What Price Afghanistan?
"The narrative
… has been too negative."
So
says Defense Secretary Robert Gates of political and
press commentary about the war in Afghanistan. It
reminds him of the pessimism of June 2007, before the
Iraqi surge began to succeed, said Gates.
But the narrative is coming now not
just from critics of the war but stalwart defenders.
John McCain says the war effort could be headed for
"crisis" and
holds President Obama responsible for announcing a
timetable for withdrawal starting next summer.
And how optimistic can Americans be
when, last month, in the ninth year of our longest war,
the U.S. field commander, Gen.
Stanley McChrystal, said the Taliban have fought us
to a draw.
Eight years ago, the Taliban seemed
finished.
Since then, we have poured in
scores of thousands of troops, spent $300 billion, lost
1,000 soldiers and seen thousands more wounded. Yet, the
Taliban have never been stronger or operated more
broadly.
Unfortunately, the narrative the
Pentagon deplores is rooted in reality.
The battle for Marjah, said to be a
dress rehearsal for June`s decisive Battle of Kandahar,
appears not to have been the triumph advertised. The
Afghan government and police failed to follow up and
take over the Marjah district. The Taliban continue to
execute those working with the Americans.
Kandahar, with 800,000 people, is
10 times as populous as Marjah and the spiritual capital
of the Taliban.
And we now learn the Battle of
Kandahar will not take place in June.
Indeed, it is not going to be a
battle at all, but a struggle for the hearts of the
people, to persuade them to rise up against the Taliban,
work with the Americans, and transfer their loyalty to
Kabul and President Hamid Kharzi.
The people of Kandahar apparently
do not want U.S. protection any more than they want a
battle for the city. And how can President Kharzi win
their loyalty when his drug-lord brother, Wali Kharzi,
is the Al Capone of Kandahar?
As for President Kharzi himself,
after a Taliban rocket attack on his loyal jirga, the
national council, this month, he got rid of his interior
minister and his intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, in
the biggest shakeup of his time in office. Both men had
strong ties to the Americans, and Kharzi is said to have
suspected that their first loyalty was to the Americans.
Shown evidence of the Taliban role
in the attack on the loyal jirga, says Saleh, Kharzi
told him he thinks the Americans were behind it.
Kharzi, says Saleh, has lost all
confidence that the United States and NATO have the
perseverance to see the war through, and he is working
in secret back channels to cut a deal with the Taliban.
From Harvard researcher Matt
Waldman of the
London School of Economics, reported in the
London Telegraph,
comes the explosive charge that Pakistani Intelligence
is now fully collaborating with the Taliban. [See
The Sun in the
Sky: the relationship between Pakistan`s ISI and Afghan
insurgents`, (PDF)]
On June 16, The
New York Times
reported that Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the
Mumbai massacre, is operating in Afghanistan,
attacking Indian aid workers. Like the Taliban,
Lashkar-e-Taiba received early support from Pakistani
intelligence.
What is going on in Afghanistan?
It appears that Pakistan, by
maintaining ties to the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba,
wants to ensure that if and when the Americans do
depart, as Obama signaled we would begin to do next
July, Afghanistan will move into Islamabad`s orbit, not
New Delhi`s.
For the United States and NATO,
however, casualties are rising to the highest levels of
the war. June is shaping up as the bloodiest month ever.
While Barack Obama has promised a
review of U.S. strategy and policy in December, at the
present rate, hundreds more young Americans will by then
have given up their lives.
For what?
To succeed in creating in
Afghanistan a country where the Taliban have been driven
permanently from power and there is no chance of
al-Qaida`s returns, we need a government in Kabul and an
Afghan army and police that can follow up U.S. military
gains by taking control, protecting the population and
providing social reforms.
We don`t have that government. We
have, instead, a regime that has no confidence we will
stay the course and is thus dealing behind our backs
with the enemy who is killing our troops.
It is simply not credible that the
United States and its NATO allies, some of whom—like the
Dutch—are pulling out, can prevail in this war in 12
months so America can begin coming home, as Obama has
promised, unless Obama is willing to write Afghanistan
off.
If he is, he should tell us now and
save those Americans lives.
If he is not willing to see
Afghanistan fall, he should tell us what it will take,
and how long, to avoid a defeat and win this war.
For saying the U.S. can succeed in
the next 12 months in what we have failed to accomplish,
at a rising cost in blood and money, for the last eight
years, is not credible.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Patrick J. Buchanan
needs
no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed
here by
Paul Craig Roberts.
