The Long Crisis

Posts Tagged ‘CIA’

I’ve always thought that the War in Afghanistan is nuts. I also think that a good understanding of Afghanistan and its centuries old traditional tribal organizational structure and culture has been and is still sorely lacking by our generals and top level government officials.

Sure, America had the right to go after those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. But to invade Afghanistan with a conventional military force was a stupid way to go about it. To take on the Taliban was like taking on a hotel owner because one of its guests, the US CIA trained and funded Osama bin Laden, who helped us fight our proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, turned on us and committed a horrific crime. What a case of blowback.

Surely, the powerful US, with its teams of highly trained special forces and Navy Seal teams could have gotten the revenge job done in a smart, fairly low cost way. If only at the time we had a President with a fully functioning brain we wouldn’t still be in Afghanistan eight years after 9/11 and have Osama bin Laden still unaccounted for.

Then to make matters much worse we took our eye off Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and invaded a country whose leader had been one of our big Mid Eastern buddies for eight years during the Iraq – Iran War but whom we didn’t like very much when he wouldn’t dance to our tune. What a gift to Osama. His plan all along was to bleed the US dry and he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been wildly expensive misguided endeavors for the US both in blood and treasure.

President Obama has a considerably higher amount of brain power than George W. Bush but yet he immediately made the Afghanistan War his to lose by escalating the conflict rather than seeking to find an honorable way out. So instead of finding ways to defuse the conflict the US, under Obama’s orders, has stepped up combat activity with the predictable result. US military deaths for the month of August, 2009 are the highest of the entire war and the trend looks to be for more bad news.

Is it the old American hubris trap that Obama has fallen into? And why has he continued with the misguided Bush policy of authorizing the launch of destabilizing drone air missile attacks into Pakistan? US long distance “warriors” are probably killing or wounding ten innocent Pakistani civilians for every al Queda suspect taken out. And in a country where revenge is a matter of honor many more anti-American militants are being created than destroyed.

The missile attacks are political poison to the democratically elected government in Pakistan and are complicating an already complicated situation. Our own missiles may have the unintended consequences of bringing down the Pakistan government. One that may well be replaced by truly crazy and violent fundamental extremists who do hate the US.

But all of this is not just my opinion. Watch the above video. The video brings you three former high-ranking CIA agents explaining why there is no “victory” to be won in Afghanistan. Unless he is very lucky President Obama’s War is going to cost him his reelection chances.

It is a stupid war for the US to be engaged in. Our war against Osama bin Laden has been transformed into a war against the Taliban. Since the Taliban were created and still have the support of important segments of the Pakistani military and are mostly local Afghanis, and the puppet Karzai government is increasingly corrupt and ineffective, we are involved in a war that is so complicated with local nuances that we don’t even understand the forces we are dealing with. In fact, I suspect that we are being played by corrupt Afghani officials and warlords who place profit far above serving their country.

Is pushing the US vision and version of oil pipelines across the far reaches of Afghanistan so important to us that we are willing to engage in a perpetual war across the entire Af-Pak region? Is Obama so quickly under the control of special interest groups who are war profiteers? I only ask the questions. I have no facts to back up my worse fears. I do know that high ranking CIA agents think that the War in Afghanistan can not be won. Which begs the question. If the war can not be won what in the world are we hoping to accomplish in Afghanistan?

Oh yes. I understand that our generals still think that the war can be won. But then they think that of every war they are engaged in or they would not be generals. I very well remember General Westmoreland and his always optimistic statements about winning the Vietnam War. All that was required was more time and more troops. History records that the general was a bit too optimistic as generals often are.

The arguments made for the escalation of the war by the Obama administration sound as contrived and frankly nuts to me as those made by Bush and his band of fuzzy thinkers or the predictions of Presidents Johnson and Nixon about the “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam. What do you think? Is there any hope left that the US can win a war in far away remote and rugged Afghanistan?

And if we do “win” what have we won? The right to build a nation that is currently one of the poorest and most corrupt in the world? Do we really think we can manage that task when four years after Hurricane Katrina we have been unable to even restore New Orleans, an important American city. Hubris and the inability to admit mistakes carries a high price.

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