I never had a problem with sending troops to Afghanistan to get the people who trained and financed the 9/11 attackers. But I always thought it was a bit crazy to think that we should build an Afghan military that is more expensive to maintain than any central government there could ever afford. Not only does this strip Afghanistan on any real sovereignty (since they are perpetually dependent on outside financing), it turns us into their collections agent, as we are always looking to get paid first.
If I could rewind the tape and do things over, I would have gotten in and out of Afghanistan without making any commitments about the future of the country. And if we were going to try to help them have a decent government, I would have focused almost exclusively on setting up systems that would bring in revenues. Toll roads, for example, would have been a good idea.
As it is, we will leave Afghanistan after thirteen years of occupation and the government will have no money to maintain what we’ve built. They’ll have no choice but to seek money from the opium trade, and we’ll have no choice but to look the other way.
And, frankly, what I’ve laid out is the optimistic viewpoint.
I wasn’t too much against it either. Especially if we did it right.
And if we were going to spend money anyway, spend it more wisely.
After we invaded, and captured bin Laden and his terrorist crew, we could have tried to do a “Marshall Plan,” and worked to take that country from their even pre-Genghis Kahn, pre-Medieval, more like “Alexander The Great”, times, to somewhere closer to, the 21st Centuries, “Yes We Can!”
Or, at least to somewhere closer to “A chicken in every pot, and a car in every garage.”
I was one of the few against it from the inception – publicly, and as a media figure – precisely because it was clear we weren’t going to “do it right.” The number of fatuous and absurd rationales given were endless, from the “right” to attack any nation “harboring” terrorists – which is any nation – to ignoring Taliban offers to turn AQ leaders over if the US guaranteed we would follow due process, to the professed concern over women’s rights in Afghanistan that evaporated the second we had “our” guy installed, to promising we’d build a new democracy and then turning around and putting the same warlord thugs at the table that Afghans thought the Taliban were a better alternative to in the ’90s.
It was, in retrospect, exactly the same arrogance, dishonesty, obliviousness to local history or culture, Cold War thinking, and delusional attitudes of inherent US moral superiority that was used to sell the Iraq invasion and occupation, and it was managed exactly the same. Revenues? Revenues? We’ve installed a government that for the last decade has ranked as the most corrupt on Earth. You should worry about revenues, sure, but even more about where the revenues actually go. Hint: Very nice villas in Abu Dhabi. The only reason the Bushies lost interest is while there was plenty to loot by the standards of our warlord proxies, for the Bush cabal it was small potatoes. Lots more looting potential in Iraq.
Taliban offers to turn AQ leaders over if the US guaranteed we would follow due process
Yeah, no, that never happened. The demand was that U.S. promise that bin Laden be given a trial in an Islamic Court according to islamic law, and only after we submitted sufficient evidence to convince bin Laden’s father-in-law, Mullah Omar of the Taliban, of his guilt.
Why people think that the word of the people who massacred the Iranian embassy staff should be a good-enough basis for our foreign policy is beyond me.
You sometimes have to negotiate with unsavory characters. Then it’s a matter of setting up a regime of trust and verify. The Bush regime has been faulted for not exploring this channel even with its limitations. Providing sufficient evidence to Mullah Omar no doubt was the hitch; if we had evidence, likely it came from methods and sources that the US did not want to expose.
Father-in-law? Really? Metaphorically or in reality.
I wonder how reluctant some nations are to deal with the US because of the atrocities that our operatives have committed. The word of people in international politics always is only a good as their vested interest in the situation, and sometimes not even then. Moralism over this never has avoided catastrophe. Naivete over this guarantees catastrophe. There are alternatives to both of those.
The problem isn’t that Mullah Omar is an unsavory character; it’s that he was making a transparently dishonest offer that only the most determined of suckers would consider remotely acceptable.
If you think the religious fundamentalist Pashtun warlord was going to turn over his son-in-law/commander of the training program of his military/top foreign funder/guest who’d asked for his protection/longtime ally to the United States, to face charges for killing non-Muslim civilians as part of a jihad…I want to play poker with you.
And I mean “father-in-law” literally. He married his daughter off to bin Laden to seal their alliance, old-school style.
Naive, in this case, means considering the offer plausible.
After Tora-Bora we should have left.
Or after installing Karzai, we should have put gobs of actual private investment in development. Where are all those businessmen who want us to go in when it is time for them to do something. Good economies reduce violence. We don’t realize this because we haven’t ourselves had a good economy in 40 years.
But…there are still folks in the decision chain who have the illusion that the US can create a forward operating presence in Afghanistan against the Russians and the Chinese. That’s what those heavy footprint bases in Bagram and Kandahar were for (in addition to generating billions in profits for KBR and other contractors). That is a dangerous and entrapping illusion. The US no longer has the resources to conduct forward deployment on a global scale; George W. Bush squandered them. We have left the post-World War II world in which forward deployment made a little sense. Now forward deployment angers locals and increases the threats to US presence. It’s time to return to a more traditional US strategic posture of defending the territorial US and ensuring open seas. That means that we leave Afghanistan to be fought over by its neighbors.
But…there are still folks in the decision chain who have the illusion that the US can create a forward operating presence in Afghanistan against the Russians and the Chinese.
This theory makes a lot of sense. The creation of permanent bases in Iraq to reposition American troops outside of Saudi Arabia while maintaining the ability to project force in the region was one of the driving forces behind that invasion. The Bush administration really did think in those Risk-board terms.
We all thought they were toppling the Taliban in order to get at al Qaeda, but in hindsight, it looks a lot more like they were using the excuse of al Qaeda to topple the Taliban and bring the country into our sphere of influence – just like Iraq. They certainly lost interest in bin Laden as soon as the capital fell.
Extreme forward deployment–to the point that bases have total global coverage — is the most expensive way to run an empire. Placing those bases by force of war ups the cost and risks overextension. Too many policy people believed their own hype about the “world’s remaining superpower” and forgot that all power is limited and wise leaders know their limits. Bush’s invastions of Afghanistan and Iraq showed that the US could win two regional wars–if there were against nation states. But it exposed the weakness of US power to handle other situations and the folly of depending only on military power. And Rumsfeld’s attempt to do it on the cheap (like McNamara’s before him) doomed both occupations from the outset. And the rotating of National Guard troops and rapid reployments without proper recovery sapped the stamina and mental reserves of probably the best trained troops the US has ever had. Bush’s abuse of the military should earn him eternal condemnation from every veteran, but too many snap to salute the flag.
The neo-cons strategic (as opposed to economic) objective was US dominance in Central Asia and the Middle East. No doubt that illusion was grounded in the perceived success in reconstructing Europe after World War II and incorporating all of the Warsaw Pact but Russia into NATO. Given this history, it would not surprise me at all for Russia’s friendship in the aftermath of the Boston bombing to be in the context of long-term US diplomatic efforts to incorporate Russia into NATO, an idea that began in the Clinton administration.
What is completely open now, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, is the architecture of global national power relationships. One of the trends is actions by corporations through trade negotiations like the Trans-Pacific Partnership to excape the bounds of national sovereignty and to have a global mechanism for undoing national regulations and laws.
And Rumsfeld’s attempt to do it on the cheap (like McNamara’s before him) doomed both occupations from the outset.
I don’t think Rumsfeld was ever on board with the occupations. He’s the guy who said that security was the Iraqis’ problem, and wrote the memo about the insurgency there delaying our exit.
I think his model was Panama 1989, or any number of Latin Americans adventures in the 19th and 20th centuries – get in, topple, and leave.
As it turns out, Iraq is not Guatemala.
No question, the neoconservatives are Great Gamers.
I meant to add, the neoconservatives’ Great Game focus on competition between nations is of a piece with their lack of interest in actually going after al Qaeda.
Considering what China is doing along the Pacific Rim we actually need a forwarding operating presence against them, but Afghanistan is a bad spot for it unless you plan on supporting Uygher dissidents.
IMO, a policy of open seas under the current Law of the Sea is a better option than forward deployment of land bases. In fact, we could improve our standing immensely by closing the bases in Okinawa. Guam and Diego Garcia are sufficiently forward to handle maintenance.
That handles the South China Sea and the East China Sea, both of which are international waters.
China and Taiwan eventually will have to come to an agreement. They are huge trading partners as it is. And Taiwan Chinese businessmen have invested heavily in China’s economic zones, in Hong Kong, and likely in Shanghai as well.
The US and China are sort of aligned on stability on the Korean peninsula. And Russia and China have congenial relations.
As for supporting Uyghur dissidents, give Dana Rohrbacher a call and see if we are doing that. He never met a guerilla group he didn’t want the CIA to support. As long as they were destabilizing the right country.
Well it would have been better if we’d been able to pass the Law of the Sea treaty too…
It’s out there any time we want to sign on to it.
It should be noted that the majority of the Senate does indeed want to sign on to it.
Well, of course the whole thing would have been slightly more plausible if we hadn’t then gone and invaded Iraq. But then people have been trying to pacify Afghanistan all the way back to Alexander the Great. If it hasn’t happened by now, maybe it isn’t going to.
Speaking of “getting paid first” we did discover massive amounts of rare earth metals in Afghanistan…. Those metals, if they could be mined, would pay for a fine military for quite some time.
I’ve been somewhat surprised after this discovery was announced how little discussion there has been about them. They are perhaps more strategically important than oil in the modern economy, and I doubt if we want to abandon the area and watch the Chinese or Russians control these vital supplies.
Considering who would lead the charge along with the uncomfortable fact that 9/11 was a crime perpetrated not by the country or government of Afghanistan but mostly Saudi “jihadists,” I opposed it.
Afghanistan is not a country.
It’s a land mass with tribes on it.
Never should have gone in there in the first place.
McCaskill won’t rule out putting boots on the ground in Syria
It is so nice that Sen. McCaskill has volunteered to go to Syria. She should tell us exactly how she intends to show us how it’s done and what boots she intends to wear–the buckskins or the alligator hides.
And BTW, apparently Saxby Chambliss came off as the pacifist.
On this issue, both Senators should keep their yap-flappers under control.
I like those black leather ones that go above the knees, you know with bodice and whip. McCaskill would look hot. We could integrate it into our torture program.
“What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity.
“But in the final analysis, it’s based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we’ve seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society.” – Jim Garrison, 1969
I would state it differently. It is the inability of people to subordinate their human goals to those of society.
Screw you, I got mine. Don’t tax me. Torture those fucks, I have nothing to hide. Let them die of illness if they can’t pay. And so on.
The power of Congress and the states has been given to the executive because Congress is full of venal cowards and states are full of bigots.
I would have nuked Kandahar when we had al Qaeda holed up there and then brought our advisers/troops home. This is also why I never run for office…
I, too, bought into the “good” war propaganda, partly because at least it wasn’t the Iraq War, and the Taliban is epically evil. But the inevitable logic was right there before our wishful eyes: once you go there, you have to stay, or the whole exercise becomes pointless. Unless the country’s power structure deeply changes, the Taliban and its like will remain an ongoing pestilence.
In hindsight it’s obvious that we did not “get the people who trained and financed the 9/11 attackers” to any level that justified the human, moral, and economic cost. Politically, withdrawal is a political defeat, because nothing important changed much.
that illegal and immoral (under international law anyway, unless you can show me a UNSC res authorizing it) war was what set the stage for Iraq.
International law does not require a UNSC resolution to authorize a war fought under Article 51. That is the one exception to the general rule that it is illegal to conduct military operations without a resolution.
Using military force against a foreign fighting force that is launching mass-casualty attacks against civilians in your home territory is as textbook a case of the right to self defense under international law as one could possibly imagine.
the gov of afghanistan launched no such attacks.
http://www.iadllaw.org/files/IS%20THE%20U.S.%20BOMBING%20OF%20AFGHANISTAN%20JUSTIFIED%20AS.pdf
http://www.tni.org/archives/archives_bennis_art51
http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1287&context=vulr&sei-redir=1&refer
er=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dafghanistan%2520article%252051%26sourc
e%3Dweb%26cd%3D8%26ved%3D0CFwQFjAH%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fscholar.valpo.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcont
ent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1287%2526context%253Dvulr%26ei%3DDBt_UZ6_CcqwygGK9YHIDA%26usg%3DAFQjCNHvqcSf
5C9Qf7VFphbQAY6l8ZJ44w%26bvm%3Dbv.45645796%2Cd.aWc#search=%22afghanistan%20article%2051%22
“textbook example” your ass
The unrecognized “government” – that is, the Taliban militia that were fighting a civil war, and were recognized as a legitimate government by exactly one country on earth – was indistinguishable from al Qaeda at the time the attacks were carried out.
Bin Laden was in charge of training their armed forces. His people had just assassinated the leader of the forces fighting against the Taliban.
But even without that, the Taliban were actively protecting al Qaeda, providing them with territory, resources, and people. That makes them legitimate targets under the laws of war.
You should try to be less reflexively emotional, and try to form opinions based on facts.
The entirety of the argument in your fist link is based on an assertion that we don’t have enough information about the Taliban/al Qaeda relationship, and bases that laughable assertion on the lack of publicly-available evidence eleven and a half years ago. Not only are they wrong about the existence of such evidence at that time, but given how much more has come out, it’s quite embarrassing that you would post it today.
The second link claims that launching an attack after 9/11 is “pre-emptive.” Again, I would be embarrassed in your shoes to post that link.
The third link asserts that the justification for the self-defense claim presented to the UN by the US and UK was not sufficient. Unfortunately for the author, there is exactly one standard by which to judge whether such a claim is sufficient for the UN, and that is its rejection by the UN – rejection which never happened. While the author is entitled to his opinion, it remains exactly that – the opinion of one person, which has been overruled by the party empowered to make the decision.