Stupidity in Afghanistan
There is one bright shiny spot for Bush in the Iraqi war - it hides his utter incompetence in Afghanistan.
To recap. After 9/11 happened, GWB finally realized that the Taliban was a threat (something I had been writing about well before 9/11, FWIW, I say this simply to point out that if it was obvious to me and I don't have access to the world's largest and most sophisticated intelligence apparatus, why the heck didn't Bush see it?). The Taliban gave support to Osama (not surprisingly, after all, with Ronald Reagan's help, Osama helped install the Taliban), Osame attacked the U.S. and Bush pulled his nose out of my pet goat's book binding and attacked the Taliban.
And then he decided to forget about Afghanistan and attack Iraq.
Okay, what is it that made this such an incredibly stupid, STUPID, STUPID mistake?
It was not the fact that Iraq had no WMD's, no connection to 9/11 and no relationship with al Qaeda. Those are among the reasons that the Iraq war was a mistake. But not why dropping the ball in Afghanistan was a mistake.
Neither is it the fact that the President dropped the ball in Tora Bora. Letting Osama get away rather than sending in troops needed for the unnecessary war in Iraq. That was a mistake in the war on terror. But that's not what was so unbelievably stupid about the Afghani policy.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber in Afghanistan detonated himself at the funeral of an Aghani governor who had himself died in a suicide attack a few days before. Nearly 50 people were killed or wounded. The Opium trade has returned to Afghanistan with a vengeance . . . from none at all 5 years ago, it is now the country's largest export and Afghanistan is one of the largest opium importers in the world. Essentially, we surrendered, almost entirely, the war on drugs, so that we could walk away from the war on terror.
No. The point is that Afghanistan is in a state of chaos. Outside of Kabul, the country is controlled by warlords, opium merchants and the Taliban. The Taliban is resurgent EVERYWHERE in that country.
Bush's mistake was that ALL OF THIS WAS SO PATENTLY OBVIOUSLY GOING TO HAPPEN.
What makes me think I'm so smart? I'm not. What makes me such a great prognosticator of future events (in hindsight)? Nothing whatsoever.
But I read BOOKS. I read NEWSPAPERS. And I believe that there are lessons to be learned in history.
The Taliban is doing to the U.S. supported government of Mr. Karzai exactly what it did to the Soviet Union in the 70's and 80's. It was the cost of the war in Afghanistan, in aid, munitions and blood, that ultimately broke the back of the Soviet Union.
And WE trained the Taliban to do that. Who ARE the Taliban? They are the so-called "freedom fighters" that Ronald Reagan poured so much money and arms into. Reagan trained Osama bin Laden. We taught the Taliban - the former mujahedeen - how to fight a prolonged, sustained, guerilla war against an entrenched governement with all of the assistance of one of the world's largest super-powers. We taught them how to use their knowledge of the mountainous geography to hide and attack.
And with our training they not only held off, but beat back the Soviet Union.
What in the world made Bush believe they would simply fold up their tents when we drove them out of Kabul?
Afghanistan today is little different from the Afghanistan of the early 80's - A major super-power supports a puppet government, based in Kabul, with little or no control over the outward provinces, mired down in a guerilla war that shows no signs of slowing or ending as the Taliban consolidates more and more area under its control.
Sound familiar? It should.
The Taliban simply did what it was trained to do - - fled back into the mountains where we waste soldiers' blood on the rocks while they laugh at us.
Could anyone have expected them to do otherwise?
Just like Hitler before him, Bush made the classic mistake of opening a second front, before consolidating a temporary victory in the first. Bush (and by implication, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and everyone else in that administration who supported the war in Iraq), simply failed to recognize they had won a battle in Afghanistan, not the war (not surprisingly, they made the same mistake in Iraq with the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco).
And if Bush ever bothered to read a book or a newspaper, he might have known this too.
To recap. After 9/11 happened, GWB finally realized that the Taliban was a threat (something I had been writing about well before 9/11, FWIW, I say this simply to point out that if it was obvious to me and I don't have access to the world's largest and most sophisticated intelligence apparatus, why the heck didn't Bush see it?). The Taliban gave support to Osama (not surprisingly, after all, with Ronald Reagan's help, Osama helped install the Taliban), Osame attacked the U.S. and Bush pulled his nose out of my pet goat's book binding and attacked the Taliban.
And then he decided to forget about Afghanistan and attack Iraq.
Okay, what is it that made this such an incredibly stupid, STUPID, STUPID mistake?
It was not the fact that Iraq had no WMD's, no connection to 9/11 and no relationship with al Qaeda. Those are among the reasons that the Iraq war was a mistake. But not why dropping the ball in Afghanistan was a mistake.
Neither is it the fact that the President dropped the ball in Tora Bora. Letting Osama get away rather than sending in troops needed for the unnecessary war in Iraq. That was a mistake in the war on terror. But that's not what was so unbelievably stupid about the Afghani policy.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber in Afghanistan detonated himself at the funeral of an Aghani governor who had himself died in a suicide attack a few days before. Nearly 50 people were killed or wounded. The Opium trade has returned to Afghanistan with a vengeance . . . from none at all 5 years ago, it is now the country's largest export and Afghanistan is one of the largest opium importers in the world. Essentially, we surrendered, almost entirely, the war on drugs, so that we could walk away from the war on terror.
No. The point is that Afghanistan is in a state of chaos. Outside of Kabul, the country is controlled by warlords, opium merchants and the Taliban. The Taliban is resurgent EVERYWHERE in that country.
Bush's mistake was that ALL OF THIS WAS SO PATENTLY OBVIOUSLY GOING TO HAPPEN.
What makes me think I'm so smart? I'm not. What makes me such a great prognosticator of future events (in hindsight)? Nothing whatsoever.
But I read BOOKS. I read NEWSPAPERS. And I believe that there are lessons to be learned in history.
The Taliban is doing to the U.S. supported government of Mr. Karzai exactly what it did to the Soviet Union in the 70's and 80's. It was the cost of the war in Afghanistan, in aid, munitions and blood, that ultimately broke the back of the Soviet Union.
And WE trained the Taliban to do that. Who ARE the Taliban? They are the so-called "freedom fighters" that Ronald Reagan poured so much money and arms into. Reagan trained Osama bin Laden. We taught the Taliban - the former mujahedeen - how to fight a prolonged, sustained, guerilla war against an entrenched governement with all of the assistance of one of the world's largest super-powers. We taught them how to use their knowledge of the mountainous geography to hide and attack.
And with our training they not only held off, but beat back the Soviet Union.
What in the world made Bush believe they would simply fold up their tents when we drove them out of Kabul?
Afghanistan today is little different from the Afghanistan of the early 80's - A major super-power supports a puppet government, based in Kabul, with little or no control over the outward provinces, mired down in a guerilla war that shows no signs of slowing or ending as the Taliban consolidates more and more area under its control.
Sound familiar? It should.
The Taliban simply did what it was trained to do - - fled back into the mountains where we waste soldiers' blood on the rocks while they laugh at us.
Could anyone have expected them to do otherwise?
Just like Hitler before him, Bush made the classic mistake of opening a second front, before consolidating a temporary victory in the first. Bush (and by implication, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and everyone else in that administration who supported the war in Iraq), simply failed to recognize they had won a battle in Afghanistan, not the war (not surprisingly, they made the same mistake in Iraq with the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco).
And if Bush ever bothered to read a book or a newspaper, he might have known this too.
posted by BuddhistAttorney | 4:57 PM
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