NYT Op/Ed: Aghanistan

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/opinion/20mon1.html?hp

Editorial
The Good War, Still to Be Won

- snip -

How different things might be if the Bush administration had not diverted needed troops and dollars into the misguided invasion of Iraq, nor wasted years discouraging needed NATO military assistance, nor pulled its punches rather than pressuring a Pakistani dictator with, at best, mixed feelings toward the Taliban.

Those are some of the questions raised in a devastating Times account earlier this month of how Afghanistan’s “good war” went bad. The battle against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies is still winnable, and it is vital to American security. But victory will require a smarter strategy and a lot more attention and resources.

In the first months after Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, the world, the Afghan people and Washington’s most important allies were all on America’s side. Now, a resurgent Taliban army operates from Pakistani sanctuaries. It wins Afghan hearts and minds every time an errant American airstrike kills innocent civilians, and it gains even more whenever an aid-starved Afghan government fails to deliver on its promises of better governance, economic development and physical security.

America has never had enough troops in Afghanistan, not in 2001, when Osama bin Laden was on the run in the caves of Tora Bora, and not today, when much of the country is still without effective authority. Too few ground troops have meant too much reliance on airstrikes, leading to too many innocent civilian casualties.

Since the Iraq buildup began in 2002, it has drawn away the resources that could have turned the tide in Afghanistan, including the military’s best special operations and counterinsurgency units. Afghanistan, larger and more populous than Iraq, now has 23,500 American troops. Iraq has about 160,000.

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[Amonester]

1. But, but, but... Iraq has 10 trillion dollars of premium light crude...

easy to steal (as long as the taxpayers won't mind sending their family members there to lose life & limbs for the pigs of Big Oil's stock options & obscene retirement plans).

To paraphrase herr neocon rumsferatu: "There R no targets in Afghanistan."

[PDJane]

2. Oh, well...........

That is probably because Afghanistan was never more than a distraction and an embarassment.

The US had, at various points, funded, backed, and trained both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. The bit about bin Laden being there was an excuse; however, there really wasn't anything left to destroy in Afghanistan. They've been bombed back to the stone age, and the US method of waging war doesn't work well on the ground.

The only reason that Afghanistan has ever been of tactical importance is its proximity to the USSR. They were a convenient pawn to tempt Russia to over extend itself, and a way to get the oil from the Caspian Basin to the shipping point. That's it.

NATO is now there, under the auspices of a US commander, and its further killing civilians in an arial war.

This is not a good tactic, folks.

[ConsAreLiars]

3. War was never the right strategy in Afghanistan. And more war there is not the way

to neutralize the Al Qaeda faction within Islam. There were far smarter options that were ignored from the beginning. All more bombings and murders create is more anti-US militants.