Four US soldiers are reported dead in Afghanistan today after al-Zawahiri posted a video calling for insurrection against US forces there. What’s more our “ally”, President Karzai is no longer issued a statement that we need a new approach on the “War on Terror” because the old one ain’t working no more:
KABUL, Afghanistan — Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader urged Afghans in a new videotape today to rise up against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, prompting President Hamid Karzai to denounce the terror fugitive as “the enemy of the Afghan people.” Four U.S. soldiers were killed in combat in eastern Afghanistan.
Karzai also called on the international community to reassess its approach to the war on terror, saying the deaths of hundreds of Afghans, including Taliban militants, in fighting with U.S.-led forces was “not acceptable.” […]
A clearly frustrated Karzai also said the coalition approach of hunting down militants does not focus on the roots of terrorism itself.
“I strongly believe … that we must engage strategically in disarming terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training, equipment and motivation,” Karzai said.
War not acceptable? That’s the only thing President Bush knows how to decide upon, Mr. Karzai. Tanks, planes, bombs, lots of collateral damage — that’s what the Bush administration supports. I thought you knew that by now.
Too bad all that strutting by our Commander-in-Chief after Zarqawi was blown up last week was so short-lived. You kill one terrorist leader in Iraq, but up pops a litter more in Afghanistan. It’s no longer the central front on the war on terror, so I guess they got jealous. Al Queda and the Taliban wanted to send a message that they’re still there, some 3 and 1/2 years after we officially liberated the Afghan people.
Message delivered.
(cont.)
Seriously, anyone who’s been paying attention to what’s been going on in Afghanistan knows that Mr. Bush’s platitudes about how we have brought freedom to the Afghan people rang hollow. Al Queda is still there in force, the Taliban has not been crushed and is enjoying a revival, and drug lords and warlords rule over most of the countryside outside Kabul. In short, President Bush “cut and ran” before he accomplished the mission.
We already have one failed state in Iraq, and it’s becoming more clear as each day passes that, by effectively abandoning Afghanistan before Al Queda and the Taliban had been eliminated in order to invade Iraq, we’ve created another one. Yes, we have our military bases there, and lots of opportunities for our soldiers to practice their combat skills under live conditions, but what else do we have?
Karzai’s government has limited control, at best, beyond the borders of his capitol city. The drug trade has returned with a vengeance to ruin lives over here, while lining the pockets of criminals and terrorists over there. The lives of ordinary people have improved little, if at all.
In neighboring Pakistan, we have an ally in General Mussharef, who refuses to fully support the hunt for Osama bin Laden, much less prosecute the leading figure in the illicit atomic weapons technology trade, Abdul Qadeer Khan, not only the father of Pakistan’s bomb, but quite possibly the godfather of North Korea’s, as well. With military and intelligence forces infested with supporters of radical Islamic clerics and Al Queda sympathizers, we are just one bullet (or car bomb) away from having a fundamentalist Islamic state in Southwest Asia that already possesses fully operational nuclear weapons.
Unlike in fantasy games where you can make up your own reality as you go along, in real life mistakes have consequences. George Bush has made mistake after mistake in his Presidency, from failing to heed warnings about an impending Al Queda attack in the Summer of 2001, to invading Iraq with too few troops to secure the country, to wasting billions of our tax dollars on a corrupt enterprise to rebuild Iraq, to failing to strike a deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program in 2003. His mistake in failing to complete the mission in Afghanistan may ultimately prove to be his most costly one, however.
Not costly for him, obviously. Never for him. But very costly for the safety and security of the people of this nation whom he is pledged to serve.
It is all pointless. Once the USA starts fighting a war of occupation, it has lost.
In May 2006 CentCom flew 609 Close Air Support Sorties in Afganistan. “In one action, a U.S. Air Force B-1B and A-10s responded to Coalition forces taking small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from Taliban extremists in the vicinity of Kandahar. The B-1B expended a precision guided JDAM, ending the engagement”. The initiative is with the insurgents. An $18,000 bomb was released to blow a hole in the ground or forward a couple of True Believers to Paradise. All this does is to guarantee a generational tribal hatred for the foreign infidels.
In the Air Force right now surely there’s a Wing-Nut General who wants to rerun Curtis LeMay in the “Fog of War” and who is seeking approval from up above to turn the current ineffective ad hoc air sorties into a systematic insurgent stronghold elimination campaign.
The only effective strategy against guerillas is strategic hamlets or genocide. Since Europe is trying to overcome past instances of genocide, the only chance NATO has of pacifying Afghanistan is forcing the population into bomb-free zones. This takes lots and lots of troops and political skills in getting the population to agree to re-settlement. Since neither are likely, NATO sooner or later will get to replay the Soviet’s previous withdrawal and/or America’s withdrawal out of Vietnam.
Perhaps some two years ago I read that many called Afghanistan a failed state. Remember, we never found the leader of the Taliban, Omar ? and for sure they have made headway summer after summer since the spring of 2002. I also remember we were going to recall some of our 18,000 troops last year and hand everything over to the other forces there.
The schools we built there were built according to our standards and practically fell apart within months. The New York Times Magazine has had several good articles about Afghanistan during the last two to three years.
Bush has to be held accountable for this state too. As well yesterday Feingold and Kerry talked about other areas where the terriorists have gotten a stronghold in Indonesia and elsewhere. With all our attention on Iraq, they said terriorists have thrived. And that was the main point of their ammendment, that we need to redeploy from Iraq so we can actually tackle the program of terriorists. Everyone should have listened to the entire debate on C-Span.
Ahmed Rashid has some comments in the New York Review of Books of May 24, 2006. The piece is available online. I quote the last sentences:
“In his more lucid moments, Zahir Shah, the former king of Afghanistan, now ninety-two years old, recalls the first US president to visit Kabul. That was President Dwight Eisenhower, who also came for a one-day visit, on December 9, 1959, when, at forty-five, the King ruled the country and was considered young. Shah remembers that he asked Eisenhower for more economic aid for his impoverished country, as well as diplomatic help to improve Afghanistan’s deteriorating relationship with Pakistan, and a sustained US presence to protect the country. The help he received was meager and ineptly supplied. Some things never change.”
I think the article is worth reading.
sidd
He is Unocals ally.