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.

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.

More troubling questions about the Bhutto assassination

The Pakistani government is raising a lot more questions than it is providing answers in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Bhutto herself sent an e-mail to be released in the event of her assassination that blames Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharrif, who she believed was behind blocking a request to have the FBI and Scotland Yard investigate a bombing at one of her rallies on October 18, and subsequent moves to reduce her security when she had asked for more.

It does seem very likely that the bombing was carried out (as claimed) by radical Islamists, almost certainly associated with al-Qaeda. I don't buy into the theory that some in Pakistan and a few in the United States have claimed that Pakistani security were directly involved and tried to make it look like al-Qaeda because 1. that ascribes to them a level of competence and sophistication that frankly they don't have; 2. it is hard to imagine Pervez Musharrif inspiring a suicide bomber to give up his life for the regime; and 3. it would be illogical for the Musharrif regime to do so because there are enough real Islamicists in Pakistan who wanted Bhutto dead that they would only need to take a step back and let them kill her.

It is this last possibility, however, which seems at least distressingly close to the most likely scenario. Bhutto was widely disliked and distrusted both by the Musharrif dictatorship and by Islamic radicals within the army itself, and that has been widely reported. There is no reason why they would have blocked outside agencies from investigating the October 18 blast unless there were something to hide. And to reduce security when she asked that it be increased seems inexplicable unless they were actually hoping that it would fail. There are reports that even the security that was provided, mainly local police, abandoned their posts as the rally last Thursday droned on longer than expected.

Most damning however is the set of contradictory reports regarding the cause of her death. Within thirty-six hours it went from bullet wounds to shrapnel and then to a report that she had bashed her head against a lever on the sunroof of her minivan after the explosion.

This may not seem important, but it is in Pakistan. To be killed while standing for what you believe in is seen as a martyr's death and is much more inspirational than to be killed in an accident. Martyrs hold a special place in the Islamic world and are valued as inspirational leaders in a way which western culture has trouble understanding.

For this reason, some had tried to portray it as her fault that she 'just happened to clumsily bash her own head while ducking while she was coincidentally being shot at' in order to deny her a martyr's death. That seeems odd to me, reminding me of the case in Belen, New Mexico some years ago when I lived there when a 21 year old thug was charged with murder after he had jumped on the chest and head of an 89 year old woman, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. Originally the diagnosis was that he ahd caused her death by crushing her windpipe, but then it turned out that she had died from a massive heart attack, which she apparently suffered moments before he landed on her windpipe, while he was still jumping on her chest. So his lawyer tried to get them to throw out the murder charge, arguing that she had died from the heart attack, which she coincidentally just happened to have while this guy was jumping on her chest and the prosecution couldn't prove that the two events were related. I don't remember how that one turned out, in fact I think I left the state before they ruled on the motion. But common sense dictates that he was responsible for her death, regardless how it happened, and the same kind of common sense is that Bhutto was assassinated no matter what the immediate cause of death was.

However, a videotape made of the assassination shows clearly that she was shot and fell back into the vehicle before the attacker blew himself up. That makes a huge difference because not only does it prove that she did indeed die specifically of wounds suffered by the gunshots (as people who were in the vehicle have been saying) but that the story put out by the government is simply a fabrication. For them to have said something like that is stupid in 2007 (or 2008) when it is virtually certain that at a public event like that there would be hundreds of video cameras, cell phones and other video recording devices. Like I said before though, competence is not their strong suit.

Bush doctrine: we support democracy-- except where we don't.

Today the Supreme Court of Pakistan threw out five of the six complaints that had been lodged against the election last month of General Pervez Musharrif as President of Pakistan.

Of course, the whole thing is a sham. The 'election' was carefully conducted only among three hundred or so assembly members, virtually assuring that Muharrif would be re-elected. However the opposition to Musharrif, who seized power in a coup nearly a decade ago and has steadfastly refused to give any of it up, complained to Pakistan's Supreme Court and asked that the election be declared illegal. On the eve of the ruling, which would have gone against Musharrif, he declared 'emergency law' and summarily dismissed all of the Supreme Court justices who refused to sign a loyalty oath to him. He then filled the vacancies with his hand-picked replacements, so that the decision rendered today might as well have been written by Musharrif personally.

President Bush has asked that Musharrif leave the army. So he will. That doesn't make him any less of a dictator, nor does it do any more to legitimize his 'election' than the rump Supreme Court decision we saw today. (I could add an acerbic comment here about Bush and elections and Supreme Court decisions, but you all know what I'd say, so I won't.)

What it does is point out in stark relief two things.

1, The support of 'democracy' everywhere that Bush pledged in his second inaugural speech is null and void in countries where the dictator kisses up to us.

2. Bush was a fool for fashioning our whole policy in Pakistan around Pervez Musharrif. There is no 'plan B,' and now State Department officials are feverishly trying to craft one in case someone other than Musharrif emerges from the present crisis as being in control in Pakistan. Sound familiar?