No Afghans at the Dog Show

What now? Osama’s gone. Pakistan is never going to be a reliable ally… ever! And the Taliban are attacking us in Afghanistan as if they were smelling victory around the corner. We aren’t going to “win” in Afghanistan, and our own picked leader, Hamid “I’m so damned corrupt” Karzai, is busy entreating with the Taliban, because he knows the Americans have to leave. Those conversations are being encouraged by the Americans for precisely the same reasons.

First, let’s look at the United States from the Muslim perspective. Look at the local view from an e-zine, Jidaliyya (jidaliyya.com) which collates the work of Muslim scholars who write under sponsorship of the Arab Studies Institute (which is in turn affiliated with Georgetown University’s Arab Studies Journal).

In the May 4^th, Jidaliyya.com, Sanaa Alimia writes: “While people in Washington, New York and across the US were celebrating, dancing, and chanting ‘USA! USA!’ for the long-awaited vengeance for the 3,000 deaths of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, people across Pakistan are mindful that over the last seven years the number of Pakistanis killed is 34,017. In 2010, over 900 Pakistanis were killed in US drone attacks, which were also supported by their own government and military. Less than two weeks ago, over twenty-five people were killed in North Waziristan, in one drone attack and the month before forty civilians were killed in another drone attack. Beyond the casualties, there are hundreds of thousands of displaced Afghans and Pakistanis who cannot return home. There are countless maimed amputees, whose disfigurement is a commonplace feature of the landscape in Peshawar…

“The war in and against Pakistan has transformed the country. Checkpoints, bomb blasts, identity cards, paranoia, detentions, and drone attacks are all daily realities, features of the landscape. As Mohsin Hamid summed up, ‘America’s 9/11 has given way to Pakistan’s 24-7-365.’” In short, there is nothing that America wants or believes is reasonable given the Taliban-supported attacks against the Twin Towers or the Pentagon that has, in the eyes of the vast majority of Pakistanis, justified the American actions in Afghanistan or the cross-border attacks against the Taliban and their supporters across the border in Pakistan.

For the most part, America and its policies are despised by the locals, who would rather consort with the very Taliban who are attacking Pakistani cities and towns than support America’s war on terror (or whatever name we choose to apply). Anyone who believes that a Pakistani politician could get re-elected by clearly backing American goals in the region is both naïve and misguided. The only reason the United States has to entreat with the Pakistani leadership and provide aid is to keep almost 100 nuclear warheads out of direct control of Islamist militants. Pakistan will never make a real choice to side with the United States, no matter what our Congressional leader believe. Pakistani politicos are literally forced to play both sides of the game.

To makes matters worse, the war in Afghanistan has escalated, and American casualties are mounting, all amidst a continuing sinking feeling that all of this American bloodshed is for naught, that we will withdraw only to watch the Taliban solidify their hold on the entire country. The morale of our fighting men and women in Afghanistan is thus at an all-time low. “As fighting and casualties in Afghanistan's war reached an all-time high, U.S. soldiers and Marines there reported plunging morale and the highest rates of mental health problems in five years… The grim statistics in a new Army report released [May 19^th] dramatize the psychological cost of a military campaign that U.S. commanders and officials say has reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgency…

“Some 70 percent to 80 percent of troops surveyed for the report said they had seen a buddy killed, roughly half of soldiers and 56 percent of Marines said they'd killed an enemy fighter, and about two-thirds of troops said that a roadside bomb – the No. 1 weapon of insurgents – had gone off within 55 yards of them.” HuffingtonPost.com, May 19^th. We’ve long-since lost any semblance of victory; the war hasn’t been going our way for a long time. With billions of dollars wasted on a futile effort in horrible economic times, most Americans can’t seem to understand why we’re still there either.

Clearly, our forces in Afghanistan share that perspective, as Huffington’s summary of the above report highlights:

· Only 46.5 percent of soldiers said their morale was medium, high or very high last year, compared with 65.7 percent in 2005. For Marines, it was only 58.6 percent last year compared with 70.4 percent when they were surveyed in 2006 in Iraq. (The report compares numbers of the Marine to their time in Iraq because they were not in Afghanistan in significant numbers before the surge.)

· Nearly 80 percent of Marines and soldiers said they'd seen a member of their unit killed or wounded, compared with roughly half who said that in the earlier years.

· Nearly 1 in 5 soldiers and Marines reported psychological problems such as acute stress, depression or anxiety last year, compared with 1 in 10 among soldiers in 2005 and about 1 in 8 among Marines in 2006.

· The use of drugs for mental health or combat stress was lower among soldiers and Marines than among civilians in the same age group.

We have a moment. We killed Osama. We can use this as an excuse to accelerate our departure and claim we’ve got what we need, we’ve clearly shown the world how we respond to outrageous attacks on American soil and there is little left for us to accomplish going forward. If the President’s Middle East message, delivered in his May 19^th speech at the Department of State, is to resonate with Muslims around the world, now is a very good time to quit Afghanistan. We are most certainly not making America any safer by continuing to stab at the bees nest.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while I believe we should respond strongly and harshly against our attackers, we also must operate in a manner that is best for America.