Two Billion Dollars a Week

That’s what we spend, week in and week out, to main our presence in Afghanistan. It’s a war that history tells us we cannot win, and daily, facts mount to support that negative result. We claim that we have suppressed the HaqqaniTaliban, but so confident are they at a new height in their power and influence that they mounted a stunning set of attacks in the heart of Kabul on April 15^th… and have walked away from the negotiating table with American diplomats. And it wasn’t just Kabul that they struck; there were three attacks in Kabul, two in Jalalabad, one in Paktia Province’s capital, Gardez, and another in Logar Province’s capital, Pul-e-Alam. On April 28^th, “insurgents with small pistols hidden in their shoes managed to force their way through a security checkpoint and make it to the threshold of the governor’s office in Kandahar … before being shot and killed by guards.” New York Times, April 28^th.

The mega-corrupt Hamid Karzi regime, effectively installed by the Americans when they expelled the Taliban in the early stages of the war, controls a small radius around Kabul and not much more. Elections were purportedly rigged to keep Karzai and his cronies in power, and he, like the Americans, appears to very much despised by the people. Back in March, after other incidents depicting American soldier urinating on the corpses of their insurgent victims or where a cache of Qur’ans were inadvertently burned, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a decorated 38-year-old veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was formally charged with the murder of 17 Afghans , more than half of them children.

Military leaders roll their eyes at the thought of the Afghan troops that are supposed to replace American fighters actually being able to bring peace and stability to the region. But it is official government policy that they can and will… even though just about everybody on earth knows they cannot and won’t. The Obama Administration doesn’t want to appear negative or weak in the face of the upcoming election, an event that is shaping our generally misguided policy in that region.

Our attempt to repair the bridge with Pakistan – so that we can restart the governmental bribe we call “military aid” (estimated at between $1.18 and $3 billion) to incent the Pakistani leadership to keep their nuclear bomb technology to themselves – has failed. “The latest high-level talks on ending a diplomatic deadlock between the United States and Pakistan ended in failure on [April 27^th] over Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike. The White House, angered by the recent spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, refuses to apologize…

“Aside from the apparently intractable issues of drones and the apology, the two countries focused on four specific areas of potential cooperation: counterterrorism, the NATO supply lines, military aid payments and the Taliban peace process… Yet there was an undeniable sense of wariness, driven by the pressures of domestic politics, with Mr. Obama facing re-election this year and Pakistan due for elections in the coming 12 months. Pakistanis’ rage has been rising since a shooting in Lahore in January 2011 that involved a C.I.A. employee and fueled common fantasies about being overrun by rogue spies. The American operation to kill Osama bin Laden a few months later was taken as a stunning breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty.” NY Times, April 27^th.

Because of the April 15^th Taliban attack on multiple Afghan targets, which the United States believes was coordinated by the Haqqanis from Pakistan’s western tribal district, and more than a little pressure on Obama from the upcoming election, the apology for the 24 deaths was a political impossibility for the American president.

And so the wasteful war in Afghanistan continues, American and civilian lives lost daily, with no clear discernible benefit to anyone rising to the surface. And after the US and her NATO allies depart – currently still slated for 2014 – everyone knows that the harsh Afghan environment will quickly erase the signs that we were ever there. Just like the disappearance of the Soviet presence when they lost their war just a couple of decades ago. Two billion dollars a week.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there has to be a better word than “stupid” to describe our current efforts in Afghanistan and the surrounding region… but I cannot think of it.