This is so wrong

Yes to that.

This thread is a perfect example of the left-wing bias of the general populace of A2K.

That it is, is A-OK. It is open to everyone and if Leftist posters dominate, so be it.

One question: At what point does the Obama administration take responsibility for the policies and actions of the USA?

He and his supporters never miss a chance to suggest that they have "inherited" the problems they need to face from W.

Once Obama increases or reduces troop levels in Afghanistan, does he not assume the problem?

It would be great if we could all lay our failures on the steps of our predecessors.

Chances are that the residual benefits of the Bush Administration policies will not be credited to W, and yet we are supposed to accept that O gets a buy on ills presumed to be generated by W?

I love the Leftist response to Afghanistan:

1) Withdraw out troops. We're not winning and so why try?

2) Karsai is ineffectual so let's overthrow him

What happens when the Surrender Monkeys take control?

'suggest', Finn, come off it, don't be so dishonest. Where else could the problems have come from?

Karzai is a shill and he'll soon be an American immigrant or a dead man.

I wonder if those of you now debating the appropriate tactics for our ongoing "good" war in Afghanistan recognize how similar the discussion is to those applied a few years ago to our "bad" war in Iraq. I say this as one who after a great deal of reflection came to the conclusion that both or our wars with Iraq, the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent intervention a decade later were great strategic errors, and that my previous rationalizations for them were wrong.

I'm afraid our new president is trying too hard to be all things to all of his mutually contentious supporters. Not a favorable indicator of things to come.

For my part, i have never suggested that the war in Afghanistan is good. I would describe it as justified. Once engaged in Afghanistan, it is a waste of treasure and of lives not to see the effort through to a reasonable conclusion. Anyone who cares to look at these fora will see that i adopted the same "we broke it, we need to fix it" attitude toward Iraq. I opposed the invasion from late 2002 onward, and the evidence is in these fora, and i also said after the invasion was an accomplished fact that having invaded, we needed to make good on our promises about reconstruction and bringing stable government to Iraq.

We need to do the same thing in Afghanistan. The lack of a reliable, credible government in Afghanistan directly relates to Iraq. Karzai was put into power, and the old warlords (equally well described as drug lords) were re-installed so that the preparations for the invasion of Iraq could be hurried along without distraction. Karzai was a supporter of the Taliban until his father was killed in 1999, allegedly by the Taliban or their agents, an allegation which Karzai has publicly stated is true. This is not different from the support for the Taliban which Pakistan gave, and which was publicly expressed by Benazir Bhutto and General Musharraf. Given the nearly 40 years of civil war in Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising that Pakistan welcomed "stable" government there, but Pakistani support for the Taliban went well beyond applauding a return to stability, and pointedly ignored the enormities of Mullah Omar's regime.

And it went further than most Americans are aware. ISI, the Pakistani security services, not only operated in the tribal areas of Waziristan on both sides of the border, they gave material support to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and it is reasonably alleged that ISI agents took part in firefights with U.S. troops in Waziristan in 2002. Afghanistan is a mess; the previous administration took no effective measures to clean up the mess, Pakistan has contributed to the mess, and neither NATO nor the United States are going to get a handle on cleaning up the mess without a long-term commitment.

I don't see any reason for a massive build-up, but i consider the 17,000 troops to be sent there a reasonable accretion of the forces necessary to provide security in the southeastern provinces. The 30,000 troops requested by CENTCOM are probably not unreasonable, either. Ultimately, though, the problem will not go away because we throw more and more troops at it. Something has to be done about the warlords/drug lords, and Karzai has to be gotten rid of, although i am certainly not suggesting assassination, or even looking the other way while proxies assassinate the man. We can't expect the situation in Afghanistan to improve while the same old crew of cronies and drug lords run the country to no other purpose than their own enrichment. The evidence that the program of providing military security to the embattled provinces is working comes from recent Taliban idiocies such as attacking girls who have attended schools and the burning of schools. The Taliban has no illusions about the eventual effectiveness of providing education and public services to the Afghans, and neither should we. This is, as i earlier said, a "doable" mission. And we should do it.

Troops, armour planes etc are just a means of pumping money into Afganistans economy.

More troops = more money flowing into the economy thus reducing reliance on poppy money. Along with more money comes discretionary spending (as opposed to subsistance spending). Demand for manufactured goods rises and is satisfied by local and international manufacturers. Education increases alongside demand.
A satisfied population is a stable population.

But the huge feet are past tense -- things are messed up. There are things we can do to mitigate that before we get out.

Did you read the NYer article? (You likely did at the time...) It was informative, and left me thinking we needed more troops there (before Obama was talking about it, or before I noticed him talking about it anyway),

As heartening as it is to hear you find the second one a great strategic error, I'm very curious why you think the first one was a strategic error.

Indeed I believe the real strategic error was the Gulf War - we had nothing whatever to gain for our efforts except the transient affection of the Emir of Kuwait. In the case of the subsequent intervention to depose Saddam there was at least a coherent strategic objective - the creation of a stable modern non authoritarian secular state in the Moslem world; and preventing the extention of Iranian control into Iraq. However the problem was that the cost to us certainly (and them, possibly) wasn't at all favorable relative to the benefit.

In 1990 we had no historical or strategic interest whatever in the continued existence of the state of Kuwait. We did have a serious stake in the maintenance of enough peace and order in the Gulf for the export of much needed petroleum to continue, and for the eventual development of modern states there. We had already been successful in achieving the former objective throughout the eight years of warfare between Iran and Iraq, and there was no a priori reason for us to suppose that Saddam's occupation of Kuwait would interrupt the flow of petroleum. Indeed his objective in seizing Kuwait was financial - Iraq was broke after eight years of warfare with a nation with more than three times its population and sorely needed the petroleum revenues it could generate.

Historically Kuwait was the creation of British Imperialism as was Bahrain. These (and Persia) were the sites of the original oil discoveries, and wherever possible the British tried to set up local governments small enough to be dominated by them but just large enough to occupy the then known sources of petroleum. These were the principal targets of the British in their campaign in 1914 to bring down the Ottoman Empire, before the Turks could complete their modernization efforts and thereby enrich themselves. Though it is another (long) story it was this that led the British to install the Shah's father in Iran and to induce us to take over their plot to overthrow Mossadech and reinstall Reza Shah's son in 1952.

From an historical perspective Kuwait and its people are quite naturally associated with Mesepotamia and whatever political entity rules there. Moreover their largely Sunni and relatively secular population, well acquainted with the modern world, would provide a needed balance to an Iraq, still too vulnerable to an Iranian led Shia uprising, but still the best bet for the later emergence of a secular, non authoritarian, modern state in the region.

Our real strategic interest in the region was to prevent the emergence of an hostile authoritarian state able to dominate the Persian Gulf. The Shia fanatics ruling Iran were then (and are today) the principal potential for that unhappy prospect. Through the Reagan years we very wisely and skillfully did what we could to prevent either side in the Iraq Iran war from gaining a decisive victory, first subtly helping the Iranians and later the Iraqis. It was all done very effectively, though at war's end Iraq was broke and exhausted. (Interestingly the Soviets and the French footed the main bill for supporting Iraq during the war, each for different reasons providing the tanks, aircraft and field weapons used by Iraq in the war. The French still lusted after the oil fields of Mosul that were promised to them by their allies the British in their secret treaty that accompanied the 1914 campaign against the Ottomans: the Soviets were pursuing their misguided arm the Arabs program, unaware that they were widely mistrusted by their beneficiaries.)

Saddam's seizure of Kuwait was in fact the successful culmination of a strategy we put in place nine years earlier. That the wealthy Kuwaitis who lost their palaces had friends and associates among the wealthy of the western world and members of the petroleum club was a matter of no importance to us. However I fear it was largely that that induced us to take the misguided and counterproductive action of driving Saddam out, thereby increasing the relative power of Iran; making Iraq vulnerable to a Iranian inspired Shia uprising (one of the factors that motivated our later intervention to overthrow Saddam); and focusing the hostility of a growing international brotherhood of fanatic Sunni extremists, who struck back at us a decade later.

anyone care to tell us how afghanistan can return to some kind of peace while pakistan is becoming more violent on a daily basis ?
imo afghanistan is just a small cog in the wheel and much western effort and blood will be wasted there "trying to win an unwinnable war ' .
hbg

link to complete article :
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13144811&source=hptextfeature



pakistan provides more than enough recruits to join their afghan compatriots as required - there is an endless supply of them .

Ya can't hardly blame them, Hamburger. Western nations would never have put up with anywhere near the interference in their countries affairs. Ya reap what ya sow, blowback, just rewards, stick your nose where it don't belong and there's a good chance the nose will disappear.

the british learned their lesson the hard way - over a few centuries - but it seems that they finally did learn .

as i've said many times before : if afghanistan is such a major problem for the whole world , why are the nations close to it - such as japan , india , china , saidi arabia ... ... either ignoring it or even working with the taliban or al-qaida .
perhaps the western governments might be able to learn from the nations close to afghanistan ?
or are western goverments afraid it might show weakness if they try to learn and understand more about countries in "foreign" continents and their inhabitants ?
or are they still in the "conquering" mode of the "conquistadores" ?
hbg

The honesty is refreshing. Put aside forever the preposterous notion that the USA sticks its nose where it doesn't belong for altruistic reasons. It's greed, pure and simple.

True dat.

Do you really believe we had nothing to gain from the the first Gulf War than the reluctant thanks of the Kuwatis?

Put aside whether or not there is anything to be gained, strategically, by coming to the rescue of the defenseless when they are beset by the naked aggression of a neighbor , it's pretty clear that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was the opening move in an attempt by Saddam to assume control of the region's oil.

If unopposed in Kuwait, it would only have been a matter of time before Saddam found a pretense to invade Saudi Arabia with weapons purchased with the treasure stolen from Kuwait.

Surely you believe the US had a strategic interest in keeping the Saudi oil fields out of the control of Saddam, and if so, why wait until he actually attacked Saudi Arabia?

There is every reason to believe that once in possession of Kuwait he would, eventually, invade Saudi Arabia (although it may have followed the conquest of the smaller Gulf states), and that he would have, militarily, been in a better position to do so, than when he invaded Kuwait.

Rational people often make the mistake of predicting the actions of the irrational based on the parameters of their own view of reality.

The notion that Saddam would have been content with his conquest of Kuwait and not used it as a launching pad for even more aggressive ventures is not realistic.

The man had, in essence, absolute power in Iraq. If he wanted someone to die, they died. If he wanted the possessions of someone, they were his. If he wanted someone to do something, either they did it or they died.

Yet having god like power over millions was not enough for the maniac.

Whether an advocate of neo-conservatism or real politik, it's pretty damned clear that the US has a very deep strategic interest in the uninterrupted flow of Middle East oil.

To think that a successful Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would not have put that interest in peril is pretty myopic.

I stated my case very clearly.

Even with Kuwait, the best Saddam could do would be to hold off an obviously hostile Iran, a nation with three times the population of Iraq & Kuwait combined. With such a dangerous and obviously hostile enemy at his back he could neither afford nor survive an attack on Saudi Arabia. The prospect of a Baathist dictator taking over custody of the Islamic holy cities would ignite a firestorm in the Arab world and possibly in Iraq as well.

Even if Saddam was sufficiently irrational to ignore all this and stay in power while attempting such a move, particularly over the distances involved, he would be very easy for us to beat - as we demonstrated in Kuwait in 1991.

I don't think it's simple. Strategic consideration is there, use of our military industrial complex is there, greed is there, and sometimes some altruism is also there, altruism or its cohorts.

I was raised with being a missionary being good. I considered, momentarily, signing up with the maryknoll nuns to be a maryknoll doctor. Luckily I took a few deep breaths. Altruism is oft benighted but I understand that on occasion we in the u.s. mean well. I'll admit there can be pure good will for afghanistan.

What a brilliant analysis. I am going to write to President Obama to let him know that there are people like Setanta who can encapsulate the problems and the solutions of war in Iraq and Afghanistan in just two paragraphs. Setanta's allusions to "The Shrub" and "Forty Thieves of Bagdad" as well as "Neo-cons pursued their REAL agenda in Iraq, are so compelling that they need no footnotes.

I think Finn D'Abuzz,despite the obvious incredibly effective and efficient reaseach skills presented by Setanta, is right on target.

If only to free the Iraqis from murder and torture.