Look, I want to see Afghans enjoy security and prosperity without living under some twisted imported version of 9th-Century Islam. I don’t want to see a resurgence of the Taliban or a return of safe havens for jihad training centers. But I keep reading stuff like this and it makes me extremely doubtful that we can succeed or will succeed in getting a decent outcome.
Fundamental to plans for undermining the insurgency is to set up Afghan security forces — robust, competent, honest, well equipped and well led. If such forces can be created, then the plan is to hand them responsibility for the security achieved by the Army and Marines, allowing for an American withdrawal.
But the bad reputation of the Afghan police forces, in particular, along with the spotty performance of Afghan forces in Marja, suggest that the work and the spending of billions of American dollars to date had not achieved anything like the desired effects.
The Afghans in the meeting with the colonels were blunt. “They said: ‘We’re with you. We want to help you build. We will support you. But if you bring in the cops, we will fight you till death,’ ” Colonel Newman said.
The plan is to bring in the cops; already they are arriving at American-built outposts.
Again, I don’t have a moral objection to being in Afghanistan. My whole concern is for what’s best for our country’s national security and what’s best for ordinary Afghans (in that order). I don’t buy the whole ‘fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here’ nonsense, and generally think just being there presents an irritant that spurs blowback. I’d be more willing to stick with a new strategy in Afghanistan if the central government (and their cops) had a shred of legitimacy, but they don’t. Honestly, this problem with the Karzai government is the strongest parallel with the war in Vietnam. Even when our troops adopt wise policies and earn trust, it doesn’t do any good if the villagers don’t trust their own countrymen not to rob them blind.
My concern isn’t that we’re doing something immoral just by being in Afghanistan. My concern is that we’re spending a lot of money and losing lives and getting wrapped up in the opium trade, and basically relying on a miracle to see us through.
Our young friend, and father of 3 boys under the age of 4, is being deployed for the FOURTH time next month. Two in Iraq and the latest two in Afghanistan. There seems to be no end in sight.
when did he enlist?
2002, right out of high school.
This is the root of why the Afghan surge has already failed. The central afghan governemnt will never be strong enough to function in any way. All the gains the US military make will be lost once we leave. Nothing can prevent that.
Besides, the ongoing operations in Yemen & on the African continent make the Afghan war pointless.AQ is everywhere. Using massive military power against a shadow organization is stupid beyond belief.
With millions out of work at home, better things can be done with the money we’re wasting in Afghanistan.
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Capt. Stephan P. Karabin II, who commands Company C, greeted Company K as it arrived. His brief to the incoming officers was as forceful as what the Afghan elders had told Colonel Newman.
The Afghan soldiers who accompanied Company C, he said, had looted the 84-booth Semitay Bazaar immediately after the Marines swept through and secured it. Then the Afghan soldiers refused to stand post in defensive bunkers, or to fill sandbags as the Americans, sometimes under fire, hardened their joint outpost. Instead, they spent much of their time walking in the bazaar, smoking hashish.
Company K had stories of its own. As its own Marines stumbled wearily across friendly lines, much of the Afghan platoon that worked with them was straggling behind, unable to keep pace.
The first phase of the campaign for Marja was ending. Captain Karabin had paid aggrieved shop owners $300 to $500 each for their losses to the Afghan Army’s looting.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."So we’d be better off just naming Afghanistan a protectorate and running it ourselves?
Spending a lot of money and losing lives and getting wrapped up in the opium trade, and basically relying on a miracle to see us through isn’t immoral? Is that some kind of newfangled morality brand?
It’s the morality of progressive American exceptionalism.
There’s an essay at consortiumnews.com comparing how William The Conquerer took care of the Anglo-Saxons post Hastings versus Gen. McChrystal’s war in Afghanistan.
And I wouldn’t worry about the U.S. getting involved in the opium trade, Boo. The CIA is always involved in the drug trade.
You know, perhaps Afghanistan isn’t the best place to look for moral behavior. You won’t find it in the Taliban or the Karzai government or the various warlords or in the Soviet occupation, or in the al-Qaeda camps, and it doesn’t surprise me that under Bush and Cheney’s perverted leadership you don’t find it from Americans either.
But I don’t have a problem with what we’re trying to do, only in what I see as a rather hopeless task.
It is about what YOU do. But all Americans do is make bizarre excuses for committing mass murder . . .
And sadly it doesn’t seem to matter whether they call themselves progressives or conservatives, or liberals, or moderates, does it? American exceptionalism is alive and well throughout the socio-political spectrum.
I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone that Karzai is in the position he is in because the Americans put him there to act as their puppet.
And the Taliban are there because nutty Saudi princes needed something to do with all their money and Pakistan liked the free subsidized education. So what?
Everyone’s a puppet of someone. The problem goes beyond Karzai. He’s just the least objectionable of the alternatives. I don’t think there is some wonderfully enlightened leader waiting in the wings to solve the endemic corruption and brokenness of Afghan society. In fact, it’s because of this that I object to Obama’s policy. I don’t object because I think he’s engaging in imperialism, but because I don’t think we’re achieving our goals or are likely to.
“You know, perhaps Afghanistan isn’t the best place to look for moral behavior.”
One should not look elsewhere, when the lack of moral behavior has been proven to exist at home. And no, it`s not under the credenza, nor were the WMD`s.
I`d be more concerned with security & prosperity here at home, before judging the outcome of a fiasco abroad, ongoing for almost a decade & caused by professed paranoia, & the profit potential inherent in being the “winning side”, though at as slow a pace as possible.
This pace slowed down, by changing strategies, by then, assessing them, & always concluding it`s someone else`s fault.
It`s always aggrandizing to sit in judgement
Whenever the U.S. fails in one of these ventures, it is always because in some way or another, the invaded people were not “up to the task” in some way. This suggests that ultimately the failure really is the responsibility of the U.S. for not choosing countries to invade whose inhabitants are competent, sophisticated, and honest enough to cooperate effectively in their subjugation to the empire. I think the Arabs and Muslims are just too backward, primitive, and corrupt to be worth trying to conquer. Perhaps the U.S. should consider invading a part of the world that has a better class of people living in it.
Hurria,
It`s strange that you mention that.
I was wondering at that exactly, but couldn`t come up with a country that would fit the bill. I did have a word flash through my mind though.
“Autoeroticism”, except that they`ve seemed to be screwing themselves over quite satisfactorily already, as well as other countries.