While the Administrations imperialist war in Iraq grinds on with nary an end in sight, the former bright star in our militaristic firmament, Afghanistan, is sliding into chaos. A newly resurgent Taliban, assisted by fresh Al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan, have been slowly retaking large parts of the countryside. Where has the mainstream media been while this has been going on? Focused on the disposition of the mortal remains of Anna Nicole Smith, naturally.
Salon has an article today which examines exactly how screwed up things are in the Hindu Kush. I quote, “Last November, a CIA analysis of the Karzai government found it was losing control, and American ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann warned then that the U.S. would "fail" if the plan for action didn't include "multiple years and multiple billions." Our gains, once held firmly, have been lost and the coming year may portend Afghanistan's future, with ominous rumors about a spring offensive by insurgents floating down from the mountains.” Yet the administration continues to pour resources, military and civilian, into Iraq and the acceptable range of opinion expressed in the mainstream media has been again limited to the against the war/against the troops bullshit that has been force-fed to the country by the fascist Republicans since day one.
What explains the administrations reluctance to engage in battle some actual terrorists in the never-ending “war on terror”? While Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq prior to the United States invasion in 2003, Afghanistan is a thicket of nasty types who have been utilizing America’s folly in Baghdad to increase their strength and numbers. It seems our priorities are completely reversed from where they should be. I suppose a never ending war on terror supports all sort of economies and businesses. Actually winning it would eliminate the justification for surveillance of American citizens and the abolition of the rule of law and cost Cheney and his cronies a few billion in lost wealth.
On the left, the netroots profess to be shocked, (shocked!) that the Democrats who were elected in November have spent most of their time arguing about who gets to stand where in the circular firing squad they’ve been forming since the day after the ballots were counted. Regular readers of this blog know full well my opinion of the Democrats ability to take their heads out of the corporate trough long enough to resist anything this administration has cooked up in its extrajudicial pajama parties.
Things over there are bad but they could get much, much worse. If Congress has even a shred of decency left in its corrupt and decaying body it should cut of the money to Iraq and hold impeachment hearings.
9 comments:
The current issue of the New Yorker has a revealing article by Seymour Hersch. He doesn't say it in so many words, as forceful as he is, but the the conclusion to be drawn is that we have given up fighting the Sunni dominated Al Queda as part of a quixotic campaign (i.e. like tilting at windmills) to go against Shiites, i.e. Iran.
My 2 cents. The bombing at Bagram Airbase certainly underscores what you say. Of course, a mutual friend over there living in the capital still has a bar to go to, a gym to work out at and a court of law (albeit a piss poor one) to attend to. Of course she also has her own driver to shepherd her through the checkpoint--you can take the person out of the west but you can't take the west out of the person or something like that--and that picture I paint isn't the one she is actually experiencing, even though everything said is true.
One key problem here is the role NATO, and the US really, assigned to Pakistan. The reality is that Pakistan doesn't con control, and never has, the warzistan province or the north-west frontier province. Additionally, it would be too embarrassing to them to allow NATO troops to fight in what is territorially their nation. Matters were not helped either by the truce Musharref signed with the Taliban. We all know they are not technically in Afghanistan per se, but in this large swath of ungoverned terrain. So, what are we really to do with that? This is not to say that your assessment of the situation isn't correct. Just it isn't clear cut either. Taliban forces are amassing a springtime offensive to cut off the Kabul-Kandahar road. We know about it, have known about it for some time. But what can be done unless NATO troops can invade what is territorially pakistan and stop them where they are now.
Pakistan is indeed a great problem; there are far too many competing interests Musharrif (sp?) has to placate to retain power for the government to be a reliable ally. I would simply reiterate that if we focused on Afghanistan with as much emphasis as on Iraq, the situation would not be spiriling out of control. And with all due respect to our friend in Kabul (with serious respect, actually), the county is a long way away from needing a functional judicial system and resources would be better served developing infrastructure and finding a replacement for the Opium trade. The fact that everyone can play nice and go boozing in the capitol escorted by armed guards is IMHO hardly a measure of the country's stability.
And remind me to edit before posting. Yuck.
Boys, boys,
We're all on the same page here. Afganistan is ungovernable, leave the opium trade to the warloads, and Pakistan is not our friend. Business as usual.
2 more cents from this halfwit.
First, the professor has spoken.
Second, I do agree with the patriot. The US should never have shifted focus from Afghanistan. Absolutely. And I agree that being able to booze is not a measure of stability. Especially when it is being done by westerners. I mean the same goes on in old Baghdad, right? I guess what I was imply and I will now outright say is that when I speak to our friend my first question is what does she feel about the situation, the people, etc. from where she stands. She seems to think or to a degree project a much more secure and hopeful situation. She is in possibly the second most dangerous country, has been told if she is stopped by the Taliban she WILL be murdered, and sees everyday the missing limbs of Taliban rule, yet appears somewhat hopeful. I don't understand it myself. Further, while I agree resources should focus primarily on infrastructure, medicine, education, etc. the work being done by afghan lawyers with some help and guidance from western lawyers is certainly important to any hope of good government. It means a lot to any man who is being detained for months on end simply b/c he got into a car accident (which I understand happens regardless of fault). It means a lot to those who are detained and would otherwise not be released w/out paying a bribe to have someone bring papers before a judge and demand his/her release. This is what afghan lawyers are doing there--and not at the behest of western overlords, but for themselves. They are fulfilling a need, are valuable, and banking on a better tomorrow for their nation.
People are detained for months in single-vehicle car accidents in Mexico all the time and they have a constitution and a developed legal system. You cannot measure the pulse of the country from Kabul and any justice system developed in Kabul will fail unless it has the support of the tribes outside the capitol. What troubles me about this project and others of its ilk is that it tacitly accepts the eurocentric idea that a tribal society which has never embraced a centralized authority can have a centralized legal system based on English common law. Of course I may be talking completely out of my ass since I have no idea what the Afghani constitution looks like. What I do know is that the constitution was written by a handful of people under the direct, or indirect, instructions of a trio of relative outsiders - interim president Karzai, United States ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (a neo-con and close Bush supporter) and United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Granted the constitution endorses human rights, the Islamic republic and women's rights. So does Cuba's. So does ours. It also was written to ensure a very strong presidency and a relatively weak parliment. this seems counterintuitive when one considers that the divisions in the country are tribal. Bust as we all know, Washington generally finds it more convenient to deal with an individual, usually a president and his coterie, than with a strong parliament. A single individual can be manipulated, awarded or uprooted at will. I have totally lost sight of my point so I'm going to stop now.
I don't know. Islamic Sharia or ad hoc jirgas that uphold tribal customs such as revenge murders? I think I'd settle for a tacitly eurocentric legal system with all it's flaws. But that's cause I'm an ole colonial boy...of course, I haven't had a clue of what my point actually has been or is--aside from killing some time here at the factory--from my first comment to this one, but you knew that.
A couple of comments. First, our mutual friend should get the hell out of there before she's killed. I haven't read the Afghani constitution ; however, I do know that Army jag was responsible for setting up the judicial system. And, that's it is based on the sharia. It had to be in order to have any type of legitimacy. Are rights of the accused basic human rights? That's debatable. It's a difference in definition of justice. Removing the tribal ethic of blood feuding is a difficult task, since it's thousands of years old. Are our values "better"? Of course.
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