We seem to be losing ever more ground in the "other" war. The one that had, you know, actual justification but where the idea that the war would accomplish some of its objectives was important to the widespread support it garnered.
« Debates | Main | MANPAD Mania »
Afghanistan
17 Jun 2007 11:12 am
Comments (14)
Matt,
Why don't you advocate withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan - or at the very least, limiting their mission to preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing bases there (essentially, the majority Dem position on Iraq)?
For all the lamentations about the war in Iraq, in at least three ways the current effort in Afghanistan seems more quixotic:
First, the Taliban is far more popular among Afghan (and Pakistani) Pashtuns than Al Qaeda is among Iraqi Sunnis;
Second, the Durand Line border between Afghanistan and Pakistan intentionally bisects the historic Pashtun tribal area, so the Taliban can always flee to the Pakistan side of the border to regroup;
Third, perennially 4th World Afghanistan would seem to have worse prospects of maintaining a stable democracy than Iraq.
Several things about Afghanistan from someone who has been blogging about it for a while...
1) It's a great example of why the notion that "all it takes to win wars is for everyone to agree with the President about it" is completely wrong. The entire world was on board with this, it still has a very multinationalist presence, and it's becoming a disaster.
2) The reason we're losing so badly is because we don't understand the opium trade. The Taliban is again becoming powerful because we're trying to destroy an industry that we can't destroy. The Taliban have been able to rebuild itself by providing protection to the opium farmers and the drug smugglers in exchange for weaponry (the weapons that are supposedly coming from the Iranian government are actually coming from corrupt Iranian officials trying to profit from the opium trade). For farmers and others who lose their incomes because of the opium eradication (which has accomplished nothing), the Taliban just get more recruits.
3) The U.S. State Department, the UN anti-drug office and the British Government are arguably the most delusional players in this battle. The Pentagon actually made a very smart decision not to allow our troops to take part in drug eradications. This left the task up to the British, who should have also said no. The European Parliament passed a resolution to encourage the licensing of opium farming, so that the opium stocks could be bought up by the government and used to supply the third-world with much needed opiates. This plan wouldn't have eliminated the black market suppliers, but it would have driven a lot less recruits and weaponry into the hands of the Taliban.
Why don't you advocate withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan - or at the very least, limiting their mission to preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing bases there (essentially, the majority Dem position on Iraq)?
I'm genuinely not all that familiar with what it is that US forces are up to in Afghanistan at the moment. I agree with the general sentiment that it would be appropriate for the US/UN/NATO mission there to try to construe its mission narrowly rather than broadly (this drug business, at noted by thehim, is crazy).
the Taliban is far more popular among Afghan (and Pakistani) Pashtuns than Al Qaeda is among Iraqi Sunnis
This is actually an argument for withdrawing from Iraq and not Afghanistan, since it seems likely that the U.S. presence in Iraq is making it more difficult for the Sunnis to go after Al Qaeda.
There may also be a bit of apples-and-oranges in the comparison between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
To be a little more in-depth, Fred, your post suggests that it should be easier to achieve our goals in Iraq than in Afghanistan. There are two different goals that you mention; defeating anti-American terrorists (relevant to your first two points) and establishing democracy (relevant to your third). But it seems likely that our continued presence in Iraq is counterproductive to both these goals, so we should certainly withdraw.
I don't know whether similar reasoning means that we should withdraw from Afghanistan as well, though one possiblity is that we can do something to disrupt Al Qaeda in Afghanistan even if (thanks to Bush's initial mismanagement) we have no prospect of wiping them out there.
What Fred forgets, above, is that the 60% of the Afghan population who are not Pashtun, and the significant plurality of Pashtun who are not pro-Taliban, overwhelmingly want NATO to stay, in part to keep the Taliban from coming back. NATO's presence has actually been pretty successful in limiting the amount of interethnic strife there the last few years.
The analogous scenario in Iraq would be if one Shiite faction (say the Mahdi army) was fighting a low-intensity, unipolar conflict in the south against NATO, the elected government, including a Shia head of state, other Shia, and all the other ethnic groups, but everybody else in Iraq just wanted to be left alone to rebuild the country and were only angry because the foreign and national armies weren't being effective enough in stopping the Mahdi resurgence. The U.S. should be so lucky.
Some more intelligent comments here than the usual thread. Encouraging.
One question I have WRT Afghanistan is to what extent -- if any -- Al Qaeda is still there. A couple of months ago my Congressman wrote an op/ed in the local free paper about how we need to withdraw from Iraq because there are "only a few thousand" Al Qaeda members there and refocus on Afghanistan.
Also, if memory serves, pre-9/11, the Taliban was cracking down on the opium trade in Afghanistan -- it was one of those traditional Pashtun practices (the other being buggery) that they eschewed. If the Taliban is working with the opium farmers now, that suggests an smart pragmatic turn on their part; maybe we can do the same. Isn't there a need for legitimate opium-derived medicines? Maybe we/the UN/some deep-pocketed international organization can buy opium off of the Afghan farmers, convert it into legitimate medicines, and sell it on a sliding scale to developing countries that can't afford synthetic equivalents. Maybe to get the Europeans on board, European pharma companies could be given a tax holiday or other incentives to set-up shop in Afghanistan to manufacture the opium-derived meds.
It's funny how 'the other war' is so little covered. I guess the press is either giving cover for the admin as they continue to fuck it up (albeit with 1/10 the number of soldiers in that other success story, iraq.
so we don't do any drug eradication yet we let them continue to export their nations prime export, opium. I wont say smuggle as that implies it's being transported in secrecy. Every government in the world knows afghanistan's #1 export is opium. We just wanted to control that too or at least tried to by taking on osama (who is in control of it if we're not going after it).
So we've got that going for us too.
in otherwords, if the press covered afghanistan and the utter chaos going on there (the schools!) too, there would probably be more uproar by us, you know, not so serious folks to get the fuck out of dodge rather than fight armed with a banana and a rubber chicken with dumbya at the head.
As long as our leaders continue to think that we were attacked by a country on 9/11, they will continue to advocate counterproductive policies in this neverending war. Like occupying Afghanistan, a country which has chewed up every empire that has attempted to occupy it.
When will they understand that we were attacked by an idea on 9/11, not a country. The idea is resistance to US hegemony in the Middle East. Until we significantly alter our patently unjust policy in the region (supporting massively unpopular autocracies like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt), there will be no change in the status quo.
I can't stand it when liberals try to prove their anti-peacenik bona fides by going on about how they supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Was a full-scale invasion the only way to nab Osama? I don't know that much about special ops etc, but it seems like such things would be far more effective than an invasion in which we chase him into unstable un-invadeable and nuke-having Pakistan. Support of the Afghani war was just as wrong-headed as support for the Iraq war, but no one's had to admit it yet. I saw Jonathan Tasini speak last year, and even he wouldn't come out and say going into Afghanistan was wrong.
Also, Afghanistan is a perfect example of why developed nations should legalize, tax, and heavily regulate every illicit substance under the sun.
Was a full-scale invasion the only way to nab Osama?
No, but it was the only way to fully depose the Taliban, which was something that some liberals supported doing even before 9/11 because of their horrendous human rights record (similar to many liberal views of Sudan today).
Support of the Afghani war was just as wrong-headed as support for the Iraq war, but no one's had to admit it yet.
Absolutely not. Not even close. The Iraq War was doomed from the very beginning, but the Afghan war didn't have to be. We're in trouble in Afghanistan because we decided to believe in fairy tales when it came to dealing with the opium.
Also, Afghanistan is a perfect example of why developed nations should legalize, tax, and heavily regulate every illicit substance under the sun.
Exactly. If that happened, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all because the Taliban would still be a bunch of random crazies instead of a well-armed militia.
No, but it was the only way to fully depose the Taliban,
It seems that the "only way" didn't work at all.
which was something that some liberals supported doing even before 9/11 because of their horrendous human rights record (similar to many liberal views of Sudan today).
Not this liberal. Invasion and occupation as a means of ending human rights abuses does not work. When liberals talk about a Darfur intervention they often claim that things there are somehow less complicated than they are in Iraq, that our "mission is clear" etc, exactly the same sort of stuff that was being said about Iraq pre-invasion.
Also, did anyone really believe that the invasion of Afghanistan was going to serendipitiously coincide with a major shift in US drug policy? Could we not predict that there'd be a massive post-Taliban increase in opium production? Were we somehow unaware of the permeability of the Pakistani-Afghani border? Of course not. Osama escaping, the resurgence of opium-funded warlords etc were all very predictable.
We're in trouble in Afghanistan because we decided to believe in fairy tales when it came to dealing with the opium.
It seems to me the "fairy tale" was the belief that U.S. drug policy would change in any significant way. There were two main goals of the invasion of Afghanistan - to capture or kill bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leadership, and (purportedly) to improve the human rights situation. It should have been obvious that there was no way an invasion would achieve these aims.
It seems that the "only way" didn't work at all.
I disagree. I think it worked just fine. The problems with Afghanistan didn't start occurring until a few years after.
Not this liberal. Invasion and occupation as a means of ending human rights abuses does not work.
I agree with you, but not all liberals do.
When liberals talk about a Darfur intervention they often claim that things there are somehow less complicated than they are in Iraq, that our "mission is clear" etc, exactly the same sort of stuff that was being said about Iraq pre-invasion.
I completely agree. My point isn't that it's a smart position, it's just that it's a position that some liberals hold.
Also, did anyone really believe that the invasion of Afghanistan was going to serendipitiously coincide with a major shift in US drug policy?
I doubt it.
Could we not predict that there'd be a massive post-Taliban increase in opium production?
Sure.
Were we somehow unaware of the permeability of the Pakistani-Afghani border? Of course not. Osama escaping, the resurgence of opium-funded warlords etc were all very predictable.
I'm not sure the Osama escaping part was so predictable. And the permeability of the Pak-Afghan border is only a small part of the reason why smuggling is so easy over there. The Iranian-Afghan border is just as permeable (and the Uzbek-Afghan border, and...
You're making an interesting point about whether we should have known that an occupation of Afghanistan would be a disaster understanding the fact that our drug policy is assinine, but I believe that allowing the Taliban to tell us to go f*ck ourselves after 9/11 would have done more damage to our credibility and our willingness to address threats.
It seems to me the "fairy tale" was the belief that U.S. drug policy would change in any significant way.
That's beside the point. If you take the viewpoint that the Bush Administration shouldn't be allowed to do anything because they can't understand the drug war, then every argument is simple. People like you and I, who understand the folly of prohibition, just need to make our voices heard and demand that politicians have the courage to take up the issue.
There were two main goals of the invasion of Afghanistan - to capture or kill bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leadership, and (purportedly) to improve the human rights situation. It should have been obvious that there was no way an invasion would achieve these aims.
I disagree. I think we could have captured Bin Laden with only minimal changes in our focus and tactics, and I don't quite agree with you that we should have opposed the invasion of Afghanistan simply because we could envision the Bush Administration getting the opium issue wrong. In fact, they really didn't start screwing that up (the opium issue) that badly until 2004, when we should have been electing someone else President here (and keep in mind that Rumsfeld of all people was adamant that U.S. troops not be used to fight the opium trade, so it's not the usual suspects who were wrong about the opium).
Comments closed July 01, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Yeah, it's depressing. The United States and the Bush Administration is almost solely to blame for this, though I suppose NATO could do more as well.
Posted by Korha | June 17, 2007 11:57 AM