Given the emphasis on Iraq, one thing that could have given President Bush a modicum of respect--the routing of and defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan--is slipping through his fingers.

Robert Gates is trying to get more NATO troops into Afghanistan because more troops are needed.



Is the government finally saying what I tried to get y'all to discuss re Afghanistan?

The US has a reason for winning in Afghanistan! We went there to rid the country of terrorists, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. That was the basis for the 'War on Terrorism.'

What's gone wrong?

You asked what went wrong? More or less everything , right from the beginning, when they had Osama cornered at Tora Bora , and they refused the CIAs request for more rangers , instead they hired a local warlord to do the job...that worthy got bribed and Osama has made his escape....and he has plagued us ever since.
Mind you at that time he was relatively isolated with a small cadre of supporters.
But then he hit the jackpot...IRAQ was invaded...all of a sudden he had the greatest propaganda machine in the world doing his dirty work ...Namely the western media...every victory and every battle that we celebrated ...was perceived as a slap in the face by the moslem population of the world and it was seen as an unjust war.
You know right after 9/11 we had most of the islamic world on our side...BUT when we invaded Iraq a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (and every muslim knew that)...the tide of islamic public opinion turned against us.
So you want to know what went wrong ? Bad decisions by an administration (and their lapdogs) an administration run by people that did not know the difference between Sunni and Shia...nor did they know wich of these groups Osama belonged to nor had they ever heard of Wahabism and who is controlled by it.
In other words a war started in ignorance about the enemy...so what can you expect from that ?

I guess I used to expect more, Amboss . Now I know I can expect nothing from this administration.

Why is Afghanistan my Hobby-horse? Because my dearly-loved nephew was there--and could br sent back. And I'll always wonder why--

Your nephew was there, like me there and here, because he raised his hand and took an oath. I know what you really meant was why did we as the United States make the decisions to go there? Well, the events of 9/11 certainly were part of it. THe nature of the Taliban regime and tribal society that spawned it were part of it. The continuing potential threat they posed were part of it.

My concern is not so much why we went, which I believe was completely justified. What concerns me is the inability of some members of our society to distinguish between our justified reasons for going and our dismal failure to execute after we arrived. I was there early in the process and played my own very small role in things. We did the very best we could with the resources we had and in the circumstances under which we operated. Frankly, you guys who don't know what the hell you are talking about can arm chair quarterback us to death and denigrate our performance but we did a DAMN GOOD job!

Political decisions over which we had no influence, let alone control, are responsible for the mess in Afghanistan now. Those decisions are responsible for the squandering of opportunity, resources, and lives in Afghanistan. But...and this is a big deal to me if not to you guys...we went where we were told to go and did what we were told to do. Our mission was to topple the Taliban government such as it was. We succeeded in that effort. The capture or killing of Osama bin laden was a goal but it was never our assigned mission and it was not resourced as such. Don't suggest we failed to do our duty or complete our mission.

Lawmage,

I believe that you will discover that not only liz, but virtually all critics of the war, agree with your statements. What we find fault with are the continually morphing reasons the administration gave for our reasons for invading Iraq (not Afghanistan!), and the failure of a decent plan to control things once the government had been toppled, which you guys accomplished in very short order. We blame the mess in Afghanistan and the mess in Iraq completely on the administration and your Commander in Chief and the piss-poor planning that went into the decision to attack, not on the performance of our brave troops who continue to risk their lives under abysmal conditions for an administration with its head up its ass who doesn't even provide complete body armor and vehicle armor for you guys. We find this to be an outrage on *your* behalf.

Please do not mistake those who are dissatisfied with the administration's poor performance as being critics of the men and women who are doing their best to fight the administration's poor war plan. We do "support the troops" (I'm starting to hate that hackneyed phrase, but we do indeed support you guys whole-heartedly).

I agree with Helice, and find it astonishing that the American people support the troops far more than Bush-Cheney seems to.

They sent you guys out to accomplish a mission, then basically abandoned you to their appointed political hacks and neocrat hawks who didn't seem to care whether you had proper armor or proper vehicles, and who chose to privatize your security by putting it into the hands of the scumbags at Blackwater, who ride around with better weapons and armor than you have, and make three or four times as much as you.

That must frost you even more than it does me.

The idea that Americans, and I mean almost ALL Americans don't support the troops is as great a lie as has ever been put forward by this corrupt, criminal administration. They are the ones who don't support the troops. But these miserable bastards in the white house would rather blame us than admit to their own mistakes. It's much easier for them that way.

The only way this administration supports the troops is by torturing people who may have some information they want, then denying that we torture anyone because the torture was performed in foreign countries, to whom we handed over our captives.

And the sophistry of that argument, and the pure inhumanity of it is something that will be denied only by the fringe neocrats, not by any real American.

Wolfowitz, Perle, Bremer, all the sadistic chickenhawk neocrats who want nothing more than continuing war in the ME, are far, far less patriotic than the housewife who sends a box of cookies and a cheery letter to a GI.

Hello again Law...as usual you take everything personal (I.E.we are critizising the troops ) when nothing like that was ever mentioned or even hinted at. just read your post again :
and then read what everyone had posted...It was the leadership in washington that we raked over the coals and not the troops ...nobody was "armchairing" any military operation as you insist we did ...instead you (the military) had our sympathy when decisions made thousands of miles away negated most of your accomplishments...Afghanistan was solidly under our control , But failure to follow up inevitable led to the mess that that country is in now.

The question now is--Can we do anything about the situation? As Dax said, Afghanistan has as much oil as Baltimore(?) which puts the lie to the claim that we invaded Iraq 'just' to topple Saddam's government.

The Taliban is slowly gaining ground in Afghanistan and, I believe, is spreading into Pakistan. Since the Taliban are extremist Muslims, shouldn't they become a part of the 'War on Terrorism' and shouldn't resources be expended on that war and not just on those countries with both terrorists and oil?

Law, you claim to have knowledge of military strategy--what do you think? Should we pull out of Afghanistan and send those troops into Iraq? Should we give up in Afghanistan and let the Taliban do as they please in the ME?

I know that you were severly wounded in Afghanistan--as many of our cherished men and women have been--to what end?

Has our 'big stick' turned into nothing more than a 'little twig?'

Huh? Non sequiter alert...

Not so fast, Liz. It is not quite correct to say the Taliban is expanding into Pakistan. The Taliban is largely a creation of the Pakistani ISI in the first place, one intended to more or less stabilize Afganistan in the post Soviet withdrawal period. It was formed from among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan and is predominately Pashtun in its ethnic character. As such, it had and still has enormous relevance in Afghanistan but not so much in Pakistan. Indeed, its Pashtun character serves to ensure it will only ever have limited influence in Pakistan except among the Pashtuns of the Northwest Frontier Territory. Pakistan has its own homegrown Islamic extremists, extremist groups cultivated by the ISI for use in the Kashmir conflict with India. These groups have some commonality of interest with the Taliban in so far as they are all militant Islamic groups but those commonalities do not necessarily translate into a unified front. It would be unwise to treat them all as a single cohesive enemy. Their divergent goals means they cannot be addressed with a one size fits all solution.

The tenor of your question suggests we are NOT expending resources in Afghanistan or against the Taliban...that is clearly untrue. We have expended an enormous amount of resources there. However, our interests are less directly threatened in Afghanistan and frankly, the threat there does not justify the expenditure of resources on the scale of Iraq. You guys like to play political games and decry everything as being about oil and thats fine...continue to be intellectually dishonest if you like. The simple truth of the matter is that oil is indeed a strategic interest of the United States and it makes the Middle East a region of strategic importance. In short, oil is indeed worth fighting for because our entire way of life and standard of living in the West is inexorably tied to oil. You guys how suggest its not worth fighting for are hypocritical...I don't see any of you volunteering to go live in the Thirld World with its standard of living...which is what we would face in the West without oil. Indeed, I would suggest securing our oil supplies is MORE important than fighting terrorists. Terrorists are an annoyance but they do not in and of themselves represent an existential threat to the West. Significant disruptions in our supply of oil does. Unfettered Islamic extremism has the potential to rise to a similar level of threat and so ought to be addressed but terrorism is only one facet of the Islamist threat.

Liz...I am hurt. The tone of you statement suggests you do not in fact think I have any knowledge of military strategy. No matter...Should we pull out of Afghanistan? At the moment, I would say no. I would suggest a radically different strategy though. I would abandon reconstruction efforts and all the Civili Affairs projects. They are a waste of resources. I would build a handful of large and well fortified bases in the area and use them to support and sustain strictly military operations targetted at the Taliban and its "infrastructure." This would not do the average Afghan a great deal of good in terms of improving his quality of life and in truth might actually degrade it. So what...What it would do is serve our strategic interest in preventing a resurgent Taliban re-establishing a national government and providing a safe haven wherein groups like Al Qaeda can operate freely and openly. Strictly speaking, Afghanistan is not the Middle East. Moreover, the Taliban is not operating outside of Afghanistan and to a lesser extent in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan's NWFT. So, even complete abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban does not significantly impact the Middle East except in so far as a provides a safe haven for extremists who may subsequently pose a terrorist threat to ME nations like Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

I have noticed before, Liz, that you seem to prefer to conceptualize the Taliban as if it were some regional group eather than a strictly national group with some small spillover into Pakistan. You also seem to prefer to extend the issues of Pakistan and Afghanistan into the Middle East proper...both of those are intellectual errors that will cause you to misidentify not just the actors but also the agendas in the Middle East.

As I have suggested elsewhere, I think we have already "lost" in terms of Pakistan and Afghanistan. We are not going to reverse the slide into ever more extremist versions of Islam in those two nations. Instead, we ought to embrace a policy of containment. We ought to focus our efforts on strengthening India and moderating Iran with the ultimate goal of normalizing relations there and allowing the Iranians to absorb some of the spill over. The predominatnly Sunni tribal groups of Pakistan and Afghanistan have little affection for the Persian Shiites of Iran...we can use that scism to our advantage.

I feel compelled to ask, after reading this statement, why we are always told we are fighting the "war on terror"?

How about the "war for oil"? How about the "war for our way of life?" How about the "war to keep everyone in Hummers?"

Are you really risking your life, and the lives of those in your unit, to fight a war on terror that is not a threata to the west?

It's an astonishing admission on your part, and if true does more to condemn the Bush administration than I, or any of my "secular-progressive" colleagues could possibly do.

If "terror" isn't a threat to us, why the f*ck are we there? And I think you mean "essential" rather than "existential" threat to the west, because if it were existential, we wouldn't give a damn what they do.

Actually, I meant existential...not in the philosophical sense of Thoreau but in the literal sense of relating to our existence. Terrorism is not, in and of itself, a threat that is relevant to our continued existence...it is not an existential threat.


Dax, the war in Iraq was not about Terrorism, or not entirely about terrorism...or even mostly about terrorism...it was about our interests in the region. The focus on combating terrorism was a convienent one in that it served to galvanize public opinion at the time. It also had the benefit of being true, despite your belief that everything Bush ever said is a lie...its just that combating terrorism is not, nor should it be, the primary focus.

We have interests in the Middle East beyond terrorism. First and foremost among htose interests is the undisrupted flow of oil to world markets. You already know this and I suspect you fully realize how important that is to our survival in the West. You also understand the potential for increasing expansion of radical islam to destablize governments in the Middle East and replace them with governments hostile to the West. This clearly has the potential to disrupt the supply of oil reaching us in the West and thereby devestating our why of life. Indeed, one of the rallying cries being voiced more and more recently among the jihadist movements is the "theft of Islamic patrimony" in the form of oil sales to the "infidels of the West." So, there is compelling reason for us to involve ourselves in the region and to manipulate events to whatever extent necessary to ensure governments willing to sell us (not just eh US but all the West) oil at sustainable rates remain in power or come to power where required.

People can wail about "no blood for oil" or the "war for oil" or whatever else they choose to bitch about, Dax. At the end of the day, our economy and the way of life it supports through out the Western world is founded on oil. That is worth fighting for anywhere in the world. I think our governments are extremely foolish for not giving the search for alternatives to oil a far greater strategic national priority so that we can disentangle ourselves from the region...but that is a seperate matter.

Thank you, Lawmage, you've finaaly given us your thoughts about Afghanistan rather than fighting me over things I've never said.

Don't you dare take that and run with it into your playground of misdirecting, overwhelming words!

By IsI, I asuume you mean Inter-Services-Inteligence in Pakistan. I know what it means, because I looked it up. How many others who read these posts do the same?

Given no explanation of either ISI or your contention that the "Taliban is largely a criation of the Pakistani ISI in the first place," how are we to judge your statements? You've said before, after all, that 'Taliban' means 'students'--people who come from affluent families.

The American public, if they think about the Taliban at all, see the Taliban as extremist Muslims who shoot to kill--those very same Muslim extremists that you have said, over and over again, are conditioned by their beliefs to end the Western World. (Okay, you haven't said it that way, but you've said it that way.)

Are you suggesting that Why?

Most of our money is going to the war in Iraq. Is that an interest in oil producing countries? Or is it it terrorist producing countries?

Liz...STOP!!!! I did indeed say that Taliban means "The Students" but I never said anything about affluent families...that is your addition based on your faulty understanding of the socio-dynamics in the area. The Taliban rank and file DID NOT come from affluent families...they generally came from dirt poor families who sent their sons off to madrassas where they would be feed and housed rather than watching them waste away in the refugee camps in Pakistan.

Why did Pakistan allow (it actually formed rather than allowed to form) the Taliban to form? For several reasons I have previously explained. It was extremely destablizing for Pakistan to have anarchy in its neighbor Afghanistan. It flooded pakistan with refugees that did not fit into Pakistani culture and society which is far mor cosmopolitan than is that of Afghanistan (though not so much by Western standards.) These refugees were already pretty radicalized from the war against the Soviets and they were getting increasingly radicalized in the madrassas funded by our Saudi friends. So, it was in pakistan's interest to find somewhere else for them to go...back to Afghanistan.

That required some sort of stabilization there. Pakistan takes a calculated risk with a stabilized afghanistan though. You see, the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group there and they dominant Afghan society and government, such as it is. There are Pashtuns in Pakistan but they are a small minority and a source of trouble for the Pakistani government as witnessed by the issue of Greater Pashtunistan (again, look it up.) So, pakistan needed an intstrument that would bring stability to Afghanistan but NOT raise the Greater Pashtunistan issue again. A radicalized islamic government was one such instrument and was the one the ISI elected to use. Perhaps their experience building Islamic radical groups for use in the Kashmir made such a choice the obvious one for them to use to address Afghanistan...we can only speculate.

As for oil...I have explained that at length previously, liz. Oil is important to our way of life...important enough to fight over. We are concerned with islamic terrorism precisely because it threatens our access to oil. That threat is considerably less in Afghanistan and Pakistan (non-oil producers) than it is in Iraq or the Middle East proper. Hence, the disparate allocation of resources.

Forgive me for butting in in what seems to be a private discussion between Liz and Law...But when law posted :
What you said here is quite correct,but there are several jokers in the deck that you failed to mention...namely Saudi Arabia , China and Russia.
First Saudi Arabia , a thoroughly corrupt regime , that we are propping up , because thats our only option. We dare not to invade that country because of Mecca and Medina...even tho most of our enemies (men , philosophy , and finance ) originate in this Kingdom...but if we invaded 1.5 billion moslem , from Indnesia to Morroco would be up in arms and most of these governments would be toppled as a consequence unless they sided with the Jihadists.
Now this is only hypothetical a what if proposition...
But in the mean time China is building pipelines across Asia all the way to Iran and the Caspian oil regions...they are also making treaties (to build refineries and help opening up new fields) with the governments of Venezuela and the Sudan...why are they doing that ? Because they are in the same position that the west , they need the oil. Ater all their economy is flush with american dollars.
Now as far as the third party is concerned , namely Russia...they are sitting in the "catbird seat"...they will deal with anyone , as long as the money is there...And where does most of that money come from ? The West thats where.
In the end , it is probable that the marketplace will be the deciding factor...no matter how many soldiers were stationed in the middle east the oil price went to 100 dollars per barrel regardless. After all, it is not the military that controls oil prices , but it is tha oil company that does.