http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=189243
One would think that such a gruesome track record, coupled with the fact that the only result to date is that the Karzai Government controls the capital city of Kabul, while five or more heroin-financed drug lords control the countryside, would raise at least a few questions of utility. But no! Rising costs, declining prospects, and the fact that no outsider has ever won a war in Afghanistan be damned, the war will go on. Americans have a right to know why. Indeed, so does everybody else on the planet.
The truth is depressing. One of the earliest disfavors George W. Bush did for Americans was to crudely define the purposes of this war: He targeted his campaign on al-Qaeda, saying ""We will fight them over there so that we won't have to fight them over here."" That became the central Bush administration mantra of the War on Terrorism.
The Bush strategy slowly morphed into selected drone and manned flight bombings in northwestern Pakistan, the region known as Waziristan. Although Bush claimed that Pakistan was an American ally, he and his team apparently saw no inconsistency in claiming an alliance while selectively killing the Pushtun people of Pakistan and other regional tribals in the ally's backyard.
Obama signed on to this strategy when he authorized a drone attack in Waziristan earlier this week. But the campaign narrative changed; all of a sudden the target was the Taliban, not al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
With that shift, the purposes of the war suddenly changed. The U.S. was no longer ostensibly fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Instead, the Obama mission had become a fight against Islamic fundamentalism.
Somehow, overnight, the U.S. was thrust back to 2001. The new game is not precisely to throw the Taliban out. It is to keep them from coming back into power. Keeping them out of Afghanistan presumably would also limit the power and freedom of action of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Just what is in this strategy for us? Let's look first at what the Taliban had done to deserve this awkward distinction. When the Soviet Union had enough of Afghanistan warfare and withdrew in defeat in 1989, the country experienced about five years of factional in-fighting and change, reasonably defined as political chaos. During that period the Taliban emerged as a force, first by being hired by Pakistan to protect or facilitate traffic through contentious regions like the Khyber Pass, and second by being supported spiritually, politically and financially by fundamentalist religious schools in Pakistan. The Taliban proved very effective, better motivated, organized and supported than anybody else, and they grew quickly as a power center in Afghanistan's fragmented political environment. Then, in 1996, they took the country away from its U.S. and western supported, but weak, post-Soviet era government.
The Taliban, under their traditionalist leader Muhammad Omar, qualify as hard-core, strict constructionist Muslims. Among their first actions they forbade any provision of education to women. They also objected to opium and heroin production and shut down the industry throughout Afghanistan. But from a U.S./western point of view, their main sin on taking over the government in 1996 was to provide a safe-haven to Osama bin Laden.
In August 1998, al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists carried out brutal raids on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In fact, bin Laden's power base was then split between Sudan and Afghanistan, and that accounts for President Clinton's bold but largely ineffective U.S. missile strikes on reputed al-Qaeda targets in those two countries. The collateral damage, meaning the many civilian casualties, of the Clinton attacks was largely ignored in the U.S. But it is not unlikely that those two missile attacks were part of the motivation for the 9/11 events.
For the past seven years the U.S. has known loosely where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda may be. So far, it has spent seven years, nearly $200 billion, over 500 American lives. 150 allied lives, and a good piece of its reputation on an as yet unsuccessful effort to bring them down.
One of the most popular images of official incompetence these days is that of the person who does the same thing over and over again while each time expecting different results. President Barack Obama seems to be trapped in this illusion. He is facing the most compelling of political fears: If he were to stop the war in Afghanistan and a major terrorist attack were to occur in the United States, his critics will be quick to say it was his fault.
As of now, for nearly three decades the U.S. has been variously devoted to bringing peace to Afghanistan. That has achieved little so far beyond returning the Afghan countryside to its drug producing overlords and permitting Afghanistan to supply 90% of the world's heroin. Yet it appears that the safest domestic political course for any but the boldest of American presidents is to continue this useless war.
However, the consequences of this war are mounting as the U.S. shreds it alliance with Pakistan and goads the Pushtun people into defending themselves. The U.S. simply does not have the military resources to deal with 50 million angry Pushtun people defending themselves at home in one of the remotest places on earth. The correct appreciation is to know not when we have lost but when we cannot win and back gracefully out of it.
The writer is the author of the recently published work, A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist on rense.com.
(Source: rense.com
View Rate : 524 # News Code : TTime- 189243 Print Date : Saturday, February 14, 2009
Why the U.S. should leave Afghanistan
By Terrell E. Arnold
Beginning early in the presidential election campaign last year, both candidates asserted that they would increase the heat in Afghanistan. Between 2001 and early 2009, military operation in that country, which so far have accomplished nothing, occupied virtually the entire Bush presidency and burned roughly $200 billion of the U.S. treasury.
One would think that such a gruesome track record, coupled with the fact that the only result to date is that the Karzai Government controls the capital city of Kabul, while five or more heroin-financed drug lords control the countryside, would raise at least a few questions of utility. But no! Rising costs, declining prospects, and the fact that no outsider has ever won a war in Afghanistan be damned, the war will go on. Americans have a right to know why. Indeed, so does everybody else on the planet.
The truth is depressing. One of the earliest disfavors George W. Bush did for Americans was to crudely define the purposes of this war: He targeted his campaign on al-Qaeda, saying ""We will fight them over there so that we won't have to fight them over here."" That became the central Bush administration mantra of the War on Terrorism.
The Bush strategy slowly morphed into selected drone and manned flight bombings in northwestern Pakistan, the region known as Waziristan. Although Bush claimed that Pakistan was an American ally, he and his team apparently saw no inconsistency in claiming an alliance while selectively killing the Pushtun people of Pakistan and other regional tribals in the ally's backyard.
Obama signed on to this strategy when he authorized a drone attack in Waziristan earlier this week. But the campaign narrative changed; all of a sudden the target was the Taliban, not al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
With that shift, the purposes of the war suddenly changed. The U.S. was no longer ostensibly fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Instead, the Obama mission had become a fight against Islamic fundamentalism.
Somehow, overnight, the U.S. was thrust back to 2001. The new game is not precisely to throw the Taliban out. It is to keep them from coming back into power. Keeping them out of Afghanistan presumably would also limit the power and freedom of action of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Just what is in this strategy for us? Let's look first at what the Taliban had done to deserve this awkward distinction. When the Soviet Union had enough of Afghanistan warfare and withdrew in defeat in 1989, the country experienced about five years of factional in-fighting and change, reasonably defined as political chaos. During that period the Taliban emerged as a force, first by being hired by Pakistan to protect or facilitate traffic through contentious regions like the Khyber Pass, and second by being supported spiritually, politically and financially by fundamentalist religious schools in Pakistan. The Taliban proved very effective, better motivated, organized and supported than anybody else, and they grew quickly as a power center in Afghanistan's fragmented political environment. Then, in 1996, they took the country away from its U.S. and western supported, but weak, post-Soviet era government.
The Taliban, under their traditionalist leader Muhammad Omar, qualify as hard-core, strict constructionist Muslims. Among their first actions they forbade any provision of education to women. They also objected to opium and heroin production and shut down the industry throughout Afghanistan. But from a U.S./western point of view, their main sin on taking over the government in 1996 was to provide a safe-haven to Osama bin Laden.
In August 1998, al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists carried out brutal raids on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In fact, bin Laden's power base was then split between Sudan and Afghanistan, and that accounts for President Clinton's bold but largely ineffective U.S. missile strikes on reputed al-Qaeda targets in those two countries. The collateral damage, meaning the many civilian casualties, of the Clinton attacks was largely ignored in the U.S. But it is not unlikely that those two missile attacks were part of the motivation for the 9/11 events.
For the past seven years the U.S. has known loosely where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda may be. So far, it has spent seven years, nearly $200 billion, over 500 American lives. 150 allied lives, and a good piece of its reputation on an as yet unsuccessful effort to bring them down.
One of the most popular images of official incompetence these days is that of the person who does the same thing over and over again while each time expecting different results. President Barack Obama seems to be trapped in this illusion. He is facing the most compelling of political fears: If he were to stop the war in Afghanistan and a major terrorist attack were to occur in the United States, his critics will be quick to say it was his fault.
As of now, for nearly three decades the U.S. has been variously devoted to bringing peace to Afghanistan. That has achieved little so far beyond returning the Afghan countryside to its drug producing overlords and permitting Afghanistan to supply 90% of the world's heroin. Yet it appears that the safest domestic political course for any but the boldest of American presidents is to continue this useless war.
However, the consequences of this war are mounting as the U.S. shreds it alliance with Pakistan and goads the Pushtun people into defending themselves. The U.S. simply does not have the military resources to deal with 50 million angry Pushtun people defending themselves at home in one of the remotest places on earth. The correct appreciation is to know not when we have lost but when we cannot win and back gracefully out of it.
The writer is the author of the recently published work, A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist on rense.com.
(Source: rense.com
Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/
KeyLink: http://www.NetworkAztlan.com
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