obmar
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If Iraq is lost, Afghanistan is not -- at least not yetIf Iraq is lost, Afghanistan is not -- at least not yet
Tom Plate has a solution for America's wartime woes
By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Washington --- Like some drugged-out physicist with a far-out theory about the creation of the universe, I tried out my admittedly unusual "exit strategy" for getting out of Iraq on almost anyone who would listen.
The unsuspecting audience included a world-famous China expert, a widely admired Asian ambassador, a Japanese diplomat who is close to the new Prime Minister of Japan, an internationally recognized Dean of a foreign-policy school, and a former top cabinet member in the Clinton administration. This was all in one day. And they liked the idea.
I couldn't, alas, get inside the White House to run my exit plan past President George W. Bush. Allegedly, he was sighted holed up in the Lincoln Room frantically leafing through State of Denial, a new book by Bob Woodward that alleges a black hole of administration confusion, public deception, insider back-stabbing and an almost psychotic dependency on a denial of reality in all things involving the Iraq war.
Whatever your stance on this invasion, the bottom line is that the war is not going terrifically well, to say the least. U.S. generals are despondent about not having enough troops on the Iraqi ground to do the job, and U.S. troops on the ground are unhappy about the unceasing waves of terror attacks, the decreasing level of support from the U.S. public and the increasing sense that their Iraqi mission is indeed an impossible one.
Frankly, it seems like the latter phase of the Vietnam War all over again. But there is at least one important difference. When the Nixon Administration decided to withdraw, there was only one place for our troops to conceivably go: and that was home. In the current quagmire, there is a very honorable alternative: instead of cutting and running, U.S. troops now in Iraq could – and I would say should -- be sent to nearby Afghanistan.
Afghanistan -- on the border with Pakistan, whose frontier regions offer shade to extremist groups -- could fall back into the hands of the Taliban, who are close allies with Al Qaeda. Afghanistan was the country that the Bush administration invaded after 9-11 – but before Iraq. It is the one country that was directly connected to terrorism and the 9-11 catastrophe; by contrast, Iraq has never been.
At the time of the U.S. retaliation, the Bush administration was supported by virtually everyone, including outspoken U.S. critics like then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. "Bush had to do something," Mahathir, now in unhappy retirement, told me shortly after the October 2001 invasion. "Afghanistan was the right call. Who could really oppose that?"
But as was accurately predicted by Mahathir and other Asians, such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew – not to mention by many European notables like Jacques Chirac, as well -- Iraq was the classic wrong call. It became the ambition that went too far. Before long, invasion became occupation; occupation engendered smoldering resentment; the liberators of Saddam became the jailors of Abu Ghraib, and the bad-guy terrorists had a cause worth rallying over: the new wave of infidels in Mesopotamia.
Now, public sentiment in the U.S. for withdrawal is rising. Unmoved, defenders of the invasion condemn the "cut-and-run" option as cowardice. But such a characterization would be wholly misconceived if instead of running home, U.S. soldiers were re-deployed to Afghanistan to finish the job their brothers and sisters begun three years ago.
This worthy mission has been languishing because of lack of troops; the U.S. commitment in Iraq has arguably been made more difficult -- attracting terrorists from outside and boiling the passions within Iraq -- by the very presence of U.S. troops.
The Pentagon has been calling the Afghan campaign "Operation Enduring Freedom." It is the enduring part that is now in peril. Taliban forces are making a strong comeback. Western commanders are calling for more troops. We know where to get them: from Iraq.
More troops need to be provided to military commanders in Afghanistan as soon as possible. That country cannot be permitted to fall into civil war, as has Iraq. It must be saved from that fate, the Taliban must be cornered and kept in a box, and Pakistan, which warily neighbors democratic India, must not become destabilized. An Afghanistan and a Pakistan united in terror would be a terrible collapse of Western policy in the region.
But at the moment, the Bush administration stands on the verge of losing both Afghanistan as well as Iraq. It scarcely takes a spaced-out rocket scientist to see that removing U.S. troops from Iraq and repositioning as many of them as feasible (or, of course, rotating in other troops that otherwise would go to Iraq) in Afghanistan is what game theorists call a potential "win-win" deal.
We cannot hold Afghanistan without more troops. More troops for Iraq are not in the cards – and still might not work. Better to prioritize Afghanistan: For it is far better to have saved one country from disaster than to have saved none at all.
At the moment, we run the risk of winding up zero-for two.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.
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The Inquisitor
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obmar,
We have lost Afghanistan as well as Iraq, or more precisely, we have succeeded in turning these two countries into seething hotbeds of chaos and confusion. They will not emerge from their present state of anarchy for years, and so, cannot play a role on the world stage. This was the goal all along. It was never the US intent to "secure" Afghanistan, nor to "democratize" Iraq. We needed Iraq's oil off the market, and we have succeeded. We needed Afghanistan to become impassible for all who wish a pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Far East, and we have succeeded.
The US government doesn't care how many lives are destroyed, they care about how much money the oil companies can make and how the US can remain the only super power. Another year or two, time enough for Bush to leave office, even in disgrace, and they will have their wish come true.
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obmar
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How many thought the intend was much better than that...
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The Inquisitor
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obmar,
The sheeple still think we're in there for noble purposes if they remember at all that we are still at war in there. But the Taliban control over 1/3 of the country, the war lords own everything else except Kabul.
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obmar
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Soon the opium trade will reach to the level the days before the taliban....
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The Inquisitor
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I'm afraid it's already surpassed those days. Perhaps one of the only good things to have come out of the Taliban rule was the near radication of opium production from Afghanistan. We have allowed the rebirth of the Heroin years sadly.
But this never gets attention on American media.
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The Inquisitor
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Actually obmar,
I'm researching that period of history right now in a book entitled, "Ghost Wars." It's about the period from late 1979 to September 10,2001, and deals basically with the Middle East. Right now I've made it to 1994. This is where the Taliban really first surfaced. In fact, the ISI apparently gave them a whole cache of arms to start up their military activities. The book carefully skirts mention of most of the CIA's work at the time, but it does get very detailed as to the players and what was at stake.
I'm afraid that the same thing is happening all over again. The Taliban already own over 1/3 of Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai (who supported the Taliban back in the day) was also a member of the Massoud government then. He now controls downtown Kabul and not much else.
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