Dear legislators in Capitol City, sweating in stone buildings this Session, searching for cash and coins for clinics and coronary bypass machines, for bandages and bedpans, searching inside books and briefs and file cabinets. Surely you've looked everywhere, but what...
Note: This is part of a strategic dialogue on Afghanistan. You can see Ed Corcoran’s piece here.
For years, the war in Afghanistan has been in crisis. But now with a failed Afghan election, the resurgence of the Taliban as a political power, NATO allies withdrawing from the battlefield, and Pakistan’s tribal areas under increasing influence from the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the situation looks worse than ever. Obama and his team are spinning their wheels trying to devise a policy to right the sinking ship, but the most sensible solution, for Afghans and U.S. citizens, is to start planning a way out.
Note: This is part of a strategic dialogue on Afghanistan. You can read Erik Leaver’s piece here.
A major U.S. effort in Afghanistan makes no sense in its own right: a faraway country with very limited resources and a history of hostility to invaders. But Afghanistan was intimately involved with the World Trade Center attack — a major psychological blow to the American people, and that has given Afghanistan a major psychological tie in U.S. minds. The present focus on Afghanistan, as articulated by President Barack Obama, "has a clear mission and defined goals — to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and its extremist allies."
“We deeply regret” are words that almost always end with something terrible.
The Obama administration consistently fails to learn the lessons of Vietnam in Afghanistan. It mischaracterizes the Taliban threat, has not deployed an adequate number of troops, and faces waning support from the public. Despite the hopelessness of the task, the administration continues its delusional policies.
On September 4, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force conducted an airstrike on a fuel tank hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. The attack killed dozens of people including civilians, according to NATO sources. However the German Minister of Defense, Franz Josef Jung, has stubbornly denied that the attack harmed civilians, insisting instead that “only Taliban were killed.” Jung even verbally attacked NATO and EU statements on the topic, saying that “other countries should not interfere.”
On September 3, the German command in northern Afghanistan in the Kundus region ordered an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) air raid on two oil tankers that had, according to intelligence reports, been hijacked by Taliban forces. U.S. bombers carried out the raid destroying the two targets. In the days that followed different numbers of casualties, including civilian victims, were reported. An ISAF fact-finding mission reported 125 dead, among them at least two dozen civilians. The German defense minister initially asserted there were no civilian casualties at all — and then later backtracked. The events of early September in northern Afghanistan have initiated a fierce debate in Germany about the role of German forces in the country — and provoked stiff criticism from Germany’s allies.
One of the oddest — indeed, surreal — encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How can Washington avoid the kind of defeat it suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago?
The official results of Afghanistan’s presidential elections won’t be known for weeks. The ballots cast around the country need to be brought to Kabul — some by donkey and helicopter — and counted. Nevertheless, U.S. officials have rushed to celebrate the process, and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen heralded the elections as "a testimony to the determination of the Afghan people to build democracy." This despite more than 75 reported incidents of violence throughout the country, an estimated 26 civilians and security forces dead, reports of more than a handful of districts where no one voted, and complaints about impermanent ink, intimidation, and other irregularities.
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Dahr Jamail’s The Will To Resist: Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books). The testimonies below were collected at a national conference, "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan," held by Iraq Veterans Against the War.