Afghanistan: the president threw in with the Taliban
By D.J. McGuire | Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 | International, Policy, Politics, Virginia
No, not that one.
Now that I have your attention, though, I think it best to remind everyone that carping at President Obama for his announcement of an American pullout from Afghanistan by 2014 is simply a waste of time. No American president of either party would have been able to stay longer, because Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants us out and wants a deal with the Talibs.
That what is good for Karzai is terrible for his and our country matters nothing to him.
Whether we like it or not, a new phase in the battele with the Taliban is soon to begin: basically a proxy war that pits the Pakistani ISI against us. The Afghans, once again, our caught in the middle. While elitist and posers enjoy warbling about Afghanistan resisting all foreign occupiers throughout its history, they tend to ignore that, for the most part, Afghans have never been able to unite, either. Thus, while foreign troops come and go, foreign influence is eternal there.
We are headed for a 21st Century version of the Great Game, with the U.S. and India on one side (against the Talibs), Pakistan and Communist China on the other (with the Talibs and Karzai), and Russia eagerly trying to leverage both of us.
We will need to make sure the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan triumph (simplistically, the non-Pashtuns; more accurately, the tenuous coalition that controls the Afghan Parliament), and remind everyone that the Taliban and al Qaeda are still joined at the hip (especially the Russians, who tend to let their Anti-American ADHD get in the way of maneuvering against the allies of Chechnya’s rebels).
So, rather than rip President Obama for choosing the inevitable withdrawal, we should instead rip hm for his refusal to say anything about how to help Afghanistan defeat the Taliban. He seems to think that just handing over the reigns will answer the mail – meaning he either doesn’t realize Karzai’s actual intentions, or he just doesn’t care.
That is the real problem with Obama’s policy of Afghanistan.
Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal
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Former candidate for Board of Supervisors in Spotsylvania, current blogger, economics teacher, and long-rumored windbag. There are two causes closest to the heart: steering the country away from the social democratic nonsense that is sinking Europe, and convincing the rest of the "rightosphere" that the NBA really is a joy to watch.
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2 Responses to "Afghanistan: the president threw in with the Taliban"
Afghanistan, at this point, seems to be a relatively unimportant distraction, with bin Laden gone and Al Queda there decimated. What we still need to do there can be better done by drones and small special forces teams than by masses of troops. Pakistan is the real issue and the site of the real threat in the region. It’s also a place where a real state might yet be constructed. Nation building in Afghanistan is just a waste of time, there’s no nation there to build and there never has been. Were the Taliban to re-take control in Afghanistan they’d probably go back to misruling the country in the same fashion they did prior to 2001. We never had a problem with that until they failed to hand over bin Laden. At which point we justifiably intervened and overthrew their government. Unlike Al Queda, the Taliban had no international ambitions prior to our invasion, they were content to screw up their own country.
Great post. You hit upon something that both parties won’t acknowledge to the public: Afghanistan just doesn’t fit the nation-state model in many ways. It’s never been a united “country” in the sense that we view most states in the world. I have restrained from criticizing both Bush and Obama on this particular matter because it’s not really going to be solved unless Afghanistan can be united in the traditional sense…obviously I don’t think it’s any closer to that now than 2001. It’s still a collection of people within common borders with many different agendas, the “state” of Afghanistan being very low on the priority list of many.
If we are honest about foreign policy and the 2012 elections, we need to hear two things: 1.) Each candidate’s comprehensive strategy for the region stretching from Libya to Afghanistan. A couple of applause lines about Israel or fighting terrorists is not policy or strategy. Don’t let candidates just toss out a line and accept that as their foreign policy. And, 2.) Some seriously outside the box thinking on how to manage relations with “failed” states. Increasingly, around the globe, we’re seeing more and more states that are crippled….even on our own continent, one can look at Guatemala and really be concerned. It’s not quite at the point of failure, but a lot of its institutions are starting to go down a bad path. So far, both parties still act and make policy based on the idea of nation-states and try to still treat failed states in the same manner and all we need to do is “rehabilitate” the states. I think that is folly, as Afghanistan shows, and we need some fresh thinking on the subject.
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