AFGHANISTAN - A LESSON 200 YEARS OLD

It's braver to quit Afghanistan now
Peter Preston
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 November 2010 21.59 GMT

If the date for withdrawal from Afghanistan is fixed at the end of 2014 then our soldiers may be dying for nothing.

Let's do what any smart politician does, and reach for the latest polling results. About 92% of young Afghan men in Kandahar and Helmand provinces (via a sample of 1,000 interviewed by researchers from the International Council on Security and Development, with an extra 500 respondents from northern areas of the country) know nothing about 9/11. Mention the twin towers and all you get is blank looks. And 43% can't find anything good to say about democracy, either.

Forty per cent think Nato forces are there "to destroy Islam" (or Afghanistan itself); 61% believe that Afghan national security forces won't be able to cope without international support; 56% suspect that Afghan policemen are helping the Taliban, and 25% reckon they'll join them in the end. The equivalent figures for national army soldiers are 39% helping the enemy and 30% switching sides when that's possible.

Now, the news since the last bout of similar polling a few months ago isn't all bleak. Rather greater numbers are backing Nato to win in the end. But that was before the great and good of the alliance met in Lisbon this weekend and decided, after a fashion, to designate 31 December 2014 as "the end" in question. It's a firm "deadline", according to David Cameron – or a "provisional" and "aspirational" one, according Nato's secretary-general, who seems curiously concerned that "conditions have to be right" to let the boys come home.

Of course people talking to pollsters only express opinions rather than facts. Of course circumstances can change. Of course Mr Cameron and, indeed, Barack Obama – both of whom need Afghanistan's long, bitter war over before they face their electorates again – may be right to set a timetable. But can we pause for a moment, draw a deep breath – and not laugh out loud.

Presumably the Taliban have been consulted, diaries in hand, and circled various windows of opportunity for surrender. Presumably Osama bin Laden has rubber-stamped the agreement. And perhaps Mullah Omar's nod to join Hamid Karzai in coalition – with Omar as deputy prezza and a deal on tuition fees for ex-insurgent students – hasn't received quite the publicity it merits.

But let's not be too blinkered as we look at the panoply of Cameron/Clegg deadlines. Growth surging by New Year's Day 2015? The Irish economy turning tiger again? Bin Laden up on trial in the Hague? Labour down to 15% in more conventional polls?

If you set the right schedule, excluding factors you can't control, then naturally such achievements are "very doable" (as the head of Britain's armed forces says of the PM's pledges). Anything can be realistic (in the view of our most senior general in Afghanistan) if you leave realism out of the equation.

Politics always dictates its own version of realism, to be sure. Mr Obama needs withdrawal targets to keep General David Petraeus on some kind of leash. Mr Cameron, remembering how the top brass bullied Gordon Brown, probably wants to keep Sir David Richards busy doing the do-able. Getting out of Helmand and quitting Kabul equals votes at home. Democracy may not enthuse 43% of Afghans, but it rules the roost back in Whitehall and Washington.

Yet things don't look like that in the killing fields. Out there, to the Taliban, Lisbon timetables have no meaning (except to nominate a time of opportunity). Out there, any notional dates on year planners may be dust and delusion one blast later. You can't be categoric in conditions like these. And if you're forced to be "firm", then there's really only one conclusion: that the men who die between now and 2015 may well die for nothing. That, if you want to get out, then do what is always do-able if you're brave enough: just get out now.

LISBON, Portugal – President Barack Obama says it's "hard to anticipate" the exact U.S. role in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Retaliation is a term that can be justified by anyone who wants to. You're asserting justification again. This is incorrect. More important, it's a perpetual argument that only justifies further violence by all those involved.

What if the Afghan government is the Taliban and they are allowing the country to be a launching pad as they did before we invaded?

How do you propose that we work with them on something only we believe to be a problem. Bribe them with cash and arms? Agree to remain silent on their human rights violations?

If the US and NATO pull out tomorrow, the Taliban will become the Afghan "government," and they will owe no allegiance to the US and have little reason to fear us.

You have anti-war tunnel vision Diest.

Vietnam is not a legitimate analogy. Pulling out of Vietnam was never going to have the same consequences as pulling out of Afghanistan tomorrow will.

As it turned out, Vietnam's post-war aggression was limited to Cambodia and the insane Pol Pot regime. They were never a direct threat to America but if they had embarked on a campaign to establish military dominance in the region they would have had to draw the attention of then President Carter, and he would not have been the first liberal to become a hawk when push came to shove.

Edgar recognizes that a real threat from Afghanistan exists that can't be met with vague assurances of working things out.

And the idiotic notion, which you seem to believe is spot on, that we need to just stop doing things that other people think are bad and eventually (after we take our deserved lumps) we'll be OK is the mark of a fool.

"Work with the Afghan government.."

Really?

Conveniently vague and predictably skirts the issue.

What if the Afghan government is the Taliban and they are allowing the country to be a launching pad as they did before we invaded?

How do you propose that we work with them on something only we believe to be a problem. Bribe them with cash and arms? Agree to remain silent on their human rights violations?

If the US and NATO pull out tomorrow, the Taliban will become the Afghan "government," and they will owe no allegiance to the US and have little reason to fear us.

You have anti-war tunnel vision Diest.

Vietnam is not a legitimate analogy. Pulling out of Vietnam was never going to have the same consequences as pulling out of Afghanistan tomorrow will.

As it turned out, Vietnam's post-war aggression was limited to Cambodia and the insane Pol Pot regime. They were never a direct threat to America but if they had embarked on a campaign to establish military dominance in the region they would have had to draw the attention of then President Carter, and he would not have been the first liberal to become a hawk when push came to shove.

Edgar recognizes that a real threat from Afghanistan exists that can't be met with vague assurances of working things out.

And the idiotic notion, which you seem to believe is spot on, that we need to just stop doing things that other people think are bad and eventually (after we take our deserved lumps) we'll be OK is the mark of a fool.

Obama was one of you and you loved him for it. Now that he has responsibility for the safety of our nation, he has parted ways. It can't be that he knows more than you do, it must be that he has been co-opted by the War-Mongers.

As for Afghanistan being more of a terrorist base now than it was pre-invasion, that is simply ridiculous, and you embarrass yourself in asserting it.

And what makes it even more odd is that I'm only pointing out the reality that retaliation will happen, it has to happen.

Taliban impostor stuns US, NATO
November 24, 2010

FOR months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the repeated appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mansour was apparently not Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, US and Afghan officials now say that the Afghan man was an impostor and that high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

''It's not him,'' said a Western diplomat intimately involved in the discussions. ''And we gave him a lot of money.''

US officials confirmed on Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mansour or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who travelled from across the border in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge. The fake Taliban leader even met President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and US leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old US-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in US aid....<cont>

If we pull our troops out tomorrow the Taliban will conquer Afghanistan, they won't be freely elected to rule the country.

However, let's say that is exactly what happens, and they resume stoning and mutilating women, executing homosexuals, and in all ways imposing a theocratic dictatorship, you've been clear in your position that we should not stick our noses in their business. I think that's morally indefensible but one can make an isolationist argument that it makes political sense.

The German elections that allowed the Nazis to come into power were far more free than any that will result in the Taliban resuming power.

Yet what, if as they did in the past, allow Islamist terrorists to use Afghanistan as a base of operation in their war against America. Are you really suggesting that we can do nothing about it because they were elected by Afghans?

And let's say Karzai's government stays in power and yet is too ineffective to keep terrorists from using the country as a base of operations (see Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan) how, specifically, do you suggest we "help" his government with this "problem?"

Will you be OK with a deal similar to what Obama has cut with Yemen, which allows us to send Predators after the bad guys, and which, unquestionably, has led to the deaths of innocents?

"Adopting fair trade practices?"

Do your Union friends know you want to sell them down the river for peace?

And that's all the Taliban want in return for not allowing our existential enemies safe have in their country?

But then maybe you're right, I'm too crusty and cynical to appreciate the Taliban only care about the welfare of the Afghan people.

Do you have any idea how naive you are?

You think my "launchpad argument" implicates and entire nation and is "dishonest and costly."

So what was the proper alternative?

Afghanistan absolutely represented a threat to the US, because it's government allowed al-Qaeda to use it as a base of operations.

Are you you really arguing that it could could only have been a direct threat to us if it had attempted to invade us?

What was the proper response Diest?

Is there anything worse than being "luke-warm" about sending Americans to a foreign land to die?

Diest, you just delivered one of the most damning criticisms of Obama that I have ever seen.

As for your final comment, I tend to find that there is an inverse relationship between the number of smileycons used and a poster's confidence in their position.

The US has experienced three actual attacks during Obama's presidency (one succeeded, and two failed). All three are traced to Yemen, not Afghanistan.

You no doubt wish to trot out the same tired argument that our anti-terrorist efforts are creating terrorists, but even if this is the case, they're not using Afghanistan as their launching pad. It's pretty tough to when there are American troops on the ground.

You've embarrassed yourself yet again and you don't even realize it.

Is there anything worse than being "luke-warm" about sending Americans to a foreign land to die?

The US has experienced three actual attacks during Obama's presidency (one succeeded, and two failed). All three are traced to Yemen, not Afghanistan.