NY Times and The Long War Journal produced an outstanding graphic depicting the current situation in Afghanistan. Since today is day 1 of the Afghanistan reboot, I thought I would highlight two of the more interesting articles I read in the wake of the Obama speech.
Probably the best armchair quarterbacking I have read today is an Op-Ed from Robert Young Pelton.
I was one of the few outsiders on the ground in late 2001 when America won this war. We toppled the Taliban regime in weeks. Life was looking up for millions of Afghans and 2002 would have been a great time to get the check, grab our coat and go home. But we stayed to mop up.
His suggestion?First we installed Karzai - and his buddies grifted billions in aid money.
We knew Osama Bin Laden hoofed it to Pakistan and that the Taliban were recuperating there too, where their "movement" was created by the government. But we pumped millions into their corrupt military regime anyway.
Soon we couldn't quite tell who was who on Afghan battlegrounds and we found ourselves kissing babies and killing them with errant air strikes at the same time. We went from liberator to oppressor.
We've never formulated a coherent reason for "why" we are in Afghanistan. Listening to Obama's war plan, Americans ought to be asking, "What will change?"
Our uncoordinated, gargantuan movements are no match for the Taliban's turn-on-a-dime tactics. To win, the Taliban simply have to sit in one spot and watch us spend, bleed and argue to death.
We can't even convince the Afghan on the street we're doing any good since the termite-ridden tentpole of our claim to waging war is to support Karzai's legitimacy. You have to pause for laughter when you say that in rural Afghanistan.
Admit we screwed up and go back to what works: Empower the local tribes, enlist Afghans eager to fight the bad guys, don't force them to support a corrupt central government or bow to foreign forces - and keep picking off Al Qaeda with Special Operations troops and drones.
Although most of the article is a brief history lesson from his perspective, he nails it in the conclusion.My recent trip to the United States has been an enriching experience, during which I had a very healthy discourse with the American public and an opportunity to understand their concerns about the war in Afghanistan. One question I was asked almost everywhere I went was, "How can we stop losing?"
The answer is a political surge, in conjunction with the additional troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Quitting is not an option.
Pakistan and Afghanistan were shortsightedly abandoned to their fate by the West in 1989, in spite of the fact that they were the ones who won a victory for the Free World against the Soviet Union. This abandonment lead to a sense of betrayal amongst the people of the region. For the sake of regional and world peace, let us not repeat the same mistake.
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