This didn’t get much attention yesterday, but it seems important:
The US plans to wind down its war in Afghanistan a year or more earlier than scheduled by ending its combat role in the second half of 2013.
[…] “Hopefully by mid to the latter part of 2013 we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role,” Panetta said on his way to Brussels for a Nato meeting about Afghanistan. “It’s still a pretty robust role that we’ll be engaged in. It’s not going to be a kind of formal combat role that we are [in] now.”
Here’s some more Afghanistan news:
A secret US military report says the Taliban, heavily backed by Pakistan, are confident they can win the Afghanistan conflict, and that they are gaining popular support at the expense of the Kabul government.
[…] Its conclusions, that the Taliban’s strength and morale are largely intact despite the Nato military surge, and that significant numbers of Afghan government soldiers are defecting to them, are in stark contrast to Nato’s far more bullish official line, that the insurgent movement has been severely damaged and demoralised.
redshirt
Once we’re gone and the sands sweep over the remains of our bases, it will be as if we were never there.
Except of course in the lives/dead that were directly impacted.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Of course it didn’t get much attention. Imagine if President McCain had been doing this. Totally different coverage.
Ugh, the mere mention of “President McCain” requires a brain bleach.
Linda Featheringill
Why don’t we leave Afghanistan completely in 2012, say in the middle of February?
patroclus
I think that it is absolutely key to note that this timeline will be applicable if and only if Obama is re-elected.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Linda Featheringill:
We want to leave a government in charge, even if it’s not the one we would like to have. Leaving while the two sides are fighting to fill in the void would put our troops in danger.
I think, like in Iraq, the time frame is meant to give the two sides a reason to resolve things with us in between.
General Stuck
The Taliban will re occupy and control the historical Pashtun tribal lands in Afghanistan, with something like the Northern Alliance reconstituting and defending the rest of Afghanistan, hopefully doing a better job of it than before our arrival in that country. The Taliban will slowly lose the influence of the now deceased OBL, and his pipe dreams of a global caliphate, and the Taliban will concentrate on their age old struggles in both Pak and Afghanistan, to mostly be left alone. And life and death will go on like it has for ages. Pakistan is the big worry with their nukes and hair trigger status with India, also with nukes, and now in a death hug and spiral with the Taliban fueling more instability for all concerned. I suspect they will reach some kind of tenuous cease fire with each other, and it will be not much our business as long as jihadi Arabs aren’t filling Mullah Omar’s head with grandiose plans to bring the west to its knees.
just uninformed speculation on my part. Except the part that mostly, our interests there were mostly dumped at sea with OBl now sleeping with the fishes.
Villago Delenda Est
The only way to win in Afghanistan is to commit genocide. To wipe out most Afghanis to save them from themselves.
Are we willing to do that?
If this were the deserting coward malassministration, it would be a possibility After all, killing hundreds of thousands to get rid of one obstinate former client was considered an acceptable cost. Besides, we need to throw some shitty country against a wall every ten years just to show everyone how tuff we are.
The Moar You Know
Nobody wants to be the last man to die for a mistake.
Villago Delenda Est
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
By this time in the McCain administration, it would be President Palin, because Gramps would have succumbed to some sort of “accident” about two years ago.
Frankensteinbeck
He said he’d give a try to fix the mess Bush made, and if he couldn’t we’d leave. He tried, we couldn’t, we’re leaving. He also said he’d get the original target, OBL. I find it refreshing to have a president who’s not speaking in code.
The Moar You Know
@Linda Featheringill: The pragmatic explanation is that you simply can’t get all of our assets out of the country that fast. Iraq took almost four years to clear out of, they started back in 2008.
There’s a lot of stuff that we probably don’t want to leave behind, these guys are already well-armed enough, if you catch my drift.
Butch
I think that long ago we should have started working with the regional powers – China, India, Russia – to take a larger role in Afghanistan, rather than shouldering it mostly alone.
kindness
I understand the need to communicate with your adversaries but why is it we keep shipping Pakistan a billion dollars every year?
The Moar You Know
I think that long ago we should have started working with the regional powers – China, India, Russia – to take a larger role in Afghanistan, rather than shouldering it mostly alone.
@Butch: They all refused. At least two of those nations have fought there before. Maybe they knew something we didn’t (rolls eyes).
Villago Delenda Est
@kindness:
Because they have nukes.
A lot of that aid is to help them with control protocols for their deadly toys.
Alex
“The secretary of Defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we’re going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan,” Romney said, according to reports from Las Vegas.
“He announced that. So the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops?” Romney said. “It makes absolutely no sense.”
Romney concluded that Obama’s “naivete is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom.”
————-
Remember: A vote for Romney is a vote for permenant war
amk
@Alex: Of course, if willard had his way, the pullout will be as orderly as it was in vietnam.
Send one of your useless sons to afpak, miit.
slag
@Frankensteinbeck:
Personally, I thought we should have ended the war the day we ended Osama Bin Laden. But then, as a rule, I prefer very clear goals and tangible accomplishments.
Frankensteinbeck
@Butch:
It’s always worth remembering that Bush didn’t just get us into an unnecessary war in Iraq. He abandoned Afghanistan to do it. Once the conquest was over, he made zero effort to rebuild either nation, and just kept the troops around to fight any rebels. He screwed a lot of pooches, but Iraq and Afghanistan were the biggest and hardest.
scav
Afghanistan v. Elsewhere has one hell of a record.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@slag: I want to fight your wars: They seem so simple.
Maude
A lot of the heavy military equipment is coming out of Afghanistan this year. That is the beginning.
Mittens thinks that withdrawing US combat troops is misguided.
It is Afghan. Afghani is a gun.
4tehlulz
>India…take a larger role in Afghanistan
I can’t think of a better way to guarantee a In/Pak nuclear exchange.
handsmile
It should be noted that the story behind the second of mistermix’s links above (secret US military report on Taliban) was first broken and heavily promoted yesterday morning by the BBC, emphasizing the steadfast relationship between the Taliban and the Pakistan intelligence services.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16821218
I have little doubt that the report was leaked in advance of Panetta’s statement on US combat strategy in Afghanistan to embarrass and constrain the Obama administration. (CNN was right on cue this morning with this line of attack, i.e., how can the US leave now that the Taliban is boasting victory.)
While I realize that I recently posted this link, there is a superb and deeply informative essay, “Afghanistan: The Best Way to Peace,” in the last issue of the NYRB written by British journalist and policy analyst Anatol Lieven. He summarizes a number of recent books on the subject written by American, European and Pakistani journalists, scholars and diplomats. Lieven’s own recent book, Pakistan: A Hard Country, is comprehensive and authoritative.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/09/afghanistan-best-way-peace/?pagination=false
Bill H.
@patroclus:
I think you miss the point. This is a talking point to get him reelected and has nothing whatever to do with what will or will not happen after he is reelected.
@Maude:
Actually, Afghani is Afghan currency.
Villago Delenda Est
@Maude:
I stand corrected, but the two seem interchangeable nowadays.
boss bitch
@Bill H.:
Announcing that you are working on pulling out of a decade old war a year or early is not a talking point.
Butch
@Frankensteinbeck: I think I need to apologize that my comment came off as hawkish and I didn’t mean that at all. I’m sorry if it was misconstrued.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
I was told this by an Afghan. It was embarrassing.
@Bill H.:
That, too.
Dave
The Graveyard of Empires remains undefeated…
At least President Obama recognizes our time here is done. You can’t fight a war successfully when an ally-in-name-only provides material support and a porous border to your opponent.
God help us if Mitt wins. He’ll keep us there another 10 years just to prove that Republicans don’t “cut and run”.
Of course, in his case they up and go to France and live in mansions.
PeakVT
@Butch: You’re kidding, right?
Linnaeus
Just found that that the son of a couple of professors in my department was killed in Afghanistan. I didn’t know him, but I know his parents reasonably well. Apparently, he had really found his niche in the Marines and earned the respect of his fellows there. He had some good plans for his life once his deployment ended, which would have been about six weeks from now. And now he’s dead. I don’t know what to say other than it’s a tragedy.
patroclus
@Bill H.: Well, Obama had a “talking point” the last election about how he was going to both end the Iraq war and get bin Laden in Pakistan and both happened, so I’m inclined to believe that, if he’s re-elected, thie year’s “talking point” about ending the Afghan war is likely to have the same result.
If Obama hadn’t have ended the Iraq war as promised and gotten bin Laden as promised, then you might have a point, but he did so you don’t.
slag
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Hey–In my wars, the getting there may not be simple. The simple part would be knowing where the there is and being able to recognize when you’ve gotten there.
But that requirement originates from my own limitations. I’ve never ever been able to achieve a successful result without first knowing what the successful result looked like. Though I’m sure there are some people who are able to do that. Maybe.
Mnemosyne
Since there are some other knitters/crocheters here, I thought I would remind everyone that Afghans for Afghans is looking for hand-knitted or hand-crocheted children’s clothing (sweaters, socks, mittens, hats and blankets) by Feb. 29th. The restrictions are that it must be made of animal fibers (wool, alpaca, etc.) since non-animal fibers are not warm enough for Afghan winters, and socks must be knitted, not crocheted.
Bill H.
@patroclus:
Obama did not end the Iraq war at all. The troops came out of Iraq on precisely the schedule which Bush and Maliki agreed upon before Bush left office, which was considerably slower than Obama promised in his campaign. (“One brigade per month beginning the month that I take office.”) Obama tried to negotiate with Maliki to keep them there longer and failed. That is not me being anti-Obama, that is simple fact.
So it would seem “I might have a point.”
General Stuck
@Bill H.:
A median number of troops for a brigade is about 4000 troops. you do the math with the 150 thousand that were in Iraq when Obama took office. And it is endearing the mental gymnastics some of you go to to criticize Obama. Or, the implication that luckily we had Bush to thank for getting our troops out of Iraq.
Obama could have kept troops in Iraq without legal amnesty in that country, if he’d wanted to. And there is no evidence he pushed very hard for protections of US troops, that almost certainly Maliki would have relented, but maybe enough to innocculate himself politically from GOP cries of cutting and running. But that doesn’t change the fact the troops are gone, and you can parse it any way you wish for Obama fail.
You folks will never trust anything the president says or does, and the GOP thanks you for playing.
This president has earned the trust of dems, or should have by now, as presidential promises go.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Probably, if Pakistan cannot continue to play it’s own political game and contain the Taliban.
The Taliban were primitive thugs who pushed Afghanistan back into the Middle Ages. If they do so again, and give protection to terrorists, there will be a loud clamor not to send troops, but to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
A Democratic Party president might try to cool the blood of the mob. A Republican president will happily oblige them.
patroclus
@Bill H.: The argument that Bush ended the Iraq war is really one of the most absurd ahistorical arguments that I have ever seen and is paradigmatic of something Dear Leader Greenwald might say. Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war from the beginning; Bush started the war based on baldfaced lies. When Bush left office, the war was ongoing; with multitudinous deaths still occurring. When Obama leaves office, the war will have been over for years.
The SOFA was negotiated after Obama’s election and the Iraqis took Obama’s suggested timeframe and used it in the negotiations; thereby effectively forcing the Bush administration to go along. If they hadn’t, then there would have no legal veneer authorizing the continuing occupation by U.S. troops.
No historian will ever take your view because it is utterly nonsensical. You have no point and you know it.
Brachiator
@Bill H.:
This is nuts, and typical of a strange GOP world view.
You write as though once Bush set the process in motion, neither his successor in the White House nor anyone else could do anything but watch it happen.
This is doubly odd given the saber rattling by some of the GOP presidential contenders that they would have found a way to keep troops in Iraq.
gene108
@General Stuck:
Pakistan needs more space to train terrorists to attack India. Afghans make good foot soldiers and give Pakistan some level of denial ability in their involvement, as with the incursion into the Kargil pass in 1999.
@Butch:
The problem is Pakistan.
Pakistan already is getting nervous with India’s aid to Afghanistan. I’m not sure what Russia and China’s involvement in Afghanistan is, but I’ll bet there’s some involvement.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/05/india-regret-supporting-karzai-afghanistan
As long as Pakistan feels a pliant government in Kabul is the most important thing for their security, there’s not much hope for reconciliation between Karzai’s government and the Taliban.
The Taliban exist because Islamabad props them up. They seized power in the 1990’s because of aid from Pakistan.
There’s not much anyone can do, as long as Pakistan feels the most important thing for their western neighbor is they are dependent on Pakistan and willing to help advance Pakistan’s agenda, i.e. be a thorn in India’s side.
Robert Sneddon
@Brachiator: It’s not difficult to contain the Taliban or whatever you wish to call the Pashtun tribes in the south-west of Afghanistan. The British figured it out after learning from events such as the Elphinstone Expedition — hold the Khyber Pass and sow discord and the Pashtun tribes will gnaw at each other’s vitals. Give them an enemy they can unite against standing on their own territory and they will fight like demons and make money; a lot of the Afghan economy is currently predicated on the flows of wealth into that country from the invaders. Take that money away and the problems the Taliban cause in the surrounding countries such as Pakistan will decrease substantially.
DanielX
I do believe I’ve seen this movie before, what with MACV – er, NATO – proclaiming triumph to be right around the corner, and the opposition being completely confident in eventual victory once the foreigners run out of time, patience and money. There’s even a relevant quote:
You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
the issue in political terms is that obama is on the side of getting out of afghanistan at the earliest feasible opportunity.
thus, leaving the republicans on the side of more troops and continued war. lets see raw money or newt make that case.
if the election hinges on the troops staying or coming home, i think the issue is a winner. though, batten the hatches for an assault on patriotism and all that.
Mark S.
From the second link:
I am amazed that any government could be less preferable to the Taliban, but there it is. We’ve completely backed a loser in Karzai. It’s really time to get the hell out of this shithole. Our main goal, destroying AQ, has been accomplished.
Marc
@patroclus: This.
I look forward to reading the next firebagger comment about “Obama’s endless wars.” He ended two and just put a date on the third. But we have to make sure he gets the chance to make good on it.
Mnemosyne
@Bill H.:
You mean that in the course of negotiations to keep the troops in Iraq (which was something Maliki actually wanted — he did not want US troops to leave), the Obama administration offered a condition that they knew perfectly well would not be accepted?
Weird, it’s almost like the Obama administration didn’t want to stay and so they offered conditions that would be impossible for Maliki to accept.
Though I do have to laugh when people claim that Obama only withdrew because the law required him to. Because obviously the invasion was totally legal in the first place, so there’s no way Obama could possibly have gone against the law, amirite? It’s not like we had overwhelming military power or anything.
Brachiator
@Robert Sneddon:
The British never figured out much of anything.
People seem to forget the increasingly brutal, paranoid and xenophobic reign of the Taliban.
And as noted, the Pakistan Intelligence Service is playing a dangerous game, trying to throw the Taliban bones to keep them from making more moves against Pakistan itself. Meanwhile, the Taliban is playing its own game against its supposed Pakistan handlers.
This reminds me of how the US foolishly believed that they could easily control Musharraf. Then again, the US has been pointlessly trying to “handle” Pakistan since the Cold War.
The Saudis and the government of Pakistan have the major responsibility for containing the Taliban. And they failed spectacularly before. Apart from this, talking about the faded glories of the past British hegemony are faded and empty reveries.
@gene108:
Nothing like this was necessary for the more recent 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Samara Morgan
hahaha
now who has been telling you guys this for months?
mememememe!
guess what else i see in my quantum crystal ball….Imran Khan is gettin’ Zardari’s job in 2013.
could there be a connection?
Khan doan liek America much.
He led he Arab Spring style sit-in that closed the NATO supply routes last spring and is suing the US for droning civilians in Waziristan.
tolejasotolejasotolejaso
mclaren
Magnificent! America is making the transition from hopeless quagmire to endless debacle, and much sooner than anticipated. How wonderful.
Meanwhile, that secret army report offers proof once again that America boasts the greatest military the world has ever known. 1.2 trillion dollars per year spent on America’s military, and we can’t defeat a bunch of 15-year-old kids who are armed with bolt-action rifles from WW I. Doesn’t it make you proud?
Everyone join in praising Barack Obama’s supreme wisdom and peerless insight in sliding deeper into the bottomless quagmire misnamed “Afghanistan” by changing the name of the hopeless endless futile mission from ‘war’ to ‘nation-building.’ Repeat after me: “Obama is a genius!”
mclaren
From the second link:
There, fixed that for ya.
xian
wish we could put mclaren and toko-loko in a roomful of mirrors together