Afghanistan-- what the heck are we still doing there?

If current reports are accurate, the Trump administration (remember Trump ran on a neo-isolationist policy in which while he promised to get rid of ISIS, otherwise pledged to reduce our involvement in foreign wars) is about to get us in deeper in Afghanistan.  The Afghan war, which began in October 2001, a month after September 11 and less than a year into the Bush administration, lasted through the rest of that administration, then through the entire Obama administration and now is into its third administration  (arguably its fourth;  recall that on August 18, 1998, eleven days after the African embassy bombings the Clinton administration launched cruise missiles in an attempt to get bin Laden in a meeting he was known to be attending that day;  unfortunately the meeting ended early, before the missiles arrived and we now know that among the topics discussed during the meeting was the plot that eventually became 9/11. )

Given that the 9/11 terror attacks were hatched in Afghanistan (not to mention the African embassy bombings and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen) and the Taliban government was at the time giving refuge to bin Laden, it made sense to go in originally because if we hadn't then bin Laden and al-Qaeda would have continued unimpeded in their quest to kill Americans.  However, after an offensive in January and February of 2002 drove bin Laden from his hideout in Tora Bora and drove the Taliban into a small sliver of Afghanistan, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld made a fateful decision.  The Taliban was almost gone, but instead of finishing the job and taking the final sliver of the country they held onto, the Bush administration put Afghanistan on the back burner and then used 9/11 as a rallying cry to invade Iraq, a country a thousand miles away that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks.  An invasion of Iraq had been on Bush's agenda since taking office after his father had made the decision not to finish off Saddam Hussein in the 1990-1991 Gulf War,  and since then Saddam had continued to cause problems for the U.S. and other countries in the region. 

By putting the situation in Afghanistan on the back burner, the Taliban were allowed to regroup and grow back, and by then were learning how to fight more effectively against the few Americans remaining;  roadside bombs, suicide bombings and ambushes, especially in populated areas (the same tactics used later on by Iraqi insurgents after Bush claimed 'mission accomplished' a few weeks into the Iraq war.)  By this time bin Laden had fled to Pakistan,  so we were in effect fighting on one side of a civil war (and propping up a corrupt government then led by Hamid Karzai, which was known to be dealing, just as the Taliban were, in opium poppies that were smuggled out and into the world drug market.)

President Obama, like President Trump, ran on a platform that included getting American troops out of harms way.  Only it didn't happen, and in fact eight months into the Obama administration (and on the eighth anniversary of September 11) I wrote a blog post critical of the Obama administration's Afghan policy.  It seemed then that the Obama Afghan policy was really little different than the Bush policy.  Obama's "Afghan surge" only got us in deeper and didn't ever seem to resolve anything.  Yes, Americans and our allies might win battles and take territory, but just like any guerrilla war, once they left the territory it reverted back to the control of whoever had the support of the local populace (think about it-- HOW MANY times since the Afghan war began in 2001 have you heard about Americans backing allied Afghan government forces driving the Taliban out of strongholds in Helmand province?  As soon as we leave, the place reverts back to Taliban control and we don't have the manpower to physically occupy all of it.)  With bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda fragmented, clearly there is no threat from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan anymore.  Of course now you keep hearing about 'ISIS in Afghanistan.'  It's not like a bunch of ISIS fighters somehow traveled from Syria to Afghanistan. It's the same locals we have been fighting who are now calling themselves an affiliate of ISIS. And at some point we have to ask ourselves why we are still there.  Does anybody even know what exactly a 'victory' in Afghanistan would be?  No administration-- not the Bush administration, not the Obama administration and apparently not the Trump administration, has said what exactly the objective is in Afghanistan.  If we are going to stay there then don't we owe it to our troops to state exactly what our purpose is and what we are trying to achieve?  Vacuous statements like 'a stable Afghanistan' are useless as an objective.  How do you measure 'stable'  in a country that has been at war now for over forty years?  And how do we plan to create it?  If we can't answer these questions then we should GET OUT. 

Right wing waits until the decision has been made to decide which side they are on.

Before President Obama tipped his hand about whether he would retain or fire General McChrystal over comments he and staff working for him made in a Rolling Stones article, very few pundits or media on the right tipped theirs either. Among those who did, there was no clear consensus, and there were plenty of articles that said Obama should fire McChrystal (such as this editorial by conservative icon William Kristol which not only advises Obama to fire McChrystal, but that he should call on David Petraeus to replace him.) I doubt if Kristol will write a follow up editorial praising Obama for doing exactly the way he suggested though.

It is true that the most offensive remarks disparaging both the commander-in-chief and the Vice President) were made by McChrystal's staff, not McChrystal. But a commander is responsible for the attention to duty and following the law of all those under their command. McChrystal understands that.

At least Kristol was willing to say what he thought. Not so many other pundits on the right, including not only a lot of conservative journalists but the mavens of talk radio. Of course the decision was made before most of them were on the air today, but it was amazing how in unison they suddenly all sounded off immediately after the decision was made. It was as if keeping McChrystal was the obvious choice all along and their stated bewilderment at Obama for firing him was chalked up to everything from ego to a secret desire on Obama's part that America lose in Afghanistan to help foment discontent at home.

Now, you can be sure that if the decision had come down to retain McChrystal, then all of the very same right wing reporters, bloggers and talk show hosts would have said that was a terrible decision and showed that Obama was weak and indecisive. They would have still brought up the charge that Obama had an agenda to not win in Afghanistan, just in that case it would have been 'by making sure the soldiers see him as an ineffective C-in-C.'

If you listened to anyone's monologue bashing this decision then you can imagine how they would have sounded bashing the opposite decision.

Because they had that speech already written as well.

Obama is making a big mistake in Afghanistan

As I've written before (President Obama is making a big mistake in Afghanistan.)

His commitment to send 30,000 more American troops will succeed only in more Americans coming home in coffins.

I will say that in October 2001 when the Afghan was began, I was fully in support of the mission. And I was among those who argued in 2002 (and since then as well) that it was a mistake to not finish the job in Afghanistan and instead be detoured into a costly and time- and resource- consuming war in Iraq.

So why not go back and finish the job now? Well, for starters it's not the same job. Back then it was pretty clear that we were fighting the people who attacked New York City and their patrons. But by now things have become considerably more muddled and it's hard to know who the good guys are, or even if there are any good guys.

Once again we are stuck in the middle of a civil war, this time between a corrupt and despotic government and the previous government which was run by fanatics. This has strong ethnic, regional, religious and tribal overtones as well as blood feuds that go back to the beginning of time.

There are, as General McCrystal himself said, very few members of Al-Qaeda even in Afghanistan right now, so in effect we are fighting the Taliban. Yes, the Taliban are terrible masters, fundamentalists who stone women to death just for speaking to a man and who kill barbers who shave off beards. But the truth is there are many terrible masters in the world, ranging from some of our 'allies' in the arab world to the North Korean regime to Robert Mugabe to the Chinese leaders who the President was just hob-nobbing with a couple of weeks ago. The decision about whether to commit American forces should be made using one metric and one metric alone, which is what is in the best interest of the United States? And I don't see how fighting the Taliban (a local Afghan movement, which thanks to our bumbling intervention over the past several years spilled over the border into Pakistan) solves anything.

Further, there is a definite risk that we could lose. In Iraq it was relatively easy to seal most of the borders when we ran the 'surge' (though I still contend that the best we can claim in Iraq is a pyrrhic victory.) The only mountainous borders Iraq has are with Turkey in the north and parts of the border with Iran to the east. But the Kurds who control northern Iraq and the Shi'ite government of Iran which controls Iran are both hostile to the Sunni Wahabbi sect that Al-Qaeda subscribes to and so won't tolerate Sunni fighters seeking refuge (even from us) on their soil. In contrast, it is well known that the weak Pakistani government has little or no control over areas along the border and the terrain is such that it is virtually impossible to prevent the movement of fighters across the border. Unless we are willing to remain there indefinitely with enough troops to squelch the insurgents it's safe to say they will simply hang out in Pakistan until they outlast us. Remember the Soviet Union tried doing this with half a million troops, five times what we will have, and they also came up short. It's easy to say that the Soviet military was overrated (though doing so just points out the scare tactics we had to live through to justify enormous military budgets in the 1980's) but by the same token it seems that the Mujahedeen who fought them (the direct precursor to the Taliban) were underrated.

What about the argument that if we just let the Taliban take over they will invite AQ back in and we will be back to a pre-September 11 world, waiting for the next horrific terrorist act?

First, I'm not sure how having our army there prevents terrorist attacks from taking place (since AQ can just as easily plan them when they are in Pakistan, as it is believed their senior leadership is.) But beyond that, we have been successful in attacking AQ in Pakistan without a massive commitment of American troops, even in areas where the Pakistani army has little presence. We've done it through the collection of intelligence, predator drone and other kinds of missile strikes, special forces operations and covert operations. I have no problem with these kinds of things (and have advocated for them in the past--- there are after all bad people in the world and if you don't advocate for war then you have to have a workable alternative for dealing with people who simply want to kill you if you don't kill them first.)

Second, if the hangup is AQ, why not see if we can negotiate a deal with the Taliban in which we won't fight them if they don't let AQ back in? Why would they honor the deal? Because we'd pay them to, of course. What? throw money at them? Well, the war is costing us a heck of a lot to fight, and one thing we've learned in the middle east is that allies can be bought. AQ needs the cover of the Taliban (in both Afghanistan and Pakistan) to have a place to operate. Why not just deny them that? Yes, that's a radical idea but as far as I know it hasn't even been tried yet. Let's see what their price is before we massively escalate a war which may in the end be unwinnable.

It's Sept. 11 and in good conscience I have to say it: OUT NOW!

Today is September 11, and a story out today compels me to speak out.

I'M SORRY, MR. PRESIDENT BUT YOUR POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN HAS NO DIRECTION, AND WE SHOULD GET OUT!

I fully support this administration on nearly every issue, most especially health care reform. I supported President Obama last year and continue to support his domestic agenda. And even in foreign policy, his early moves to get out of Iraq (though still far too slow for me) and his changing the tone from one of U.S. hegemony in the world towards more international cooperation are welcome changes.

But he's making a huge mistake by pouring American forces into Afghanistan.

Back when we went to war there in October 2001, I fully supported President Bush in his pursuit of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government that gave him shelter.

But that was eight years ago, and President Bush bungled the job by de-emphasizing the Afghan war in the spring and early summer of 2002, when the Taliban had been driven into a small sliver of land, and one more concerted offensive could have finished them off (and probably netted all or most of the senior al-Qaeda leadership at the same time.) President Bush turned down the heat then and focused on Iraq, a country a thousand miles away that had nothing to do with the 9/11 terror attacks.

So bin Laden got away, the Taliban regrouped while we were otherwise preoccupied with Iraq and even spread across the border into Pakistan, and today we see that the leading U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Billy McChrystal says that he sees no major signs of al-Qaeda in the country. Apparently they've moved on to Pakistan and elsewhere. This is a very important story, because remember we originally went into Afghanistan to get rid of al-Qaeda. Well, if al-Qaeda is gone, then who are we fighting, and why?

So if we are not there hunting al-Qaeda what are we doing? Propping up 'democracy?' That's a joke. We've been seeing the notoriously corrupt Karzai government steal an election right in front of us. Karzai will win the recount and be selected President again. But he will have no more legitimacy than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has in Iran. To suggest that we in any way accept a fraudulently elected leader as legitimate is to make a mockery of our own belief in democratic values. Mr. Karzai has no more legitimacy if the results of this election stand than the Taliban do. Neither was chosen by the people. So don't say we are in Afghanistan to support 'democracy' because we haven't seen any real democracy there. Ultimately for the Afghans to ever live in a true democracy they have to want it enough to fight for it themselves.

What we do see is in essence a civil war between the Taliban and the Karzai government. It is true that the Taliban have a reprehensible political and legal system in place in the areas which they control, and that life is especially horrible for the female half of the population. However, is that a reason to lose American lives over? I don't see it. The problems of Afghanistan belong to Afghanistan. The United States should be ready to lend a hand (both financially and with good advice) if asked, but there is really no good reason for maintaining U.S. troops there anymore.

Does that mean that we just give up searching for al-Qaeda terrorists? Not at all. Leaving with our army doesn't preclude continuing to collect intelligence, the use of special forces for quick, defined missions (such as if we have good intelligence about where bin Laden is), or of working behind the scenes with his local enemies (there are plenty, after all) to get to bin Laden that way. What successes we have had recently have been through the use of Predator and Reaper drones, unmanned aircraft that have gotten several al-Qaeda operatives (mostly on the Pakistani side of the border.) There is no reason why those sorts of operations couldn't continue.

I recently wrote a post entitled Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it about the uncanny similarity between our fruitless search for bin Laden to our similarly fruitless search despite sending an American army to march all over Mexico searching for Pancho Villa in 1916. One point I made was that as long as we were there, Villa essentially had nothing to worry about from his local enemies because he was giving the 'yanqui' the proverbial finger. But once we left so did his protection, and there were people in Mexico who knew how to find him much better than we did (and they eventually did catch up with him too.) It is certainly prudent to continue to keep an eye out for bin Laden but like a baseball that's gotten lost in the woods, there comes a time when the effort (and in this case that means American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars) expended outweighs the diminishing chance we have of finding what we are looking for. If you want to blame George Bush for that because the trail has grown cold while we were off fighting in Iraq for more than half a decade, go ahead. But it's time to get our army out and limit our looking to our intelligence service, satellites and other sources.

But the bottom line is that neither President Bush nor President Obama has articulated why we are still fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, what exactly we hope to accomplish there, what constitutes 'success,' and most importantly, what our exit strategy is.

In his speech the other night President Obama pointed out that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are more than it would cost to reform health care (and that is true, based on CBO numbers.) But for that comparison to be any more meaningful than just a few numbers on paper, we have to quit bleeding our treasury just as so many Americans have bled their lives into the soil of those two nations all the way on the other side of the planet.

Imagine that: paying for health care reform by bringing all our soldiers home. Now THAT'S what I call a real world solution.

For more information: http://rethinkafghanistan.com

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Right after the September 11 terrorist attacks, news outlets reported that it was the first attack on the continental United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) since the War of 1812. They said it was a new phenomenon: a foreign leader who hid in another country from which he had effectively declared war on the United States. When they said that they showed their ignorance of American history, and in matters of foreign policy ignorance of history is a very dangerous thing. There is a saying that those who do not study and learn the lessons of history will repeat it, meaning that they will not recognize a situation they are confronted with and will repeat the mistakes that were made by their forbears. And so it seems to be today, in terms of our war in Afghanistan and our pursuit of Osama bin Laden.

Let's go back to March 9, 1916. Foreign invaders attacked the United States. They first attacked the 13th Cavalry regiment of the United States Army, seizing over 100 horses and mules, then stormed into the town of Columbus, New Mexico, burning much of the town and killing two dozen people (both soldiers and civilians,) some of whom were shot in the head, execution-style.

The attackers came from Mexico and were led by Francisco "Pancho" Villa, already a notorious revolutionary. Villa, despite being pursued by U.S. troops still found time to cross the border again and attack the town of Glen Springs, Texas on May 15 of that year, killing one more American.

Because there were then still Mexicans alive who remembered the Mexican War with the United States (1845-1848) Villa's raid was cheered across Mexico.

This was the first attack by a foreign attacker upon United States territory since the War of 1812 and it prompted an immediate angry reaction from the United States. General "Black Jack" Pershing led 10,000 American troops into Mexico in pursuit of Villa. Their stated goal was to pursue Villa 'to the ends of the earth' if necessary, and either kill him or bring him back to face a court of justice. They had some success with disrupting and damaging Villa's organization (in fact, a young Lieutenant named George S. Patton is credited with killing Julio Cárdenas, one of Villa's top commanders.)

However, Pershing's expedition marched 2,000 miles through Mexico and while they did engage Villistas (and occasionally other Mexican revolutionaries) they never caught up with the man himself. Pershing later admitted to having been "outwitted and out-bluffed at every turn." In short, the Pershing expedition was a failure that did more to strengthen Villa by raising his popularity than it did to hurt his military capability.

The expedition eventually ended in January, 1917. The United States was well aware that Villa was still lurking someplace in Mexico and border security was beefed up. Pershing and his troops were soon after on a ship to Europe to fight the Kaiser's army (with more success than they had against Villa, I might add.)

Villa had been celebrated as a hero across all Mexico at the time, as Mexicans were more than happy to see him giving the proverbial finger to the United States. However when Pershing left, Villa was back to just being Villa. And Villa had left a wide trail of bodies all over Mexico as well and made a lot of enemies. So it is not so surprising that a few years later, on July 20, 1923, someone ambushed Villa while he was driving his car and riddled him with bullets. The Federales, Mexican police, claim it was them but many sources suggest they just showed up to take pictures. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Let's fast forward to the present. On September 11, 2001, we saw the second organized foreign attack on U.S. territory since Villa and the first since World War II.

Americans were outraged and the country rallied together in support of a war in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban rulers of the country and their al-Qaeda allies, and either kill or capture Osama bin Laden.

Although I almost never support war, believing it should be a last resort, I felt then that the Afghan war was necessary.

I also felt (like many others, and expressed very directly by Al Gore in the summer of 2002) that we should finish the job instead of putting it on the back burner to go fight another war. However, whatever one may think of Iraq what is done is done and we are now back fighting in Afghanistan.

Much has changed however. Far from being on the offensive, we have become primarily tied down to defending the cities and a few military bases. Our 'support' rests with the popularity of a government that few people outside the capital support or even acknowlege. International borders (especially that between Afghanistan and Pakistan) are either ignored by the enemy or used as a 'terrain feature' by them to their advantage. Recently we have been looking for another way to send supplies to Afghanistan because we can't even guarantee our own supply convoys in terrain that is so mountainous, craggy and rocky that the enemy can literally advance to within a few yards undetected. And, they blend into the civilian population giving our troops the unpalatable choice between sitting and waiting for them to attack us before we can respond or shooting at people who very well may in fact be civilians. In short, we have become the Soviet Union. Ironically, Russia recently answered our call for another land-based supply route and negotiated with other former Soviet republics to allow us to use the same supply routes in from the north that they used to use. One wonders whether this gesture from Putin and Medvedev was made from good will or with a sly grin, because they know very well how vulnerable those other routes are, and can't wait to see us fighting the same war they fought and lost.

Into this situation we have dumped thousands more troops. I wish them success, but I am not optimistic that we will achieve it. There was indeed a window to finish off the Taliban in Afghanistan (and maybe get bin Laden) but that window has long since been closed. A nascent antiwar movement, rethinkafghanistan.com has recognized this too and is calling on American soldiers to be withdrawn from Afghanistan if the present offensive in Helmand does not achieve its objectives and help stabilize the country.

But if we leave won't bin Laden again be a threat to attack the United States?

Yes, he will. But staying there doesn't guarantee that he won't. Further even if we leave there is no reason we can't continue to hunt for him via collection of intelligence, covert operations and the use of unmanned aircraft.

At this point, I would suggest that as long as we stay we are probably helping him hide. He is still fairly popular among the Pashtun, the tribe that is most strongly identified with the Taliban, and among some other Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Being pursued by the United States gives him the equivalent of a 'get out of jail free' card with many of the locals who don't want to make trouble for the man who is still throwing a finger at America. But if we leave he will have the same problem that Villa did-- he's left a wide trail of bodies (including Afghan, Pakistani and muslim bodies) that he will have to answer for, and sooner or later one of his local enemies will catch up to him, just as they did to Pancho Villa.

The price of a missed opportunity

I'd like to take you back for a moment, to a time when American policy makers faced an enormous decision.

The time was during the spring of 2002. Following the September 11 attacks, the U.S. had assembled a truly international coalition (remember the world was on our side at that time) to go after al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies in Afghanistan. In an extraordinarily brilliant operation we had driven al-Qaeda from their stronghold in Tora Bora and by working with local warlords had driven the Taliban into a small sliver of mountains and caves in southwest-central Afghanistan.

Though nothing is ever perfect, we won a smashing victory by January of 2002. The one blunder we made was in contracting local Afghan forces to go in and finish off bin Laden instead of doing it ourselves, and he apparently still had either the influence or the money to make his way through their lines. But bin Laden and al-Qaeda were effectively non-entities and the only real question was how long he could stay ahead of our dragnet. We had at that time the full cooperation of the Pakistani military as well. The warlords and other Afghans who had chafed under the rule of the Taliban were glad enough to be gone from it, and the future looked pretty bright.

But then George Bush decided to essentially leave things as they were in Afghanistan, leaving only enough forces there to carry on a war of attrition and he turned our attention to Iraq.

The first major American politician to speak out against the change was Al Gore. He made it clear in the summer of 2002 that we should finish the job in Afghanistan and that it was a mistake to take our eye off the ball. So Republicans accused Gore of playing politics with national security so he could run for President in 2004. Gore responded by making a statement that he would not seek the Presidency in 2004 and continued to press for finishing the job in Afghanistan. I think this is why Republicans so detest Al Gore, more so than pretty much any other Democratic politician (even Bill Clinton.) It is clear that this one area of disagreement would likely have defined where a Gore Presidency would have diverged from the events of the Bush Presidency, and every day that goes by with more bad news from Afghanistan makes it clear that Gore was onto something.

Since then we've seen a muscular re-emergence of the Taliban. The local warlords (who have dubious loyalty to begin with and can be easily bought) began to reconsider their allegiances (why stick with us when it was clear that we were no longer prioritizing them?) The U.S. and our Afghan allies have pretty much become restricted to the cities and military bases, and control only the countryside they are patrolling in, and when they leave it reverts to Taliban control (President Mohammed Karzai has been derisively referred to as 'the mayor of Kabul,' a poke at how far his authority extends.) I've said it before and I've said it again-- the situation we now find ourselves in in Afghanistan is exactly the situation the Soviet Union found itself in during the 1980's. To most Afghans, we have become the Soviet Union.

More ominously the Taliban have strengthened themselves in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. With the unpopular Musharraf dictatorship itself stirring up opposition to its rule (and by implication support for Islamicists) our best hope for a reliable ally in the war against terror was former Prime Minister Benizir Bhutto. But she was killed, and it is still unknown exactly who was responsible and whether the failure of Pakistan's intelligence service to protect her was by design or incompetence. After seven years of war the Pakistani military and intelligence service, always full of Islamist sympathizers, have lost patience with America and now are led by a weak civilian government that is a very very questionable ally. There is ample reason to suspect that bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership now resides on the Pakistani side of the border. We've conducted more and more raids into Pakistan. The Pakistanis say they want advance notice, but with their intel service rife with Taliban informants we might as well CC al-Qaeda directly if we plan to tell the Pakistanis what we are doing. This week things came to an ugly, ugly head. A massive truck bomb at the Marriott hotel killed scores of people. It is clearly the work of either al-Qaeda or the Taliban (does it even matter anymore which one?) The target was twofold: a clear message to the Pakistani government that they are in grave danger if they continue to work with the Americans at all (a message they appear to have gotten with their first action to kick out the FBI and announce they will run the investigation themselves) and to western interests in Pakistan directly-- obviously the Marriott is an American hotel chain and this one was a favorite of western diplomats and media members, some of whom are among the victims.

Most worrisome of all, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Right now there is no reason to believe that any Islamicists have access to their nuclear arsenal, but with the situation deteriorating as it is, can anyone be confident that they won't have such access soon? If the specter of a nuclear cloud over an American city courtesy of a weapon smuggled in by terrorists was used to scare people into supporting the Iraq war, perhaps by allowing al-Qaeda and the Taliban to recover in Afghanistan and then expand over the border and establish themselves so strongly in Pakistan the Bush administration has in fact brought that specter far closer to reality than you or I want to imagine.

Now let's concede for the moment that after five long years of war Iraq appears to be stabilized. It won't become a Jeffersonian democracy to be sure, but we have routed al-Qaeda in Iraq (recall that while Saddam Hussein didn't want any organization operating in Iraq that he didn't control, bin Laden sent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Baghdad in December 2002 when war was imminent officially to seek dental treatment but in fact to begin organizing al-Qaeda in Iraq.) The Sunnis and Shiites are not carrying out ethnic cleansing anymore. And we know for sure that Saddam's alleged WMD stockpile was a ruse designed to maintain his internal power and scare his blood enemy the Iranians.

But let's say Iraq is a success. Forget for a moment the five years of war there, or the trillion dollar pricetag or the 4,000 American soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. There is just one question. is there ANYTHING AT ALL we gain from Iraq that makes it worth the price of letting our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan escape the noose and grow back as they have? With Pakistan and its nukes now part of the equation, the answer is clearly no.

The best evidence that conservatives know they have screwed up is found in the stretching they go through to justify their ill-fated decision to shift focus. The last time I put up a post on the Afghan situation they kept alluding to the losses al-Qaeda and the Taliban have taken since we went to war on October 7, 2001. Point conceded (though they've never been as strong in Pakistan as they are today.) But that argument misses the point. By January 2002 they were driven back to near total defeat. That was when we took our foot off their neck instead of finishing the job. And as a result they are now a virulent cancer, and in a political climate there where our options are far worse than they were at the time. To claim that because they are weaker now than they were on September 11 so we need not worry is like claiming that because Russia is weaker now than the Soviet Union was during the height of the Cold War therefore there is nothing to fear from Putin. Obviously there is a lot to fear from Putin (the past couple of months should have made that clear) and there is a lot to fear from the Taliban and AQ.

Leaving the root of the weed in the ground instead of finishing it off will likely go down as the most consequential decision of the Bush Presidency, and I only hope that the next President will figure out a way to put together a plan that really does get rid of them once and for all.

As I discussed in November, it appears we do have a Pyrrhic victory. But don't let the right try to claim it is anything more than that.

Lately, it seems that the righties want to talk about Iraq. They claim that since the surge worked, that somehow that vindicates all the crap they've thrown out there about it during these past several years. Fine, let's talk about Iraq.

I beg to differ with the standard right wing analysis. It is true that violence in Iraq is way down (especially U.S. troop casualties) and that we appear to have driven al-Qaeda out of Iraq. The Al-Maliki government has won several battles against homegrown militia groups and appears to have control over nearly all of the country.

And while the right tends to exaggerate the part of this that is attributable to the surge, there is little doubt that U.S. forces played a major role in routing al-Qaeda and in helping the Sunni militias take control of their regions of Iraq, and also in supporting the government's offensives against the Sadrist militia and other similar groups. If the right is guilty of exaggeration by failing to acknowledge the contribution of former Sunni militias that we bought by the payment of cash as being very important to the overall success as the surge, then often we on the left are guilty of failing to acknowledge the plain fact that the surge worked.

But where the righty argument falls flat is when they try to extrapolate from that back to justifying the original invasion of Iraq. Several months ago I anticipated this argument in a post I wrote entitled, The BEST case scenario in Iraq: A Pyrrhic victory.

Now, as an American I'm glad that starting where we were we have achieved this best case scenario.

However if we add up the costs and gains of the Iraq war we find the following:

Gains:

1. Saddam Hussein is gone. Of course there are still many bloody dictatorships in the world including the leaders of the country right now hosting the Olympics and we cannot get rid of them all but certainly we got rid of one. In any case, Saddam was gone by six weeks into the war, and had been captured by nine months into the war, so this still doesn't justify the nearly five years we've been fighting since the capture of Saddam.

2. Iraq is now a democracy. And the first thing they did with the democracy we gave them was to ratify a Constitution that states that the official religion is Islam and that Sharia is a source of the law, and elect a parliament full of fundamentalists that immediately passed restrictions on the legal rights of women so that in matters like divorce, inheritance and custody disputes they have even less rights than they had under Saddam. Democracy is like anything else-- it has to be earned to be treasured, not handed down. That is why Poles value their democracy while Iraqis have elected a majority of members of their parliament who are committed to establishing Sharia. Luckily, the political gridlock in Iraq has had the effect of preventing their parliament from getting much done.


3. There are now at best a handful of al-Qaeda members in Iraq. Which is exactly how many there were back in March 2003 when we invaded (Saddam knew who he could trust, which was nobody.) So we've beaten al-Qaeda all the way back to where it was in the first place.

4. We now know for sure that Iraq was no longer making WMD's or stockpiling them. If Bush had waited for Hans Blix to do his job then we'd have learned that at a lot less cost.

Costs:

1. The five year detour into Iraq have al-Qaeda, almost destroyed (along with their Taliban allies) in Afghanistan by January 2003, a second chance-- and they have come roaring back. They now have far more power in both Afghanistan and in Pakistan than they have had at any time since we put that war on the back burner and went after Iraq instead in March 2003. Righty likes to compare their present status to where they were on September 11. But that is not a valid comparison. Bush could have made the final push in early 2003 to end the earth of the Taliban and rid their Afghan center of power of al-Qaeda (including bin Laden and al-Zawahri) but he chose to relax the pressure and go after Iraq instead. So the nature of our conflict against the Taliban and AQ changed fundamentally in early 2003 from one of offense to one of essentially attrition and guarding certain selected strongpoints (mostly cities and military bases.) This is exactly the strategy the Soviet Union pursued in Afghanistan and it failed then, and it has slowly been failing us over the past five years. Further, the next American President will get to deal with a weak government in Pakistan which is even less willing to support operations and go after al-Qaeda and the Taliban than the Musharraf government was-- and we now have evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service itself is full of Taliban sympathizers, making Pakistan an unreliable ally at best.

2. We have lost the support of the world that we enjoyed virtually unanimously after 9/11. Most righties tend to blow this one off, suggesting that unilateral action is better anyway, but in fact we are overstretched right now militarily (one reason Iran is so belligerent-- they know darn well that as long as we have 150,000 or so troops tied down in Iraq we lack the ground force to seriously threaten to invade them.) Thanks to the poor planning of what to do after the invasion and the years we stayed fighting in Iraq it's a safe bet that next time we need a coalition, be it for political or military reasons, we'll find lots of cheerleaders but very few willing to go out onto the field with us. And incidents like Abu Graib and the use of torture have destroyed a well-earned reputation and given us a black eye that will take decades to fade, even if they are not ever repeated.

3. 4,000 American lives. Yes, this is less than a tenth of the casualty total in Vietnam and only 1% of what we lost in World War II. But then we have to ask: 4,000 lives for what? It's not an insignificant number (for example it is more Americans than died on 9/11) and is it really inconsequential to ask why we had to lose them when there were opponents of Saddam who were willing to fight and die to overthrow him themselves (such as those who rose up in 1991) if we had just supported them?

4. The myth of American military invincibility. There was a time when the armed forces of small countries like Grenada, Haiti, Serbia or even Iraq (during the first Gulf War) would either drop their arms and surrender at the news that the Americans were on the way, or if they fought would be systematically run over and destroyed pretty much at the same rate as if they had dropped their arms. American military casualties from all conflicts that we fought, in total between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the start of the Iraq war in 2003 were less than a thousand (and the majority of those were killed in either the Beirut bombing or the First Gulf War.) Because of the perception of American invincibility, we rarely had to use the 'big stick' to get other countries to do what we wanted to. We just had to tap on it a time or two, and they'd get the message. But that is no longer true. Iraq has made it not true. We've had to fight hard for five years just to win a war in a country no bigger than California, so it is little wonder that countries like Iran and Venezuela have become emboldened. In the movie, "Predator," Arnold Schwarzeneggar's character is emboldened when he discovers that he has wounded the alien creature. He says, "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Thanks to Bush's reckless misuse of the finest military machine in the history of the world, other countries will now have that attitude. Even the small wars in the future, we will have to fight them, not be able to win anymore just by showing up.

5. A trillion dollars at least, once all the costs of Iraq are tallied up. Even if our economy was sound, a trillion dollars of new debt (because it was all borrowed from the future) would be a big hit. But in the sick economy we have now, the trillion dollars of new federal debt (and corresponding drop in the dollar) is more than a big hit. It's more like a crippling hit.

6. Geopolitical winners: 1. Iran. Saddam (their biggest enemy) is gone. They have a friendly government in power in Baghdad (and just in case that changes the Badr brigades they had trained for years in case they needed to push an uprising against Saddam, has seamlessly melted into and put on the uniform of the Iraqi army.) The United States (their most powerful enemy) is no longer able to do more than bomb them, because we played the 'invasion and occupation' card. 2. China. As we decline thanks to Iraq (see #4) we should remember that history always shows us that as one power declines, another invariably rises to challenge its place. Just as we rose, reached parity with, and eventually eclipsed the power of a declining Great Britain. Anyone have any doubt as to what the next superpower will be (or maybe already is?)

As I said several months ago, the best outcome that was possible in Iraq was a Pyrrhic victory. Of course that is better than an outright loss (we've got the trophy, right?) but it in no way vindicates or justifies the stupid and poorly thought out decision to go to war in the first place.

The size of the army

During the recent discussion on Iraq and Afghanistan, we are being confronted again with a hard, cold reality-- that we simply do not have enough ground troops to fully cover the manpower needs of both wars (and you can forget about the idea that our military, at least in terms of being able to invade and occupy yet another country, is an effective deterrent anymore to Iran or anyone else who wishes to pull our tail.

Republicans often love to point out that the military was downsized after the end of the Cold War during the early 1990's and blame Democrats. That is at best an oversimplification however and at worst an outright revision of history. Following the end of the Cold War, the idea of a 'peace dividend' in which less would be spent on the military in the absence of the Soviet threat was widely bandied about Washington by politicians on both the left and the right. In hindsight, it may have been naive to suppose that there would not be other threats, and to fail to anticipate the threat from Islamic extremism, but it is certainly not anything that our friends on the right warned us about back then any more than anyone on the left assumed this would be a problem moving forward. And further, the military of the 1990's was plenty big enough to handle minor crises and wars in places like Haiti and the Balkans.

Since 2003, when we put Afghanistan on the back burner and invaded Iraq though we've had a consistent manpower shortage. The army has struggled to meet recruiting goals, tours have been extended, we've sent national guard units to fight in frontline combat operations in much higher numbers than we ever had before, we've 'stop-lossed' thousands of soldiers who were due to leave the army and some people are back in Iraq on their third and fourth tours. And recently it has become even clearer, as the administration has all but admitted that we don't have enough troops for Afghanistan because of how many are tied up in Iraq.

There was also a mini-scandal of sorts that came out this week in that it turns out the number of new recruits who have 'waivers' allowing them to join the army despite juvenile convictions or other issues has jumped from about 5% of all new recruits in 2004-2005 to a rate so far this year running at around 13%. For the record, that doesn't bother me at all since I believe that many young people make mistakes when they are younger and I don't believe that getting busted for underage drinking, drug use or some other petty crime in high school should disqualify someone who wants to turn his or her life around from doing so in the military.

We can still bomb the heck out of anyone who gets in our way but in the kinds of guerilla wars we find ourselves fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, overwhelming air superiority is at best only a minor benefit. In fact, this points out one of the basic problems we've had. We still spend as much as twenty times as much on our military as any other country in the world. So funding isn't the issue. But we've bought far too much expensive military hardware that has little use in today's wars, while neglecting the most basic of resources-- the 'boots on the ground.' We still have thousands of nuclear warheads, including those in storage, but not enough feet with boots on them. Some of this has to do with the structure of Washington itself-- makers of expensive planes and other high-tech equipment have a whole lot more lobbying muscle in Washington than does anyone whose priority is simply to make sure that we have a military tuned to the demands of the present and foreseeable future.

It is also true that during the 2004 campaign John Kerry promised that if elected he would authorize and expansion of the army to include the creation of two new combat divisions. George Bush was asked about it once during the campaign and said he'd 'consider it.' Unfortunately Bush won that election, and whether for reasons of pride (because the idea originated with his opponent) or because he is too dumb to realize the urgent need for a larger ground army, he never followed up on the proposal. Of course it takes time to authorize, pay for, recruit, train and equip a larger army (not that much time though-- in WWII we trained, equipped, won the war and had them back home in less than four years.) But had the President borrowed a good idea from his opponent and asked for the two divisions back when he began his second term they would be well on the way towards being usable and giving us the capability to fight two ground-intensive wars that we now lack.

I don't believe that we have to spend any more money to get a larger military either. I believe that instead of spending over a billion dollars on a single bomber, we should maybe look at reprioritizing our military budget and prioritize towards having more ground troops available and fully trained and equipped.

Patrolling in Kabul is 'romantic?' Either the President is delusional or kinky in a very strange way.

Well we now know what President Bush's definition of 'romantic' is. serving in the Afghan war.

I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Yeah. uh-huh. If he was younger he'd serve. This from a guy who pulled strings to get out of going to Vietnam.

Not seeing your family for months on end, patrolling streets half a world away and hoping not to encounter any suicide bombers along the way, or at least hoping that if there are any then you will find them before they find you. Seeing blood and death and carnage. Wondering why the administration didn't put in enough troops at the outset to do more than turn Afghanisan into an endless war of attrition against an enemy with a steady stream of recruits. Going to bed each night with the realization that you've cheated death once again and the time until you see your family again is one day shorter.

There are a lot of words that kind of image conjures up in my mind, but 'romantic' isn't one of them.

Ask the question: If Pat Tillman was murdered, who didn't want him to come back alive?

Once again (in what we are learning is a story which seems to get worse every time we get closer to the truth,) we've learned some disturbing new details regarding the death of Pat Tillman.

Tillman, you may recall, was the NFL star who left a career worth millions of dollars per year to join the elite U.S. Army Rangers (along with his brother Kevin) after 9/11 so he could fight in Afghanistan against the people who had actually attacked us. After a stint in Iraq, where he told comrades that he opposed the Iraq war and believed that it served no purpose in the war against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, he was redeployed to Afghanistan where he died on April 22, 2004. Within hours, a heroic story about his death was put out, and he was even awarded a silver star. A nice touch, it turned out to what was even then known to be a big lie.

But in today's story, we learn much more. Much more disturbing.

SAN FRANCISCO - Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors, whose names were blacked out, said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away....

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if it would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters, and they had said no," the doctor testified.

We also learned this:

• No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire nor was any government equipment struck.

After their first set of lies was exposed, the Pentagon and the White House are still sticking stubbornly to their second story, that it was a friendly fire 'accident,' even now offering up the heads of several generals on a platter.

But the evidence is still there, that this was no accident. And the motivation is clear: Pat Tillman was well known to personally oppose the Iraq war, which was not the war he signed up to fight. And after his commitment was over, he'd have been a devastatingly effective opponent of that war. Even Ann Coulter would have had a tough time attacking Tillman after he got home from both Afghanistan and Iraq, and began speaking out against the Iraq war. April 2004 was the month that Iraq boiled over and it was clear that the U.S. would be there longer than Tillman's commitment. So suddenly he died, conveniently in the war he had volunteered for, and within hours the heroism story was out, carefully scripted and made to order, complete with silver star.

Mary Tillman is right, this doesn't pass the sniff test. There is more here that needs to be investigated. Let's hope that Congress demands to know the names of the doctors involved and determines why their suspicions that it was murder weren't acted on. It is true that the army did eventually conduct an inquiry in which they asked if any of the men in his unit disliked Tillman. But maybe that isn't the inquiry that needs to be asked in regard to what appears to be a cold blooded case of murder. Maybe the question needs to be asked, who was afraid of Pat Tillman, and how far would they go in order to prevent him from saying what he was going to say after he left the army?

They're still looking for a chump.

The latest news is that several months after proposing the creation of the office of a 'war czar' to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are still looking to fill it after several qualified candidates said, 'thanks, but no thanks.'

Of course the office itself is absurd. We already have the joint chiefs of staff, the secretary of defense and above them the Commander in Chief who is supposed to be doing all of that. It is hard to imagine what another high level bureaucrat would do that would improve the effectiveness of either war.

Ultimately, it isn't about improving effectiveness, as has been pitched. It's not about that at all.

It's about finding a sucker to be the scapegoat. The day after last year's election, Don Rumsfeld, who had been absorbing the brunt of the criticism for our failed war policy, resigned. So who does that leave? His replacement, the joint chiefs and the President. What this sounds like is that they all agreed that none of them wanted to be the 'fall guy' when (no longer if) we leave Iraq without leaving behind the grand democracy that was envisioned, but which was never a realistic vision. And even more tragically, the war in Afghanistan (which I've always, see Terrorism and the Afghan War) which should have been our focus, has since it quit being our focus degenerated into a mini-Iraq (except that the problems there are growing-- it's not so 'mini' anymore either.) So sooner or later we may have to make the incredibly hard decision to recognize that the chance that we did have to get rid of the people who really are our enemies in Afghanistan, has passed us by, and decide whether we want to refocus our efforts where they should have been in the first place and gamble on being able to reverse the direction of an increasingly uncertain and bloody war or withdraw and think very carefully through what the pitfalls are of getting sidetracked before we make another attempt.

The decision to put Afghanistan on the back burner before we had caught up to the al-Qaeda leaders there and invade Iraq was made early on during the Afghan war, and the present situation in both countries can be pinned on that single decision. But now those who made it don't want to be tagged with the consequences. All of which makes the 'war czar' position come into much sharper focus.

It's really the office of the 'blame czar.'

And obviously everyone they've asked so far to take the job, can see that very clearly.

Consider why a terrorst wanted Republicans in power in Washington.

We've by now seen the news reports that a terrorist donated large amounts of money to the Republican Congressional Committee. The man, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari (who went by the alias 'Michael Mixon') has been indicted on, among other things, sending money to fund a terror training camp in Afghanistan.

But what is interesting is to look at the dates.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, www.politicalmoneyline.com and www.opensecrets.org.

Why would a supporter of terrorism in Afghanistan suddenly start supporting Republicans in April of 2002?

Well, that is almost exactly when the Bush administration and other Republicans started talking about shifting their focus away from Afghanistan to Iraq.

I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority...."

"I am truly not that concerned about him [in response to a question about bin Laden]."

Both quotes by George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

In other words, during the period in question, the Bush administration was specifically de-emphasizing the war in Afghanistan in order to change their focus to Iraq. Democrats (especially Al Gore, who in 2002 was considered likely to run again in 2004) were sharply critical and suggested pushing harder in Afghanistan.

I'm not suggesting that there was any quid pro quo with Mr. Alishtari's donations (which in the overall scheme of things probably did not make much difference). What I am suggesting is simply that a terrorist supporting other terrorists in Afghanistan saw that what the President and the GOP was doing was going to help his friends (those who attacked us on 9/11) and therefore did what he could to push the Republican agenda forward. The Republican party has claimed they had no idea who he was and I believe them. But they should heed the call to give back the money now that it is known.

And he was right, Bush policy has helped them.

Taliban making a comeback while we are fixated on Iraq

While all the focus is (still) on Iraq, it seems like no one is paying attention to 'the forgotten war' in Afghanistan.

Like Iraq, the situation is deteriorating and has been for over four years. Like Iraq, we have seen poor leadership from this administration that has played into why we are stuck in such a bad situation. And like Iraq, our troops have become targets in an ongoing civil war.

There is a difference however. Lest we forget, those who actually did us harm on 9/11 were hiding out in Afghanistan, not Iraq. And unlike Iraq, which was simply a war of George Bush's choice, and which was therefore not supported widely within the international community, there was very little opposition from that community to our invading the Taliban-run country.

But Afghanistan has just never been a major concern for this administration. As former President Clinton astutely noted, there are more than seven times as many American troops in Iraq as there are in and around Afghanistan. The whole argument about 'fighting terrorists over there...' falls flat on its face when we see how little the war against al-Qaeda in the place where we know for a fact they are strongest fits into the priority scheme. In fact, we even have President Bush on record:

I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.

-- George W. Bush on March 13, 2002 (more than a year before the Iraq war, but when he was starting to ratchet up the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein).

Obviously he was telling the truth when he made that quote. Because Afghanistan has not been a priority at all. Well, maybe for a few short weeks during election season (as I wrote in a post entitled Terrorism and the Afghan War (written last year, exactly two months before the November election). The President had at the time been talking a lot more about the Afghan war and al-Qaeda than he had for-- well-- since the 2004 election:

I bet that by Christmas, Afghanistan will be relegated to the same second thought that it has been over the past few years.

I was right about that. Came Christmas, and it was. Fortunately, the Bush administration had gone to that well one too many times and the American people didn't buy it.

I believe two (not necessarily contradictory) things about Afghanistan. The first is that we actually have a real reason for being there and we should stay until the Taliban and bin Laden are gone. The second, on the other hand, is that we have already compromised our position in Afghanistan because of the focus on Iraq. If we are not ready to make fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda there our priority then getting out is a much better option than continuing to fight the war of attrition we see going on right now.

Continuing to send American troops to fight and die in Afghanistan while we send the resources they would need to Iraq is the worst of all worlds, and if that is the Bush administration's plan then we owe it to our troops to get them out of there.

Yeah, it's Christmas. And I was right.

This would be a good time to visit a 'crystal ball' kind of prediction:

Back on September 7, as the President was suddenly focusing on the Afghan war (you know, the war against the folks who really attacked us on 9/11) as a way of diverting attention from Iraq, I wrote:

Terrorism and the Afghan War:

At the end I predicted, based on past elections, that the new focus on the Afghan war was an election related smokescreen:

So that explains a lot of why, with the election less than nine weeks away, we are suddenly seeing such a renewed focus on the war in Afghanistan right now.

Sure, conservatives will express shock at my questioning the President's motives.

All I'd say is, be sure to continue to ask him about the war in Afghanistan in November after the election and December.

Because I bet that by Christmas, Afghanistan will be relegated to the same second thought that it has been over the past few years. Hope I'm wrong, but that's what I expect.

Well, Christmas is here, and the focus is on... Iraq.

What really bothers me about this is that what the President and his advisors once again used as election campaign fodder isn't the usual stuff about abortion, guns, gays, etc.-- I can handle that-- but wars which involve the deaths of thousands of people (including hundreds of Americans), to say nothing of the aspirations and hopes of millions of people.