First, before we get to the main course, a small appetizer (yes, that’s sarcasm) from “Over There.”
KABUL, Oct 8–A car bomb exploded outside the Indian embassy and the Afghan Interior Ministry in the capital Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and destroying offices and cars along a heavily fortified street, Afghan officials said. […]
[A] 2008 attack on the Indian embassy was also linked to the Taliban, and to individual members of the Pakistani intelligence agency who allegedly provided key logistical support. Pakistan is a longtime rival of India, but {indian Embassy Spokesperson] Prasad avoided drawing any immediate conclusions about whether Pakistani militants or intelligence agents may have helped orchestrated Thursday’s blast. […]
At least 18 of the injured people went to the Ali Abad hospital nearby, according to doctors. Golam Sakhih, 46, a gardener at a hotel near the bomb site, was hit by shards of glass on his leg.
“Every year, year by year, security is getting worse in Kabul,” he said.
And as security gets worse, we are informed that President Obama has to choose between two separate options. Guess what those are. Let me give you a hint. Leaving is not considered an option:
His military commanders on the ground, led by General Stanley McChrystal and the head of the US Central Command (Centcom), General David Petraeus, are reportedly urging Obama to increase the number of troops deployed to Afghanistan from the current 68,000 to over 100,000 as part of a comprehensive “counter-insurgency” (COIN) strategy.
That’s option number 1, otherwise known by the word our media can’t seem to find in their vocabulary: escalation. Probably because “escalation” picked up some negative connotations from the Vietnam war. Of course, they could also call it a “surge” but I guess, no one is too keen on using that term either. So instead we get this wonderful new acronym “COIN” which ironically enough is just what we’d have to spend a great deal of to “up the ante’ in Afghanistan. Odd that they should be asking for a total of 100,000 troops, roughly the same number the former Soviet Union used during its failed experiment in “nation building” back in its lost decade of the 1980’s. Everyone gives Reagan all the credit for winning the Cold War. I, on the other hand, think perhaps we should recognize the role Afghanistan played in helping to destroy the Iron Curtain. Just as Vietnam helped grind our economy to a screeching halt, the cost of trying to subdue the Afghans and turn them into a pliable Marxist state, placed a similar drag on the Soviet Union’s economy at a time when it was already in a very fragile state. I guess the mistakes one empire made there are not considered terribly instructive by our empire’s leaders. Or maybe they just hate America and want to see it fail.
So, what’s the second option? More of the same, i.e., the status quo:
President Joseph Biden, are urging a less ambitious “counter-terrorism” (CT) strategy that would maintain US troop strength at current levels while stepping up Predator drone strikes and special forces operations targeted at key Taliban leaders and their al-Qaeda allies both in Afghanistan and in their safe havens in neighboring Pakistan.
More robot drones or more human cannon fodder? Those are the only choices? Even former “liberal hawks” such as our good friend (code for useful Bush idiot) Michael O’Hanlon are setting off alarm bells regarding the war against the Taliban because (just like the former Soviet union again) our principal ally is a corrupt government under Hamid Karzai based in Kabul which we installed and continue to prop up, despite the recent evidence of fraudulent elections which, to date, have allowed Karzai to remain in power:
“If there’s any one lesson from Vietnam we should remember, it’s that we need a viable indigenous partner,” he warned during a recent talk to a neo-conservative group that strongly supports a major escalation. “We can do everything right, and if our partner doesn’t do its part, we’re not going to succeed.”
The article in the Asia Times by Jim Lobe which I’m quoting from, by the way, is titled “Heads or tails, Obama loses” as if this is a lose-lose coin flip game (pun intended). Secretary of State Clinton is for going “all in” on COIN, Biden, as noted, wants to check, and Defense Secretary Gates allegedly has yet to place a bet. Yet, if Obama is a loser no matter what he does, I have a new option for him to consider: Just Get Out. Before it’s too late. Before more of our troops are killed or maimed. Before more of our ever less valuable dollars are wasted on a war we can’t win. Britain learned in the 19th century that fighting over Afghanistan was a losing proposition. Russia discovered the same thing in the late 20th Century. And after nine years of trying to create a “stable, Pro-American democracy” in that forlorn country, maybe we should do what they did. Admit that military occupation cannot effect change in that vast mountainous region beset by tribal conflicts and a fierce hatred of foreign invaders. What makes us think we can succeed where every other Empire on earth has foundered?
Only sheer hubris, people. The hubris of generals like Petraeus and McChyrstal who don’t want to become the next William Westmoreland. The hubris of neoconservatives who never saw a foreign war they didn’t like, if only for the bump it gives to the stock prices of their buddies in the defense industry. The hubris of the so-called public intellectuals, such as David Brooks at the liberally biased New York Times who have never had to put their own skin in the game, but are more than willing to sacrifice the lives of others based on their claimed ability to predict the future:
“A Taliban conquest of Afghanistan would endanger the Pakistani regime at best, create a regional crisis for certain and lead to a nuclear-armed al-Qaeda at worst.”
Really David? And you are certain of this because of your superior skills at predicting the outcome of our other wars of choice, like the ones you made regarding our misadventures in Iraq for which you acted as the NYT’s cheerleader-in-chief for President Bush? I should trust your judgment?
History teaches us many things. One of those lessons is that political leaders never seem to learn the lessons of history. When push comes to shove they make the same mistakes as their predecessors in the false belief that this time things will work out differently. For anyone who thought Obama was going to change the workings of our Military-Industrial-Political Complex, sorry to disillusion you. For those of you who knew this was not part of the change he would bring, congratulations (sort of). Not that anyone has anything to celebrate right now, regardless of what you expected last year from a President Obama regarding our foreign wars. For in the end, all of us will continue to suffer the consequences of the decisions of our nation’s elites and their delusions of grandeur otherwise known as “American Exceptionalism.” The Romans thought they were exceptional too. Now all they have to remind themselves of their “glory days” are a bunch of crumbling ruins. It seems we are headed down that same road, but in a rocket car this time, not a chariot. I’m sure it will make for one helluva crash.
