By Ron Beasley
As Steve noted below Obama's National Security Adviser, James L. Jones has some serious doubts about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. As Jones said:
"we can't want this more than the Afghans"
Well increasingly the Afghans want it less.
“What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?”
Such sentiments were repeated in conversation after conversation with more than 30 Afghans in Kabul and nearby rural areas and with local officials in outlying provinces. The comments point to the difficulties that American and Afghan officials face if they choose to add more foreign troops.
If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here.
The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.
There may have been a time when we could make a difference in Afghanistan but that time is long past.
By Steve Hynd
In a new interview with German mag Der Spiegel out today, Obama's National Security Adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, is sounding skeptical about the McChrystal escalation request for extra troops in Afghanistan. He says, dismissively, that "generals always ask for more troops".
SPIEGEL: The Obama administration is reviewing the strategy for Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, is asking for additional troops.
Jones: Generals always ask for more troops. Take it from me.
SPIEGEL: You would know. You're also a general and you were in Afghanistan from 2003 to almost 2007 ...
Jones: ... and of course when I was there I asked for more troops. When we started in 2003, we had to develop a plan. So by definition, you have to ask for people.
SPIEGEL: And now you support General McChrystal's demand for 40,000 additional troops?
Jones: We are in the middle of a process with the president and all of his advisers in assessing the overall situation in Afghanistan. I believe we will not solve the problem with troops alone. The minimum number is important, of course. But there is no maximum number, however. And what's really important in Afghanistan is that with this new administration we insist on good governance, that it be coordinated with economic development and security, and that we have much, much better success at handing over responsibility for these three things to the Afghans.
SPIEGEL: To President Hamid Karzai, who has just been reelected after a controversial election?
Jones: To the Afghans. And we will put much more emphasis on battling corruption and putting competent and honest people in positions of authority. We will be working with our friends and allies to do that.
SPIEGEL: When do you expect a final decision on McChrystal's request?
Jones: It will be a decision made by all NATO members, not just the US president. As part of NATO we are one of 28 nations, and we are going to closely follow NATO's discussions of the McChrystal request. It's a NATO request of which the US will do a portion of it, but we think other countries will do their share as well.
If Jones really means that, and isn't just glad-handing NATO co-operation to a European media outlet, then the McChrystal request may just be D.O.A. Britain might contribute troops for a training mission, but I doubt America will get any other realistic contributions from other NATO members. Canada is on its way to its own exit ramp, Italy and France will not get further involved and Germany is deeply riven on the issue. The rest, frankly, don't count.
Jones also suggests that the main mission of "defeating , disrupting, and dismantling" Al Qaeda has already succeeded in Afghanistan and that the real focus of that mission is now in Pakistan - where extra US and NATO troops are of very limited usefulness.
SPIEGEL: What is the goal in Afghanistan right now -- to win the war?
Jones: Our definition of the goal has been to defeat, disrupt, and dismantle the al-Qaida network, which is the one that is the most significant threat to our homeland and to the European homeland. These are people that will stop at nothing. So we pay a lot of attention to where they are and what they're doing. We want those three D's, if you will, to make sure that they cannot come back to Afghanistan and reestablish a platform from which they can organize and equip themselves to do what they did several years ago. On that score, we're pretty successful in Afghanistan.
SPIEGEL: But al-Qaida has not been destroyed. The terrorists are now operating from Pakistan.
Jones: Unfortunately, there are some safe havens in Pakistan and it looks like the Pakistan army is seriously going after them. There are operations in Swat Valley and now in South Waziristan and we hope that they will continue. We intend to be of whatever help we can to ensure that they try to rid themselves of that cancer that exists between the two countries.
SPIEGEL: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently expressed her disappointment in how the Pakistani government is fighting al-Qaida. Do you share her view?
Jones: Well, if you had been here in March and asked me the question whether I'm more worried about Afghanistan or Pakistan, I would have said Pakistan because they had this policy of appeasement, which was flawed. I think they recognized it as well. Since March, they have done reasonably well in what they set out to do. We hope they have long-term objectives to go after all insurgents, not just theirs, but after the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaida, and other groups. This is really going to continue to eat at the fabric of their country if they don't.
Although Jones says that he doesn't know when U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan, he also raises the legitimacy issue, using a phrase other administration officials have already trotted out: "we can't want this more than the Afghans". He also says "You can keep on putting troops in, and you could have 200,000 troops there and the country will swallow them up as it has done in the past."
With administration officials signalling that we're still some time away from any official announcement on McChrystal's plan, Jones would appear to be one of the skeptical voices within the administration about the need for that escalation.
By Steve Hynd
The Obama administration has a new so-called Afghan Compact which is designed to increase good governance in Afghanistan and reduce corruption. The main problem, though, is that any compact needs two sides agreeing to implement it.
The success of the so-called "Afghanistan Compact" will hinge on Karzai's willingness to take bold actions such as cracking down on official corruption, replacing ineffective ministers and surrendering some power to local authorities, which in the past he's resisted or failed to undertake.
"As long as the population views its government as weak or predatory, the Taliban's 'alternative' style of delivering security and some form of justice will continue to have traction," says a U.S. government document that outlines part of the proposed Compact and was obtained by McClatchy.
"We would have to see some really concrete actions on the part of Karzai to be able to take this seriously," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst, now at the Middle East Institute. "It looks great on paper."
Yeah, the military's counter-insurgency theory and the infamous COIN Guide for Policymakers look great on paper too. But when the rubber hits the road...
The new-deal Compact, in the manner of the new softly-softly colonialism that COIN has popularized, is entirely a U.S. creation but is supposed to look like it's Karzai's idea:
The Obama administration has been developing the Compact for months in coordination with U.S. allies and Karzai's government. It's tried to keep the effort quiet so it could be presented as an Afghan initiative, according to several U.S. and European officials and the U.S. government document. "Afghans must lead," the document says.
The document outlines proposals for ceding greater power to authorities who run Afghanistan's 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts, including providing them with more development funds and the ability to direct them to projects that they think are most needed.
U.S. officials said Karzai also would be expected to implement new efforts to crack down on rampant corruption fueled by the country's production of opium, which is used to produce heroin, and to replace ineffective ministers with technocrats. Ministries that fail to improve could see international funds cut, they said.
Like any of the ministers care if their ministries funds get cut. It'll reduce their graft money inflow somewhat, but most are making far more from the corruption or drug trafficking they're supposed to stop. The people that get hurt, therefore, are common Afghans at the bottom of the heap. Meanwhile, plans to decentralize just mean more opportunities for provincial warlords and grafters to make some of the moolah their Kabul superiors have been keeping to themselves. That's if they ever happen, which I wouldn't suggest Obama holds his breath for. Puce wouldn't suit him.
Cynical, moi?
A U.S. intelligence official also said he was skeptical because the compact would require Karzai to break deals he made with warlords and power barons who oversaw ballot box-stuffing on his behalf.
"Karzai won't do the things it says he'll do — in fact, he can't do some of them without getting killed — and we have no way to enforce it. Do we threaten to cut off aid if he doesn't give Parliament or the provincial governors a bigger role? Threaten to withdraw troops? Arrest his brother down in Kandahar for drug-trafficking?" said the U.S. intelligence official.
Gareth Porter in his latest piece (subscription only, sorry) agrees with that anonymous U.S. intelligence official. He writes:
the sudden intensification of administration pressure on the issue of corruption is aimed less at far-reaching reform of the system than at avoiding a significant worsening of the problem in the wake of Karzai's fraudulent re-election.
In return for their pledges to guarantee huge majorities for Karzai in the Aug. 20 election, the Afghan president had to make promises to a number of power brokers or warlords in the provinces. Some of those were promised key ministries in the next government, according to Gilles Dorronsoro, a specialist on Afghanistan at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The main concern in Kabul and Washington in the wake of Karzai's reelection is how many of the warlords to whom Karzai is indebted will be rewarded with ministries when the new cabinet is announced,
"Everybody who supported Karzai now expects their payback," said Dorronsoro, who spent the entire month of August in Afghanistan.
...Dorronsoro believes the administration's influence on Karzai's new government is going to be constrained by Karzai's dependence on provincial and sub-provincial warlords who control the actual levers of power outside Kabul. The U.S. pressure on Karzai "can only work on a few ministries and a few issues", he told IPS.
Gareth quotes David Kilcullen as saying last August that "There is no Afghan government in the way there is an American government. There are only a series of fiefdoms." In the majority of those fiefdoms, it will be business as usual.
Meanwhile, across the pond, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is sending what his opposition rightly says are conflicting signals.
Gordon Brown has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai he will not put UK troops "in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption".
In a speech, Mr Brown said the UK "cannot, must not and will not walk away" from its mission in Afghanistan.
But he said continued coalition support would depend on the delivery of reform.
"International support depends on the scale of his ambition and the degree of his achievement in five key areas: security, governance, reconciliation, economic development and engagement with its neighbours," said Mr Brown.
"If, with our help, the new government of Afghanistan meets these five tests, it will have fulfilled an essential contract with its own people. And it will have earned the continuing support of the international community, despite the continuing sacrifice.
"If the government fails to meet these five tests, it will have not only failed its own people, it will have forfeited its right to international support."
Brown cannot have it both ways. Either the UK will withdraw its support - and that means including withdrawing its troops - if Karzai doesn't play nice or it "will not walk away". Yet Brown is in the same cleft stick Obama is in; he's only being a little more honest about it. A timetable for withdrawal - and the prospect of Karzai and his warlords having no Western backing in their ongoing thirty year civil war with the Taliban - is the only leverage the West realistically has left. We've seen this situation before, in Iraq in 2006/08. However, for the moment, the U.S. and U.K. governments are too afraid of the political blowback domestically to properly wield the only political stick they have.
Which means the new Afghan Compact is a clunker that should be traded in before it costs us even more blood and treasure.
Along these lines, I think it's important to push back on a particular line of COIN critique:
In addition, the doctrine of counterinsurgency virtually assures long-running military campaigns in other hot spots, even as we're engaged in combat and rebuilding operations in Afghanistan. "We're going to be involved in this type of activity in a number of countries for the next 15 to 20 years," said Lt. Gen. David Barno, a COIN advocate who served as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
I'm pretty skeptical of this line of thinking, and I'd like to see that quote in full context; I'm not convinced that Barno is making the point that Dreyfuss wants him to make. There's no question that COIN can be a critical part of the imperial project; indeed, for really successful territorial imperialism in the modern age a COIN oriented military would be absolutely necessary. The roots of COIN clearly lie in the age of empire. However, I think that warnings about how the adoption of a successful COIN doctrine and orientation will lead to additional counter-insurgency campaigns is fundamentally wrong-headed, for two reasons. First, the United States didn't need capable COIN to become involved in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. A conventional military doctrine did nothing to prevent any of these wars, and there's no indication that it would do so in the future....
Winning quickly and leaving, however, is something that COIN advocates can never promise. The way of fighting that COIN proponents advocate doesn't lead to the sort of war that American hawks like, or that is very palatable to the American public. The kind of war that COIN advocates want is the kind of war that the US is least likely to engage in if the COIN faction becomes dominant. In the American political context, an appreciation of the costs of COIN means fewer wars, not more.
This is a seductive argument that is wrong on two counts. The first is the domestic political dynamic makes it much easier for hawks to propose and implement policy than it is for doves. The thumb is on the scale for invasions to defend people from themselves for their own good and then tangentially for US national interests (our motives, as always, are pure.) COIN doctrine as the dominant Pentagon faction makes the dove argument against long term chaos, which was trotted out for Iraq, a politically weaker document as invasion proponents can say "We can handle it, as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan (let's ignore the strategic failures of the Surge and the lack of clear political goals in Afghanistan that are not mutually contradicted by other strategic goals and the basic societal matrix... and let's ignore ethnic cleansing and the weakening of the post-Westphalian state while we are at it too....)
Secondly, and more importantly, let us assume that the COIN bureaucrat proponents completely win their fight with the conventional forces and conventional threat factions in the Pentagon --- does that mean the US will retire all heavy armored and mechanized infantry units? No, it may mean a few more heavy brigades are shifted to a Stryker configuration or moved to the National Guard. Will the Air Force get rid of the F-15C/F-22 air superiority capability? No, they may decrease it to buy more drones. Will this mean the US Navy gives up nuclear attack subs? No, they'll just relabel the program office and argue that fast attack subs protect us from seaborne insurgents that we are seeing in Afghanistan[/snark].
The US military has put a massive amount of intellectual muscle and funding behind the concept of full-spectrum dominance: means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations.
COIN advocates in charge most likely means an "add-on" to capabability or de minimas a marginal reshifting of force structure for the next fifteen to twenty years; the heavy invasion and counter-attack forces will still be in the US inventory and still on active duty in significant numbers. So as long as full-spectrum dominance is the US doctrine of choice and we collectively get our panties in a bunch at states that wish they could spend 1% of our annual defense budget on their militaries, COIN does not decrease the chance of future interventions; it instead probably increases the chance of future interventions and invasions as it is a "solution" that is "proven to work" as long as not too many questions are raised about either what "working" means or the initial rosy scenario assumptions that are made to sell the invasion.
By Steve Hynd
Another British soldier has died for Bush and Blair's Afghan adventure - the one neither Obama nor Brown have the balls to admit they should get out of.
230 British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan. For reference, the number of British servicemen killed during the Falkland War was 252. The number killed has already surpassed the 179 dead in Iraq
The percentage of the British populace who favor withdrwal from Afghanistan has jumped 10% in just two weeks, according to polls.
Britain is in the runup to a General Election, with the Labour Party deeply split on the war and with the Tories already trying to outflank Brown's government to the Left.
By the time the toll of Afghan dead passes that Falklands War landmark figure, pressure for the UK to leave will be unignorable. The tragedy is that Brown will allow those other soldiers to die before accepting the inevitable.
The United Nations said Thursday it would pull about 600 staff members out of Afghanistan in the wake of a militant attack that killed five staff members and wounded nine.
By Steve Hynd
The news that an Afghan policeman has shot British soldiers who were mentoring his unit, killing five and wounding six more, has sent shockwaves through the UK's press, public and political parties today.
British and Afghan officials said the men were killed at a police checkpoint when the policeman picked up his weapon and began firing.
The British soldiers were living and working at the checkpoint as part of a team mentoring the Afghan National police (ANP).
The gunman apparently fired without warning, then fled. Another six UK servicemen and two ANP officers were injured.
A UK military spokesman said: "It's our understanding that one individual Afghan National policeman, possibly in conjunction with another, went rogue.
"His motives and whereabouts are unknown at this time. Every effort is now being put into hunting down those responsible for this attack."
The Taliban have reportedly claimed responsibility for the attacks, bringing long-standing questions about how thoroughly compromised the Afghan security forces are by militants and their own corruption into sharp focus.
Every single British newspaper is covering the attack and pessimistically analyzing the prospect of the joint US/UK strategy of "we'll stand down as they stand up" ever working. Training the Afghan security forces is the lynchpin of McChrystal's exit strategy and one of the reasons he wants more troops, yet the rush to train those forces has left exactly the kinds of gaping holes that the Taliban can exploit.
Peter Galbraith, the UN official who resigned over UN complicity in Afghan presidential election fraud, told the BBC radio:
"The process of police training and recruiting has been very rushed. Normally the police get an eight-week training course. That is actually very short and there isn't a lot of vetting of police before they are hired.
"And actually, in recent months, they shortened the training programme from eight weeks to five weeks because they wanted to get more police boots on the ground in advance of the elections. So there was a real rush to recruit an additional 10,000, particularly in the south, particularly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
"So it is not totally surprising that people were recruited who may have had Taliban sympathies or were infiltrated into the police by the Taliban although I don't know yet whether in this particular episode that is exactly what happened."
The undermining of the legitimacy of the Afghan government because of the "chaos" surrounding the election had also "created opportunities for the Taliban," he said, sending his condolences to the families of those killed in the incident.
Mr Beattie, who worked with the ANP during tours of Afghanistan in 2006-07 and 2008, said Afghan police officers were often paid off by insurgents.
He alleged that a former chief of police in Helmand was caught talking directly to the Taliban on his personal phone on several occasions.
“It is absolutely right to say that the Afghan police are infiltrated by the Taliban at every level, from the very lowest to the very highest,” he said.
Mr Beattie added: “Fears about the police are really well founded and they have been known about since 2006.
“There are a number of real problems. They’re not really trained properly.
“They’re really a militia, a tribal police whose allegiances are not necessarily to the government or even to the provincial governor. It is normally to their village or tribe or the area they come from.
“Because they’re militia they can be bought and paid off at will. If the government’s paying them they’re reasonably happy. But if they don’t get enough money they’re quite happy to be paid by the insurgency.”
He also raised concerns about drug abuse among Afghan police officers, large numbers of whom are said to be habitual users of heroin or cannabis.
The Afghan Interior Minister has described the shooting as an "isolated incident", however that's simply false as the London Times notes:
There have now been several episodes in which Afghan policemen have suddenly turned their weapons on Western mentors or their fellow policemen.
In September a policeman opened fire on an American soldier in the capital, Kabul, seriously wounding him, because the American was drinking water during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally fast during the day. Two Americans died in an unexpected attack in Warden province on October 2. Two weeks later an Afghan policeman hurled a grenade and opened fire on American mentors in eastern Afghanistan, killing one.
While some past attacks appeared to result from cultural misunderstanding and personal disputes, yesterday’s is the third attack in just over a month, suggesting that the incidents may be more than coincidence and the Taleban has begun to plan such episodes.
For now, Gordon Brown is staying the course, saying that the Taliban is afraid of US and UK attempts to mentor Afghan forces and claiming that is the reason for this attack, rather than it being a symptom of failure. It's a pretty thin spin to use as a pretext for the UK's continued involvement.
Still, former foreign office minister Kim Howells, a Labour MP and parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee chairman is just the latest Labour voice to say that the "great majority" of British troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan. With the press and public now firmly against further involvement, and his Conservative opponents trying to outflank him to the Left, Brown - if he survives long enough - is liable to wobble considerably as we approach the next General Election.
By Steve Hynd
Sonali Kolhatkar is co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission and has worked closely with RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) for almost a decade. She has an op-ed at Foreign Policy In Focus that should be read by everyone concerned about an occupation without end in Afghanistan.
Kolhatkar writes:
One of the original justifications for the war in 2001 that seemed to resonate most with liberal Americans was the liberation of Afghan women from a misogynist regime. This is now being resurrected as the following: If the U.S. forces withdraw, any gains made by Afghan women will be reversed and they'll be at the mercy of fundamentalist forces. In fact, the fear of abandoning Afghan women seems to have caused the greatest confusion and paralysis in the antiwar movement.
What this logic misses is that the United States chose right from the start to sell out Afghan women to its misogynist fundamentalist allies on the ground. The U.S. armed the Mujahadeen leaders in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation, opening the door to successive fundamentalist governments including the Taliban. In 2001, the United States then armed the same men, now called the Northern Alliance, to fight the Taliban and then welcomed them into the newly formed government as a reward. The American puppet president Hamid Karzai, in concert with a cabinet and parliament of thugs and criminals, passed one misogynist law after another, appointed one fundamentalist zealot after another to the judiciary, and literally enabled the downfall of Afghan women's rights over eight long years.
Any token gains have been countered by setbacks. For example, while women are considered equal to men in Afghanistan's constitution, there have been vicious and deadly attacks against women's rights activists, the legalization of rape within marriage in the Shia community, and a shockingly high rate of women's imprisonment for so-called honor crimes — all under the watch of the U.S. occupation and the government we are protecting against the Taliban. Add to this the unacceptably high number of innocent women and children killed in U.S. bombing raids, which has also increased the Taliban's numbers and clout, and it makes the case that for eight years the United States has enabled the oppression of Afghan women and only added to their miseries.
...Those who make the case that withdrawing U.S. troops will unleash another bloody civil war where Afghan women and men will be at the mercy of the Taliban and warlords, are raising the exact same justification made for the war in 2001: that it's our moral duty to protect Afghans from fundamentalist violence. This logic ignores the fact that we have nurtured and created the very fundamentalist violence that targets Afghans as explained above. By empowering war criminals and protecting a corrupt government that has forgiven the crimes of all sides including the Taliban, and that even includes some Taliban leaders, all we have done is complicate a war that was on-going. A member of RAWA who goes by the pseudonym Zoya in a U.S. speaking tour last month made it clear that it's hard to imagine things getting worse if the U.S. does pull out immediately. The damage isn't being prevented by the United States — it's being carried out by the United States.
Instead of subjecting Afghans to the three oppressive forces of a stronger Taliban, a corrupt and criminal government, and a deadly foreign occupation, the first thing we Americans can control most directly is to end our occupation immediately. This alone won't address the Taliban and Northern Alliance. But it will reduce the oppressive forces at work, and potentially reduce the legitimacy of the warlords and the motives driving the Taliban.
Read, as they say, the whole thing.
By Steve Hynd
Mother Jones' David Corn, live-tweeting the White House presser as always, has just reported that Gibbs has refused to be drawn on specific anti-corruption measures the U.S. will demand of Hamid Karzai, saying only that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was working on the matter.
The trouble with the Embassy working on it is that the folk there don't have the authority to do the only thing that could conceivably have any effect - announce a withdrawal timetable.
Michael Cohen nails it:
[A] shout out to Spencer for finding this precious quote from an administration official in another Times story:
“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them."Adorable! Meanwhile before those 3-6 months are up this Administration will have likely decided to send even more troops to Afghanistan (i.e. exactly what Karzai wants us to do) basically erasing whatever leverage we have left over the guy to "seriously address" corruption. Why does anyone in this Administration - after watching Karzai steal an election and play the US and NATO like a fiddle - think he will do anything seriously different going forward, especially when we've offered no indication that we intend to cut him or Afghanistan loose?
Perhaps this should lead to a recognition that we simply don't have the host country support to do an actual counter-insurgency. I mean if this isn't an indication that those feverish dreams of COIN dancing in the heads of policymakers are have little basis in reality then I give up. How can you fight an counter-insurgency when not only is the Afghan government illegitimate, and incompetent, but seemingly impervious to real NATO and US persuasion?
In the end, It seems to me that if you want to get Karzai's attention the best place to start would be to show him you're actually serious about changing course if change isn't forthcoming. And along those lines we have one piece of leverage that we can use - the number of American soldiers that we are willing to throw into the fire on behalf of this government. It's about time we used it. It's about the only card we have left.
Meanwhile, FOX News has an op-ed that suggests conservatives have found a way to outflank Obama on AfPak policy for political ends, rather than sticking to "staying the course". Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, an alumni of the Nixon Ford and Reagan national security teams, takes the recent conservative hawk meme that Pakistan is now the "central front" in the War On (Some) Terror (TM) a step further and announces that the U.S. should dump Afghanistan entirely. Her argument is that the $20 billion or so it would cost to fund McChrystal's escalation would be far better spent on Pakistan aid.
Some of her argument is decidedly iffy:
as much as Afghanistan’s President Karzai has been a disappointment to American interests, Pakistan’s President Zardari has been an unexpected surprise. Previous Pakistani leaders paid lip service to defeating Islamic militants within their country. They played us like a fiddle: pledging their support, taking our aid, and sitting on their hands.
President Asif Ali Zardari has proved to be a leader willing leader willing to take the fight to the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies. Zardari has transferred crack Army troops from the Indian border to the Afghan border. He’s cleared the Taliban out of the Swat Valley. He’s fighting a serious battle in South Waziristan and has plans to move into North Waziristan. Unlike his predecessor Musharaff, Zardari has come to realize that it’s either him or them, especially after Taliban extremists murdered his wife Benazir Bhutto.
Rather than prop up a corrupt and incompetent President Karzai in a country where Al Qaeda is no more, we should instead give President Zardari all the assistance he needs so that his forces can defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He has many flaws, but at least he’s willing to fight.
Saying that Zardari is better than Karzai is really more like comparing leprosy to the plague, it's comparing two very bad things. The former is almost equally as corrupt and spineless as the latter. But the actual argument isn't as important as the final position, for conservatives. We've seen a similiar process in the UK, where conservatives have been moving to outflank Brown by being more Afghan-skeptical. The truth is there's at least as much political calculation as concern for national security going on - and the irony is that conservatives are using much the same flanking manouver as Obama did for the win in the 2008 election, when he compared Iraq to Afghanistan.
Still, the notion that $20 billion a year would do better work bribing Zardari and Kayani than providing a surge in Afghanistan isn't a ludicrous one. It would make Kerry-Lugar look like chump change and might even be enough to overcome China's influence in Pakistan, which helps keep Pakistan's military on its chosen path of sponsoring proxies for regional feuds.
(A big hat tip to @davidmacdougall for a discussion on Twitter that informed a big chunk of this post)
By Steve Hynd
The Seminal at Firedoglake is asking for everyone's help in keeping Derrick Crowe, their Afghanistan Fellow, writing his excellent posts.
Derrick has been writing regularly on the war, bringing to bear facts, video testimony, statistics, political insight, and thoughtful arguments to drive home the point that escalating the war in Afghanistan is the wrong policy. Derrick has been writing and researching so prolifically because he’s been on a three month fellowship, using funds provided out-of-pocket by the good folks over at Brave New Foundation and the editors here at The Seminal.
Yesterday, Derrick’s three month fellowship came to an end. Now we asking for your help to keep it going.
...Derrick’s blogging has made a difference.
Six months ago, President Obama had ordered in tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan while admitting that there was no strategy. Support for the war in Afghanistan was at 50%. Today, 58% oppose the war in Afghanistan. And President Obama right now is engaged in the process of "rethinking Afghanistan," not surprisingly the title of the documentary Brave New Foundation made about Afghanistan. Over the course of his fellowship, Derrick has appeared on the front page of Firedoglake, Open Left, and the Huffington Post numerous times. He’s been on Al Jezeera television, and he’s been cited by the New York Times. He’s helped push this debate.
It's true, Derrick has been a wonderful advocate for Afghanistan escalation skeptics. His posts are informative, forceful and on point.