Politicians do it. Sports teams do it. In fact it’s supposed to be a part of the “never say die” ethos that keeps Americans pushing harder, often doing what others say just can’t be done. That’s the honorable side of effort, but there’s stupid side that shows itself when folks who say they’re winning actually behave in a manner that makes it clear they really know they’ve lost the game.
And when it comes to war, the cost of playing a stupid game and not owning up to a stupid loss comes at a staggering price, in lives lost and money spent. According to costofwar.org, Afghanistan alone has cost us to date over $355 billion in direct costs alone; Iraq about $738 billion. According to iCasualties.org, over 2,100 coalition military fatalities (over half American) have been recorded with untold civilians and hostiles killed in this Afghan theater. Yet the U.S. and her allies control little more than the area around the capital city of Kabul; the Taliban are more entrenched today than they have been when they openly ruled the entire nation in 2001. They are still despised by most of the populace, but their knowledge of the local scene, familiarity with the names and faces of their unwilling constituents and tactics of fear have moved them back into the catbird seat of Afghan power.
Without hundreds of thousands more troops (read the candid dispatches of oh-so-many American generals) and the willingness to stay for perhaps decades, without eliminating the safe havens in neighboring “ally” Pakistan, ungovernable tribal districts where Pakistani troops (many with pro-Taliban sympathies anyway) are loathe to deploy, the coalition efforts to unseat the Taliban return appear less than futile. We seem to be going the way of the Soviets in the decade-long debacle in the 1980s; their effort too drained their coffers and contributed to their political collapse. To make matters worse, the horse we picked, once pro-American Hamid Karzai who (despite massive evidence of election fraud) as our “democratically-elected” President, seems to be hell-bent to shatter the record for governmental corruption, making sure that any bon a fide probe into finances never succeeds.
Karzai wasn’t the first to notice that his government wasn’t on solid ground just relying on U.S. support, but he was most definitely an “early mover” when it came to effecting a rapprochement with the Taliban leadership. Now, it seems, despite statements to the contrary to the American people that we “can win,” the U.S. seems to be moving towards accepting the inevitable: “United States-led forces are permitting the movement of senior Taliban leaders to attend initial peace talks in Kabul, the clearest indication of American support for high-level discussions aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, senior NATO and Obama administration officials said… While the talks involve senior members of the Taliban, officials emphasized that they were preliminary, and that they could not tell how serious the insurgents — or the weak government of President Hamid Karzai — were about reaching an accord.” New York Times (October 13th).
Sorry folks, we have done a lot more than look the other way: “The Taliban leaders coming into Afghanistan for talks have left their havens in Pakistan on the explicit assurance that they will not be attacked or arrested by NATO forces, Afghans familiar with the talks say. Many top Taliban leaders reside in Pakistan, where they are believed to enjoy at least some official protection… In at least one case, Taliban leaders crossed the border and boarded a NATO aircraft bound for Kabul, according to an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. In other cases, NATO troops have secured roads to allow Taliban officials to reach Afghan- and NATO-controlled areas so they can take part in discussions. Most of the discussions have taken place outside o f Kabul, according to the Afghan official.” New York Times (October 19th).
The groundswell towards such peace talks, clearly supported by neighboring Pakistan, is abundantly clear at all levels: “‘The Taliban want talks to take place,’ the peace council leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani [pictured above], a former Afghan president, told a packed news conference in Kabul. … ‘Today ther e is a special agenda that exists here,’ he said. ‘Today the government and the international community are here with us.’” When we pulled significant forces out of Afghanistan in 2003 to fight the false war in Iraq over non-existent WMDs, we lost the only momentum we had to take out the Taliban quickly and permanently; the rest of the campaign waged by the United States and her allies – recommenced as we de-escalated in Iraq – was relegated to the pages of repeating mistakes indelibly etched in history, a very menacing recurrence that seems to have begun with our Vietnam War.
We have a recession to fight, energy needs to be met, infrastructure and education that need to be repaired and a thousand other noble goals that spending money on a losing cause delayed, hampered or even prevented. America has become a highly polarized, back-biting assemblage of “slogan-mongering” purveyors of false simplistic solutions to exceptionally complex problems. We’re no longer able to tolerate mega-billion-dollar policy errors, much less trillion dollar aggregate costs, as we might have been in the past. Prudence (okay, “discretion”) is indeed the better part of valor.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder what exactly it takes for America to learn from its mistakes and the obvious mistakes of others.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment