Well, as widely reported, Obama has finally announced a new policy for the Afghanistan conflict. In short, 30,000 more troops are to be deployed there in the short term. After eighteen months, it’s planned that troops will “begin to come home”, though exactly what that means is open to question.
Juan Cole expounds at length on why this strategy, which seems rather like the Iraq “surge”, isn’t likely to work – in a nutshell, the surge in Iraq’s supposed success was mostly due to fortuitous coincidence with a number of political events, none of which are likely to have Afghan analogues.
John Faulkner has praised the strategy, but notably isn’t promising extra Australian troops to assist.
On questions of infant mortality, nutrition, life expectancy and literacy, Afghanistan is ranked near the bottom of the world. With unemployment rife, and civilian casualties already very high, I can’t see how more troops will do anything but turn more desperate young men into the arms of the Taliban.
This will be Obama’s Vietnam.
Admittedly, Obama was dumb to decalre himself expressly on Afghanistan while campaigning for the presidency, but even so I think this is the classic case of where you can plead “changed circumstances” once elected.
Obama could simply have upped sticks and left when the mess surrounding the farcical vote arose, declaring that they would intervene again “should evidence of the territory being used for attacks on US assets arise”.
Each new troop is going to cost between 500,000 and 1 million to keep in the field for a year (and when you allow for rotation, we are talking not 30,000 troops but more like 45,000. The matchs is pretty simple — somewhere between 15 and 45 billion US extra each year if they don’t get injured. The total bill will end up being closer to 100 billion pa. You can support a lot of refugees on money like that.
Would there be a revolt at home amongst anyone likely to vote Democrat in the mid terms or in the Presidential election in 2012 if he left? Unlikely.
This is the American military/Industrial complex at work. It will just send America down the gurgler fast.
The watershed in Iraq was not the surge, but when Maliki took on the Sarists in Basra and won. Something the Americans could not do. The US military were caught completely unaware by this and it was done with Iranian help. Since then Ameircan troops have been in a way redundant and Iraq just suffers them. Turkey and Iran have far more influence in Iraq than America which is now on the sidelines.
The reason we don’t here any more of Iraq is because of this. They won the war, but lost the peace.
Of course, the whole justification for this war, that is, that it is the claimed necessity of continuing with the occupation to deny the alleged perpetrators of 9/11 a base from which to launch new such attacks, is the subject of a heated dispute on the forum discussion Saturday Salon – The Truth is Out There! edition.
“Of course, the whole justification for this war, that is, that it is the claimed necessity of continuing with the occupation to deny the alleged perpetrators of 9/11 a base from which to launch new such attacks, is the subject of a heated dispute on the forum discussion Saturday Salon – The Truth is Out There! edition.”
Your grammar is very confusing, but I can only assume you’re exhorting still more people to look at your unravelling mental health on “that” thread.
Warning for those who haven’t been there yet: It’s pretty ugly and sad for the most part. I’d just skip through to the youtube links. But of course saying this makes me party to the cover-up. Make of that what you will.
I am suprised it took Obiwan so long to accept the advice of his military who now have the experience and track record of how to succesfully fight and win this type of conflict. The new direction isn’t his making – he is accepting the advice given. Funny how the Dems were so critical of the Bush/Petraeus surge but now the Obiwan surge is on it is all good.
As for theory that Iraq doesn’t apply to Afghanistan – of course not – different countries – different wars, but the principles of counter-insurgency warfare haven’t changed for a long time. It’s just taken the US a long time to relearn the lessons.
Setting a date rather than an event driven program is high risk because wars don’t run to timetables. The first casualty of war is the truth, the second is the plan.
If they bugger off from Afghanistan without leaving a self-sustaining security force and adminstration they just asking for the next 9/11 to happen.
I think announcing an intention to withdraw is pretty smart. It should be a clear indication to Afghans that this is not some colonial exercise. As well it may instil a sense of seriousness in Afghan politicians, that they will be entirely responsible for Afghanistan before too long.
The successful counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya springs to mind here. One of the most potent weapons of the Malayan communists was always denied them – the British had a clear intention to leave the country. They couldn’t co-opt pro-independence sentiment.
Comparisons to Vietnam are pretty superficial. There is no chance – none whatsoever – that the US will have half a million troops in Afghanistan as in Vietnam, or that the war would be conducted in the same brutal way.
“Bush buggered off without leaving a self-sustaining security force…”
Bush’s errors were/are legion, but he didn’t “bugger off” from anything. He completed his term in office and then vacated his office as required by law.
Ginja’s comment at #7 is pretty interesting.
I have precious little sympathy for Obama, but in this case I certainly sympathize with the difficulties of having to sort out this gigantic mess. Here’s hoping he’s favored with both wisdom and luck, and the course he takes results in less bad, and more good.
Well yes, it is different. But it simply means that Obama has chosen a different road to failure.
What is meant here by “Afghan politicians”? Who with any authority or chance for authority in Afghanistan is saying “we want to make sure that by 2011 Afghanistan has achieved the semblance of the conditions that will allow the US to leave ‘with honour’”?
The answer, of course, is the coalition of forces that believes it can control Afghanistan after the US leaves. And that coalition will contain a large slice of the Taliban.
Thus, like US policy in Iraq, the US trick is to bribe the dominant domestic political/military force into looking like it accepts US timetables and outcomes.
In Iraq Bush did nothing while Shiite theocrats closely associated with the ruling groups in Iran prosecuted a vicious program of ethnic cleansing against the Sunni. The counterfeit of success was achieved in Iraq at the expense of millions of innocent Sunni. Under those circumstances the Shiite theocrats were happy to humour Bush. And now even the January 2010 sham elections in Iraq have been postponed.
In Afghanistan neither Bush nor Obama did anything while the puppet government they foisted on the Afghans mutated into narco-trafficking warlordism. Unlike in Iraq, in Afghanistan it has been impossible for the Washington spin machine to make the dominant political force in the country look acceptable to world opinion. So far, there is no Afghan Maliki who can represent the interests of theocrats while simultaneously looking cute or at least acceptable to US public opinion.
The objective of Obama’s timetable is to encourage the emergence of such a figure to justify the US exit.
For Obama it is vital that this Maliki-equivalent looks acceptable until the US can leave.
For the Afghan people, they are more concerned with what this figure will do after the US leave. They know that whatever he does, it won’t be pretty.
Bush buggered off without leaving a self-sustaining security force. You can paint it anyway you like. And btw, it wasn’t just his errors. It was the Pentagon’s too. And the Generals. The same dimwits Obama is taking his advice from.
“Obama has chosen a different road to failure.”
I’m not so sure; but then of course it all depends on what anyone means at any given time by words like “failure” or “success.”
There’s the on-the-ground picture, then there’s the big picture, and then there’s the Roolly Big Picture. The US is never realistically going to “win” in the on-the-ground picture, so “road to failure” may be apt there; or maybe a slightly different translation, like “road to nothing that looks like a tangible sort of success.”
But in the Roolly Big Picture, which for the US is not so much Afghan nation-building or humanitarian concerns (legitimate though those are in their own sphere), but rather US territorial security and its connection to global security and order, the US arguably achieved most or all of its realistic goals in Afghanistan quite a long time ago. AQ and Taliban dealt a sound, humiliating and disruptive smack, check; punitive expedition to warn various wannabes that there isn’t ever going to be a pleasant margin in open-source acts of war against the US, check; and a demonstration that the purported “weak horse” wasn’t so weak after all, which one suspects gave appropriate pause to the various audiences, hidden and not so hidden, for whom the message was intended — check.
I can’t read White House tea leaves but I’m hoping (and suspecting) that Obama has come to the realization that most other legitimate US goals in the region can be achieved by means other than waging war, and the non-legitimate goals ought to be abandoned anyway. But in the short term, he’s got this weird political-military-strategic limbo dance that unfortunately has to be done, in order to unravel the whole train-wreck. If McChrystal can work a miracle in a year or 18 months or whatever, great; but if not, and probably not, then options can still be pursued which one hopes will involve a big reduction in pointless war-making. As for the Afghan domestic scene, it was a mess before 9/11, it’s a mess now, and it will be a mess in the foreseeable future. Any option that can mitigate suffering should certainly be explored, but failure on those terms is not the same as failure in terms of US vital interests.
I appreciate your pictures classification.
Yes there are pictures of different magnitude.
Let’s start with the picture on the ground. I agree with you that Afghanistan is a place that will never in our lifetimes conform to anything that we would recognise as civil society. The US invasion has simply made Afghanistan dangerous in different ways. But don’t forget that Bush was going to democratise the Middle East. Such talk causes ripples. More on that later.
Now for the big picture. 9/11 was planned in Hamburg, not Afghanistan. AQ doesn’t need a territorial base to pull off stunts like that. By blundering into Afghanistan, Bush has set off a chain of events that fit OBL’s script to a nicety. Bush has assisted in accelerating the Islamisation of a large and imprtant part of the world. Pakistan is in a state of permanent emergency. An acquaintance of mine is the child of a prominent family in Dacca, Bangladesh. This person, secular and sophisticated, was essentially chased out of Bangladesh by the local Taliban there.
This process of Islamisation may have occurred without Bush but I think that it undeniable that Bush has stimulated it powerfully.
This is the hand that Obama has been dealt. My fear is that this surge and the planned withdrawal will be interpreted as a major Islamist victory in the region. It will be interpreted, and legitimately interpreted, as Obama’s Retreat from Moscow. When Napoleon quit Moscow, this was seen as a huge victory for Russian particularism, nationalism and religiosity. Napoleon’s campaign to bring France’s version of universal values to the world was seen to crumble in a heap. This failure had very unfortunate consequences.
For Obama there is no escaping the consequences of Bush’s mind-boggling stupidity.
Perhaps not. But on the other hand, setting up a big training facility, where hundreds of recruits can practice with machine-guns and learn how to cook up and use home-made explosives, is probably going to be a bit difficult in Hamburg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Farouq_training_camp
In any event, Katz, what was the US supposed to do in the aftermath of 9/11? Any American President — not just ‘the Imbecile’, as you call him — would have had to take military action against the Taliban once they refused to hand over Bin Laden.
Of course, they didn’t get Bin Laden in the end. But they had to try. What was Bush supposed to tell the American people? “Look, why don’t we just forget about that little contretemps on September 11? It didn’t mean much — more people die on the roads each year. Hey, I wonder who’s going to win the 2002 Superbowl?”
Bush had to go into Afghanistan. Surely you understand that. One may legitimately criticise much of what came after, but the decision to go in flowed with inexorable logic from the events of 9/11.
Is this the only alternative to full-scale military failure that you can imagine?
A friend of mine described the situation in Afghanistan in this manner;
‘1. US supported warlords and, with Saudis, imported jihadis to provoke Soviet invasion.
2. Soviet imperialists took the bait and occupied Afghanistan.
3. Warlords and jihadis defeated puppet regime with US aid.
4. Warlords fought each other. US uninterested since only interest was in weakening Soviets (Brezinski still proud of the mess).
5. Warlords wrecked Kabul and became insufferable.
6. Pakistan ISI replaced warlords with Taliban.
7. Taliban allied with jihadis (now known as “Al Quaeda” – “the base” from the base of “Afghans” ie jihadi veterans imported to Afghanistan by US and Saudis).
8. Jihadis attacked US (9/11) and became insufferable (”blowback”).
9. US and NATO, replaced Taliban with coalition including reconstructed and tamed warlords under more restraint.
10. They (US and NATO) seemed to be following a (Hungarian) salami strategy of slicing off the worst warlords from the coalition one by one with the expected buildup of a “middle class”.
11. Hasn’t worked. Taliban feeding off oppression of people by warlords. Pakistan embroiled. Needs liberation of the people from oppression by both warlords and Taliban. Also needs democratic revolution in Pakistan. Democratic revolution in Pakistan needs democratic revolution in India. There’s interesting things happening in Nepal which may affect India and hence Pakistan and Afghanistan.
and had said;
‘My view on Afghanistan was one of “benevolent neutrality”.
Invading Iraq necessarily implied a strategy of democratic revolution and destabilizing the whole region which I naturally supported, since it made strategic sense.
Replacing the Taliban with a reconstructed and tamed warlord regime, was merely a stop gap thing, without much strategic significance – essentially the sort of stuff “sensible” corporate liberal imperialists like the Brookings institute have done from time to time with client regimes, thus earning US imperialism its well deserved reputation…
So while one couldn’t oppose getting rid of the Taliban (or get in the way with pointless critiques), I don’t think the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan actually picked up the ball to be able to drop it.
Initially, they had just let Pakistan’s ISI inflict the Taliban on a country they just weren’t very concerned about, then, when the warlords became insufferable, they only did the absolute minimum to restrain the warlords when helping them back to power after the ousting of the Taliban that had become insufferable.
Hopefully they will now get serious and unleash some real social change, as the only way to avoid worse problems in Pakistan (with forces now available as the far more strategically significant situation in Iraq permits).
But I haven’t been following it in enough detail to be sure.
Certainly Afghanistan is a living example of the policies that both the old guard of the US foreign policy establishment and the pseudoleft advocated for Iraq: Put a more friendly regime in without unleashing the region-changing chaos of actual democratic revolution.
Naturally that classically Brookings institute approach hasn’t worked (though it’s better than leaving the Taliban in charge).’
He then went on further to say;
‘Certainly Afghanistan won’t be moving directly towards socialism.
As for liberal democracy, I’m not much of a fan. Worst possible system except for the others…Iraq won’t be a particularly liberal democracy and far from secular, though probably more so than Cromwellian England.
Afghanistan’s democracy will be even less liberal and far less secular than Iraq’s. Democratic revolution is what creates the conditions in which both a middle class and a proletariat emerge as significant at the expense of other classes. Neither of those classes is a precondition but both are a consequence of uprooting pre-capitalist social relations.
What existed in Iraq before and what still exists in Afghanistan now had/has not made the first step of revolutionary overthrow of the previous social order.
Afghanistan so far has just been another regime change, unlike Iraq.’
Obama has left in place the General who managed the end stage of Iraq to deal with Afghanistan. Can leftists now discuss what is really required to make democratic revolution in this part of the world?
Obviously progressives would want an outcome similar to Iraq rather than any outcome that would see Al Qaeda and the Taliban remain on the face of this planet. That is not something that the peoples ought to tolerate any more than leaving Axis power political forces in power after their defeat.
Even most Trotskyites accepted that the occupations of Germany Italy and Japan produced real demonstrable progress. Why would any progressive or leftist think unity with Al Qaeda and the Taliban policies and demands would serve the masses?
Many people who consider themselves leftists (as this thread demonstrates) do not know why western bourgeois governments have deployed troops to the war in Afghanistan that really was started from the 9/11 attacks and simply bleat about how dreadful war is, and it seems to me that Obama is their leader!
But while the loonier element can rave on about oil pipelines across Afghanistan etc., Obama the President, must actually work out what to do about the real war aims.
Biden and Clinton have one view and the top generals in the field (‘David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, says he endorses Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy in Afghanistan’) have another.
Petraeus having designed and led the successful surge in Iraq is someone to be taken very seriously. Obama at that time campaigned against the surge,
(unlike McCain)Clinton and Biden are reverting to realist policies. The very rotten to the core U.S. policies that led to the blow-back of 9/11 in the first instance.
One has to put forward demands that make some sort of sense and that could not be troops out now. I bet, (though who can tell what an opportunist Harvard Lawyer might do) Obama will continue to smash up the collapsing anti-war movement and back the Generals who are not following the old post WW2 rotten to the core script at all.
Well, we haven’t had a “full-scale military failure” yet. And a certain Mr Obama doesn’t think we are going to have one. With respect, Katz, I’ll take his prognostications over yours.
Anyway, what other alternatives were there? The only one I can think of would have been a quick campaign followed by an immediate withdrawal: AQ has been smashed, and now we’re going straight home.
Of course, if Bush had done that, you’d have been blaming him ever since for the ensuing anarchy.
This continuing war crime is not about reprising the killings in the US on September 11th 2001.
It’s not about the Taliban, with whom previous US administrations have been more than willing to work – why wouldn’t they? – when you look at the other despotic, cruel regimes the west happily deals with.
A government of madmen who would be irrelevent to the rest of the world; who inhabit dry, rocky and arid moon-scapes with names few of us had ever heard about until recently – if it wasn’t for the importance of the geo-political interests of the chest beating global players – the Brits, the Russians and the Americans, and sometime soon, the Chinese. A group of strange, twisted men with an uncompromising and murderous religious outlook, dressed in odd clothes and who perversely still receive millions (?billions?) of US$, both to allow the passage of arms, men and equipment around Afghanistan (how cocky is that!), but also because Afghanis still control the farmland so needed by the US drug trade. I mean, can anyone believe that 8 years of the might of the world’s largest army has not been able to prevent Afghani farmland becoming the pharmacy to the west? Do you expect me to believe that with all the highest tech surveillance that can endlessly track individual people with pinpoint accuracy (who are then eliminated – again by remote control), but where poppy fields and the transport of enormous amounts of drug is somehow not visible and preventable!?
I don’t believe this war is about catching this or that man, or about wiping out Al Qaeda. How credible the reports about who was prepared to trade these men, of course, I have no idea.
But I reckon history will unfold and show the on-going crimes and corruption of all the players: the crazy people who organised the 9/11 attacks, the crazy people who decided to make this a cause celebre to cover their basic desire to push yet further into central Asia.
This war is about empire. It’s about control and the projection of presence, of a self-proclaimed “right” to exercise power.
President Obama’s long expected decision to boost troops numbers to kill more Afghanis is a cruel attack on the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and an indication of how hog tied our decision makers are to the aims of the military.
It is an attack on the integrity of the people around the world who thought – just for a brief moment – that this man might actually mean those glib words and phrases that fell out of his mouth like chocolate from a party fountain.
With him, we know the old maxim about whoever you vote for, you just get a politician (read: a snake oil salesman).
Ignore the off-the-cuff brilliance, ignore that he’s apparently the first non Anglo-Caucasian President of the US – but don’t ignore the blatant lies and corruption throughout the whole bloody adventure, and follow the money.
This speech says nothing about some of the “elephants in the room” – the thousands of private contractors who are up to their armpits in the killing stakes, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It says nothing about the remote control killing that is organised from the safe haven of world wide military bases, of which we host quite a few.
President Obama had made this “his” war within 3 days of his inauguration when he countenanced and commended the drone attacks that killed Pakistani civilians.
That he too deserves to join that line-up of desperate men who think they can defy the wishes of ordinary people, who want nothing much else but to live their lives in peace – and not become locked into spirals of hate – that 9/11 is indicative of.
That President Obama now puts his hand up for future world court jurisdiction is not something I hoped he would do.
But if it is any consolation for the poor people of the world, then they can take heart in knowing that there are just and honest people in the west who are working hard to stop murderous attacks on their countries and that they too will get their day in court.
Shame Obama, shame.
Let’s see.
I give Bush more credit than you imagine. He recognised that a smash raid on AQ would have been counter-productive (and he was correct). In fact, he saw his father’s smash raid on Saddam in 1991 as a failure and was determined to avoid the mistake (Bush Jun. was grievously incorrect in this case).
Bush Jun. said that he intended to democratise the Middle East. After that, all the folks there would eschew islamofascism and subscribe to some variant of America’s version of universal values. This transformation would be achieved by military means — EPIC MILITARY FAILURE.
“Is this the only alternative to full-scale military failure that you can imagine?”
I’m not sure what war you’re looking at, but I don’t see “full-scale military failure” anywhere in the landscape. Consider:
– the US Army is the one that’s busy creating a ruckus in Afghanistan. There is no Afghan army breaking the furniture in say Kentucky. That sort of force-projection isn’t really congruent with large scale “failure.”
– after 8 years of war, the US has sustained fewer casualties than it did during say Pickett’s Charge in the space of a single afternoon. Of course every casualty is a cause for grief, but perspective does illuminate certain truths.
– there is no draft, and US society is not mobilized in any strenuous way.
– Obama has spent weeks or months stroking his chin, musing at his leisure about when or if or how he might consider the thought of possible withdrawal, and if so, under what sort of fussy circumstances. He’s hardly being driven off in a rout. And even if he were, it wouldn’t be an irrecoverable position, not by a country mile. It’s just not that sort of conflict. Which is part of a plausible argument for bringing it to an end.
Yeah, the war is a mess, it’s a human calamity, and it’s causing far too much needless suffering. But “full-scale military failure”? Anyone can appreciate or share your disdain for Bush, but you’re wandering into Captain Ahab country here. Comparing this sorry business to Napoleon and Moscow is just a misuse of the concept of scale.
Part of the problem is of course the weird nature of this unusual sort of circumstances: the US simply can’t prosecute the war with anything like ruthlessness or full strength, because everybody knows that the Afghan people themselves are not to blame for any of this. That alone has created all sorts of weirdnesses that wouldn’t have bothered a soul at say Guadalcanal. I don’t envy anybody who has to make concrete decisions in this environment. There are preferred and less-welcome outcomes, but the only major “failure” would be in a Br’er Rabbit sort of way.
So, Captain Goalpost-Shifter is changing the subject to Iraq and to Bush’s aims for the entire Middle East. No, let’s not go there. Please.
Katz, why don’t you just give me a nice run-down on the various better alternatives that Bush had to the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Afghanistan is, after all, what this thread is titled.
Failure = when the mission assigned was not achieved.
Epic failure = when that mission remains unachieved AFTER EIGHT YEARS.
Tragic failure = when the epic failure is reinforced by the same means as that which created the epic failure.
Obama is about to transform epic failure into tragic failure.
Paulus, Bush said that he attacked Iraq because he was in league with AQ, according to Bush. Bush perceived the Middle East as a whole. Or have you forgotten that rather embarrassing moment in failed comprehension?
Are you seriously suggesting that if the US had not invaded Afghanistan, the Afghan Army may have laid waste to Kentucky (or any other state of the Union)?
That would be perceived as a stupid idea by the stupidest village idiot on Planet Stupid.
?????
There is the possibility that the strategy will work and the US – and the many other countries with troops in Afghanistan – leave the country in reasonable, or at least tolerable, shape.
Bush and Cheney OKd a request by Pakistan in Oct 2001 to airlift out of Tora Bora senior Pakistani military personnel attached to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_us_invasion__occupation=afghanwar_tmln_pakistan_involvement
And just to make sure you get that Bush was never serious about capturing the Al Qaeda leadership, he also withdrew troops from the area of fighting in Tora Bora. And its history that they fled to Pakistan. That isn’t a blunder. Thats policy. Policy? Why yes, policy:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/11/13_Laden.html
As for the fact that the nation building claim is a complete furphy, I give you exhibit A: Afghanistan.
So why are they in Afghanistan? Thats where I come up short. Obviously the military/industrial complex, and some old time imperial gangsterism. But they don’t hand out minutes of the meetings.
You want American nation building? How about this:
Now thats nation building, American-style.
Afghanistan was destroyed by Genghis Khan this still the basic problem there civilization was smashed ,the military option is similar to the Vietnam situation in the sense there is a historical problem until the problem are analysed by non military personal they will loose the conflict unless they can completely over power the opposition like the Panama walk over conflict not possible in Afghanistan .
The US routed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan on day one. On the very first day.
Ever since then all the USA and its allies has done is to swap the medieval (but functioning and on some sort of projection) rule of the Taliban for anarchy and war-lordism.
That is worse as it means a society derailed. History on hold. The invasion of Afghanistan was and is a crime. It didn’t even make Americans safer.
wbb have a look at comment 16 above
for example this part
‘Replacing the Taliban with a reconstructed and tamed warlord regime, was merely a stop gap thing, without much strategic significance – essentially the sort of stuff “sensible” corporate liberal imperialists like the Brookings institute have done from time to time with client regimes, thus earning US imperialism its well deserved reputation…
So while one couldn’t oppose getting rid of the Taliban (or get in the way with pointless critiques), I don’t think the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan actually picked up the ball to be able to drop it.’
and
‘Certainly Afghanistan is a living example of the policies that both the old guard of the US foreign policy establishment and the pseudoleft advocated for Iraq: Put a more friendly regime in without unleashing the region-changing chaos of actual democratic revolution.
Naturally that classically Brookings institute approach hasn’t worked (though it’s better than leaving the Taliban in charge).’
FDB,
My post meant exaclty what it said. It was in anticipation of someone like Razor using the false flag terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 as a justification for the continuation of the war:
4 corners on 19/12 , ‘Afghanistan, on the Dollar Trail’ explained how it is that the NGO’s are the Taliban’s best friend:
patrickm – I have now read your comment. Didn’t seem to have many suggestions about any way forward!? “Benevolent neutrality”? Is that where you don’t mind discussing something – but don’t actually give a fuck either way?
I realise my condemnation of the invasion is unhelpful in looking to the future – but I periodically like to put it in a comment here – just so nobody is deceived that the US invasion of Afghanistan was ever uncontroversial. Or worse to believe that it was ever the right thing to do.
But to the future – yes, if the US leaves then the resulting war between the Taliban and US armed warlords will be devastating (again) – the first victims will be all and any “moderates”. That is why the US owns the security of the Afghan population from now and into the forseeable future. However there are smarter and dumber ways of proceeding. The US must allow the Talibanisation of aspects of the Kabul government. It must also allow a certain degree of Balkanisation of the country. A westernised liberal democractic nation approach is futile.
Reconstruction is the highest priority. More dollars and more dollars. Less high-tech killing from 40,000 feet. Stop with all the blather about democracy – this only fuels apathy among allies when they see it fail. There are many more important things to be done first than democracy.
wbb: “reconstruction is the highest priority…more important things to be done first than democracy”… Indeed, and please see previous comment for how even so-called reconstruction efforts are a big part of the problem. It seems that unfortunately, (presumabkly because that episode was produced non-ABC), the full 4 corners web-archive replay and transcript service isn’t there for that particular program.
The gist of it was that the Afghani equivalent of Blind Freddy can see that the reconstruction dollars are being scammed by all and sundry, starting with hefty admin slices being taken off by adminsitering NGO’s, a most obvious manifestation being the proliferation of massive 4wd comfortmobiles for NGO staff from top to bottom.
At the other end they showed the absolutely appalling standard of work done in building an actual clinic: plumbing that doesn’t work or with unhealthy leaks, crumbling masonry, hopelessly inadequate equipment, all that and more.
Surprise surprise part of the explanation is not just how much money is left to do the jobs after all the vultures have taken their percentage, but who the tenders are let out to and how liitle that relates to ability to do quality jobs, and more to do with nepotism and patronage.
Which is all completely predictable, baksheesh as a way of life is as endemic there as it is in current Australian state ALP administrations. The Taliban need do anything more than publicise the story of yesterdays NSW parlaiamentary travesty to show that western democracy done wrong has very to little to offer and much to avoid.
Maybe Obama is going to allow the military/industrial complex to fail in broad view.
The Pentagon say they need 30,000 extra troops. Obama says how long, they say 18 months. Obama says OK. Obama is going on the advice of the Pentagon. Lets see if they know what they are doing.
The amount of pressure put on the government by the military was surprising. Well, now they got what they wanted. This is the Pentagon’s war now.
OK.
First I’d like to endorse what wbb said about the necessity of rehashing this sorry story. Also, wbb’s predictions about Afghanistan will prove to be mostly correct.
It will be important to rehash the events of 2001 until it becomes clear that US decision makers have understood the lessons of 2001. By his actions, it is clear that Obama has failed to learn the lessons of 2001.
Paulus appears to labour under the misapprehension that there is only one kind of invasion — that is the stand-off unleashing of massive ordnance. The stunning visuals of this war were more for US domestic consumption — a vindication of queried potency — than to achieve the proclaimed ambition of the military action.
That proclaimed ambition was to deny Afghanistan to AQ as a territorial base. Only when the Taliban refused to comply with US demands did the US invade Afghanistan. The original purpose of the Bush administration was to leave the Taliban in possession of Afghanistan.
At that point, the US opted for regime change. This policy was always going to provoke Islamist anger around the world. Bush’s methodology made this problem much, much worse. Apparently, Bush ignored the danger of arousing widespread, popular islamism. Bush was confronted with a problem in Afghanistan. He has managed to promote its spread everywhere.
A far more intelligent approach would have been to buy off tractable elements in the Taliban in return for results, among which results might have been the arrest or deportation of AQ operatives. So far this war has cost one trillion dollars. You can buy many Taliban with half that sum.
That option is still available to Obama but the price is likely to be much higher now and the US is already $1 trillion poorer.
Upthread Japerz opined that Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow was of a different scale. He misunderstands. Napoleon had suffered a fatal defeat before the first Frenchman died of cold and starvation on the road back to Paris. Napoleon’s plan to change the world ended with his first step on the road from Moscow.
The American failure in the Middle East is more serious than Napoleon’s failure in Russia. Napoleon’s failure strengthened Tsarist absolutism, which remained inflexible until the crisis of 1917. This was bad, but it was only one country. Bush’s failure has strengthened Islamism worldwide. We still haven’t seen the consequences of this strengthening in areas of the world that are right now the fastest growing populations on earth.
“Napoleon’s failure strengthened Tsarist absolutism, which remained inflexible until the crisis of 1917.”
So in other words, historical stuff happens historically during the course of history. Napoleon was a busy guy. While he was determining history for Russia, he was also having historical-type effects on Austria, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Italy, and that empire… what’s the one I’m thinking of? Starts with a B. Oh yes, the British Empire. All in a day’s work for a Man of Destiny.
This sort of thinking is certainly very lively, but it’s more a parlor game than anything else. Woodrow Wilson entered the Great War in order to make the world safe for… ADOLF HITLER!!!11! (Think about it, it only takes 3 or 4 chess moves to do.) Bet he never saw THAT coming.
Bush’s Iraq war was and remains the defining error of the age; so yes, you’re right, it will continue to have malignant ripple effects. Notwithstanding the sheer toll in human suffering, personally I’d say the worst repercussion isn’t even an uptick of Islamisation as you assert (that’s a periodic comet, after all) but the gaping abyss of squandered good opportunities which were cancelled out by the black mark of the war. Of course, those two things do meet at the crossroads.
(Actually I think Bush’s ruinous domestic policies may prove equally disastrous in the long run, but at least they didn’t cause war casualties. There’s a good case to be made that Bush is really a Cylon; his fuckups are somehow just too perfect and enveloping.) But bad neocon policy is/was just not the only thing that’s causing other things. And the Afghanistan war has separate claims; you can link them in certain regards, and it’s instructive to do so, but it’s also instructive to decouple them.
“A far more intelligent approach would have been to buy off tractable elements in the Taliban in return for results…”
But don’t you get it? This too would have had unintended butterfly-effect malign consequences (not to mention putting you at the same lunch table as Joe Biden –trust me, you don’t want that–), and then we’d just be complaining about those effects instead. Plus when you consider the stakes, buying off the Taliban simply wasn’t a credible option.
It is possible to have a reasonable conversation about this Japerz.
We aren’t too far apart on this.
The concept you are nibbling around is foreseeability.
In the first flush of revolution, Napoleon could have (and did) convince himself that the old European absolutisms were close to toppling. And topple they did all over Europe. Napoleon’s mistake in Russia was understandable. He expected ordinary oppressed Russians to love him but they didn’t.
America’s name was already mud in large parts of the Middle East long before Bush came to power. That wasn’t his fault. Nevertheless it was foreseeable that even the most sensitive American invasion (hah!) was likely to raise severe hackles. Moreover, the US had worked assiduously to promote violent islamism in the struggle against the Soviet Union. OBL had learned about weaponry and tactics thanks to the US taxpayer (or at least her distant progeny).
Only a blind man could fail to observe that the US would be hard-pressed to get many Middle Easterners to love them. Moreover, unlike Russian peasants, islamists know how to fight because they have been taught by one superpower and have fought and defeated another superpower.
Bush can’t use Napoleon’s excuse. His failure was foreseeable.
Well the last time I thought or read seriously about Napoleon was back in high school, so I don’t think I’m going to pursue that line any further.
To really get into the rest of the issues you raise, in a thoughtful way, would I think involve a lot of rather ponderously large conceptual structures and ideas, (and a lot of plain speculation), but I don’t think I’m up to being long-winded. I will say that I think one of the long-term structural dangers is that so much of the American political class at large has become so breathtakingly shallow; Bush was only the most extreme example of something that is reaching epidemic proportions.
But anyway enough of that. Thanks for the chat, as ever.
It wasn’t credible in the sense that it could have been made explicit US Presidential policy. But that wouldn’t have been necessary, would it?
Now the price has gone up. The US has to purchase the components of peace from every second stall-holder in the souk. (Piecemeal, perhaps.) I don’t know if the process has become any more credible – in a domestic US political sense – but the price must eventually be paid.
From the poppy-growers to the warlords to the Taliban themselves – the blood-price will have to be paid. (And leave some in the kitty for the former US escort, Karzai – he doesn’t come cheap.)
The temptation might be to do a runner – but hopefully memory will serve well enough to remind that that just doesn’t work – in this very little world – anymore.
A couple of years ago I attended a very confused talk presented by a visiting progressive young woman from Afghanistan. She was clear that the Afghan government was almost as bad as the Taliban and that the US policies were crap in backing the warlords who she rightfully saw as her enemies. But after identifying how dreadfully wrong this ‘do nothing that is revolutionary’ position was, she then proceeded to talk about how the way forward was with aid projects and how troops aught to be withdrawn.
It didn’t seem to dawn on her that the girls schools she was associated with in the refugee camps in Pakistan were only possible and protected from Taliban fascists one way or another by Pakistani soldiers! Neither did she seem to appreciate that no aid workers would go anywhere in Afghanistan without troops to protect them.
She just didn’t seem sensibly engaged in the business of fighting the protracted war to transform her life (by definition a revolutionary war) but rather (as she was being hosted by the muddled Oz peace movement types) was obviously caught up in the pacifist nonsense that Obama is now helping to bury.
Obama after months of studying the issue and hearing all kinds of advice and viewpoints continues along the basic path set by Bush in the strategically vital country of Iraq. McCain supports him (with the obvious criticism of the timetable).
Obama is actually opposed by Biden and Hillary Clinton who IMO were trying their best to reverse direction and return US policies to the reactionary ‘realist’ establishment policies of the past that sustained and created the swamp of the Middle East in the first place. But the issues have clearly moved on and the US is in no position to go back to the old and discredited policies. The best Obama can do is attempt or even just appear to have a bob each way as the method of placating his Democrat base.
Not everyone has a taste for it, patrickm!
Your stumbling block is that you see Afghanistan as a binary problem.
Taliban = bad. Democracy = good. But even if you could jump start your simple model, you would have an even bigger problem.
Most Afghani people would be closer in position to the Taliban – than to your idea of Democracy.
patrickm,
it almost sounds as though even as the young woman who had lived through it all and completely rejected a military solution, you are so wedded to the idea you can’t get past that. She is telling you how corrupt it is, and you are saying its protecting you from the fascist. I can see how she would not understand you, either.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104967631
The only positive thing about the action in Afghanistan is for Bin Laden.He knew he couldn’t beat the west in an armed conflict but he could bankrupt them and that, if he is still alive, is exactly what he is doing.
Out of the coalition of the deluded,the other main player and supplier of cannon fodder Grt Britain will like Gorden Brown soon be gone.The people are not going to tolerate the coffins coming home for much longer.
There is now a series of measurable front’s in the U.S., Middle East (ME), policy reversal, which was the correct response to the blow back attacks of 9/11. Even as the military conflict deepens in Afghanistan progress is apparent on this, and all other front’s. Due to the difficulties in Afghanistan, GWB had essentially left it in a holding pattern while Pakistan was turned around for it’s vital part of the war; and while the strategically more important war was fought and won in Iraq. At some stage the US was always going to have to get back to developing the struggle in Afghanistan. Even his Democrat successor could not avoid this as we have now seen.
The Nixon Christmas bombing of Vietnam all those years ago did not change, nor was it designed to change the defeat of U.S. imperialism in the U.S. Kennedy liberal ruling-elite’s effort to p r e v e n t free and fair elections in Indo China. The Vietnam defeat was formalised very shortly afterwards by Nixon. Most in the progressive peace movement of the time were made despondent with this bombing. Only a very few recognised what it really heralded and we can now benefit from this lesson as we try to come to grips with the current struggles throughout the world which all increasingly amount to local facets of but ONE struggle.
There are similar signs of imminent progress of that one struggle, the struggle for a bourgeois democratic revolution, currently throughout the ME, but amateur time frames and understandable subjective desires for quick results often obscure the signs. This is both an unavoidable struggle and a Herculean struggle, so it implies that it is a protracted struggle with many possible setbacks and adjustments in tactics in each local particularity as it proceeds. But proceeding it is.
“There are similar signs of imminent progress of that one struggle, the struggle for a bourgeois democratic revolution, currently throughout the ME,”
Ah! something to finally frame from L.P.
Who, that would call themselves progressive, does not know that the occupation of the Palestinian people is harming all aspects of this required revolution? This revolution has been identified by the U.S. ruling-elite as in the interests of not only the U.S. ruling-class but all Western peoples’.
Thus progressives, and all supporters of democracy and human rights can expect an end to the war for Greater Israel. IMV the signs are that we can expect it during Obama’s (1st?)term. The mass murder of the Gazan Palestinians at the start of 2009, and the election of the Netanyahu government does not change the strategic direction of the war for Greater Israel.
U.S. policy reversal towards the Palestinian people grinds remorselessly on and was demonstrated when GWB declared the West Bank ‘occupied territory’, rather than Clinton’s characterisation as ‘disputed territory’. It is now reasonable to predict the handing back of the Golan Heights to Syria, and the start to the removal of the settlers in the course of the next three years. It is clearly in U.S. interests to ‘assist’ the Israeli Government (even if we have to wait for a Livni government) to formalise and conclude this defeat ASAP. The only question is what is possible?
In the very short term people will be witness to all manner of obfuscation and carry on over the start of the handing over of the POW’s, most notably Marwan Barghouti. It’s probably best during this time to just reflect on all those years when Mandela was that notorious terrorist held by another apartheid regime for daring to struggle for his rights.
BTW. Change is now quite apparent in Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan, as that society is divided and war is being made by Pakistani progresives, united with others on the most reactionary elements that are not just tiny and isolated elements but are in control of large regions of the country, and Obama supports the spread of this war. So, the Afghanistan war IS now spreading, and the current proposal from Obama is to send more troops, AND to demand very much more from others, most importantly from the Pakistani government, and the discredited Afghani Government.
The U.S. intends to ignore the government in Afghanistan when no progress can be made by, or through, different elements of this force. The U.S. intends to simply identify and back all, and any elements (both inside and outside of the current government)that have the interests of the masses foremost, or who can make agreements,(and be held to account for them) that are stepping stone agreements in the manner of uniting the many to defeat the few and in the context of a clear path towards development of a future Afghanistan that is not mired in the current paralysing corruption.
Rather than stick with any formal lines through a heavily corrupted government the U.S. intends to turn to ‘imperial’ / revolutionary methods while it proceeds to reform that government, because that government is dependant on aid, and western troops are not there for fun. Rather they are there to win a war. The strategy is to ensure that the next electoral process is actually free and fair and very clearly seen to be so.
Endless war is not a strategic winner. There must also be social revolution launched and led from the big cities and that struggle must be protracted. The temptation to just go back to the former policies where the unelected Pakistani military dictatorship backed the Taliban and made use of terrorist groups like LE, without that ongoing improvement in the democratisation of the largest Muslim power centre could not possibly work for progressives. The deepening fight in Pakistan is as central to that region as Baghdad was central to Iraq.
The political transformation of the big cities is what will continue to change the more peripheral regions such as the Tribal regions and on into Afghanistan. Liberating, democratising and protecting the largest population centres (on outward as forces become available)is the key.
Failure to liberate the peoples’ from the tyranny of corruption has and would continue to just provide an opportunity for honest reactionaries to continue to recruit the socially backward elements that the revolution is directed against politically, into the military elements. Not all oppressors are dishonest and corrupt. Some are simply the lawful local tyrants that the revolution is directed against!
Patrickm @ 48. Sorry mate, if I was marking your comments – say at Duntroon – I’d give you perhaps 5%.
But even at such an “august” institution as that, it probably matters for very little how good an assessment your years of study helps you develop.
Our politicians aren’t concerned about the accuracy of the information, the depth of the analysis, or the brilliance and independence of your thought – which is what advisors should be producing. They make decisions to ensure the ideologically “purity” of the outcome – so we continue to support those whom we think we need for our greater protection.
Then a story line gets concocted around that – WMD, freeing the women, a democracy like ours, eliminating the Taliban / Mr Hussein, opening the country for foreign investment – I’m sorry that should read: “bringing the country up to the 21st C”, etc, etc.
Mate, if you’re interested in why and how Pakistan is a dismembered state, grab a copy of Tariq Ali’s – “The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power” (2008).
Now there’s a wonderfully readable, dynamic, astonishingly subtle and comprehensive assessment of Pakistan – and what happens to a country where the ensconced and parasitic elite tries to serve a foreign master and ignores the poverty, basic rights and fundamental desires of its’ own people.
Mate, information worth reading is readily available – if you actually want it.
Demanding ≠ getting.
If the Afghan government is discredited, why is Obama propping it up?
Time to snap out of this silliness, PatrickM.
Katz, “why is Obama propping it up?” Well only because the US has invaded the place! And its’ options must be close to zero (but hoping like hell that some sort of client state can be brought out of the props room within 18 months).
Kazai is the product of Halliburton’s control of the initial stages of the invasion – put there and protected by the previous US administration.
While this new US administration appears as blood-lusting as the previous one, it isn’t quite so committed to the Halliburton ring of steel – other corporations are dying to get their hands on some of the bottomless pit of money that’s being thrown around.
That can be the only logical reason there has been any comment on the level of corruption now. Without critical comment coming out of the US administration, there’d be nothing in the MSM either. Certainly not from our own chest thumping “Me too! Me too!” government or media.
In his speech the other night, Obama tried desperately to distance the current dire situation with the quagmire of Vietnam and without any much success as far as I can see – certainly US anti-war and veteran’s groups don’t agree with his mechanical and simplistic assessment.
Maybe fortunately for Kazai, when the US withdrew support from Diem in South Vietnam, he was assassinated within hours or days. (Diem had been plucked from a seminary in the US to be head of the “Democratic Republic of South Vietnam”, if I remember correctly.) The next pop-up military cut-out – was it Air Vice Marshall Ky miraculously appeared. (Funny when you think that the South Vietnamese never had its’ own airforce – but that’s Newspeak hard at work wrenching any possibility of a real story materialising for a skeptical and unwilling people back home!)
The next government in waiting in Afghanistan will be a product of the craven and corrupt “elite” of Afghanistan sitting in front of the cameras but actually in the shadows of the endless US paid mercenaries, dressed in suits and with lap-tops in hand.
Mervyn, I have read your comments starting at 18 on this thread, and I wonder if you have read my comment at 16 where it is we part company as the history of the war was outlined? I feel sure that you would not disagree with point 1., and doubt that many others here would either, and I also think that (though you may word some other points a little differently that would be but a very minor quibble) it would be acceptable in your eyes to understand the history as stated. So, if we are to discuss this war on LP and work out what it is really all about, or convince anybody to change their current thinking, let’s leave the conclusions aside for a while and review some of the history.
BTW your attempt to compare Vietnam is not at all convincing. It seems to me as pointless as attempting to compare the role the U.S. played in WW2 to the role they played in Vietnam. On the broader issue of what policies the U.S. has followed since WW2; why do you think the U.S. foreign policy establishment are so hostile to the new policies of GWB? Do you think elections ought to mean something?
IMV Elections that mean something are the key. In Iraq the elections meant something, and will again shortly. (just as they will in the Palestinian territories and their elections are also looming) They mean something as well in Pakistan, (where for many years they did not and support for the Taliban was government policy until 9/11 brought the internal struggle DEMANDED by the U.S. through special envoy Armitage). They mean something in Lebanon, and even Turkey! How long can it be before they will mean something in Egypt, Syria, Iran and so on?
You say that Tariq Ali has produced good material. My question to you is what were his predictions before the war in Iraq? What were his predictions as to how a government would emerge? What were his predictions at the time of the ’surge’? I think you will find that his views do not hold up at all.
this guy is on to the problem more broadly
I think this is the level of debate required to work through what is wrong with the pseudo-left positions that all amount to trying to refute the unfolding reality of a bourgeois democratic revolution across the entire ME and beyond, now backed by the U.S. where previously the U.S. was the greatest obstacle standing in the way. ‘Realist’ policies adopted since WW2 were the problem, dumping them is a big part of the solution.
These are strange times we are living through. But facts are stubborn things.
Last comment spaminated.
Inevitably Afghanistan will prefer their bastard to our bastard.
Hope a moderator can extract my last comment from the spaminator.
Wbb you have on my reading, expressed a quintesential two part thought and that is a) that the Italians will always prefer Mussolini to … Germans prefer Hitler to … Japanese, Tojo to … Iraqi’s, Saddam to … etc. Before you protest that that is a gross misreading,consider Saddam was their bastard and you opposed his Baathist regime based on a tiny minority of the Sunni minority being crushed in an illegal wara and then the COW set in train a process that resulted in what is clearly a liberation that Tariq Ali neither recognises now nor predicted. Yet you imply that we will be installing our bastard! The reason you imply that is because that is exactly what the U.S. under the old policies used to do. They would simply install their bastards! Check out Pilger befor the war, he even named whom they would install!! Tariq never laughed at him and told him that that was impossible, but myself and other open revolutionary leftists did. Tariq Ali would have stood on the same platform and not batted a eyelid at Pilger, just after they marched down the street chanting ‘no blood for oil’, and ‘not in our name’.
And b) nothing ever really changes – which is a truly astonishing thought in this era of such rapid change!
In my view progress is so dramatic that imperialism just can’t function in the old manner and has had to throw in the towel and reverse course. It is not our choice who the PM and President of Iraq is, and it will not be our choice when Barghouti is elected President of the Palestinians any more than it was our choice that Mandela was elected in South Africa, or his replacements.
It will not be our choice who the Afghanis elect either but it will be our choice to identify and deal with corruption while we occupy their country and liberate the people as we fight those that would oppress them.
The goal of the imperialism doesn’t change, only its methods, and sometimes not even that.
How is Karzai, not “our bastard”? How are the warlords and war criminals that constitute his government not “our bastards”?
“It is not our choice who the PM and President of Iraq is, and it will not be our choice when Barghouti is elected President of the Palestinians any more than it was our choice that Mandela was elected in South Africa, or his replacements.”
“…and liberate the people as we fight those that would oppress them.”
We has to destroy the village in order to save it…
This statement is either seriously deluded or a deliberate distortion of reality. How can elections in Iraq be fair and free when the country is occupied by tens of thousands of foreign troops and under the direct sway of Washington and London?
In regards to Barghouti, his possible election just goes to show that try as it might (the training and arming of Fatah militants in order to crush Hamas) imperialism doesn’t always get its way. It doesn’t prove they don’t attempt to use the same brutal methods as in the past.
ML “Mate, if you’re interested in why and how Pakistan is a dismembered state, grab a copy of Tariq Ali’s – “The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power” (2008).”
’scuse Mervyn, but you did ask for this.
personally i’d be quite happy if Duntroon, etc were recomending the works of the organisers of anti Vietnam War rallies. whats next, Simon Townsend in charge of POW camps?
patrickm – “it will be our choice to identify and deal with corruption while we occupy their country and liberate the people as we fight those that would oppress them.”
What’s the point of liberating them from one bastard; just so that when we leave they can fall under the oppression of the next bastard. At least with the Taliban, there was a coherent program to their rule other than simple, naked power. The Taliban arose because the people were sick of the dance of dictatorial bastards. The next stage on from the Taliban would have been the best next hope. But we have put them back to the start of the game.
Afghanistan is not an entity amenable to centralised, democratic control. Before that can happen, there needs to be years of stability, material rebuilding and a generation of children receiving the minimum of schooling. Democracy disappears quickly in a puff of smoke when the social substrate is not properly prepared.
For me this type of discussion including my own contribution is obscenely theoretical. The US and its allies should never have put itself in the position where it is now forced to play god with people’s lives – when we know it relies on half-arsed musings not categorically superior to our own speculations.
What’s the bet the Russians are back in Afghanistan in a generation’s time?
Wbb. I bet the Russians will not be there at all! Though I agree with you that our ruling elites are not any better at understanding how the world works and how the peoples struggles are unfolding.
The three big issues of our time are ‘Nations want liberation, Counties want independence and the people want revolution’ and those who stand against the trends will on average end up on the loosing side.
So I think it is the struggle against tyranny that enables the social substrate to emerge and the next stage on from the Taliban is already in the fight and growing in that very struggle! For you everyone who could emerge as political forces in Afghanistan is and must be bastards unworthy of support. For me unity is conditional but uniting the many to defeat the few is absolute. The main thing is to stand with the oppressed against the oppressors. United front politics is what its all about really and WW2 is a good model to reflect on.
Chav you say ‘How can elections in Iraq be fair and free when the country is occupied by tens of thousands of foreign troops and under the direct sway of Washington and London?’ What will it take to convince you that Iraq is really an independent country run by its own politicians after free and fair elections? IMV you just won’t face up to your errors and even when all the COW troops have left you will still treat the Iraqi government as if they were puppets. You just are not facing up to the reality of what has and had to become of Germany, Japan and Italy yet all were occupied! Iraq is not one jot different.
‘Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases, and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in struggle against it.’ Mao Tse Tung: (September 29, 1958).
The world has changed profoundly since the 1950s, and that change is accelerating: yet when it comes to the diminishing imperial power of the last superpower not many people noticed, until recently, just how low this mighty power has fallen. Now quite a few are noticing; but they are more often than not supporters seeking to arrest the trend and not left-wingers delighted at the progress.
Take this example;
‘Bush and Cheney have done more than merely bungle a war and damage the Army. They have destroyed the foundation of the post-Cold War world security system, which was the accepted authority of American military power. That reputation is now gone. It cannot be restored simply by retreating from Iraq. This does not mean that every ongoing alliance will now collapse. But they are all more vulnerable than they were before, and once we leave central Iraq, they will be weaker still. As these paper tigers start to blow in the wind, so too will America’s economic security erode.
From this point of view, the fuss over whether we were misled into war—Is the sky blue? Is the grass green?—stands in the way of a deeper debate that should start quite soon and ask this question: Now that Bush and Cheney have screwed up the only successful known model for world security under our leadership, what the devil do we do?’ James K. Galbraith .
Galbraith is quite genuine he does not know what to do and he is not alone; the old foreign policy establishment warriors are all in a spin. People like Madeline Albright are being ignored and they are not happy at all. They viscerally know that the result of applying the Bush policy for eight years is the destruction of their carefully constructed old world of ‘measured steps’ towards democracy in the Middle East. Measured steps is their code words for actually maintaining the status quo of autocrats and rat-bags in power and impeding the progress of democracy. They want pro US governments and unless a pro US government was to emerge (hell may freeze over first) they stand with the dictators and autocrats.
The game is now up for the old US as it was for the British and French 50years ago when the Suez crisis, (actually a brutal if short war), demonstrated just how stupid some old imperialists could be.
The US ruling elite (now looking every bit as doddery as Anthony Eden) are now realizing that there is essentially nothing left of the old policy position to even hope to rebuild from because President Obama has followed the same path.
An interesting article that contains many, although, perhaps, not all the answers is “Obama’s War: Why is the Largest Military Machine on the Planet Unable to Defeat the Resistance in Afghanistan” of 2 December 2009 by Sara Flounders on Global Research.
Of course, as mentioned above the pretext for the war in Afghanistan is a lie as shown (amidst the spam) on the very bloated (at least 2.4Mb) forum “Saturday Salon – The Truth is Out There! edition 1665″.
I fully agree with
177 Liam (truth is out there edition)
‘Yours is not a search for “truth”, it’s an obscurantist, occultist search for hidden gnostic pearls, rejecting all fairness with primary sources, and it’s the opposite of history. I will not watch your videos. I will not read your Questions. I will not debate you on the differences between detonation and deflagration and the finer points of aluminium thermite’s utility in demolitions. I utterly reject the idea that your argument can be dealt with fairly or reasonably. Your “movement” should be engaged with only with derision, mocking and contempt.’
“The main thing is to stand with the oppressed against the oppressors. ”
In Afghanistan, the political culture is inherently a system that in its nature appears oppressive to our eyes. It is impossible for us to stand there with the oppressed.
Or, at least, if we try to do so, then we will be standing there a very, very long time. And in reality the natural corruption of men, would ensure that we would have become one with the new oppressors long before our initial goal was attained.
Perhaps it was worthy to fight as a foreigner against Franco for example, but I don’t know of any cases where foreign troops have lead an indigenous liberation.
Who in Afghanistan prior to 2002 was the leading light of the long rise of the oppressed? Who was the Castro, or the Mandela? The Mugabe, or the Ghandi? The US decapitated a country and now wonders why stitches and fine words will not suffice.
The main thing, patrickm, is that we stand for not plunging a people into violent disorder. Our shiny dreams of their future liberation aren’t shared by the millions who will be denied a decent life in the meantime.
One of the things we don’t like about many countries is the oppression of women. How do we propose to stand militarily with those oppressed in the liberation of one half of every family?
wbb: “what’s the bet the Russians are back in Afghanistan in a generation’s time?”
You’re missing the most important thing (actually, bless your heart, you nearly always miss pretty much *all* the important things — but clearly you have a good soul, so who can hold it against you? If you ran the world, we might all just be OK; but since you don’t, hell man, we’re fooked.)
For the rest, well, we’ve practically got a convention going on this thread. Would y’all mind posing for a group photograph? (I won’t say a group of what.)
“You’re missing the most important thing”
Ok. How many guesses I got?
“How many guesses I got?”
Well strictly speaking you’ve already had your share and then some; but since I’m a sporting man, what the hey, take three if you like.
Meantime, this is worth a read. Certainly I wouldn’t endorse its every point, but then again at least it’s food for thought… which is more than you poor critters get from some of the fish-tanks in these parts.
Gee, that’s a long article, j_p_z. You know I don’t read too fast. And ctrl-f doesn’t find me “the most important thing”. So I’ll have to use up a few of those guesses.
“We’re nation building in a place we’d have to occupy for a century to build a nation” Agreed.
“We can deal with Afghanistan again in July 2011, when we’ll have a better read on the landscape for Obama’s 2012 reelection bid” Agreed.
“Those rules are imposed because we are nation building — in a place where they don’t want our kind of nation, much less Obama’s kind of nation.” Agreed.
“In reality, we’ll be chasing the thankless, impossible dream of turning Kabul into Kansas.” Agreed.
“The plan is not for us to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It’s for us to convince the Afghans that they should fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, that our war is really their war.” Agreed.
“In fact, the Taliban is an Afghan movement, sprung quite naturally from the Islamic fundamentalism rampant in Pashtun society. It was strategically nurtured by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, .. the Taliban is Afghanistan. They’re not a foreign force.” Agreed.
Not a lot new there.
God knows what the writer proposes though – it’s gotta to be either complete withdrawal now – or else full-scale bombardment. He doesn’t say. He doesn’t really care. It’s all about Obama, for him. Wrong thread, japerz?
Shorter Alinsky (Japerz’ link): Obama has swept us conservatives off our feet. He’s bragging about his conquests and all he has given us is wet patches on the sheets.
wbb is correct. Alinsky can offer no alternative. The only question that remains is when the US will acknowledge that their Afghan adventure is a failure.
But more important for Alinsky is that now the Dems own this failure. The Right can then trumpet that Obama is no good in bed, which has been the best revenge of the seduced since the beginning of the world.
Katz: “when the US will acknowledge that their Afghan adventure is…”
Afghan adventure. “Afghan adventure.” Adventure, eh.
Thus concludes the grown-up portion of our programme — not with a bang, but a whimper. We now direct you to somewhat more appropriate fare…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FabM1RJTkrY
Adventure:
1. An undertaking or enterprise of a hazardous nature.
2. An undertaking of a questionable nature, especially one involving intervention in another state’s affairs.
“Adventure” works for me…
Wait, I put my pnuchline in the feedline!
Pretty pnuchy contribution, huh?
Pleased as pnuch with it, I am.
‘“Adventure” works for me…’
Honey, come here quick! And bring the camera! Katz has found the dictionary!
Awww, what a pwecious widdle diddums. Wook at all the paaaages! Hey honey — did you get a picture? We can put it up on the refrigerator!
‘ken hell.
I feel like I’ve been kidnapped in the Tardis to a time and place I never ever wanted to go to. Some sort of US prep school in 1959. Thanks for nowt, j_p_z. That was skin crawling.
Japerz, if you had just told me that reading the word “adventure” caused you to revert to infantilism, I may have avoided using it.
Are there any other words that distress you?
Let us presume that Obama was sincere in the sentiments that he stated in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Here is where and why the policies he is pursuing will fail:
This was surely the road ahead. Yet it is ironic that Kennedy uttered those words as the US was entering Vietnam, the archetypical and disastrous war of the era of people’s war. The US proved to be incapable of establishing acceptable and practical institutions of this kind in one small country on the Pacific sea coast. Such a task is more difficult in the middle of Asia where it costs the US taxpayer US$400 for every gallon of gas delivered to the front line!
Obama returns to Kennedy’s insight:
The US does not have the staying power. An expansion of moral imagination cannot compensate for the fact that the US is no longer the only economic superpower. The economic and financial fragility of the US prevent major wars cannot be fought without consequence for the economic and financial viability of the political economy of the US.
Economic constraint is one important determinator of the way in which the US fights wars. The US is making more and more enemies in the AfPak region. US military methodology is an important cause of the growth in power and number of the enemies in the region. Eventually those enemies, flushed with triumph, will govern Afghanistan.
‘determinator’
I wish you HAD found me, K.
Just so you know, Katz, the comment above from “the dictionary” wasn’t me. (Since I was the one who introduced that trope it’d be plausible to think so.)
correct