Joe Klein: The Aimless War: Why Are We in Afghanistan?

[babylonsister]

The Aimless War: Why Are We in Afghanistan?
By Joe Klein Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008


US soldiers situated along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
David Furst / AFP / Getty


"Things have gotten a bit hairy," admitted British Lieut. Colonel Graeme Armour as we sat in a dusty, bunkered NATO fortress just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, a deadly piece of turf along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan. A day earlier, two Danish soldiers had been killed and two Brits seriously wounded by roadside bombs. The casualties were coming almost daily now.

And then there were the daily frustrations of Armour's job: training Afghan police officers. Almost all the recruits were illiterate. "They've had no experience at learning," Armour said. "You sit them in a room and try to teach them about police procedures — they start gabbing and knocking about. You talk to them about the rights of women, and they just laugh." A week earlier, five Afghan police officers trained by Armour were murdered in their beds while defending a nearby checkpoint — possibly by other police officers. Their weapons and ammunition were stolen. "We're not sure of the motivation," Armour said. "They may have gone to join the Taliban or sold the guns in the market." (See pictures of Afghanistan's police force in training.)

The war in Afghanistan — the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win — has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a specific target. Afghanistan was where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lived, harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan, and for the past seven years, Afghanistan has been a slow bleed against an array of mostly indigenous narco-jihadi-tribal guerrilla forces that we continue to call the "Taliban." These ragtag bands are funded by opium profits and led by assorted religious extremists and druglords, many of whom have safe havens in Pakistan.

In some ways, Helmand province — which I visited with the German general Egon Ramms, commander of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command — is a perfect metaphor for the broader war. The soldiers from NATO's International Security Assistance Force are doing what they can against difficult odds. The language and tactics of counter-insurgency warfare are universal here: secure the population, help them build their communities. There are occasional victories: the Taliban leader of Musa Qala, in northern Helmand, switched sides and has become an effective local governor. But the incremental successes are reversible — schools are burned by the Taliban, police officers are murdered — because of a monstrous structural problem that defines the current struggle in Afghanistan.

The British troops in Helmand are fighting with both hands tied behind their backs. They cannot go after the leadership of the Taliban — still led by the reclusive Mullah Omar — which operates openly in the Pakistani city of Quetta, just across the border. They also can't go after the drug trade that funds the insurgency, in part because some of the proceeds are also skimmed by the friends, officials and perhaps family members of the stupendously corrupt government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Helmand province is mostly desert, but it produces half the world's opium supply along a narrow strip of irrigated land that straddles the Helmand River. The drug trade — Afghanistan provides more than 90% of the world's opium — permeates everything. A former governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, was caught with nine tons of opium, enough to force him out of office, but not enough to put him in jail, since he enjoys — according to U.S. military sources — a close relationship with the Karzai government. Indeed, Akhundzada and Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali — who operates in Kandahar, the next province over — are considered the shadow rulers of the region (along with Mullah Omar). "You should understand," a British commander said, "the fight here isn't really about religion. It's about money."

Another thing you should understand: thousands of U.S. troops are expected to be deployed to Helmand and Kandahar provinces next spring. They will be fighting under the same limitations as the British, Canadian, Danish and Dutch forces currently holding the fort, which means they will be spinning their wheels. And that raises a long-term question crucial to the success of the Obama Administration: What are we doing in Afghanistan? What is the mission?

more...

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1865730,00.html

[tekisui]

1. This 'war' will get more and more attention until we understand

that there are no good options there. The Nation had a couple very good articles this week on what Obama and the US are facing in this unwinnable war.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081222

[babylonsister]

2. I just hope Obama rethinks his stance on Afghanistan. I don't see it

as being winnable, at all. And I think we are just fed up with the bloodshed. I know I am.

PS Thanks for the Nation link.

[flpoljunkie]

3. A must read. Thanks for posting, babylonsister.

[ima_sinnic]

4. if it's good for the military-industrial complex, we'll be there, never mind how "absurd" it is

without wars, we would be nobody on this planet. that's the only thing we do now, and we're not even very good at it.

[bemildred]

5. "War is the health of the state".

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/warhealthstate1918.html

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Wow. What a fascinating article! I wonder if Smedley-Butler ever read it.

[bemildred]

8. Anarchists can be interesting.

It's sort of obvious once it's laid out. It's like police departments, where are they with no crime? It's all kind of low-budget and boring, no getting to be a hero. If you want to be a hero you need real evil criminals aplenty, like in the movies. If you are a police department, a lot of not too threatening crime is good for business. And history largely backs it up. If you want real political power, the power to do whatever the fuck you like with no accountability at all, you need wars and disasters to justify it. But you can push it too far, there are real disasters, that just come and whup you upside the head, and there are real criminals. But mostly they are not really all that smart. The real question, I think, is should we be giving some political weasel or another unaccountable power just because some disaster comes along? Is that really the right way to fix a problem? I doubt it. Unaccountable power is always a mistake. The evidence does not run that way. It just allows political leaders to continue to be lazy and stupid and manipulative instead of actually having to lead. The problem seems to be that a lot of people like being sheep, it's comforting to have the illusion of being taken care of when things get scary, you don't have to grow up.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. Of course. In a sick society (when were they ever not?), to be "mad"

in the terms of confrontational re the more outrageous aspects of its "ethos", is the only sanity. I think George Orwell spoke in such terms. Sometimes it can be expressed in the most wry, most drole way, such as Archbishop Helda Camara's expression of innocent bafflement: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist....." Unfortunately for the bulk of mankind, modern democratic governments have tended to swing between economic anarchists and social anarchists.

Imo, the quintessential font of anarchy - although I doubt if it is intentional on the part of most atheists - is atheism, since the reality is that it predicates Thatcher's personal axiom, i.e. that society is just a collection of individuals, so the only unifying aspect to it is a negation of what would bind people into a society. Of course, as we know all too well, a nation can be closely bound in the most villainous of undertakings - so it's not as if bonds, per se, are the the "be all" and "end all"; though I would contend that they are the "be all", in the sense of providing the essential framework, albeit, to whose "end all" we need to pay the closest attention.

The crooked, far right have long defamed Adam Smith, by ignoring his warnings about the ever-menacing potential of businessmen for anarchic self-enrichment and aggrandisement to the detriment of the common good. But then, he was a moral philosopher, and is said to have valued his contributions in that sphere far more than those he made in the sphere of economics.

[bemildred]

11. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell

Anyway, I agree, without some reference to a deity or some reified abstraction governments must be admitted to be collections of ordinary and not especially impressive human beings. And it is then much easier to ask them "Who the hell are you to be pushing everyone else around?"

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. That's true. Except that egocentricity is as likely to engender vicious hatred

among the poor and marginalised, as it is among the Have Yachts who have caused this Depression - and who, of course, do not have the excuse of longsuffering and hopelessness visited on them by the twisted schemes of their rulers/puppets. By definition, no section of an egocentric society, if such an absolute human nihilism could exist, would feel bound by obligations to others, implicit in a religious culture, however feebly on the part of individuals.

[bemildred]

13. My observation is that people seem to be able to keep these things compartmentalized.

Religion on the sabbath of choice, balls out selfishness the rest of the week. But religion is a big subject, and I suppose I should not generalize too much. Anyway, we're doing our best to conduct an empirical test of these issues here in the USA.

[PurityOfEssence]

6. How can we "win" when we can't (or won't) even define what victory would look like?

Let's get serious: it's landlocked and surrounded by Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. (Forget that sliver of China; it's irrelevant.)

If Pakistan blows up and Russia gets pissy, guess what? Not only can we not supply our troops, THEY'D BE COMPLETELY ISOLATED.

So, let's review: it's a logistical nightmare, and there's no strategic upside. Great, so we finally get that pipeline we've craved so much; is that going to help the United States, as if that sort of greed is any justification? It'll help India and Pakistan. It'll help some American CORPORATIONS.

Do we REALLY think we're going to destroy Al Queda? It's an amorphous blob whose second-in-command has been killed more times than Spinal Tap's drummer. Are we going to hold the territory? Are we going to impose western gender-respect on this arid nowhere? Is that even possible?

Just what the fuck do we intend to do? Apparently, we're going to show 'em how tough we are. Another brilliant stroke of foreign policy: let's out-macho a bunch of primitive fundamentalists. Here's a hot one for ya: compared to them, we're a bunch of candy-assed suburbanites. When we get tough, we waterboard people; when they get tough, they decapitate 'em. We're out of our league. We'll spend ridiculous monies and bend our will to this fight, but they're ready to DIE for it ON PURPOSE.

This all just smacks of pathetic compensation: a non-conservative needs to dispel assumptions of his weakness or muslim sympathies so he needs to "show 'em". What folly. What indefensible lunacy.

If they'd make even the most cursory attempt to state their goals, it might make sense, but they can't because they haven't thought it through. It's the highest order of insanity, and like religion, legions just nod along with a ridiculous premise and stand tall with vapid homilies of stentorian idiocy. The emperor has no brain. Nobody with a lick of sense would approve of this.

Beyond all that, the partisans who forced this candidacy upon us from a springboard of anti-war invective duck and equivocate in the face of this recklessness.

(edited for punctuation)

[LynnTheDem]

9. Why? Because George W. bUsh's regime had to have cover to do their real war.

No way could the regime have invaded Iraq -a nation totally innocent of anything to do with 911- without first having cover by invading another nation -Afghanistan- that had nothing to do with 911 but could be easily demonized through that nation's demand of "give us proof first, then we hand OBL over".

Had OBL been hiding in Canada or the UK etc, Canada etc would have said "give us proof first, then we hand OBL over"; that would have been a serious problem for the bUsh regime. Hard to invade Canada or the UK.

But a nation full of "sand n*gg*rs" and "ragheads"? No problem!


By the way; FACT is, the majority of the world's people and nations opposed the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Not as much as they opposed Iraq, but opposed it they did.

Take hope; the MAJORITY of the world are good, intelligent, peace-loving people.