their legal systems should always be trusted.
Otherwise- you are a “truther” who looks for explosives in your poop.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chris Dowd:
Why, thanky you very much. I try to be helpful.
bemused
Chris Matthews had on an “fbi profiler” & the speculation on recruitment of infiltrators into our military began. This Cliff Van Zandt person is like a male Nancy Grace.
smiley
Nadal is also a Spanish name (see Nadal, Raphael, tennis star). Does anyone know if that name came from the Moors? Maybe this **TERRORIST** army careerist is actually Spanish… or American.
Omnes Omnibus
@HumboldtBlue: Thank you for enlightening me, oh fount of wisdom.
Actually, I argue that we seem to be doing more harm than good at this point, so we need to reassess what we are doing there. We need to either devise a plausible plan to do more good than harm or get out. Soonergrunt, I am sure, has an opinion that differs from yours and from mine. I am interested in seeing what it is.
You appear to have already decided what soonergrunt’s opinion is and dismissed it. I can email Cole my credenza if that will help.
NobodySpecial
You know why we should keep troops there? Even after Bush fucked it up like he always does?
Because I’m not ready to throw those people back into the arms of the fucking Taliban. And I would go if the Army would take me.
Does anyone remember this?
Public executions of women?
Because that’s what they’d be left to if you gave that country back to the Taliban.
Now I know no one really wants our boys there one day longer than necessary besides the neos, and I’m not one of them. And this is a shit sandwich of the largest order. But if we leave, we get another religious dictatorship killing people for not wearing the right clothes again. I’m quite confident that few Afghanis want that, and the way we bellyache about OUR Christian Taliban, I don’t think we do either.
MikeJ
@SiubhanDuinne: The tragic thing is the way Americans are now going to discriminate against /b/.
General Winfield Stuck
OT
For anyone interested in a new Libby pic. Seems like a good way to top off a war thread.
Chuck Butcher
@linda:
You’re still wrong and it is meaningless to state such a thing. You obviously have no idea of the difference between the military on a base and your home town and even having it pointed out, you persist in participating in the stupidity. I don’t give a damn if you live in NYC,NY – it is the case. If you think such stupidity makes you a credit to an agenda you’re an idiot.
40+ people have been shot on a US military base, a place that should be one of the safest places in the country and you want to be stupid about it? What the fuck is the matter with you? This is a deployment base, these people are going to deliberately risk their lives for our government and it is one place they ought to be safe for awhile. Fuck you.
Leelee for Obama
@RedKitten: If the two Africans were good-looking and warm, who could blame the Old Dear? Kitten, that little story just tickled the hell out of me!
SiubhanDuinne
@bemused:
This.Is.A.Brilliant.Observation.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Winfield Stuck: Oh, that’s just about as precious as it gets. And a welcome little bit of normalcy at the end of 150+ difficult and cantankerous posts. Thank you.
Chris Dowd
I assume your short non responsive answers must mean you are engaged in your favorite hobby- busy trying to prove that those made up out of whole cloth- satanic cult – child abuse day care center cases in the 80’s really did happen after all. I mean surely those were not “conspiracies” on the part of prosecutors, police, social workers, politicians, and media friends. Yes- much more sane to believe that children were flown in airplanes (during a six hour stay at a day care center) to be abused by satan worshippers- than that sacred holy government would make up shit – completely- and then try to throw dozens of people in jail for the rest of their lives knowing they were innocent. Stuff like that never happens. Thanks General.
By the way- could I sell you some volcano insurance. I have some policies – written on the back of cocktail napkins- but you trust me- right?
Omnes Omnibus
@linda: Do you really think that people are just wandering around military bases in the US with loaded weapons in their hands? Every military weapon is secured in a locked arms room. Ammunition is under tighter security. If someone lives on base and has privately owned weapons they must also be stored securely, IIRC in the unit arms room. It isn’t witld West.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: It isn’t the wild West. Give me an edit function, please.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
Just listening to him made me think of crime chaser Nancy.
I was disgusted that the speculation started so quickly before the shooter’s identity was even released. All media is blurring more & more into Fox.
General Winfield Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
One base I was stationed at in the US, every couple of weeks, I had to pull guard duty on ammo storage site. One night, out of boredom, I broke down my M16 just for something to do. It didn’t have a firing pin. And the site was right next door to a Federal Prison. I would guess these were weapons bought off post and brought in.
Chuck Butcher
I don’t think that now there is any good answer to Af/Pak, I think the search now is for the least bad answer. That means it is going to suck, regardless.
Now I’ll be go-to-hell if I can see where 1 US/NATO soldier’s life is worth keeping these religio-fanatics from stoning one of their women. That is real damn parochial, but I’m not about to regret it, if you think holding people at gun point changes people’s religio-weirdness there’s little hope for you.
Now you can hold a gun (a very big one) to a State’s head regarding being an outpost for attacks on us at home. A State is responsible for the use of its territory and what it tolerates as use.
Mark S.
@Chris Dowd:
You’re crazier than a shithouse rat.
smiley
@smiley: MSNBC is now reporting that his first name, not his second, was Nidal, not Nadal so never mind.
Omnes Omnibus
@General Winfield Stuck: I know, and I know it wouldn’t that hard to do. Linda’s snark about the situation was annoying, so I was being pissy.
smiley
@General Winfield Stuck: Yes. Ed Schultz, for what it’s worth, just said that they were “civilian” weapons. Don’t know how he knows that. Reporters or something maybe.
General Winfield Stuck
@SiubhanDuinne:
welcome
Leelee for Obama
Just turned on my TV after a long afternoon of music. Jeebus, what the hell happened at Ft. Hood? Seems it’s a doctor with mental issues, PTSD? I can’t believe this. Just heard he may be Jordanian originally. Shit, shit, shit, this will be a mess and a half.
Sorry, but Cliff Van Zandt is worse than Nancy Grace, because he used to be an FBI agent and he should know better than to babble hyperbole. NG gets paid to do that, and she has no conscience.
Seebach
I hate even saying this, because the Taliban are the most cartoonishly evil people, almost like drawing a Hitler moustache on Satan, but:
Shit like this is happening in a lot of other places, too. Do we send troops into every one of those countries? How do we be sure we stop it?
Do you trust our government to do it right? What if taxes had to be raised? The whole project would be scrapped because a bunch of 60-somethings don’t want to pay more money to stop insanity.
All sorts of horrifying narcoterrorism violence is happening because of are drug war, and we aren’t stopping that, either.
It echoes what the neocons say, but we are a country that doesn’t really have the will to complete any of the projects we want to start. Nor do we have the will to stop anything that isn’t working.
I’m sure right now we’re funding people to fight the Taliban that in ten years will be tearing babies’ heads off and drinking the blood straight from the corpse.
prufrock
Every time I see someone advocating for the return of the draft, I think back on my four years in the Marine Corps, and the most important lesson that experience taught me. To wit; never put yourself in a position where you have to ask another person permission to take a piss.
It is wisdom I intend to pass on to my four year old son as soon as he is old enough to understand. I will damn sure fight any efforts to put him in that position involuntarily.
bago
Delightfully OT good news.
We have a winner in the space elevator race!
I Demand Editable Comments!
I’ve asked politely.
I’ve tried subtle hints.
But I’m losing patience.
When is the fucking edit function coming back?
LD50
@General Winfield Stuck:
And here’s my candidate for the stupidest of many retarded comments to that article:
Swell. We’re now supposed to forbid people of certain religions from joining the military. I can’t see anything illegal about that.
I also like the implication that a Muslim is a foreigner, just like an American trying to join the Saudi Army would be.
Hey, where’s Makewank? Shouldn’t she be sliming in here about now trying to blame this on Obama or liberals?
lamh31
Kay Bailey Hutchinson on CNN talking somemore. People really shoudln’t be saying stuff unless they are really sure. She’s now telling Blitzer that the guy was from Jordan!!!
People should really stop trying to politicize this right now. I can’t stand Rick “Stepford Wife Hair” Perry but Sen Kay Bailey Hutch needs to let the Gov provide the information.
HyperIon
@Seebach:
we are on the same wavelength.
see #116
LD50
I wouldn’t be surprised if KBH simply didn’t trust Perry not to fuck up the details.
lamh31
I know technology is good, but damn I hate that its so easy fro people to post videos of tragedies like this. It’s so easy for these videos to become exploitive
Leelee for Obama
Sadly, I am afraid they might be doing it right now. Read Charlie Wilson’s War-some of the descriptions of what the mujaheddin did to Russians they captured made me vomit, literally. The stories were being told by CIA, who, of course, were working with them. We do business with very bloodthirsty people. Pinochet, Samoza, Batista, Stalin. If we think we need them, we look the other way.
General Winfield Stuck
@bago:
Going Up!
Chuck Butcher
@Omnes Omnibus:
I can tolerate a lot with regard to snark, this isn’t one of them. Murder doesn’t bring out the snark in me and these are my kids because the act in my name at severe personal risk.
lamh31
@LD50
Still, KBH is NOT the governor. She should not be giving information to the press that may or may not be sustantiated. She told Blitze that the guy was originally from Jordan, but she wasn’t sure. Well if you aren’t sure, then don’t give out that kinda information.
This is Texas, and I don’t even want to imagine what some of the rednecks here in Texas and elsewhere.
KBH needs to let the army and guv Perry do the “press” releases
Omnes Omnibus
@Chuck Butcher: Agreed.
lamh31
The man was born in Virginina….not Jordan, KBH was wrong!!!!
AhabTRuler
You forgot
PolandHussein.J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@bago:
Will the space elevator play Muzak?
kay
@lamh31:
She’s not so bad, because she seems to have credible information, and she really isn’t going beyond that.
They’re blowing this whole conspiracy angle sky-high, though, on cable.
They picked up two additional soldiers and are holding them based on eyewitness accounts that there was more than one shooter. That’s all the officials at the base said. That’s it. That’s incredibly spare information to build a whole conspiracy narrative on. It must have been chaos in there.
They jettison accuracy for the sake of a narrative. It’s disgusting, and irresponsible. They can’t wait? Do they have no duty to get it right?
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
If they were Officers they skinned them,. Real slow.
Or made them the goat carcass in the Afghan national sport.
bOzkashI
I saw a video of this back in the 80’s/ Brutal folks, if your their enemy.
General Winfield Stuck
not your. You’re, head slap.
Seebach
Good thing that we’re their friends. What happened to these mujaheddin fellows?
Leelee for Obama
@AhabTRuler: I did, and it surprises me that I did. There are so many-
Thank God the guy seems to have been born here. This is bad on too many levels-I hope it turns out he was just completely stressed out by what he saw treating the soldiers with PTSD. What a f’in mess!
General Winfield Stuck
@Seebach:
Some of the mujaheddin may still be our friend, Not the Pashtun Taliban, obviously.
Brachiator
@liberal:
Never suggested anything remotely suggesting this.
Hmm. Again, never suggested this. I don’t know that Afghanistan can be “pacified,” no matter how many troops were sent in. I’ve been pretty clear on this in other Afghanistan related threads.
Actually, yeah, I do know this.
Wile E. Quixote – RE: I don’t necessarily see neo-isolationism as a solution.
Not a neo-con. But let’s be clear. Simply pulling out of Afghanistan doesn’t restore the status quo, doesn’t make us safer (or even necessarily less safe). And to be crassly cynical, if we pulled out of Afghanistan and there was later another attack that could be connected to the country, the Democratic Party could kiss its behind goodbye.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Reminds me of Rudyard Kipling’s poem about the Afghan women coming to the battlefield. Last line: “Put your gun to your head and go to your God like a soldier.” He was not kidding.
NobodySpecial
@Seebach:
But dammit, we DID go there and kick out the Taliban. We DO own our mess. Colin Powell, for all the evil he ever did in the world, was right when he talked about the china shop. We may not be the world’s policemen, but we’re here by our actions and we need to do the right thing. In this particular case, it’s not letting the people who were cheek-by-jowl with Al Qaeda before we went in get right back to it.
bemused
I don’t think I can take the endless speculations & conclusions by cable mouths tonight, or the following week either. It makes my brain feel numb.
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Yes, I’ve read that poem, a long time ago. What happened to invaders retreating thru the Khyber Pass. Here is a movie called The Beast that has a little of this when several Afghan war widows get a hold of a Soviet Tank officer for the ending.
Good flik.
kay
@bemused:
They don’t really know jack, yet. Wouldn’t it be so refreshing if they just said that?
I would have held off on his name. My cable station would be out of business in about a week.
Seebach
I agree that we do own the mess. We are absolutely morally culpable. But us killing people over there alone isn’t going to be enough to fix it. We’d need to allow refugees over here, spend a huge amount of money to rebuild infrastructure, stop trying to destroy the opium that people are trying to grow to make a living. But can’t you hear it now?
“Allow those terrorists over here!? What if they blow stuff up?”
“My taxes are so high it’s like Nazi Germany! I thought we killed Hitler in World War II!”
“If we don’t destroy the opium, we will have an epidemic of drug violence in this country. We are in a war with drugs!”
“Obama is a communist!”
Our country is too stupid to own this problem.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Yes, I remember that movie! It was the first time I heard the word “Inshallah” and found it fascinating that saying it would get you courtesy and care, even if you were an enemy. It was one of the only movies that told a true-seeming story about what was happening there. The tank revenge scene reminded me of a WW2 movie I saw a hundred times with Jack Palance. Can’t remember the name of that one, but my brother and I were sick alot when we were kids, and Million Dollar Movie ran the same film 2X a day for a week. We watched it every time! Needless to say, my brother was a war movie fanatic-it was the fifties.
BethanyAnne
@Chris Dowd:
You know, I was reading your comment again. You didn’t endorse any particularly outlandish theories that I saw. Heck, you didn’t even say much of what you *do* believe – just a few questions, and that the whole thing seemed implausible to you.
But you were right on the money about one thing, someone did immediately call you crazy. Guess it’s nuts to question the received wisdom from our government and press.
BethanyAnne
@Seebach: You know… we could just declare that there will be no taxes for anyone that moved to Af / Pak, and see if the Galt-er’s took the bait…
NobodySpecial
@Seebach:
No. Our wingers are too stupid to own this problem. We managed to muddle through helping Germany and Japan put it back together not so very long ago. We just have to agree it’s worth it and understand what will probably happen if we don’t. And if the majority agree that it’s time to get out, then we’ll get out, and I’ll curse Bush a few thousand more times for doing this.
Seebach
Yeah, the New Dealers did work in Japan on land reform and creating a liberal constitution. And then the GOP took over congress then, that’s when the Reverse Course started and we allowed the war criminals to get back in power and the CIA started funding the yakuza to crack down on unions.
Keith G
Just got home and opened B-J finding this. My head is already reeling from the Ft Hood shooting. I know many soldiers stationed there. Some are my former students. And as a Texan, I feel an additional layer of sorrow.
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, I am still waiting to know if indeed we have a partner there who is willing to stand up against tremendous odds and actually fight for a country. In my opinion, our people should not be more willing to fight and die than a critical mass of the Afghani population. We have been down that road before. It is disastrous
I am sorry, but I do not give a shit how nasty the Taliban are. In other moments in history, people confronted with evil interlopers have stood their ground and fought back sometimes taking horrible losses and still they fought.
If the Afghanis want the blood of my neighbor’s son spilt for them, they better fucking man up before I will even consider thinking about it.
Soonergrunt….How are you? Seems like our topic is up. Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed Matthew Hoh. In 7 min., this former grunt (are Marine captains grunts?) came very close, but not exact, to asserting my feelings on this.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/33629423#33629423
Looking forward to learning more from you.
Jennifer
I’ve avoided this conversation because I don’t have any better solution to Afghanistan than anyone else does.
Still though, I can’t help but wonder how things would be right now if we had done what Bush said we were gonna do before we went in – that is, take out the Taliban and the mullahs, and rebuild the country. They did part one and then got distracted by a shiny object in Iraq and left Afghanistan to fester. So strong was the committment to rebuilding that in the budget the year following the invasion, Bush “forgot” to include any funding whatsoever for rebuilding Afghanistan.
After 8 years of not doing what we said we were going to do before we went, I can’t imagine why no one there likes us very much.
Chuck Butcher
I may have to quit reading BJ if my posts are going to keep falling into line with the ones here. Anyhow, Afghan Victory… for your consideration. This thing has been in the works for days now. BJ got me to hit the “post” button.
SiubhanDuinne
@#179
I first read this as *I Demand Edible Comments!* and was just thinking, Wow, what a swell idea, I can haz choklit comments plz?
Wars-R-U.S.
Well let me ask if you understand that by the end of this year the U.S will have been masticating Afghanistan for more than 3000 (Three-Thousand) Days…
…with Squat to show for it except a pile of corpses and debt up the wazoo.
Am I to understand that this is OK???
Svensker
@Omnes Omnibus:
It isn’t the witld West, either, so you’re fine.
Xanthippas
Chris, I’m sorry but it’s just ridiculous to say that there is no “shred of evidence” that Al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks. We were completely justified in destroying a government that sheltered and was allied with a group that killed 3,000 American civilians and military personnel. And believe it or not we were actually fairly judicious about it, risking few Americans and largely avoiding widespread Afghan civilians casualties. Afghanistan is not like Iraq at all, not in that respect.
I do have to say, we should resist the idea that had we simply devoted more resources to Afghanistan the situation would be okay now. Nation-building is a trope, and Afghanistan has deep-seated ethnic divisions that would keep reconciliation from being anything but an automatic process. We might not be as far behind the curve as we are now, but we might have arrived at the same result in a longer period of time. Not that that’s an excuse for that former idiot of a President of ours.
Corner Stone
@Xanthippas:
Are you out of your fucking mind?
soonergrunt
I don’t have all the answers. I have said before that I I have very little faith in anybody who speaks about Afghanistan as if they know exactly what to do, or they have a single, un-nuanced answer.
Again, I write now strictly from my own experiences in the eastern and northeastern parts of the country, as well as some stuff that I have picked up in open source news. I was there last in 2006-2007 when things were really starting to heat up.
When I arrived in Afghanistan, there hadn’t been any activity in the Kabul region for over a year. By the time I had left, every base in the Kabul area had been directly attacked at least once. I was a member of an Embedded Training Team. I, and one other ETT (we were supposed to be in teams of four, but there weren’t enough of us) were embedded directly into an Afghan National Army Infantry company in the 201st Corps in the eastern and northeastern part of the country. This was my third combat deployment, my first in Afghanistan.
In my experience, as well as recent reporting from sources such as NPR, there is no fundamental difference between the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and Al Quaeda.
As most of you know, the Taliban was financed and managed for years by ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. The ISI saw the Taliban as a way to control Afghanistan, keeping it out of the Indian orbit, as well as a place for Pakistani militias to train and get combat experience before going to fight in Kashmir. Al Quaeda was also deeply involved in this aspect of the taliban. I fought against all three groups, sometimes all at once. There were almost always Pakistanis mixed in with Afghan Talib and other AGM (Anti Government Militia).
When I first got there, it was routine for the Taliban to winter over in a place called the Korengal. Some of you may remember Richard Engle’s series on NBC last year following a US Army unit in the Korengal.
I helped build the road into the place and I helped build the Korengal Outpost, Camp Restreppo, and some of the other places you saw in that series. The Taliban would go there because the terrain was unpassable in the winter and they could hole up there and wait for spring. They did this until we built the Korengal Outpost, the KOP, or as the 10th Mountain guys called it, the Purple Heart Factory. I also worked in a place called the Tagab Valley, just east of Kabul and Bagram.
As an ETT, I spent a large amount of time going into villages and meeting with village elders and headmen. I did more and better counter-insurgency sitting on my ass drinking chai than I did actually shooting, and I shot an ass-load of ammunition. I went into villages on market day and bought stuff I didn’t need as an excuse to talk to the locals, and I had my trusted interpreter and a couple of ANA I trusted do the same. This is the way you win a counterinsurgency war. One village at a time. It’s fucking hard. The shortest, most glib way to describe it is to say that we want to show the people that we offer a better life than the other guys do.
What I know from that time, and this has only been reinforced by my study of the region and current events there since, is that we cannot simply leave these people to their fate. I’ve seen what the Taliban do to people who defy them. God knows that ISAF/US forces have made mistakes, and there have been western troops who have abused prisoners. We’re not perfect, and we’re not angels. But we don’t gut-shoot children to make a point, and we don’t burn teachers to death in front of their students.
As I said earlier, I’ve been places in eastern Afghanistan where the capitol of Kabul was as foreign as Washington, D.C. Most of the Afghans I met couldn’t care less who was the president of Afghanistan. It has no bearing on their lives. The level of governance that actually affects people’s lives is at the district and provincial level. That’s where things get done. This is the main reason that the country was most successfully ran as a feudal state from the 1930s to the 1970s before the communist coup.
In the short term, we need to keep building up the Afghan National Army. When I was there, the unit to which I was attached was considered one of the better companies in the entire brigade, which was considered the best brigade in the corps. They and their parent Kandak (Battalion) could barely keep themselves supplied in the field. Logistics were at their bare minimum, and the we frequently used money from our petty cash fund to buy firewood good supplies for the ANA. When I left, they were a lot better, but still not what I would’ve considered reliable or capable. Their unit level tactics were vastly improved over the “everybody run towards the gunfire” level when I got there, but still left a lot to be desired.
The Afghan National Police also need to be completely rebuilt. The effort to build and train the ANP was just starting up when I left in the summer of 07. Unlike the ANA, where a village headman and an imam must vouch for a young man who wishes to join (thereby permanently joining the village’s collective honor to his) the ANP recruiting program basically consists of walking up to somebody and asking him if he wants a job.
If the ANP were professionalized and paid a living wage, they would be much more useful. Right now, they frequently go months without pay, which is low in the first place. They must pay bribes to their superiors to keep their jobs, and they frequently have to pay out of their own money for fuel and equipment. Is it any wonder they’re corrupt? We never trusted the ANP. We never saw them or a local analog in the Korengal, and I’m convinced the ones in Tagab took money from the Taliban to report on our activities.
In order to give these Afghan forces time to get their shit together, we’re going to have to keep fighting. When I left, there were two US Light Infantry brigades and a Marine battalion fighting in country, not including ISAF forces.
FYI–ISAF=International Security Assistance Force, the field command of NATO forces in country. Most of them don’t do a damn thing except sit around and get drunk in their camps. ISAF also stands for I Saw Americans Fight. ISAF forces that actually fought the enemy when I was there were the British, the Australians, the French, and the Dutch. Everybody else in ISAF–not so much, except for some tactical air support. The British and Australians were down south near Kandahar area. The French were doing the ETT thing in small numbers not too far from us. I don’t know where the Dutch were.
So we need more forces in country if we’re going to do any good. When I was there, we always had the feeling that we would win tactically, but were unable to exploit it because we didn’t have the resources. We won on the tactical level most of the time. A couple times we won decisively, but as I said, we didn’t have the forces, either US or ANA, to exploit that. Now the bad guys are more powerful and we need more forces to turn the tide back AND exploit any tactical victories we make.
The fact of the matter is that we aren’t going to solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan. They are part of a system. If Pakistan gets any worse, then Afghanistan will be a lot more screwed up, and if Afghanistan falls apart, then the problem we face now in Afghanistan–the problem of Taliban coming over the border from Pakistan–will be reversed. The other problem with leaving Afghanistan is that if the Taliban take over, and make no mistake, they want to do just that as soon as we leave, they will allow Al Quaeda free reign just like they did the first time around. They’ll also stir the shit in Pakistan. I really don’t think anyone here wants Pakistan, with her nukes to be unstable or worse, taken over by jihadis. I heard on NPR today (FWIW) that Pakistan has between 50 and 100 nuclear weapons. That’s just great.
I don’t believe that we are the cause of the instability in the region. I believe that it is the local players trying their inexperienced hands at realpolitik. The Iranians, the Indians, and the Pakistanis all have their hands in the Afghan pie. The Pakistanis are in it up to their shoulders. The ironic thing is that Iranian strategic goals in Afghanistan mesh with our own more than with anyone elses. They want a stable Afghanistan as a buffer between them and Pakistan in their east. In this respect, the Indians are also better allies than the Pakistanis. They also want, above all else, a stable Afganistan. Friendly Afghanistan would be nice for them, but stable is more important.
So I think, if we’re going to be involved in that region, that we’re going to have to deal with AFPak as the administration calls the system. I don’t see how we can do that effectively without a ground presence in Afghanistan.
I don’t see that we’ll have strategic success, which is to say a stable AFPAK system, without staying in Afghanistan. We’ll never get a base nearby from which to venture back into the country at will, as some fools (a lot of them neocons) are suggesting, and we WILL have to deal with these people again, so we might as well stay there and work to make a go of it.
I don’t want this. This isn’t something I suggest lightly.
It’s going to take a long time. It’s going to be really fucking hard. It’s going to be expensive, and it’s going to cost more American lives. But I don’t see that we have any realistic aternative.
General Winfield Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Thanks soonergrunt for your service and taking the time to write a lengthy piece on your experience. I tend to agree with keeping a ground force in Afghan, but I wonder if they (afghans)will ever take up the fighting for their own country as long as we are doing it for them. At least in the meta sense of trying to secure the country proper. From what I know these folks know how to fight when on their own on their own terms. And I can’t help but believe they will rise to the occasion with some material support of weaponry and that sort of thing.
And that maybe we should concentrate on anti terror operations exclusively. All in all it is doubtful that we can much longer do full scale fighting the Taliban when the American public support is dwindling by the day, anyways.
Mark S.
@soonergrunt:
Thanks for that enlightening comment. I am 99% sure we’re not leaving Afghanistan anytime soon and would just like there to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Your comment made me a little bit more hopeful of that.
What I can’t understand is why the Taliban is successful. I can’t imagine that more than a handful of fanatics would want to live under such a regime. I understand that the average villager doesn’t give a shit who’s president of Afghanistan, but wouldn’t they really prefer not to have a bunch of religious nut cases beating them on the street for not having a long enough beard?
I doubt “Afghanistan” will ever be a real nation. But I do think we can at least isolate the Taliban to the southern Pushtan areas. Maybe we can have at least two-thirds of the country be normal, which seems to be the case in Pakistan.
Elie
General Winfield and soonergrunt:
Much respect, soonergrunt…
It is so painful because, as you say, we are way past the point of a painfree solution to this…I personally do not have enough knowledge of all the strategic implications.
I believe this: there is no easy strategy for a smooth, one step exit. I don’t expect to see that.
I hope that we do not tear ouselves to pieces trying to reconcile this incredibly uncertain situation with the clean edges of our beliefs about “right” and “wrong”. I do believe that this policy will elude that easy compartmentalization (which doesnt mean that folks on all sides of this wont try to make it a simple frame)
I wish that I knew more history. I wish that I knew less about pain. I dont know what Abraham Lincoln read and thought those hard nights he had during the Civil War, or what any other leader wrestled in those hard nights on beds that gave no rest. No advisor can take this weight from you is my guess…
Heavy lies the crown… and for the people too who must bear this sacrifice and effects from these decisions. All of us can guess of the weight of this from our own less spectacular lives…my own life and situations with no easy solutions — kinsmen in turmoil with no easy solutions. And these are one dimensional comparitively.
I pray and hope for mercy and good luck….
Keith G
@soonergrunt:
Thanks. I find your input fascinating and valuable. I have no problems with the mechanics, if you will, but there are issues that you have not elucidated. Maybe they can’t be.
Where is the necessary mirror to this statement, to wit:
When the citizens of Afghanistan fight against the Taliban, and make no mistake, they want to do just that….
So why isn’t that a deal breaker? Some local populations have fought invading tanks with rocks. Partisans of the Eastern Front paid back Nazi atrocities in kind. Hell even the surrounded and vastly outnumbered Jews of the Warsaw ghetto eventually fought back. I am sorry, but if Afghanis are such useless sheep, we can never build them up no matter how much time and treasure we throw at them. I need to see them doing more than brewing chai.
So what do we do? Try to rebuild the feudal society or pound sand trying to help build up a society that has little popular buy-in?
Just some late night thoughts.
Yutsano
@Mark S.: What I can’t understand is why the Taliban is successful. I can’t imagine that more than a handful of fanatics would want to live under such a regime. I understand that the average villager doesn’t give a shit who’s president of Afghanistan, but wouldn’t they really prefer not to have a bunch of religious nut cases beating them on the street for not having a long enough beard?
The deal is, they did more than just impose religious fanaticism. There was order and a relative peace after almost 30 years of bloodshed. There were (primitive) services, adjudications of disputes, law and order after 30 years of lawlessness. This is exactly why the neglect of eight years and the horrific fail that is the Karzai government is going to bite us in the ass.
I’m not saying we leave, we can’t. I’m saying we figure out what we CAN do vs what the generals want us to do and focus on that. The policy soonergrunt describes works, but it’s slow and expensive and doesn’t give the neocons the tingle down their left leg so they want a glass parking lot and “America #1!!” signs on the remains. Whatever we do we need to figure this out, and if we decide it’s not worth our blood and treasure we need to find the most expeditious way to disengaged.
flukebucket
Thank you very much soonergrunt. It was well worth the wait.
I have no doubt that we will be staying in Afghanistan just as I have no doubt that we will increase the amount of money being spent and the amount of lives being lost. My personal view is that we are trying to push a round peg through a square hole.
But it is what it is. The decision makers will make the decisions and I am going to try hard as hell not to let it make me more bitter and cynical than I already am.
You just be damn sure to enjoy those kids and that dog as much as you possibly can for as long as you possibly can.
Xanthippas
A comment like that requires some explanation I would think, given that the opinion I hold happens to be completely conventional and mainstream, even among liberals.
Corner Stone
@Xanthippas: Ok, I’ll seperate it out for you a little bit, for emphasis.
completely justified in destroying
…
judicious
That may be the mainstream/conventional basis for your opinion but it doesn’t make it any more correct.
That’s the very definition of American Exceptionalism, and would seem to be an acceptance of The Bush Doctrine in toto.
I disagree with this opinion and mindset.
margarita
Except not really. I’d have thrown in an aside about the cost in non-American lives, but that’s considered a feature, not a bug, in that chamber. So the gentleman from New York pretty much covered it.