What More Means in Afghanistan

With Afghanistan, it always seems to be more and worse. More American (and NATO) troops "surging" in, more Taliban control in the countryside, more insurgent attacks, more sophisticated roadside bombs, more deadly suicide bombings, more dead American and NATO troops, more problems with U.S. supply lines into Afghanistan, more civilian deaths from American and NATO military operations, more U.S. bases being built, more billions of U.S. dollars needed for military operations -- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently indicated that the build-up of U.S. forces alone in that country in the next fiscal year could cost an extra $5.5 billion -- and, of course, yet more reports and studies indicating that everything yet tried to "stabilize" Afghanistan has gone desperately wrong.

And always these are followed by the insistence that more of the same militarily, a further build-up of coalition military forces, another five or 10 or 20 years of foreign "training" programs for Afghan forces still "not ready for the task" -- no one asks how Taliban fighters, no less "Afghan," prove so ready to fight without years of American training -- is the only context for future success in "reconstructing" that country. Ann Jones, who was a humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006 and wrote a moving book about the experience, Kabul in Winter, suggests just why this essentially repetitive formula, which will now pass as part of the new thinking of the Obama era, is bound to lead to more of the same. In her recent piece, "The Afghan Scam," she focuses on the "reconstruction" part of the formula, which is almost never given the spotlight, and shows just why, all military matters aside, it's such a hopeless shuck. She writes:

"The Bush administration perpetrated a scam. It used the system it set up to dispense reconstruction aid to both the countries it ‘liberated,' Afghanistan and Iraq, to transfer American taxpayer dollars from the national treasury directly into the pockets of private war profiteers. Think of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater in Iraq; Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point, and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. They're all in it together. So far, the Bush administration has bamboozled Americans about its shady aid program. Nobody talks about it. Yet the aid scam, which would be a scandal if it weren't so profitable for so many, explains far more than does troop strength about why, today, we are on the verge of watching the whole Afghan enterprise go belly up."

Can this, nonetheless, be the path the U.S. will head down in the year to come? It seems so.

Comments (28)

1. "no one asks how Taliban fighters, no less "Afghan," prove so ready to fight without years of American training"

   That IS an interesting question. Why do OUR Afghanis need years of training and millions of dollars....and THEIR Afghanis don't?

   Posted by Mask at 01/13/2009 @ 10:57am

2. we can expect a renewed effort to eliminate the threats of the taliban and Al Queda who without a refuge will soon cease to pose any real threat!---Posted by comanchenation at 01/13/2009 @ 2:42pm

   Tell us exactly WHEN that will happen? Ballpark it to "months" if you need to, but give us atleast a MAXIMUM number of months, so that you can't keep kicking the ball down the field.

   Posted by Mask at 01/13/2009 @ 4:25pm

3. Posted by comanchenation at 01/13/2009 @ 5:24pm

   That's because you don't know what you're talking about....never did.

   Same as Dubya.

   Posted by Mask at 01/13/2009 @ 7:37pm

4. What Engelhardt and the other NATION discussions of Afghanistan snub is the matter of US national security. In eliding that item, they ignore the only valid reason for the US to engage in war. That is what governs: whether or not something vital is to be gained by the US, in putting our sons at risk.

   We have no business in Afghanistan because there is nothing substantial there for us. Sure, the plight of Afghans, especially their women under the Taliban, is terrible, but even more terrible is the plight of the people in Darfur, the Congo, Zimbabwe, Somalia, etc. Let's continue to support Kabul with air support and military equipment and advisers, but they must do their own fighting. Our govt has no business losing US lives where America's safety and prosperity is not involved.

   The place has no no natural resources, and no pipeline. Whether al Qaeda operates out of Afghanistan or Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, etc., does not make us more or less safe. If anything, Afghanistan under the fiercely Sunni Taliban threaten their neighbors, our foes, Shia Iran.

   But why does the Left not brandish all that? Why does it instead rely on moralistic casuistry and anti war shibboleths? Because embracing the national security argument would destroy its argument against Iraq, where prevailing is vital for America's power position in the world. The Left does not want to go there. In fact, uts interest in US national security is to weaken it, not strengthen it. That was why, from the first, the Left railed against replacing Saddam with a US friendly govt in Baghdad, and why it preferred our army to go huffing and puffing after OBL in Afghanistan. That would not have enhanced US strength even if it caught him, just make our military ridiculous if it failed.

   Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/13/2009 @ 8:54pm

5. hugo,

   never open you mouth if you leave the u.s.

   let your wife order dinner.......

   Posted by frosty zoom at 01/13/2009 @ 9:26pm

6. Mask at 10:57am said:

   >> That IS an interesting question. Why do OUR Afghanis need years of training and millions of dollars....and THEIR Afghanis don't?<<

   Mask specializes in reinforcing the inanity of others (as in his support for the swinish Lillian's lists).

   He and Engelhardt are blind to the difference between what it takes to mount an insurrection and what it takes to defend a govt and country against an insurgency.

   Guerrillas fight from ambush, at the time and place of their choosing. They snipe and melt away. They waylay convoys. They lay mines, hit and run, fight one moment and the next are farmers scything the wheat. Which is why a few hundred, even a few score insurgents can tie down an army. Castro harassed Batista's forces with just a dozen men.

   In 2002 a handful of US special forces ran the Taliban ragged and drove them from power, within a month. But now, thousands of our troops mount elaborate operations to catch half a dozen insurgent Taliban at a time.

   Counter insurgency requires much larger forces, different skills and tactics than insurgency warfare.

   You don't need a course at Hurlburt Field to know that.

   Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/13/2009 @ 9:41pm

7. Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/13/2009 @ 9:41pm

   We've been there for 7 years, Hugo.

   How much longer will it take?

   And if counter insurgencies require larger forces, why didn't we DO THAT AT THE START...and secure Afghanistan before moving onto other harder jobs like Iraq?

   ???

   Posted by Mask at 01/13/2009 @ 10:09pm

8. Now we finish the job!

   Posted by comanchenation at 01/14/2009 @ 01:01am

   can you bring back the dead canadians?

   Posted by frosty zoom at 01/14/2009 @ 01:12am

9. Mask at 10:09pm said:

   >> We've been there for 7 years, Hugo. How much longer will it take? And if counter insurgencies require larger forces, why didn't we DO THAT AT THE START...and secure Afghanistan before moving onto other harder jobs like Iraq? ??? <<

   Three posts above yours I explained that we have nothing to gain in Afghanistan.

   Your bunch wanted our military to focus on Afghanistan, to deflect it from Iraq, where we had necessary and serious business.

   After 9/11, in our rage we mounted a kind of punitive expedition against Afghanistan, to blast the malevolent ideologue and financier of the attack, and punish his hosts.

   But even had we caught OBL and put the lid on thel Taliban, that would not have ended the war on terror, any more than killing the planners of Pearl Harbor, Nagumo or Yamamoto, would have foreclosed WWII. 9/11 represented more than 19 kamikazes, financed from Afghanistan, crashing hijacked airliners into US skyscrapers. Bin Laden was just one bubble boiling in a larger Islamist kettle. It means to rush against the the Western mindset flooding across Asia and Africa and now threatening the Muslim world. Islamists believe that Islam cannot breathe in that Western climate. Accordingly, people like Osama hope to shatter the West's skyline before it imposes itself on Muslim societies.

   The Bush/Cheney's Iraq gambit was to go on the offensive, to try and insert a democratic society, sympathetic to gender equality, free speech, religious toleration, into Islam's heartland. The West was replying with what is anathema to Islamists. Nothing we might have done against Osama or can yet do in Afghanistan can equal Iraq as a response to 9/11 and a strategic beachhead in the war on terror.

   Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/14/2009 @ 03:02am

10. Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/14/2009 @ 03:02am

    Good stuff H_P. A man after my own heart. It will be interesting to see if Obama , who does seem to be a lot smarter than many of us imagined gets onto this one quickly. A politically stable, pluralistic, economically prosperous Iraq at peace with its neighbours is now more than a dream but potentially the jewel of America's post ww2 foreign policy initiatives. That is a no brainer.

    Afghanistan selected itself for the hammering it got by sheltering al Qaeda after 9/11 but as you say it is now pretty irrelevant to America's and the security of the West.

    If Obama begins to own Iraq and gets behind its progress, even if that means dumping Afghanistan as a dead loss, those whose pathological hatred of Bush blinds them to the obvious, may get behind Obama on a project that is viable.

    Posted by lrjones4 at 01/14/2009 @ 06:55am

11. Your bunch wanted our military to focus on Afghanistan, to deflect it from Iraq, where we had necessary and serious business.---Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/14/2009 @ 03:02am

    You mean like stopping Saddam from giving his non-existant WMDs to Al Qaeda who he hated and feared?

    BTW, tell us exactly again on how many Islamists there are and how you plan on killing them all?

    Posted by Mask at 01/14/2009 @ 12:50pm

12. How much training does it take Mask to strap on explosives and blow yourself up?

    Posted by lvliberty1 at 01/14/2009 @ 01:50am

    how much training to push a button that leads to incineration?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/14/2009 @ 4:20pm

13. Mask, you asked: "Tell us exactly WHEN that will happen? Ballpark it to "months" if you need to, but give us atleast a MAXIMUM number of months, so that you can't keep kicking the ball down the field.

    The answer is: ASAP

    Posted by pyeatte at 01/14/2009 @ 11:15pm

14. How many Afghanis will the US have to kill in order to stabilize them?

    2+ million dead in Vietnam didn't work.

    How many dead in Afghanistan before most Americans realize it's all a waste?

    Or will the US first go bankrupt, and then blame defeat on all that money thrown away on domestic entitlements like Social Security & Medicare instead of killing more Afghanis ...

    War in Afghanistan was a key reason for the fall of the USSR.

    What will it mean for the US?

    Posted by sloper at 01/15/2009 @ 08:03am

15. ASAP----Posted by pyeatte at 01/14/2009 @ 11:15pm

    Well, yeah, that certainly has been the exact time-frame we've been hearing for years now, isn't it?

    Posted by Mask at 01/15/2009 @ 1:16pm

16. Mask at 12:50pm retorted:

    >> You mean like stopping Saddam from giving his non-existant WMDs to Al Qaeda who he hated and feared?

    BTW, tell us exactly again on how many Islamists there are and how you plan on killing them all?<<

    Helpless before my gravamen you take refuge in spitballs like a snotty kid.

    Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/15/2009 @ 1:23pm

17. no, hugo, mask is right. answer his questions.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/15/2009 @ 2:00pm

18. frosty zoom at 2:00pm wrote,

    >>no, hugo, mask is right. answer his questions. <<

    You don't know what "right" means, nor what a question or an answer is.

    Go play with your crayons.

    Posted by Hugo_Pirovano at 01/15/2009 @ 3:30pm

19. no, hugo, mask is right. answer his questions.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/15/2009 @ 4:10pm

20. Bush Administration are related to the Klingons: Check out for yourself at blackcoptermedia.com.

    Posted by thesid at 01/16/2009 @ 2:24pm

21. Hmmm...let's see now. The left is hysterically claiming that the war in unwinnable and a surge of troops will never work? Which war are we talking about again?

    Posted by pontificus at 01/16/2009 @ 2:54pm

22. Hey, they're predicting snow for the Inauguration of The One! Will his speech contain a pledge to 'do something about global warming' while he's shivering and brushing the snow off his head? Will the irony be lost on the adoring crowds? Stay tuned!

    Posted by pontificus at 01/16/2009 @ 3:57pm

23. ponti,

    are you a climatologist?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/16/2009 @ 9:14pm

24. Obama is stepping into the same trap that JFK walked into. The Pentagon is engaged in an endless war supporting a useless corrupt government (Karzai) with a growing insurgency (the Taliban). And the allies of the U.S. are brutal warlords who are drug smugglers. And their loyalty is very questionable. The current U.S. force is too small to secure the country, and the Taliban are getting stronger by the day. They rule the night in most the country. Obama is being pushed into a major escalation of troops. But this means sinking deeper into the quagmire. JFK took the advice of the Pentagon and opted for escalation in Vietnam, but after two years, he realized that it was useless. He was going to withdraw after his re-election, but he was killed (by the military-industrial complex). Obama is on the same road.

    Posted by philbq at 01/17/2009 @ 08:02am

25. When the history of the early 21st century is written, it may be the financial health of the global economy was rescued by a new currency, carbon. This new asset class, fungible and tradeable, reinflated the balance sheets of governments and international financial institutions alike, and pulled humanity back from the brink of a worldwide depression. That is the hopeful scenario, and not one to be lightly dismissed.

    The other outcome that may be our legacy, however, will be that just when technology and capitalism were about to deliver prosperity and security to an unprecedented number of people everywhere, and just at the time when what our financial systems needed was to embark on new investment in cost-effective energy and water infrastructure, we instead committed the wealth of humanity to deploying immature energy technologies, and arcane projects of no use and stupefying expense - such as blasting CO2 gas into underground caverns.

    In either case, what historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet destroying toxin. This could be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

    Posted by pontificus at 01/17/2009 @ 10:08am

26. In this recently presented paper by Dr. Richard Lindzen, published here in its entirety, he describes the origins of global warming alarm, the political agenda of the alarmists, their intimidation tactics, and the reasons for their success. Also, in painstaking detail, he debunks their key scientific claims and counterclaims. Dr. Lindzen is not alone - he is one of the prominent members of what has become thousands of reputable scientists who are coming forward to dispute the theory that anthropogenic CO2 is the prevailing threat to global climate. Anyone who firmly believes anthropogenic CO2 emissions must be dramatically reduced in order to protect our planet should read this paper by Dr. Lindzen, and other work by reputable skeptics. There is simply too much at stake, and too many sweeping political changes being justified because of CO2 alarm, for any responsible activist or policymaker, media influencer or ordinary voter, to not take a second look.

    Posted by pontificus at 01/17/2009 @ 10:11am

27. beware for blackcoptermedia.com and the green police are coming! support the progressive and donate!

    Posted by thesid at 01/17/2009 @ 3:22pm

28. ponti,

    so you managed to find yourself an exxon-tobacco scientist who says what you want to hear.

    well, maybe he's right. but who cares?

    oil is poison. and it has to run out.

    the u.s. is already WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY in debt trying to fight wars and maintain military bases in order to secure what's left.

    do you like breathing all that ozone pollution?

    THE SUN! IT'S HOT!

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/17/2009 @ 9:45pm