While President Obama has increasingly relied on unmanned drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Gen. McChrystal’s memo, the one recently leaked to Bob Woodward, advocates even greater troop commitments to Afghanistan—as many as forty-thousand by next year—not to battle insurgents so much as to protect the people. The end game is to protect local communities until such time as the Afghan people can raise and train a force of four hundred thousand police and military to protect themselves against insurgents. Theoretically, this sounds simple, and I am certainly in favor of protecting honest folks from the likes of the Taliban.
But of course, there is nothing simple about implementing this plan. Afghanistan is a region in chronic disarray. Gen. McChrystal notes in his memo, “Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population.” For this new plan to succeed, ISAF soldiers will, among other elements, have to accept greater vulnerability to attack, and learn local dialects. I wonder how many Afghan dialects Rosetta Stone offers. This all seems to conform nicely to the new paradigm of counterinsurgency, wherein the U.S. forces are not occupiers, but guests. But the purpose of our visit is still unclear to me. Condoleezza Rice recently told Fortune that “If you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.” But there is something obsessively myopic about the remark. The F.B.I., with its arrests in Denver and New York, has proven yet again how effective it can be at preventing terrorist attacks, and it does it on less than one tenth of the defense budget.
U.S. policy in Afghanistan increasingly reminds me of the episode of The Twilight Zone in which a little girl inadvertently slips though her bedroom wall and into a dimension not unlike an M.C. Escher drawing. The laws of Euclidean geometry become invalid and useless. Consequently, whenever she thinks she is moving back toward her room, she is only wandering aimlessly through a chaotic void. Similarly, the things Americans take for granted—strong national government, police, roads—are, in Afghanistan, dodgy at best. Familiar methods will have unpredictable results. Even a win might be a loss.
Category: General Politics, Military & War, World Affairs
Tags: Afghanistan, counter-insurgency, insurgence, leak, McChrysta, memo, Taliban
Tuesday, 22. September 2009
And here we are back in Afghanistan, the last time we were here we help defeat the USSR, but didn’t have the stomach to stick around and make it right. We need to live up to our comittments, today comittment is tough
Leaving to quick will dreate the void for the worng infill, staying too long becomes another Vietnam
Skilled leaders like General MCChrystal need support to make it right. We need to step up and support not step down
“All evil needs to suceed is for good men to do nothing”
Step Up America show our guts to make it right
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
It is hard to keep the funding to rebuild, but so easy to get the money to kill.
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
We need to step up and work with Pakistan. We also need to work with India on a bilateral resolution to their conflict with Pakistan. This will help prevent Islamabad from having to spend resources protecting itself from its major enemy. In addition, NATO needs to make a bigger commitment to the situation. If we have additional forces from other countries, then the responsibility won’t be all ours. This is the place where empires die. But if we have the full support of the world, then it won’t just be our empire on the line, but the whole world’s.
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
We should just nuke the bastards.
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
I think we should just cut our losses and get the hell out of there. There’s no way for us to win. Besides, what is a victory? How many more American lives need to be lost for a situation that was bullshit to begin with. We’ll never find Bin Laden, if he’s even alive anymore. We’ll also just keep spending money in a never-ending pit. The Taliban control that country and that’s the way it is.
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
Also, Trap Door Spider is an idiot.
Wednesday, 23. September 2009
We need to stay the course in Afghanistan. If we don’t fight them there than the’lljust come back here. We’ll get another 9/11. Obama’s plans so far are endagering america. he’s cutting military like the f22 raptor.
Thursday, 24. September 2009
These guys probably think it would be a good idea to just bomb everyone. Hasn’t our recent adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq proven that the American military isn’t as badass as everyone thought. If these small countries can tie us down, what would China do?