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Home » Afghan Update » Giving Up on Afghanistan (It Begins)

Giving Up on Afghanistan (It Begins)

Afghanistan-retreat.jpg

Well, appar­ently the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is going to release its new strat­egy for “vic­tory” in Afghanistan — though I doubt they’ll use that word — next week, but the AP put out a story on it today that says the new plan will rely on Pakistan to fight the havens and dumb down U.S. expectations:

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion is close to announc­ing a redrawn strat­egy for a war in Afghanistan that the pres­i­dent says the United States is not win­ning, focus­ing on enlist­ing Pakistan in the fight against extrem­ism and trim­ming U.S. expec­ta­tions for mil­i­tary vic­tory, admin­is­tra­tion, defense and intel­li­gence offi­cials said. 

Well, this is the begin­ning of the end folks. “Trimming expec­ta­tions” and “enlist­ing Pakistan in the fight” are code words for “exit strat­egy.” We’ve been hear­ing the rum­blings of this for weeks from Obama’s allies on the left, but make no mis­take, they have no stom­ach for this war — or any other Bush-​​initiated con­flict, for that mat­ter — and will look for excuses to reduce our com­mit­ment to a coun­try we owe much.

We’re see­ing the demo­niza­tion of Karzai by this admin­is­tra­tion along the same lines as the under cut­ting of Nori al Maliki in Iraq dur­ing the dark days of 2006. And the defeatist lan­guage has become the nar­ra­tive for all cov­er­age of the conflict:

The White House expects to announce new objec­tives for the flag­ging war as soon as next week that place an onus on next-​​door Pakistan to con­tain extrem­ism, defense and admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said Thursday. 

The New York Times had two oppos­ing Op/​Eds this morn­ing, one from Leslie Gelb and another from Fred and Kim Kagan and Max Boot, who’ve been in Afghanistan for the last week on a bat­tle­field tour.

Gelb is giv­ing Obama an out:

Mr. Obama needs to con­sider another path. Our strat­egy in Afghanistan should empha­size what we do best (con­tain­ing and deter­ring, and forg­ing coali­tions) and down­grade what we do worst (nation-​​building in open-​​ended wars). It should cut our grow­ing costs and secure our inter­ests by employ­ing our power more cre­atively and prac­ti­cally. It must also per­mit us and this is crit­i­cal to focus more American resources and influ­ence on the far more dire sit­u­a­tion in Pakistan. 

Why is it that war oppo­nents care only about “sta­bil­ity” and care noth­ing for the Afghans themselves?

The Taliban are no excep­tion. While most of them want to drive America out, they have no inher­ent inter­est in export­ing ter­ror­ism. As nasty as the Taliban are, Americas vital inter­ests do not require their exclu­sion from power in Afghanistan, so long as they dont sup­port inter­na­tional terrorists. 

I can’t believe I’m hear­ing this. Oh, the Taliban aren’t so bad as long as they’re not giv­ing haven to al Qaeda..? Tell that to the Afghans who lived in ter­ror for more than a decade under Taliban’s Hobbesian rule and who will again be sub­ject to their Wahabbist dogma if they’re given a sub­stan­tial stake in Afghan government.

And I love this:

President Obama has to ring Afghanistan with a coali­tion of neigh­bors to show the Taliban they have no place to seek suc­cor, even after an American depar­ture. The group would include China, India, Russia, NATO allies, and yes, Iran. They all share a con­sid­er­able inter­est in stem­ming the spread of Afghan drugs and Islamic extremism. 

This is like Biden’s straw man “rapid reac­tion force” to be sta­tioned in Kuwait if (when) all goes to Hell in a hand bas­ket after a puta­tive U.S. with­drawal from Iraq. Yeah, right. We’ll ask Iran to jump in and keep Taliban jack-​​booters from shoot­ing burkha-​​shedding women in the soc­cer stadium.

Kagan, on the other hand, who’s actu­ally over there and talks to mil­i­tary lead­ers, Soldiers/​Marines and Afghans them­selves, won­ders what all the defeatism is all about:

It is odd that the Afghans felt it nec­es­sary to reas­sure American vis­i­tors that all was far from lost. It reflected the fact that even in a coun­try where elec­tric­ity and run­ning water are scarce, word of the defeatist hys­te­ria now grip­ping some in the American polit­i­cal elite has spread. 

And the Kagan2/​Boot also says the idea that we can plink bad guys from Predators after a with­drawal is bunk:

There are many who claim that a large-​​scale com­mit­ment isnt nec­es­sary. Some say we have no inter­est in mak­ing Afghanistan a func­tion­ing state — all that mat­ters is pre­vent­ing Al Qaeda from re-​​establishing safe havens, and we can do that by killing ter­ror­ist lead­ers with pre­ci­sion air strikes or covert raids.

The key ques­tion for those who advo­cate pulling back is this: Where will we get the intel­li­gence to direct the raids? If we have few troops on the ground, we will have to rely on inter­cepted com­mu­ni­ca­tions. But seven years into the fight, the ter­ror­ists have learned a thing or two about keep­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tions secret. The only way to get the intel­li­gence we need is from the res­i­dents, and they wont pro­vide it unless our troops stay in their vil­lages to pro­vide pro­tec­tion from Taliban retribution. 

I’ve been say­ing recently that the best way to counter extrem­ism in the tribal areas in Pakistan is a robust Afghan army and police — includ­ing intel­li­gence forces. They speak the lan­guage, the share cul­tural and eth­nic ties but they do not share sym­pa­thies. Leaving them would weaken us. As the Kagan2/​Boot piece states, it’s time to gird our loins and fight to the fin­ish — there are no half measures.

If we aban­don them, we will become blind to one of the most dan­ger­ous threats to our secu­rity, and also hand our most deter­mined ene­mies an enor­mous pro­pa­ganda vic­tory their biggest since 9/​11.

Make no mis­take: there is hard, costly fight­ing ahead in Afghanistan. But the fight is worth pur­su­ing, and the odds of suc­cess are much bet­ter than they were in Iraq when we launched the for­lorn hope known as the surge. 

And make no mis­take, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion (with the help of a Pentagon that wants to get back in the busi­ness of com­bined arms train­ing for Fulda Gap bat­tles) is look­ing for an expe­di­ent way out, and they’ll take the Euro line of “there’s noth­ing more we can do here” and blame Karzai and Pakistan as we pull the plug.

[BREAK — BREAK: We have an excit­ing live pod­cast inter­view today with a close friend and col­league Morgan Till. He’s a pro­ducer for the PBS News Hour pro­gram and is on assign­ment in Afghanistan. We’ll talk to him live at 1200 EDT today about his report­ing in the Korengal Valley, patrols out­side Bagram, time with PRTs and hang­ing with Leathernecks near Kandahar. Please join us.]

– Christian

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  1. Mark says:
    March 13, 2009 at 9:15 am

    I had not the stom­ach to fin­ish this arti­cle. I want to throw-​​up on the pres­i­dent and his admin­is­tra­tion. This dis­hon­ors our fallen. I feel the pres­i­dent should move to Japan and fol­low their tra­di­tion with respect to great dis­hon­or­ing of one’s self.

    Reply
  2. Drake says:
    March 13, 2009 at 9:27 am

    Complaints about Karzai not doing what had to be done, are leg­endary. Reporters seem to say the Afgani peo­ple have the will for the fight(unlike some of the Iraqi’s), but the Karzai gov­ern­ment is incom­pe­tent and caus­ing Afghanis to lose faith in the sys­tem. I’ll read the link you men­tioned and wait for the cast.

    Reply
  3. Charles says:
    March 13, 2009 at 9:35 am

    There was a dis­tur­bance in the force, as if three thou­sand voices cried out for jus­tice.
    Afghanistan will fail again if troops with­draw too soon. I was under the impres­sion most Afghans had guns, so why are they hav­ing prob­lems keep­ing out the Taliban? Maybe it’s because Pakistan is keep­ing them well-​​supplied?
    Asking Pakistan to help us while they are prob­a­bly sup­ply­ing arms is just too much to ask for. Even if we put every Predator drone on the bor­der we might not stop the flow of weapons into Afghanistan. What’s next, the MacNamara line? Need an Iron Curtain between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
    In some cases not sure how more troops will help unless they are par­celled out effi­ciently. Going to the decen­tral­iza­tion model of push­ing out smaller out­posts to the front line may improve cov­er­age and net us loy­alty of the Afghans (who’s loyal to some­one hid­ing behind an FSB any­ways?). I think after decen­tral­iz­ing one still needs to con­trol the space in between out­posts, which is trick­ier than it sounds…send UAVs. Once they lose the night and we own the day the war is half-​​won.

    Reply
  4. Max says:
    March 13, 2009 at 9:52 am

    You seem to think that report­ing your opin­ions as opposed to the facts is report­ing the news. Obama is doing a way bet­ter job with Afghanistan.
    If it wasn’t for Bush going into Iraq on a lie Afghanistan most likely wouldn’t as bad a shape as it is right now.
    Also wasn’t it Bush who relied on Pakistan to fight the War on Terror and got no where fast but still gave them a blank check?
    I maybe a Democrat but I’m all for this war and you’ll that most Democrats are in sup­port of this war,because unlike Iraq it’s a war worth fight­ing.
    Please sir don’t lump all Democrats in with Code Pink.

    Reply
  5. TB says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:16 am

    can’t believe I’m hear­ing this. Oh, the Taliban aren’t so bad as long as they’re not giv­ing haven to al Qaeda..? Tell that to the Afghans who lived in ter­ror for more than a decade under Taliban’s Hobbesian rule and who will again be sub­ject to their Wahabbist dogma if they’re given a sub­stan­tial stake in Afghan gov­ern­ment.
    Christian, you make it sound like the Afghan peo­ple are united in their love for us and their hatred of the Taliban. We’re out­siders. For this rea­son alone tribes in A’stan have opposed us from the moment we showed up. If we’re so loved by all for our benev­o­lent sav­ing the day, why do we have the dif­fi­cul­ties that we do there? And as far as sav­ing the Afghans from the evil Taliban, that’s not why we invaded. We went in to attack AQ and gave our­selves the mis­sion of democ­ra­tiz­ing A’stan, even though every for­eign nation who’s ever tried has failed. If sav­ing the Afghan peo­ple was the mis­sion, why didn’t we do it sooner?
    Is a strong pro-​​western A’stan in our inter­ests? Of course. But let’s be real­is­tic about what we can do. Do you really expect that we can stay for years until the coun­try loves us more than their Paki neigh­bors (many of whom are fam­ily)? How long will that take? Is it even pos­si­ble? Expecting Pakistan to do what we want is equally ridicu­lous. They’ve had a big hand in shap­ing Afghan pol­i­tics for­ever, and they’re not going to stop or do what we want because we say pretty please. Your idea of mak­ing A’stan safe from the Taliban and AQ depends on both them and Pakistan see­ing eye to eye on the issue and agree­ing to a sit­u­a­tion to our ben­e­fit. Getting the Afghanis to make a united deci­sion on any­thing is a task beyond our means. If you think any of this is pos­si­ble any­time in the next decade, you’d do well to sell beach­front prop­erty in Arizona.

    Reply
  6. Don says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:17 am

    As a retired mil­i­tary I can under­stand the desire to win. But at what cost? We can not win in Afghanistan with out more troops than we have there now. And I am not talk­ing about a few thou­sand more troops.
    I do not believe we and I mean our coun­try has the will power to stay there for ever. And that is what we would have to do.
    I beleive we have a bet­ter option and that is to pro­vide train­ing and other aid to Afghanistan and let them do the fight­ing. After all it is there coun­try and not ours.
    We need to go after those who are a threat to our coun­try whare ever they are in the world and not spend a lot of time in occu­pa­tion of a coun­try. That is a no win pol­icy. We do not have the troops to do that. We would end up occu­py­ing more coun­tries than we have mil­i­tary force to do.
    I sug­gest we and other coun­tries have a fast action force to go in and take out those who would do us harm and get out.
    We can pro­vide the train­ing and other assis­tance to those coun­tries that request our sup­port. Instead of occu­pa­tion which if you think about it, is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.
    Just think about how we would react to our coun­try being occu­pied. We would would resist it.

    Reply
  7. drago says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:25 am

    we wouldn’t have to read this if the 100,000 troops sent to invade Iraq had gone towards Afghanistan instead.
    USA is broke, and owes China BILLION$$$$$$$$$$$.
    Read the Art of War. Don’t go round fight­ing wars if you can’t afford to.

    Reply
  8. Don says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:37 am

    Let me remind you who are so will­ing to say we are dis­hon­or­ing our solid­ers by leav­ing the field of bat­tle. It is not the mil­i­tary but our civil­ian lead­ers we serve. We left Vietnam when we were told to.
    How long do you think we can stay in Afghanistan, for­ever? The American peo­ple will stand for that.

    Reply
  9. Jon says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:43 am

    “I can’t believe I’m hear­ing this. Oh, the Taliban aren’t so bad as long as they’re not giv­ing haven to al Qaeda..? Tell that to the Afghans who lived in ter­ror for more than a decade under Taliban’s Hobbesian rule and who will again be sub­ject to their Wahabbist dogma if they’re given a sub­stan­tial stake in Afghan gov­ern­ment.“
    Since when is out America’s job to go around polic­ing the world? If you’re rea­son for us being in Afghanistan is because they have a crazy ide­o­log­i­cal gov­ern­ment, then I can list about 50 coun­tries that we should actively go to war with also. Do you sup­port that?
    We’re not the world’s police force. We’re not the ideology-​​police. If peo­ple want free­dom from oppres­sion, they should do as our fore­fa­thers did and FIGHT FOR IT THEMSELVES.

    Reply
  10. Jon says:
    March 13, 2009 at 10:47 am

    And as other com­menters have said: Had our pre­vi­ous pres­i­dent not sent 160,000 US sol­diers off to Iraq, Afghanistan (the coun­try which actu­ally had some­thing to do with 9/​11) would have been won.

    Reply
  11. Basher says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:02 am

    The AQ-​​Taliban con­flict is such a nasty one that the only proper way to erad­i­cate it would be to bomb with N/​B/​C all of south­ern Afghanistan, the Afghan-​​Pak bor­der and large parts of west­ern Pakistan, spe­cially Waziristan. No mat­ter what kind of pro­tec­tion all those rats could find in the moun­tains, less than 1% would sur­vive. But also a hell lot of civil­ian (civil­ian?) would die… ahem

    Reply
  12. Roy Smith says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:05 am

    One thing that NEVERS seems to be brought up is how Afghanistan is com­pletely sur­rounded by nations “hos­tile” to the U.S. & to NATO. That also includes Pakistan. In order to sta­bi­lize vic­tory we need to (a) sta­bi­lize Pakistan & place U.S. & NATO troops into Western Pakistan,whether the Pakis like it or not.(b) we need to occupy the Central Asian States of Kasakhstan,Tajikistan,Uzbekistan,Kyrgyzstan,
    Turkmenistan,Azerbaijan,& Armenia​.In addi­tion to that we need to occupy Moldova & the Ukraine,& we need to drive Russia out of Georgia.© we need to “sta­bi­lize” Turkey with a “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment more friendly to the U.S.(d) we need to take down Iran & neu­tral­ize Russian & Chinese influ­ence in the region.
    You can cry in your milk over Afghanistan if you want to,but unless you have gen­er­als with the balls of Patton dur­ing WWII & MacArthur dur­ing the Korean War(both sacked by weak kneed politi­cians,& Patton pos­si­bly assas­si­nated) who are will­ing to EXPAND the war to secure logis­ti­cal lines of supply,we are totally screwed when these hos­tile nations throw up a block­ade to pre­vent troop move­ments to & from Afghanistan. I mean,who are the kool-​​ade drinkers who can’t see this?

    Reply
  13. Sven Ortmann says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:06 am

    “Why is it that war oppo­nents care only about “sta­bil­ity” and care noth­ing for the Afghans them­selves?“
    1)
    The evil­ness of Taliban was not con­sid­ered as a rea­son for war. The rea­son for war was their pro­longed hos­pi­tal­ity for UBL who still claimed inno­cence at that time.
    2)
    Cost effi­ciency. The same costs of the war in Afghanistan could achieve much more good in other places of the world.
    3)
    Delivery. The armed forces don’t deliver. They don’t achieve any­thing else but tem­po­rary effects.
    4)
    The Afghans can fight for them­selves, their war­lords are sit­ting in back­ground and will face the Taliban if we leave.
    It’s even some­how funny. We’re fight­ing the Taliban, the second-​​worst arch ene­mies of the Iranian theocrats.

    Reply
  14. Keith says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:18 am

    Can you define for me the con­di­tions that con­sti­tute “victory”?

    Reply
  15. Christian says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Max,
    You’re delu­sional. Cite any well known Democrat who says any­thing about stay­ing com­mit­ted to the Afghans and the war there…
    TB et al…
    I have a strong per­sonal affec­tion for the Afghans because of my two embeds there. I’ve been all over and at the end of the day, I feel like we sort of owe Afghanistan the same atten­tion we gave the Iraqis (and I think that atten­tion is more deserved by the Afghans than the Iraqis). They defi­nately like us more than the Paks, by far. Of course I can’t speak for ALL of them, but every­where I went I never met the same kind of moral rel­a­tivism that I did in Iraq. The Afghans I met (from jundi to elder) knew we were there to help them.
    What is “vic­tory?” Well, I’m sorry folks, but we broke it, we gotta fix it. The only way ter­ror­ism won’t return to Afghanistan is a func­tion­ing democ­racy with the rule of law. If that means we have to be there a while, then so be it. “Containing” ter­ror­ism with a “regional strat­egy” is a cop out from peo­ple who know damned good and well that no one else will step up to the plate other than us.
    I’ll admit, I’m being ruled here by my emo­tions a bit. But at the end of the day, defeat­ing the Taliban and keep­ing them from ter­ror­iz­ing the Afgan peo­ple BECAME the mis­sion, bcs by default, they come back, so does AQ…
    I’ll take the incom­ing salvos like “you seem to think report­ing opin­ions instead of the facts is report­ing the news” from Max and his ilk. But it’s a fact that the Obama admin isn’t seri­ous about this war and if what we’re report­ing turns out to be the case, he will lose it.

    Reply
  16. Wembley says:
    March 13, 2009 at 11:55 am

    “The only way ter­ror­ism won’t return to Afghanistan is a func­tion­ing democ­racy with the rule of law.“
    So they get your pre­ferred form of gov­ern­ment whether they like it or not — and face it, they don’t like it.
    And there’s this small busi­ness of the opium crop…
    The Afghans could cer­tainly use some out­side help. But it’s really hard to see occu­py­ing troops as part of the solu­tion rather than part of the prob­lem.
    As for strength­en­ing the Aghan army: you have to remem­ber that they’re just another fac­tion. Or sev­eral fac­tions.
    It’s all about the pol­i­tics and his­tory, and Obama seems to have a much bet­ter han­dle on this than the military.

    Reply
  17. Drake says:
    March 13, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    I try to under­stand where Christian is com­ing from;he was there I wasn’t. The way I see it, we “at least” owe Afganistan the same qual­ity of time and focus we gave Iraq.
    We were attacked from Afganistan and the Taliban lead­er­ship are mar­ried to Alqueda, so we have to kill the Taliban lead­er­ship. The Pakistani mil­i­tary is mar­ried to terrorist’s to fight the Indian’s so we can’t depend on Pakistan too much either. We have to stay and fight, I just have not heard any­one in the mil­i­tary or admin­stra­tion say how yet, which is frustrating.

    Reply
  18. Max says:
    March 13, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    Christian I was refer­ring to your com­mon hard work­ing Democrats. You base you opin­ions on the elected offi­cials. I have many friends who Democrats as well as Republicans and all of them are united on defeat­ing AQ and the Taliban.
    They may dif­fer on social and eco­nomic issues but when it comes to aveng­ing the 9/​11 attacks they are of one voice.
    You sir need to remem­ber that a lot of the stuff you’re accus­ing Obama of are things that Bush started.
    Please sir base your report­ing on facts and not a one sided opinion.

    Reply
  19. Max says:
    March 13, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    I did enjoy this debate and I hope to read more about the war there.
    Christian you’re a very tal­ented writer but I just would like to see more facts about whats actu­ally going on there and less about how you think Obama is try­ing to cut and run. I do believe Obama wants to win this war but it’s going to take more than just fire­power to win this war. It’s going to take win­ning the “Hearts and Minds” of the Afghans. You of all peo­ple should know that since you have been there and I haven’t.

    Reply
  20. J. says:
    March 13, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    “appar­ently the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is going to release its new strat­egy for “vic­tory” in Afghanistan — though I doubt they’ll use that word“
    No, we pre­fer the term “suc­cess­ful mis­sion” over “end­less strug­gle for some form of vic­tory that calls for total sub­je­ca­tion of the enemy.” Much eas­ier to sleep at night.
    While you’re carp­ing on the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, stretch your mem­ory back to 2001, when Pres Bush had the Taliban lead­er­ship in the White House. That was when the idea of stretch­ing an oil pipeline through their coun­try was pop­u­lar. And then please STFU about whether we ought to be deal­ing with the Taliban or not.

    Reply
  21. jim says:
    March 13, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Liberals and Progressives, like Obama, aren’t anti-​​war — they’re just on the other side.
    Obama’s recent treat­ment of Churchill shows us what he thinks of Western val­ues — he thinks they are just so much racist, colo­nial­ist clap­trap. Deep down he believes we were wrong to invade Afghanistan — he lied on the cam­paign trail so he could slam Iraq and not sound weak.
    As with domes­tic pol­i­tics, Obama cam­paigned as a cen­trist and is gov­ern­ing as his true self — a hard left ide­o­logue who loathes America.
    Obama’s gut instinct after 9/​11 really was that America needed to reflect on why our poli­cies cause so much hatred. He’s writ­ten of his admi­ra­tion for the beauty of Islam and tra­di­tional, pre-​​modern soci­eties– just as he’s writ­ten of his loathing of the mod­ern American sub­urbs.
    And do we all have to copy Obama now and pro­nounce Pakistan “Pock-​​e-​​stahn”. Does any­thing show more cul­tural weak­ness and timid­ity than the affec­ta­tion of for­eign pro­nun­ci­a­tions? Shall we demand the rest of the world pro­nounce Atlanta, Georgia with a south­ern drawl — or say “Brooklyn” with it’s proper regional accent.
    I per­son­ally demand the world pro­nounce Wisconsin with the the nasal inflec­tion of my ancestors!

    Reply
  22. Ghost says:
    March 13, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    I read this piece & I see innocu­ous state­ments inter­preted in the worst pos­si­ble way + read­ing an op-​​ed col­umn as admin­is­tra­tion pol­icy. This is far below the typ­i­cal for this web­site. The fact is, no mat­ter how much Christian or any other con­trib­u­tor may like the man, McCain lost big & is likely too old to get another chance.
    “demo­nize Karzai”? Has any­one ever heard any­thing good about his administration?

    Reply
  23. chrisram says:
    March 13, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Try using a lit­tle more impar­tial­ity Christian.…it suits you much better.

    Reply
  24. McKellar says:
    March 13, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    This is all about Pakistan. A sta­ble, func­tion­ing Afghanistan can’t exist with­out a sta­ble, func­tion­ing Pakistan, and as it is, even our most pre­cise, velvet-​​gloved Predator strikes are infu­ri­at­ing the Pakistani peo­ple and rad­i­cal­iz­ing their mil­i­tary. If back­ing off in Afghanistan helps pre­vent an Islamicist coup in Pakistan, that’s what we have to do. Once the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Pakistan is more sta­ble, then we can work with our Pakistani allies to clear the Taliban out of Waziristan and work on re-​​building Afghanistan.

    Reply
  25. Drake says:
    March 13, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    The prob­lem with say­ing trust the Pakistan gov­ern­ment to han­dle things is their weak and los­ing con­trol of their own ter­ri­tory to extrem­ists. The mil­i­tary also holds the real power in Pakistan and the intel­li­gence ser­vice has ties with ter­ror­ists. I watched a good Frontline pro­gram on Afganistan on Frontline.
    http://​www​.pbs​.org/​w​g​b​h​/​p​a​g​e​s​/​f​r​o​n​t​l​i​n​e​/​w​a​r​b​r​i​e​f​i​n​g​/​v​i​ew/

    Reply
  26. CR says:
    March 13, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    Can any­one tell me who has ‘won’ in Afghanistan…ever? Not the British.….not the Russians.…..

    Reply
  27. soonergrunt says:
    March 13, 2009 at 3:39 pm

    Jim,
    Pull your head out of Rush Limbaugh’s ass, please. Your brain has been addled by the excess nar­cotics float­ing around in there.
    I realise that you have do as he tells you, him being the real leader of your party and move­ment, but could you at least have enough respect for your­self and us to not be so obvi­ous about it?

    Reply
  28. bobbymike says:
    March 13, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    This is Christian’s site and he can express any opin­ion he wants. I love how any crit­i­cism of Obama starts the whin­ing and cry­ing. Bush did this, Cheney did that.
    The key point is this, Obama, after say­ing Iraq was lost, said over and over and over on the cam­paign trail the the “real” war on ter­ror is in A’stan. Now JUST 50 DAYS into his admin­is­tra­tion he is look­ing for ways to get out.
    The rea­son is sim­ple, the quicker he gets out the more cred­i­ble it is to say “Bush left it unwork­able” the longer he stays the more it becomes “his” war.
    He is a cow­ard. Please read Michael Barone’s col­umn about how Obama oper­ates. It is child­ish “if it works I did it, if it doesn’t it is some­one else’s fault” But what do you expect from such a light­weight who can’t even intro­duce a poten­tial cab­i­net mem­ber with­out his TELEPROMPTER.
    OK left­wing cra­zies have at me I crit­i­cised your god!!

    Reply
  29. Parthicus says:
    March 13, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    very few peo­ple have the courage of our found­ing fore­fa­thers; our fore­fa­thers were also lucky that the british were thou­sands of miles away and have a rel­a­tively small land army. Even then, we needed the french to help us.
    It’s not so easy to fight an enemy that’s just next door, that has fully infil­trated your soci­ety and is funded by saudi petrodol­lars and American defense aid.
    The karzai gov’t is weak and cor­rupt b/​c we were busy in Iraq build­ing up the Iraqi gov’t. All we have to do is build the strength of the Afghan gov’t just like we did in Iraq, and the war will be won. As for the paks, they seem to be per­ma­nently enthralled with jihadism; sim­ply throw­ing money at the prob­lem or expect­ing them to “help us” with­out screw­ing us won’t work.

    Reply
  30. Tad says:
    March 13, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    Obama is really tak­ing a realpoli­tik approach to this — I’m sur­prised, it runs counter to not only his cam­paign rhetoric, but also to his party’s his­tory of Wilsonian idealism.

    Reply
  31. Tallgrass says:
    March 13, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    What is the US objec­tive in Afghanistan? A sta­ble democ­racy? A client state of the US? A reli­gious or ide­o­log­i­cal war? How do we know when we have ‘won’?
    There is not a purely mil­i­tary solu­tion, and after more than 7 years in Afghanistan it time to rec­og­nize that.
    I could go on about what a silly diver­sion and waste of troops, resources, and time invad­ing Iraq was, and how that weak­ened any effort in Afghanistan.

    Reply
  32. Drake says:
    March 13, 2009 at 8:39 pm

    No one includ­ing the com­man­ders on the ground think that there is a purely mil­i­tary solu­tion in Afganistan, but before you can deal with an expand­ing insur­gency in the coun­try, you need to secure the area, which calls for an increased build up of troops, at least ini­tially. We have to take care to real­ize that while we have been in Afganistan for years, troops have been under­tak­ing an “econ­omy of force oper­a­tion”, with lim­ited resources, which has allowed for ground that was gained to be lost. It’s prob­a­bly going to take at least as long to get back to where we were and longer to get to where we are sup­posed to be.

    Reply
  33. Max says:
    March 14, 2009 at 8:16 am

    Bobbymike you have added noth­ing use­ful to the debate. All you’ve done is shown that you’re igno­rant and pos­si­bly racist.
    Obama is not anybody’s God and to think such a thing is laugh­able. You really need to either put some use­ful into the debate or just be quiet.

    Reply
  34. Prabhat Mathur says:
    March 15, 2009 at 8:19 am

    I’m shocked. Is this really the USA talk­ing?
    It amazes me how words like ‘good taliban’,‘bad tal­iban’ are being bandied about. And the total shun­ning of respon­si­bil­ity, to leave the Afghan pop­u­la­tion at the mercy of thugs and mur­der­ers is baffling.And the talk of ‘vic­tory’. My word!
    ’With great power comes great respon­si­bil­ity’. I won­der what that means.

    Reply
  35. Sgt Oblat says:
    March 16, 2009 at 2:19 am

    The US was never going to win in Afghanistan, right from the start Bush, Cheny and Gates lim­ited the foot­print because every­one knows the US mil­i­tary isn’t up to the job.
    All the chest beat­ing about no half mea­sures and rants about fire­power just cover up the fact that it is so fat and lazy that it cant even beat an agrar­ian soci­ety with the pop­u­la­tion of Nepal.

    Reply
  36. Byron says:
    March 16, 2009 at 11:57 pm

    Afghanistan has never been more than a col­lec­tion of tribes. The coun­try is the result of another failed nation build­ing fol­low­ing WWI. The age of total war, or absolute vic­tory ended in WWII and we have yet to suc­cess­fully build a nation (Germany and Japan don’t count because they already obvi­ously had infra­struc­ture. It’s not our job, you can’t fight wars for other peo­ple, and this was never going to work.
    They have no faith in their gov­ern­ment and the Taliban is resur­gent. We have a national cri­sis and are low on funds, there is no rea­son we should get in a quag­mire and this think­ing will only lead to a rehash­ing of Vet Nam. Russians, British, Arabs, have never been able to do what we are try­ing to do suc­cess­fully, yet shoot an bomb­ing with newer tech­nol­ogy seems to have some of you fooled into believ­ing we can over­ride and entire cul­ture. They have to want it and they don’t, so we can’t give it to them. This isn’t about our suc­cess, or who we think is bad, this is about their will to make their coun­try work and it’s just not there.
    This arti­cle isn’t about whats best for Afghanistan, which may be the silence of sta­bi­liza­tion, but about our bruised ego’s. It’s over and if they want a new gov­ern­ment, they will have to build it if it is to sur­vive. EX: America.

    Reply
  37. Space Monkey says:
    March 17, 2009 at 9:15 am

    Nooooo. Who will sup­ply the intel­li­gence sect’s with laun­dered money from nar­cotics smug­gling if Afghanistan falls under China’s influ­ence?
    Afghanistan’s national motto should be:
    “Afghanistan — top­pling an empire every gen­er­a­tion going back to when we first took to these here hills.

    Reply

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