Look at the results of the new Washington Post/ABC News poll on support for the war. Not the war on Terror, not the War in Iraq. The War in Afghanistan. For the first time a majority of Americans, 51% to 47% now feel that war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon announced 6 more US troops had been killed in Afghanistan yesterday. Six Afghan election officials were also murdered yesterday, in what many are already proclaiming a flawed election because of the limited number of people voting in the Southern provinces controlled by the Taliban, and because of reports of vote fraud. Meanwhile, the word is that the US Commander will ask for more troops to be sent over there, what we used to call back in the days of LBJ, an escalation.
The new poll comes amid widespread speculation that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, will request more troops for his stepped-up effort to remove the Taliban from Afghan towns and villages. That position gets the backing of 24 percent of those polled, while nearly twice as many, 45 percent, want to decrease the number of military forces there.
This is not change I can believe in, frankly. I think we have caught the Russian disease (which used to be known as the British disease) in Afghanistan. But what do I know? I only read history books, analyse the outcomes of previous wars by foreigners there, and draw the conclusion that this is all going to end badly for the US. I guess that makes me a Defeatocrat or a Traitor or someone who doesn’t support the troops. Or maybe it makes me a realist. Take your pick.
My biggest concern is that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan will never have the budget to pay for their armed services without us footing the bill. Therefore, building up their capabilities won’t lead us to a logical point of transfer. I think we own Afghanistan and cannot sell it, even back to them.
Seems like a classic flypaper problem.
I suspect that if we’d spent a tiny fraction of what we’ve spent on military action on genetically engineering a crop disease specific to opium poppies, we’d have neutralized most of the threat posed by a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
And yes, sure, that probably would have violated any number of treaties, but since when has that stopped Americans? If we’re going to make a career out of being a rogue nation, let’s at least not be wastefully roguish.
I think first, we ought to question exactly what threat does a Taliban ruled Afghanistan pose to the United States.
To many–particularly those in the MSM, the words Taliban and Al-Qaeda are synonymous. In fact, the Taliban have never expressed any interest in world jihad.
The Taliban are a nationalistic force, concerned about expelling the invaders and righting perceived wrongs against the Pashtun.
And wasn’t it the Taliban themselves who had done much to suppress the opium trade prior to the US invasion?
Yes.
The only people who can conquer Afghanistan are the Iranians.
No.
My guess is that we are getting set up for the election fig leaf and a status of forces agreement.
And shifting our focus to eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan to deal with what remains of al Quaeda and with the Afghan Taliban leadership. Look for more Predator drone attacks, more action by the Pakistani Army.
Also, Karzai just might lose to Abdullah Abdullah because the Afghan Taliban suppresses the vote in Pashtun areas.
My prediction: announcement before December that we will be out before December 2011. Major drawdowns in Iraq and buildups in Afghanistan in October 2009. Shift to training Afghan someone in December 2009. Proclamation of Afghan ability to handle it in September 2010. Pull this up a year from now and see how far away I am.
Not being a complete cynic I’d like to believe your scenario will play out as described, but I have my doubts, shall we say.
Let us just say it is a variation on the theme of “Declare victory and go home.”
Except we should just cut out the timeline “middleman”, and declare victory today and pull out tomorrow.
We’ll do it anyway down the road, as you say.
End badly? It may be the end of an empire. Ours. What with the budget deficit reaching ever greater amounts, the US may just run out of money to finance its imperial ventures. Even now we depend upon others like the Chinese, Russians, Koreans etc. etc to loan us the bucks to keep everything in balance. Once this source of funds dries up, it’s all over folks and, I am sure, the crash will be heard plainly even in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Obama may be both our first black President and our last one as a thoroughly alarmed electorate entrusts its future to the proverbial man on a horse. It’s been quite a run while it lasted, though; just ask the executives at Goldman Sachs.
“I…draw the conclusion that this is all going to end badly for the US.“
However badly it ends for the U.S. it will be far less bad than the U.S. deserves. My sympathies are with the Afghans, the Pakistanis, and the other victims of the U.S.’s deadly combination of aggression and incompetence, and not even remotely with the U.S.
Hey Hurria, how do you like your new computer? I am thinking of getting an Apple also.
To tell the truth I am not loving it, and being forced to use it for eight days when the power adapter died on my Windows laptop did not endear me to it any more.
The upside is that the OS really is very stable, does not tend to get bogged down and need rebooting as Windows does, and the display is really superior. I really like it for that.
A lot of my unhappiness with it is admittedly unfamiliarity. I just don’t find it intuitive, and the native e-mail program and browser are lacking a lot of things that would make them convenient to use – or at least I have not been able to figure out how to set them up to my liking. I COULD switch over to using MS Outlook and Firefox, and probably will eventually if I can’t figure out how to configure the ones that came with the computer. I also don’t get the folder structure on the hard drive, and I am pretty particular about the way I set things up.
By far the biggest disappointment I have, though, would not affect you. The Arabic support on the MAC is really, really poor. First, I have still not succeeded in finding decent word processing and spreadsheet programs that support Arabic, and switching languages is not quick and easy as it is in Windows, which is a problem when you have to do it often within the same document or spreadsheet as I do. I have started experimenting with virtualization on it so I can run Windows stuff on the MAC, and I guess I will end up running Windows in a virtual machine, but it seems a shame to get a MAC and end up using Windows on it.
I agree.
It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if the US would just stop its worldwide military madness.
For example, what the hell is the US doing providing logistical and air support to Ethiopian/Somali conflicts?
None of this madness makes America safer or better.
Close a good chunk of our 700 some odd worldwide military bases, and become a normal country. That’s my prescription for sanity.
I cannot disagree with you on any of those points.
I have to tell you that one of the things that pisses me off the most is the self-referential way even supposedly liberal and progressive Americans approach their country’s most destructive and murderous adventures. It is as if how it turns out for Americans is all that really matters.
This will not end well for the U.S.? Oh REALLY?! They destroy an entire country (or what was left of it), ruin the lives of millions of human beings, and turn an entire society inside out so that it cannot recover for decades, or possibly even centuries, and then whine and snivel because it is not ending well for the U.S.? Well, boo f***ing hoo. It SHOULDN’T end well for the U.S. On the contrary, it should devastate the U.S. Unfortunately, it never does. No matter how much Americans whine and feel sorry for themselves as a result of their failed military adventures it will never end badly enough for them or affect them enough that they think twice before going out and destroying yet another country, ruining more millions of lives again, and again, and again. If only once, just once, it would end worse for America than it does for America’s victims maybe, just maybe Americans would think twice before allowing their government to do it again.
American exceptionalism is alive and well among liberal and progressive Americans.
Ah, “Real Change™”
A while back, the title of an Indian quipster’s piece caught my eye.
‘All nations have armies. One army had a nation.’
The viewpoint of an Indian commenting on a neighbour’s follies cannot be imagined : one must partake.
That is a problem I have with most ‘intelligence’ on the Middle East and more : the purported experts are professional spinmeisters posing as reporters, and more likely than not, Westerners.
This is one WASP who knows the likely recipe for bullshit. A Spanish professor regales me with the unlikeliest intel…not that he is alone in that regard. Still…Turkey operating as a denialable cat’s paw running Al Qaeda for the CIA …makes more sense when you realize 80% of murdered Afghan ‘Taliban’ – who were their government before the puppet masters installed a new ‘democratic’ chorus – are criminals.
Then you may begin to get the simplest connection to the War on Drugs.
The CIA don’t allow competition!