When the CIA found Laden`s location in Jalalabad, a quick call to the Air Force for a B-52 payload nuke delivery would have shown how a Laden was just roach for a superpower to step on.
Instead of that, we acted frightened of the roach. :-/
Posted on 07/22/2011 12:10:50 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie
When the US withdraws from Afghanistan, don't expect much help for the people it leaves behind.
Not so long ago, Western powers were doubling down on their commitment to Afghanistan. Dire warnings circulated about how the US "abandoned" the country after the Soviet retreat. This time, the West would stay and help Afghanistan achieve "stability". It would withdraw only when "indicators" found that the Taliban insurgency had been contained.
Now it is obvious that those indicators were set for President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012.
The course and timing of imperial retreats usually reflect circumstances in the imperial country, not the target country. It's about the US and the West, not Afghanistan. As ever, Vietnam is instructive.
The device by which the US withdrew from Indochina was the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. Provisions included a ceasefire between South and North Vietnamese forces, the return of US prisoners of war, and withdrawal of US troops.
Nixon and Kissinger had found an acceptable formula - in domestic political terms - by which the US could withdraw from a disastrous war. US prisoners of war were coming home. Incredibly enough, many Americans in 1974 believed that the US had actually won the war. South Vietnam was saved in a "peace with honour".
In fact, South Vietnam was left to twist in the wind. It is little appreciated that through the application of tremendous firepower and the devastation of the countryside, the US and South Vietnam had all but defeated the insurgency. The country would fall to a conventional invasion from the North.
At the time of the Paris Peace Accords, Nixon assured the South Vietnamese that should North Vietnam attack, US munitions and airpower would arrive to save the day. When the attack came, the Democrat-controlled Congress cut financial aid, and neither resupplied the South Vietnamese nor contemplated the use of US airpower.
The US had turned in on itself, mired in multiple crises generated by Watergate, the oil shocks, and domestic racial, social and economic turmoil. Those South Vietnamese who had stood with the US and depended on US assurances were abandoned to their fates. They were shut outside the embassy gates while the US airlifted its remaining personnel to safety in April 1975. Very few of them were even to be given asylum in the US until the plight of the "boat people" shamed the West.
To be sure, South Vietnam was an artificial and murderously repressive state established and maintained by US power. Its officials rivalled Karzai's in their kleptomania, corruption, and self-defeating behaviour. At the same time, many South Vietnamese and US soldiers and officials believed deeply in what they were doing, as today among their successors in Afghanistan.
Redeeming the blood debt
Ironically but unsurprisingly, it was often US soldiers who felt their country's betrayal of South Vietnam most deeply. They were the ones who had shed tears, sweat and blood for higher purposes. They were the ones who had established personal bonds with their counterparts, and who had firsthand experience of the country and its people. They were the ones who shared with the Vietnamese the tragedy and violence of war. And, as now in Afghanistan, they were also the ones who hoped for a victory that was just around the corner. If only the West would live up to its values and stay the course, they believed, the blood debt might yet be redeemed.
Take the case of Iraqis who worked for the US and the UK, many of whom have been hunted down by insurgents. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations had much interest in ensuring their safety after they risked everything to build a new Iraq with the West. The UK left theirs behind in Basra, to be rounded up and killed after British forces departed. Many US soldiers have worked tirelessly, against their own government's bureaucracy and fears of terrorist infiltrators, to help their translators emigrate. But rather than honour those who stood with the US, Bush and Obama have left unfilled 18,000 visa slots of 25,000 authorised for Iraqis by Congress.
The sad fact is that when crises at home overtake Western politicians and publics, they have a remarkable capacity for simply forgetting those who stood with the West in the non-European world. Indian soldiers, who had fought for the Allies in World War II, found themselves the objects of racism in the post-war UK; the South Vietnamese were left hanging off helicopter skids or stewing in communist re-education camps; and there is little doubt what will happen to many Afghans who have placed their hopes in the West's staying power.
For perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that neither Western intervention nor those who fight against the West offer much hope for justice, peace and democratic rule. In Vietnam, the choice was between the insanity of Saigon and the totalitarianism of Hanoi. In Afghanistan, it is between the hopeless venality of the Karzai regime and the Islamic version of the Khmer Rouge.
The killing of bin Laden and Vice President Biden's "counter-terrorism" strategy are the fig leaves that will attempt to cover the protruding shame of US retreat this time around. Promises of nation-building have been steadily downgraded. The hope now is that enough Afghan soldiers and policeman can be trained to turn Afghanistan into a kind of permanent counter-insurgent state, only with Afghans doing all the dying on both sides. While some real progress has been made in building an army, as was also the case in Vietnam, an army without a regime or a cause to support it is unlikely to hold together for long. US drones will circle above the bloody madness to come, occasionally firing missiles.
Meanwhile, back at home, the bill for Bush's wars will come due in a United States that has become ungovernable. The same corrosive neoliberalism that undermined US development programs in Iraq and Afghanistan - contracted out to a private sector interested only in its own bottom line - has left the US unable to respond to the multiple crises it faces. It is these crises, economic and political, as well as the electoral calendar, which have sealed Afghanistan's fate.
Tarak Barkawi is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge.
Plenty of cheap shots and attitude, but essentially, he’s right.
This is a brutally honest appraisal of the schizophrenic nature of a government that outgrew itself long ago and does not value its own blood and treasure.
Much of the essay is true, but that statement is not. We were in the alliance called the the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, SEATO. We don't rule other NATO countries, Japan or South Korea. Where's the imperialism?
the people of Afghanistan don’t want democracy
on top of that,
they want the invaders to leave
Perhaps I could intrique you peruse my tagline?
If not, I believe the Rebublic is truly dead.
No amount of shrieking will save it.
When the CIA found Laden`s location in Jalalabad, a quick call to the Air Force for a B-52 payload nuke delivery would have shown how a Laden was just roach for a superpower to step on.
Instead of that, we acted frightened of the roach. :-/
Throughout history, who hasn't? Virtually every would-be conqueror has been stymied in the region.
Au contraire, that is *precisely* what we are in Afghanistan to do.
Their government is a secondary consideration, and our interest in it extends only to ensuring that it does not harbor either the Taliban or other Gen4War practitioners.
Whether they can mount an election or keep their accounts straight is of little concern to us, whose interest in the country is more dire and less positive (i.e., certain things will not be tolerated) than was our interest in South Vietnam.
The genesis of the problem is the American practice of throwing money at people instead of cultivating motivated and trustworthy allies.
This hasn’t changed since the forties. Chiang Kai Shek was better funded than Mao, but Mao’s followers were better motivated than Chiang’s.
The US lost China.
The South Vietnamese were better funded than Ho Chin Minh, but Uncle Ho’s forces were better motivated. The same applies to the Afghan Government and the Taliban today. (A notable exception was when the US was on the side of the Mujaheddin (forerunners of the Taliban) in the 1980’s).
The lesson: don’t waste your time on a protracted war in a foreign land unless you have motivated allies (e.g the Kurds). Don’t attempt to buy loyalty with money, if you have to, then ensure that the engagement is very short or conducted at arms length.
When Dingy Harry declared that the war was lost, he didn't mean right then. He was alluding ti the fact that Dims will not rest until they deliver defeat to the Red-White-Blue.
The US needs to learn to carve up countries. Iraq’s Kurds should be given a separate country, as should the Iraqi Christians. In Afghanistan the north-east should be carved and given to Tajikistan, the nother-west to Uzbekistan and the Hazaras should be given their own protectorate. The Pashtuns need to be reunited with the Pathans in the N-W Frontier province of Pakistan. At the same time, detach BAluchistan from Pakistan and make it a separate country (this will cause problems for the Iranis who have Sistan-e-Balochistan as their south-eastern province) and separate Punjab from Sindh.
“We were in the alliance called the the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization, SEATO”
Oh give me a break. SEATO was a paper based alliance which was of no use during the war. Heck it only outlasted South Vietnam by less than 2 years!
I’m still trying to understand exactly how and why a punitive expedition to uproot and disrupt Al Qaeda in Afghanistan became a ten year long “nation-building” campaign. My best guess is that the Al Qaeda issue was only one of the motivess behind our intrusion, with the other unspoken goal being to establish a client state on the eastern flank of Iran that would be friendly to US interests. If so, this venture will stand as a testimonial to unrealistic adventurism on the part of the US State Department (and possibly the Bush White House).
[snip] Now it is obvious that those indicators were set for President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. [end]
There's a roach we want to kill in Kansas City.
Quick, drop a nuke on the city!
All Empires are fraudulent and most of the problems in the World today were caused by the breakup of the British, French and Ottoman Empires.
The problem with granting the Kurds a new state is that significant Kurdish minorities exist in Turkey and the Turks will go to war to ensure that a Kurdish state is not born. It’s that simple. The US does not have the stomach for another set of wars in the Middle East.
Afghanistan presents a similar problem and so does Pakistan.
In Africa, most states are mere geographical expressions and have no meaning. For example, there is no reason why Djibouti should be a separate, independent country and Somaliland is not. There is no reason why Togo should be an independent country and why Nigeria should not be at least three different countries.
The problem is that when you start you cannot tell where you are going to stop.
That's called Balkanization for a reason. And it doesn't turn out well.
Its the “quiet American” all over again.
In my view, America’s geopolitical ambitions in Central Asia are just too ambitious. That region is China and Russia’s background and it was foolhardy to assume that these experienced major players would just sit back and allow the Americans to dominate that region.
I think it is enough to dominate the Middle East, there was no way the Chinese would let the US dominate Pakistan. After the debacle in Iraq, the US neither has the will nor the stomach to effectively contain Iran.
(With the Arab Spring, even the US hold on the Middle East appears shaky).
The US needs a more humble and realistic foreign policy if she must avoid overextending herself.
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