Afghanistan: The Other Bush Debacle

Frankly, after nearly four years, it appears that our entire effort in Afghanistan has accomplished very little -- no Osama bin Laden, no Taliban leader Mullah Omar, no control over 99% of the country outside of Kabul.  In fact, about the only thing our underfunded, ill-conceived and distracted effort in Afghanistan has really accomplished is to give the country to the same violent, corrupt warlords who used to control it during 25 years of civil war.  Oh yeah, we've also managed to turn Afghanistan into poppy/opium central once again, enough to make 582 tons of heroin in 2004 alone.

The sad thing is, it didn't have to be this way.  Unfortunately, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is a direct result of the Bush Administration's poorly conceived strategy from Day #1.  However, according to the March 2005 New York Review of Books article, "The Real Afghanistan," by Pankaj Mishra:

Apart from Americans serving at bases in countries near Afghanistan and those involved in aerial bombing, the US had committed only about 110 CIA officers and 316 Special Forces personnel to the overthrow of the Taliban.  The Bush administration may have feared a stalemate in Afghanistan, where the armies of the British Empire and the Soviet Union have done poorly. Or it may have planned to save ground troops for future military operations in Iraq. In any case, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld preferred using small, highly mobile forces supported by precision bombing in Afghanistan.

As a result of Rumsfeld's theories and Bush's Iraq distraction, we did not capture Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora, we did not thoroughly defeat the now-resurgent Taliban we did not secure the country, and we did not secure the country.  To make matters worse, we have allowed former Mujahadeen, specialists in drugs, "extrajudicial killings, kidnapping, torture, rape, and human trafficking," to come "out of exile and retirement."  Perhaps the worst example of this was the so-called "Death Convoy of Afghanistan," in which one of the warlords we were working with, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, killed "up to three thousand Taliban prisoners crammed by [Dostum's forces] into sealed cargo containers" and left to suffocate.  These are the people who Bush and Rumsfeld allied themselves with in order to get the Afghanistan job done on the cheap, and poorly at that, mainly so they could pursue their real goal:  war with Iraq.

Meanwhile, according to Mishra:

More people in southern and eastern Afghanistan are likely to be drawn to radical Islamists as aerial bombings and raids on villages continue, and the US military places itself further beyond international law.

No one among the thousands of Afghans detained by the US military at mostly unknown locations across Afghanistan since 2001 has been given prisoner-of-war status. Often released as arbitrarily as they are arrested, they have no access to legal counsel. Mistreatment during interrogation?beatings, sexual humiliation, and sleep deprivation?appears common. Eight Afghans have died in American custody. Last year, two of these deaths were ruled homicides by US military doctors at Bagram air base, near Kabul.

This is a sure recipe for failure in Afghanistan, and in the "war on terror" in general.  And the blame for concocting this recipe can be placed right at the feet of one George W. Bush, great leader in said war.  Not.

Ominously, today's New York Times' article points out that, "For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future." The article elaborates on "a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations."  And, despite right-wingers' desperate denials that bad behavior by the United States (see Abu Ghraib, Gitmo) makes a difference:

Afghans interviewed this week frequently warned that if the American forces did not show greater care, especially in their treatment of detainees and their families, the people could turn against them. 'They should respect our culture and our religion and they will be successful,said Lal Muhammad, the senior partner of a real estate firm in the southern city of Kandahar.

In other words, nearly four years since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, this is far from the great "victory" the Bush Administration likes to tout.  To the contrary, we've now got a mess on our hands.  Resurgent opium production.  Reliance on war-criminal warlords.  Insecurity and unrest.  A Taliban comeback.  American military forces under increasingly deadly attack.  And no sign of a "success strategy" or an "exit strategy."  Does all this sound familiar?  Unfortunately, it seems to be the Bush way, not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq. 

Here's the bottom line:  whether or not you agree with the "war on terror," if the United States is going to fight it, we need to fight to win.  And that means fighting with the intention, the resources, and the leadership needed, not trying to do it in the half-assed way our "strong" and "resolute" Fearless Leader has done.  If not, our courageous fighting men and women will have died in vain, and our hundreds of billions of dollars will have been flushed down a rat hole.  Perhaps Bush calls this "Mission Accomplished," but I for one certainly do not.

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