We have always been or have not always been not at war in Afghanistan, except when we have or have not been… A little help here, Minitrue.
— Billmon (@billmon1) December 29, 2014
Lest we forget. Dan Murphy, at the Christian Science Monitor, on how “The Afghan war that didn’t really end yesterday ended in defeat“:
… While most of America’s NATO allies that hadn’t already washed their hands of combat will now do so, American fighting and dying will continue, with 11,000 US troops remaining in the country. There will be talk of “advising,” and “training” and “non-combat” presence. But for the most part that can be safely ignored.
Afghanistan is a dangerous place. The US-installed government there is on shaky ground, and just advising Afghan troops is a dangerous job, given that a high-percentage of US military deaths in recent years have been caused by Afghan soldiers and police. In August, Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was murdered by an Afghan soldier, becoming the highest ranking US officer killed overseas since Vietnam.
US casualties compared to Afghan ones have been negligible. Over 4,000 Afghan soldiers and cops were killed fighting in 2014 alone, compared to 2,224 US soldiers killed fighting there since 2001. Civilian deaths had soared to 3,188 by the end of November, making this year the bloodiest for civilians since at least 2009, when the UN began tracking civilian deaths. The civilian death toll is at least a 20 percent increase over last year…
Meanwhile, opium production in Afghanistan has soared despite $7 billion flushed down the tubes by the US on opium eradication. Afghanistan can not by any stretch be called a democracy – vote buying and thuggery at the polls dominate elections. The country’s government is entirely dependent on foreign aid, and has been gifted or burdened, depending on your perspective, with assets it cannot afford…
We did, however, give our remaining forces a kewl new label, so there’s that.
Baud
The only legitimate purpose for the invasion was to get bin Ladin and we did that. (Thanks, Obama!) The rest of it was FUBAR, squared by the distraction that was Iraq.
mclaren
That 7 billion dollars for “opium eradication” apparently involved sending U.S. troops to guard Afghan warlords’ poppy fields.
A little help here, minitrue, indeed.
schrodinger's cat
Weren’t the gruesome shooting deaths in the Pakistani school, just a continuation of the unrest in Afghanistan? If anything it has spilled beyond its borders into the neighboring Pakistan.
Howard Beale IV
The Taliban ended opium production when they ruled the roost after they flushed the Soviets out back in the 1990s.
Sheesh.
srv
I need help here, at this point, how many wars has Obama lost?
War On Cops not included. At least yet.
Turgidson
@Baud:
I was disappointed that Obama didn’t use getting bin Laden and the brief afterglow as a good opportunity to declare victory and leave. It became painfully obvious long ago that our presence there isn’t going to move the needle in a positive direction.
raven
Go Dawgs!
Baud
@Turgidson:
Me too. I thought that would have been a good time to draw down.
Betty Cracker
@Turgidson: A-fucking-men.
@raven: I’m pulling for the pups tonight too! And LSU — WTF?
raven
@Betty Cracker: Les Miles is a dumb-ass. I have to say I was wrong about the crowd in Nashville, looks like the mackeral snappers filled the joynt.
Tree With Water
Remember when Laura Bush adopted the welfare of Afghan women as her signature cause? I do. I believe she announced her concern during a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the oil industry.
Goblue72
$7B would provide for a good solid crack at ending homelessness in America.
Betty Cracker
@raven: I always kinda liked Miles. He’s just such an oddball, what with the grass eating, etc.
srv
@Howard Beale IV: Sorry, but this is really a popular myth like the US funding the Taliban in the 80s. The Taliban shorted opium because the warehouses were full of it and the market crashed:
http://www.economist.com/node/1383228
The Taliban had issues with muslims consuming, but they did not give a ratfuck about western consumption. They played the game, got their hundreds of millions for eradication efforts (ala Pakistan, see the original Traffik) and weren’t concerned about your black tar babies.
Sorry, but the Taliban read Adam Smith too. Business was business.
Cervantes
@srv:
What myth are you referring to?
From the 2002 article that you cited:
Cervantes
@Tree With Water:
I do remember her making some sort of statement on the radio.
Cervantes
@srv:
What myth is it that is refuted by the article you cited?
Mike in NC
Outsource policing Afghanistan to the NYPD, experts at corruption.
srv
@Cervantes: The article is cited to show the prior production boom (see graph). The rest is propaganda like everything else you read.
If you don’t remember, back then the western media was all luv-luv over how awesome the Taliban were for fighting the War On Drugs and legitimized their new regime. Just like those awesome Pakistanis fighting against tar babies! You were being played:
It is a serious academic topic that is still being debated:
https://books.google.com/books?id=-ESWBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=myth+taliban+opium+production&source=bl&ots=s8JOqd6Jmv&sig=O-IeL5AnqGIqdQVIXECzBRaiNw0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3UCjVITAOoKQyATjmYCgAw&ved=0CF8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=myth%20taliban%20opium%20production&f=false
Cervantes
@srv:
So you like the graph in the Economist article but not the accompanying assertions as to its meaning? That’s fine — and thanks for clarifying.
As for Glavin’s book, I read it when it was published. I found it to be (1) a compilation of diatribes against the left and (2) a stirring but unconvincing call for the West to “rescue,” or keep trying to “rescue,” Afghanistan.
srv
@Cervantes: Well, he hated the Taliban more than the left, and my memory he wasn’t a GW fan, so IDK why he would lie for them. And obviously emotionally attached to Afghans while seeing the Pashtun as modern day Aryans (literally, I think Nazis came up).
The best graphs are in academic PDFs, and they show bumper crops, a price collapse, and then a fatwa that Adam Smith could have thought off. Production didn’t drop until 2001, prices skyrocketed, UN Aid money rolled in, NYT’s nodded approvingly… I mean, we can assume the Tallban were good in their hearts, or at least one of them had taken a macro class.
danielx
Simply amazing, or maybe not so amazing. The money quote from the James Fallows article from the other day:
I have to admit it causes me to wonder how effectively my tax dollars are being spent, but when it comes to military spending nobody in DC who matters gives a flying fuck about taxpayer dollars.
Frankensteinbeck
Uh… no? It can’t? I mean, it may or may not be wink-wink ‘advising’, but you can’t actually just dismiss it and pretend it’s a code word for full engagement. If you just assume the government’s going to lie you’re as full of shit as assuming the government’s telling the truth. I’d like to know what ‘advising’ means so I can judge whether or not it’s an acceptable use of our troops. If you know details, Dan Murphy, I’d like to hear them and not just your assumption of what it must mean. Heaven knows Afghanistan has been a clusterfuck, but if you’re going to write an article about it, I’d like more details.
Cervantes
@srv:
Pretty sure I did not suggest anyone was lying.
Cervantes
@danielx:
Fallows ought to know better than to take anyone’s stated aims at face value.
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
History tells you that the two are equally likely when it comes to war?
danielx
@Cervantes:
I know, I know – it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
@Frankensteinbeck:
Let’s see if I can rephrase: when it comes to foreign policy and military affairs or for that matter any policy involving coercion by armed personnel, you are generally safer assuming that the government is lying than you are in making the assumption that the government is telling the truth. I don’t automatically assume every government spokesman or spokeswoman is lying about everything the government does, but I’ve been listening to government spokesmen bullshitting about various foreign policy/military misadventures and the motives behind them since 1967 or thereabouts – as in making statements that turned out to be demonstrably untrue. It started with LBJ and Westmoreland lying about required troop levels and enemy strength in Vietnam, continued with Nixon (whose lies were innumerable), and continues to this day. If anything it’s going to get worse, because the motives behind various foreign policy fuckups (to wit, central Asian gas, oil and associated infrastructure, among other things) are getting more and more difficult to obfuscate.
And Villagers wonder why voters are so cynical.
bago
Hey, at least we won the Rumalia oil field for BP in Iraq.
Cervantes
@danielx:
Re bug v. feature, nothing is self-evident but the question is not trivial.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: Casting a skeptical eye on things is definitely reasonable. Assuming that people are lying about military and foreign policy seems to me to be a step or two too far. YMMV.