Last night, while I was in the shower (thank God!), Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten finally announced his Afghanistan policy (sort of). Fortunately he did not adopt Bannon’s plan to give the war to Erik Prince, former CEO of Blackwater, the GOP SS. Bannon wanted to privatize the war for $30 billion a year, before cost overruns. Unfortunately, Trump appears to be letting McMasters call the shots. To a general, the universal solutions to all problems are troops and more troops. It has been a no-win war for years.
On Monday night, President Trump did what the last two presidents before him did: he doubled down on the war in Afghanistan. Unlike Obama, however, Trump offered no timeline for withdrawal.
“Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on,” he told the nation.
There are currently 9,800 troops serving in Afghanistan. We don’t know how many more Trump is sending. We don’t know how long they’ll be there. And we don’t know what victory even means at this point.
To get a sense of where we are in Afghanistan, I reached out Laurel Miller, who until very recently was America’s leading diplomat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She led the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan for roughly four years. After her office was abruptly closed by the State Department in July, she returned to her previous position as an analyst at the RAND Corporation.
I asked her straightforwardly if there’s a path to victory in Afghanistan and, if not, why US troops are still fighting and dying there. I also asked her how she thinks this conflict will end. While she’s unsure about the latter question, her answer to the first was one was crystal clear.
“Military victory is not plausible in any foreseeable time frame,” she told me, “and what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable.”… [emphasis added]
From <Vox>
Click through to read their complete conversation.
Now trump did say that, when out troops open their hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate. In a nutshell, that means that all are welcome to be cannon fodder, but when it comes to getting benefits afterward, and especially when it comes to voting while black or brown, that’s a different thing altogether.
Lawrence O’Donnell discussed it.
Withdrawing takes time. These were my words over six years ago.
GW ChickenHawk got the US into Afghanistan under the pretense of counter-terrorism. He did not tell us that his true intent was to wrest control of gas in the Stans … from Russia, by building a pipeline through Afghanistan to Karachi. He installed a Unocal employee as puppet President and committed the US to a war of nation building. Because that puppet, Hamid Karzai is so corrupt, that war is doomed to fail and Obama has been wrong to continue it…
…Realistically logistics dictate that if we start withdrawing troops now, bringing them and their equipment home will take between one and two years. The time to start is now.
Afghanistan’s present government is just as corrupt. My opinion is unchanged.
RESIST!!
14 Responses to “Will We Ever Learn?”
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Ryan Grim at The Intercept
It is well worth clicking through to read exactly how much of a mess we have made of this debacle.
P.S. if you let the video run for a while, Lawrence interviews Amy McGrath – and asks her opinion on Afghanistan. I could not agree with her more.
I’m aware of a surrender attempt, but it was actually Karzai that refused, although there is no doubt of who was pulling his strings. You could be referring to another attempt about which I didn’t know.
Well, Ryan says “After a few years of this charade, after their surrender efforts were repeatedly rebuffed…” (emphasis mine), but his main focus is on the results of the refusal.
“…the Bush administration…wanted more terrorists in body bags. The problem was that the Taliban had stopped fighting, having either fled to Pakistan or melted back into civilian life. Al Qaeda, for its part, was down to a handful of members.So how do you kill terrorists if there aren’t any? Simple: Afghans that the U.S. worked with understood the predicament their military sponsors were in, so they fabricated bad guys.
And “…the old Taliban started picking up guns again. When they were driven from power, the population was happy to see them go. The U.S. managed to make them popular again. Liberals then spent the 2008 presidential campaign complaining that the U.S. had “ignored” Afghanistan — when, in reality, the parts of the country without troop presence were the only parts at peace….”
If you haven’t already, please sign this petition against increasing our already obscenely bloated military budget.
Signed in Feb (and have signed others too).. Great cartoon with it!
Mitchell, you took action on February 4th.
Good video.I’m for no more war, and no more involvement, no more.The dead can’t speak for themselves, but no more.Bring the guys/gals home now.
The New York Times noted yesterday that Drumpf said he’d finally win this war but wouldn’t make the same mistakes Obama and Bush had made and then came up with a plan grossly lacking in detail but which sounded very much like the plans his predecessors had tried to implement. Drumpf, or rather his advisory generals obviously haven’t learned from the past, just as his predecessors obviously hadn’t learned from each other or from the Russians who were so keen to abandon their 10 years war in Afghanistan in 1989.
The Dutch and the Australians, loyal allies to the US as they are, have put the lives of their military on the line (and lost some) in their efforts to “rebuild” Afghanistan, the Dutch first in peace missions from compounds they never dared to leave for fear of their lives, then in training missions in the most peaceful areas like Helmand and Uruzgan, training the police force to defend themselves and the area. They left with little accomplished and both Helmand and Uruzgan are now almost completely in the hands of the Taliban. But the Dutch government has already said it probably will send in training units again to help the US, and the Australians will keep those deployed there for training on for the near future.
So nobody is willing to learn from the past, admit to their mistakes and throw in the towel. Instead everyone is following a American president who is under a lot of stress from critique from all sides and has been looking for “a war” to divert attention away from the mess he’s making of his presidency and get his ratings up. But I think perhaps his generals and his allies are leaving him Afghanistan to play with, a country that’s far away from them all and which they can accuse of harboring terrorists, even if there are only a few out there. They probably rather let him have Afghanistan to divert attention with than have Drumpf start a nuclear war with North Korea or a new war in Venezuela.
Trump wants a war, he thinks that will keep him in office eight years. It worked for Dubya.
Yes, and the oil fields in Kuwait went to Big Oil, as well.
Either there were blunders when the Taliban tried to surrender…or there were vert purposeful maneuvers designed to keep the Military Industrial Complex running at full volume! “Hey, to end the war is to slow, or stop the money flow!”
Is it possible that Drumpf is pushing this war harder and adding more troops to “win the war” because everything else he has tried to do so far has failed? He is desperate for a win!
I would like to know what makes Drumpf and the generals think they can win this war after 16 years of fighting. The Russians were there before the Americans and they left with the tails between their legs. What has changed?
Get USA out of Afghanistan. No more wars anywhere on the Planet Earth. Quit supporting the war profiteers and profiteering companies who make and sell weapons. Cut the bloated military budget by 50%.
I’m sick and tired of “endless wars” around the globe!
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Thanks all! Hugs!
If the Fuhrer is desperate for a win, he’s barking up the wrong tree.