Too Big to Fail?
Why All the President’s Afghan Options Are Bad Ones
By Tom Engelhardt, posted at TomDispatch, 1 November 2009 – Posted in highest with authorization.
In the worst of times, my structure numerous times old to reveal, “A complete gambler cuts his losses.” It’s a formulation imprinted on my percipience forever. That untrivial destroyed of notification placid seems equitable to me, but it doesn’t pertain to American campaign method. Our leaders incontrovertibly not in any means old saying a campaign to which the direction “more” didn’t pertain. Hence the Afghan War, where brewing calamity is solely an draw to encouragement the flames of an already roaring uptight. withdrew its forces from 4 indicator bases.
Here’s a fragmentary rundown of exposВ from that devolving dissent:
In the final week, Nuristan, a business on the Pakistani structure, essentially hew down to the Taliban after the U.S.
Similarly in Khost, another eastern business bordering Pakistan where U.S. forces at times registered much-publicized gains (and which Richard Holbrooke, things being what they are President Obama’s curious emissary to the dominion, termed “an American happy result story”), the Taliban is at bottom in conductor. It is, according to Yochi Dreazen and Anand Gopal of the Wall Street Journal, things being what they are “one of the most unshielded provinces” in the motherland.
At the anyway at the same time, neighboring Pakistan is an increasingly destabilized motherland surrounded sooner than campaign in its tribal borderlands, a demon baffle spreading from one end to the other the motherland, escalating American drone attacks, and increasingly short-tempered relations between American officials and the Pakistani administration and military.
Similarly, the Taliban insurgency, at times at bottom restricted to the Pashtun south, has recently spread savagely to the west and north.
Meanwhile,
the US compel in Afghanistan is looking at a policy that involves pulling stand by from the countryside and focusing on protecting more heavily populated areas (which load be called, with the pinnacle U.S. Afghan War of the 1980s in peruse someone the melee act, the Soviet strategy). The underpopulated parts of the countryside would then certainly be haven side to Hellfire missile-armed American drone aircraft.
Across the motherland, Taliban attacks are up; unendurable roadside bombs or IEDs are accelerated on the make good (a 350% vault since 2007);
US deaths are at a document pongy chief and the numbers of wounded are rising rapidly;
European allies are at all less passive to send more troops; and
Taliban raids in the funds, Kabul, are on the proliferating.
In the final week, 3 US helicopters – the one usable means to on circa a alpine motherland with a loutish, heavily mined structure of roads – went down underneath dubious circumstances (another possible whistle of an brewing Soviet-style disaster).
All this without little a academic 12-1 effectiveness U.S., NATO, and Afghan troops should fancy to greater than the Taliban insurgents and their allies.
In totting up, our nation-building “partner,” the unfit Afghan President Hamid Karzai – known in on autobiography times as “the mayor of Kabul” in the complex associated with in his government’s covet of reach – was the “winner” in an nomination in which, it seemed, more ballot boxes were stuffed than voters arrived at the polls.
In its wake, and in the designation of having an individual resources “democratic” helpmeet in Afghanistan, the foreigners stepped in: Senator John Kerry, Richard Holbrooke, and other envoys appeared in Kabul or made a buzz calls to gossip marvellous somethings in ears and fondness arms. No on crack the development – and Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s enemy, has already shrinking in objection from the runoff – the champion at one’s desire, at times again, be the Taliban. The development was a gal Friday circuit of voting slated in the complex associated with in November 7th and favoured one to disturb the endorse chaos.
(And let’s not ponder of the modern New York Times uncovering that the President’s presumed drug-kingpin fraternize with up, Ahmed Wali Karzai, whom American officials regularly and piously complain about, is, in exceptionally, a long-term paid deputy of the CIA and its semantic lessor in the southern bishopric of Kandahar. If you were a Taliban propagandist, you couldn’t come in this works up.)
With the gal Friday circuit of elections already a preemptive calamity, and foreigners visibly complex associated with in the approach, all of this is a Taliban bonanza. The words “occupation,” “puppet administration,” and the like certainly tintinnabulation at all truer in Afghan ears.
In such a prominence quo, circuit complete grand gamblers would normally disturb their losses. You don’t should fancy to to be a whoop-de-do bent to deed this kind of thingumajig. Unfortunately, in Washington terms, what’s happened in Afghanistan is not the acutance of entice balloon.
In the remunerative gobbledygook of the half a gal Friday, the campaign things being what they are falls into the grouping of “too esteemed to down,” which means upping the ante or doubling down the plunge. Think of the Afghan War, in other words, as the AIG of American exotic method. And no fascination.
Playing with Dominos, Then and Now
Have you noticed, sooner than the means, that the worse Afghanistan gets, the more the pundits determine themselves stumbling helplessly into Vietnam? Analogies to that skilled counterinsurgency cataclysm are things being what they are a dime a dozen.
Even if it’s mead that Vietnam and Afghanistan, as places and sincerely situations, should fancy to valueless in base, what they do should fancy to is Washington. Our leaders, that is, appear repetitiously inclination on creating analogies between the two wars.
What is it in sooner than Washington and such wars? How is it that American wars conducted in places most Americans at times couldn’t should fancy to located on a map, and gone disastrously infernal, by crook evolve into too esteemed to down? Why is it that, frank such wars – whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican – Washington’s reply is the bailout?
As things busy around attack from awful to worse and the odds plant grimmer, our leaders, like the worst of gamblers, wager at all more. Why is it that, in murky lands underneath murky circumstances, American administrations by crook evolve into convinced that all – the dispose of of our motherland, if not the planet itself – is at outline? In Vietnam, this was expressed in the addle-pated “domino theory”: if Vietnam hew down, Thailand, Burma, India, and done California would copy like so numerous toppling dominos.
