Distracted Much?

Well. the good news about Iraq is that it's not as if while we weren't paying attention we allowed the Taliban to establish a mini-state in northern Pakistan or anything. Oops!

The sad factor of the matter is that if we haven't already passed the tipping point in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area, we will have very soon. In practice, by the time Bush is out of office and our troops our out of Iraq, I'm pretty sure it's going to be too late and we're going to need to reconcile ourselves to the fact that Taliban successor groups will have substantially re-entrenched themselves and there won't be very much we can do about it except just kind of hope they don't once again start playing host to terrorists plotting to attack America.

Comments

Worst.President.Ever.

Posted by DRR | December 11, 2006 1:59 AM

In or out of Iraq, I don't see what good options we have in Pakistan. What was the correct policy Bush should have been pursuing and what tools were available to get Musharraf to comply?

Posted by rd | December 11, 2006 2:31 AM

rd: Well for starters we have a lot of money, and northern Pakistan is so desperately poor that pretty much the only way to become literate (nevermind get any sort of actual education) is to study at a Saudi-funded madrassa. I think that there might be some creative ways to take advantage of those facts.

(Well, okay: we had a lot of money, before the Bush administration.)

No, it wouldn't solve anything immediately, but the situation there didn't suddenly spring up in the last five years either. A little long-term thinking on our leaders' part would go a long way.

Posted by Doctor Memory | December 11, 2006 3:20 AM

Doctor Memory makes a good point, but it's hard to see how we can go about changing the feelings on this. Americans don't seem to have a problem dropping hundreds of billions on technology to kill people, but they certainly seem to have a problem with spending in the form of non-military aid. Schools should be built, but if the uniformed military or their contractors does the building after we've torn the original schools up.

I suppose this is because many Americans don't like giving hand-outs, and they see foreign aid as a simple hand-out. Contrast this with rebuilding, which is looked at as a responsibility; the "we broke it we bought it" mentality that you often hear aired on both sides of the political debate.

I really don't know how you address this. Pointing out that we don't spend as much as people think we are is a good first step, I guess, but it doesn't really deal with the fact that people are more willing to spend thousands of dollars to equip a soldier than they are to spend hundreds to help feed and shelter a family in some third-world country.

Posted by josephdietrich | December 11, 2006 4:19 AM

It would be interesting to figure out how many years of a schoolteacher's salary one could have paid with the price of one of the smart bombs one dropped on his village.

I remember looking at this issue back in late 2001, when I was living in West Africa. There was a foreign-funded school in the city I lived in, with a classy building, new books and lab equipment for every student, and a largely secular curriculum modeled on the French one, where tuition was free to anyone who could get in, based on an entrance exam. It was the Islamic School, funded mainly by money from the UAE. Needless to say, tuition at the British School and the American International School was several thousand dollars a year.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 11, 2006 5:04 AM

Contrast this with rebuilding, which is looked at as a responsibility; the "we broke it we bought it" mentality that you often hear aired on both sides of the political debate.

How about just pretending that the US bombed the shit out of northern Pakistan -- heck, there have been 'targetted' strikes leaving US military shrapnel on the ground to make the case?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 11, 2006 7:37 AM

USAID is building 50 new schools in earthquake-affected southern Pakistan:

http://www.cdm.com/about_cdm/news_and_events/news/cdm_to_reconstruct_pakistan_schools_and_health_care_facilities.htm

It really wouldn't be that hard to do the same thing up north. The funding infrastructure exists through USAID and the World Bank. There are a lot of good companies (like CDM) who have been doing good work in impoverished parts of the Middle East for decades. (I know someone at CDM...he told me the depressing tale of doing really good stuff in Lebanon throughout the 90's, watching it be destroyed on the news this spring, then hearing how the US government was preparing funds to rebuild the same work this fall. Makes you feel like a vampire, he said, but at least the work is being done).

To be honest, I think Americans may be fairly receptive to this kind of thing by the time Bush is done. Not out of charity, mind you, but out of the stark necessity of doing something, anything to influence these areas of the world.

Of course, building schools in Northern Pakistan is only Part 1. Putting non-fundamentalist teachers in those schools - and keeping them from burned down by fundamentalists - is Part 2.

Posted by owenz | December 11, 2006 8:57 AM

Here's another contract in Jordan:

http://www.cdm.com/about_cdm/news_and_events/news/cdm_to_build_and_rehabilitate_jordan_schools.htm

A big key for this stuff is getting buy in from the host government. If the US can persuade Pakistan to make education a priority, USAID will step in with the funding.

Posted by owenz | December 11, 2006 9:01 AM

But "keeping [the new schools] from being burned down" by the Taliban is the whole crux of this. Its fine to talk about how we could have been spending more, but if the the Pakistani govt has no effective control of the region, how is that money to be spent without being stolen or having its beneficiaries killed? The lesson from both Iraq and Afghanistan is that aid without security is no aid at all, and I don't see our good options for imposing security in North Pakistan. We can't occupy it ourselves, the Pakistan government's reluctant to take up the task, and our tools for pressuring that government to do so are limited given its precarious hold on power.

Posted by rd | December 11, 2006 10:38 AM

A 2,000lb JDAM (really a MK-84 with JDAM tail kit) costs roughly $23,000 per weapon (the bombs are free-already paid for but the tail kit cost $).

You have to the change the equation on the ground to change things. And that means stopping the Taliban types from burning down or taking over these schools - and teaching a secular non-fundamentalist curriculum. How do you plan to do this???

Posted by buffpilot | December 11, 2006 1:13 PM

It would be interesting to figure out how many years of a schoolteacher's salary one could have paid with the price of one of the smart bombs one dropped on his village.

a single JDAM is about $20K. you could probably get a pretty good school system, teachers and all, for the cost of one sortie.

Posted by cleek | December 11, 2006 1:29 PM

Well. the good news about Iraq is that it's not as if while we weren't paying attention we allowed the Taliban to establish a mini-state in northern Pakistan or anything. Oops!

The sad factor of the matter is that if we haven't already passed the tipping point in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area, we will have very soon.

Maybe one of these years Matthew will learn that Afghanistan and Pakistan are actually two different countries. And while we have invaded one of those countries, and currently have 40,000 US and NATO troops in one of those countries, we have not invaded the other country and have no troops in that other country.

I know this is difficult for many on the left to understand - Matthew seems to have a particularly difficult time grasping the concept - but they ought to make an effort to get it.

To say that we allowed a Taliban mini-state in Northern Pakistan is the height of ignorance. Now, perhaps Matthew is advocating invading Pakistan, I don't know. Or maybe he is advocating cutting off the Musharraf government from our support and letting it fall to the Islamist extremists. But if Matthew is advocating those policies, or has some other policy he is thinking of that would allow us to control what happens in Pakistan (which, again, for those having difficulty, is not Afghanistan - don't let the fact that both countries' names end in -"stan" confuse you), I love to hear it.

Posted by Al | December 11, 2006 1:44 PM

I also find the idea that we should just build schools in Northern Pakistan hilarious.

1. How? You know, since the Pakistani government doesn't now (and never did) control the area?

2. What do you think will get taught there?

Posted by Al | December 11, 2006 1:56 PM

Al is totally right. Just as M Yglesias makes fun of Reyes for not knowing the differnce between Shia and Sunni, he has no idea of the difference between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The US Military in Afghanistan knows full well that the Pakistani government (especially its ISI) is giving tacit and sometimes full out support to these Taliban elements so that they can destabilize Afghanistan. Having Afghanistan as a client state for Pakistan has been a long-term strategic goal (for over 50 years). Sept. 11th did absolutely nothing to change that in the eyes of Pakistani elites. Sure, they made some statements and rounded up some innocents to get the Americans off their backs, but in no way shape or form, does Pakistan want to let go of its Talibanized Afghanistan objective.

It's just that post-Sept 11th, the Pakistani army realized that since southern and eastern Afghanistan cannot be used as the staging ground for Pakistani interests, Waziristan will have to do. Under the auspices of "ungovernable territory", Musharraf has let these guys do whatever they want. BTW, this is the classic tactic of state-sponsored terrorism -- give haven to a militant group, let them train and operate without giving them direct support, and then when they attack, pretend like they're out of your control.

Until pundits like Ygelsias understand this about the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation, they will continually get it wrong.

Posted by aa | December 11, 2006 3:09 PM

Right wing meme of tomorrow: it's not that Bush lost Afghanistan. It's that the liberals persuaded him to turn Afghanistan over to the Europeans, and the spineless Europeans couldn't keep it.

Posted by aphrael | December 11, 2006 8:58 PM

Even saying that Pakistan allowed the Taliban to erect a mini-state is going a bit far; Pakistan has *never* had effective political control over the northwest frontier. Its policy all along has been a tacit leave-each-other-alone agreement with the tribal leadership in the area.

Posted by aphrael | December 11, 2006 9:00 PM

How about you right wingers understanding why Pakistan wrecked its public school system?

What I heard was that the IMF/World Bank told the military government there that it had to cut back evil big government spending on the holy principles of neoliberalism - the same principles that have made right-wingers so popular in South America lately. So what did you think a military dictatorship was going to cut - military spending? No, it was too busy with its US-coddled nuclear program for that. Out went the schools, and what American objected? And then the magic of the marketplace produced... madrassas!

Wonder what brand of religious fanatic will provide the free education in America after we've privatized it? The kind found in the film "Jesus Camp"?

Posted by super390 | December 11, 2006 9:22 PM

Will you be attending Mike Scheur's speech about the NWFP at the Jamestown FND on Thursday? Some good firsthand knowledge. Look forward to seeing you there.

Posted by ds | December 11, 2006 10:13 PM

Just to prove my point, read this latest from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/world/asia/12cnd-afghan.html?hp&ex=1165986000&en=be73086634d7d4d8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Posted by aa | December 12, 2006 6:44 PM

There are no good options in Pakistan. There never have been. Our invasion of Afghanistan saw to that. The level of anti-Americanism is so high, it is a wonder that Musharaf has been able to help us at all.

As it is, he is trading territory for time. Elections are supposed to be held next December and it is unclear whether Musharaf will allow them or even whether he will step down as Army Chief of Staff - something he promised to do 4 years ago. By ceding territory to the Taliban, he keeps the lid on domestic unrest. This, of course, does the US absolutely no good and in the end, defeats Musharaf and the forces for (relative) moderation in Pakistan anyway.

To say that all this is Bush's fault is ignorant. It is a consequence of engaging in the WOT in the first place. If you want to make the argument that fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda is wrong, then you must accept the consequences of that position by acquiescing in more attacks on America and American interests.

By this time next year, we very well may be looking at a nuclear armed Pakistan being run by those sympathetic to if not in league with radical, fundamentalist Salafists. And there won't be a thing we can do about it.

Posted by Rick Moran | December 13, 2006 4:56 AM