I’m guessing that it’s pointless to try to convince any Afghans that we’re there to help while we’re burning Korans. That’s why stuff like this happens:
As deadly violence spilled into a fifth day in Afghanistan on Saturday, two American service members were shot dead inside the Afghan Interior Ministry building, a senior Afghan official said.
NATO and the Interior Ministry confirmed the shooting deaths, but gave no details about the nationalities of the victims or the circumstances of the attack. But a senior Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, said the two were Americans. Some American personnel work within Afghan ministries as mentors and advisors, particularly on military operations.
The president issued a public apology on Thursday, and his Republican opponents attacked him for showing weakness. They ought to consider that the president was trying to save American lives. They also should consider a different line of criticism. Like, why is our secret Muslim president commanding an army that is burning Korans?
Can we leave yet?
We are leaving.
We’re just doing it slowly, the same way we left Iraq.
too slowly, and after an expensive surge that may or may not leave the country in a better condition, but which certainly hasn’t been any great success. And, given the tenuous condition of Pakistan’s government and our mutually strained relations, I am not all that sure we will extract ourselves from Afghanistan on schedule.
too slowly
Just because you’ve decided to quit doesn’t necessarily make cold turkey the best way.
A withdrawal isn’t just an answer to a yes/no question. It’s also a military operation that has to be conceived and carried out properly. I don’t claim to have the expertise to make a good judgment on this aspect of the policy. Understanding that, I’m not inclined to second-guess this particular President on his planning for the end of wars.
an expensive surge that may or may not leave the country in a better condition, but which certainly hasn’t been any great success
It arrested the collapse that was occurring at the end of the Bush Presidency. I don’t think “a great success” was ever in the cards, nor thought to be so by the policymakers.
I am not all that sure we will extract ourselves from Afghanistan on schedule.
I don’t think anyone is sure about anything when it comes to the future in Afghanistan – except that we’ll be out, eventually, one way or another.
For what it’s worth, my sense during the 2008 campaign was that expanding the Afghanistan War was, among other things, a way for Obama to have “tough guy” foreign and military policy credentials—which he needed to counter his “cut and run” strategy for ending the Iraq War.
Then, once in office, the Pentagon outmaneuvered the White House in the 2009 Afghanistan policy review so that Obama’s only real options were by how much and for how long to expand the Afghanistan War. Obama made the best of a bad hand by getting Petraeus, et al, to agree to an accelerated “surge” in return for publicly backing a drawdown after 18 months. That’s where we are now.
As TarheelDem says below, the more the US can use the next few months to get Afghanistan’s neighbors to take ownership of helping Afghanistan end what has been its own Thirty Year War, the better.
I think Obama clearly used his hawkish stance on the Af-Pak War for his political benefit during the campaign, but that’s quite a different claim from saying that a desire to appear hawkish led him to adopt a stance he didn’t support on the merits.
The surge slowed the great collapse but won’t change a thing. Afghan security forces are in open communication with Taliban forces, most are same tribe or family. The Pakistani ISI is running the Haggani safe harbors and the Pak govt isn’t doing anything to stop it. Unless we are willing to actually go to war with Pakistan to get rid of the cross border stuff and guard our 1000 mile overland supply route to our only shipping harbour this is a lost cause. The Pashtun people are the majority in the P(ashtun)akistan territories and in Afghanistan and only the British kept it from being a Pashtustan. Speaking of the British, their retreat from Afghanistan via the Kyber Pass was a complete slaughter that lasted 3 days and is still rejoiced over.
The situation there is bordering on all the Pashtu speaking peoples becoming our enemy. That is the worst possible scenario.
This Koran thing was really stupid.
At this point we should evacuate all civilians. The British lost noncombatant mem, women, and children. Unless Karsai finds a reason to back us and put the genie back in the bottle, the Taliban are just going to wait us out, just like the Iranians did with their Shia proxies in Iraq.
In short this situation is fucked.
Most Afghan security forces are not Pashtun. They are having so much trouble recruiting Pashtuns into the security forces that they are ending up patrolling Pahtun areas with Uzbeks and other ethnicities who don’t speak the local language.
Also, don’t confuse “change a thing” with “achieve a complete military victory” or “change Afghanistan into East Colorado.” Among other things that have changed in the past three years has been the willingness of the Taliban to enter seriously into peace talks.
was both appropriate and courageous.
He should use this to do what should have been done long ago – get out and leave them to the 13th century.
The Graveyard of Empires. We may indeed be “pulling out”, albeit too slowly, but the damage has already been done. As with the Macedonians, the Persians, Mongols, Brits and Soviets before us, the “American” Empire is within this generation over.
It’s a quandary… while I loathe the notion of burning books, I’ve got no problem with burning bibles. As I have no problem burning churches. Or banks.
How we get out is as important as our getting out. Wars end with politics just as they start with politics. The politics in play now is no longer US domestic politics; the American people have decided that the longest war in US history is now too long.
What remains is negotiating a transition so that Afghanistan does not go through a sudden collapse into chaos; part of that is in a status of forces agreement for withdrawal. And part of that is in the negotiation between the Karzai government and the Taliban over Afghanistan’s future. The first is hampered by the US national security community’s (driven by the neo-cons) willingness to totally let go of Afghanistan. For the future of US national security policy in the future, the President has to play this carefully in order to avoid a Dolchstoßlegende, such as was experienced after Vietnam.
The second part of this is agreements with the regional powers as to the stability of Afghanistan and absence of foreign interference. Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and the -stans are all members of the Chinese-organized Shanghai Cooperation Organization. US willingness to let this organization work out the security guarantees for Afghanistan would be both helpful to withdrawal but also could be the first step toward a different global security architecture based on balance of regional powers.
What is striking about the Republicans’ political use of foreign policy is that they have gone from criticism (“Truman lost China”) to covert sabotage (the Reagan campaign’s “October Surprise” countermeasures) to open sabotage (beating the drums of war on Iran and cheering the burning of Korans). One suspects that just as they want the economy to fail, they also want efforts to leave Afghanistan and strengthen US national security to fail on Obama’s watch. Heck they even openly long for another 9/11.
Over a billion dollars worth of military equipment is coming out of Afghanistan this year. The combat troops are leaving next year. That’s a year ahead of schedule. I’d like all US Military personnel out by October this year before the bad weather, but it won’t happen.
Two Americans, military, as far as I could figure were killed in an Afghan ministry. NATO has pulled all of it’s people out of the ministries.
This is a mess, thank you George W. Bush.
The Republicans are going to try to make political hay out of Afghanistan while forgetting that it was a Republican that got the US into this. They won’t get anywhere.