Afghanistan — VOICES for REASON

There’s no question that war is always tough on the soldiers who fight it. But in Afghanistan (and Iraq), Washington has made things doubly worse for U.S. troops: it has imposed on them policies and rules of engagement that (I’ve argued) are inimical to our security — and to the lives of our troops. What underlies these rules is the notion that our forces are morally obliged to place the lives and well-being of Afghans ahead of their own — in the name of so called “compassion” — rather than fighting all-out. The results are heart-rending.

Under current policy in Afghanistan, our forces are required to endear themselves to the local population by providing so-called humanitarian aid. How does that affect our soldiers?

[The Times of London reports:] The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.

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Today the war in Afghanistan reaches its eight-year mark. To put that into perspective, by now a child born on the day the war began would probably be starting his third year of elementary school. Or to put it in a wider context, only the American Revolution (which lasted about 8 years 4 months) and the Vietnam War (8 years 6 months) lasted longer. U.S. involvement in World War II was over in just under four years. The NYT has a chart that illustrates these data in graphic terms. The Afghanistan debacle is on track to drag on longer than any of these. (I disagree with the compilers of this chart that the Iraq war is actually over; the recent bombings around that country suggest otherwise.)

Recall what many people agreed should be our (minimum) objective in Afghanistan eight years ago: the rooting out of the Taliban and its Islamist allies. Today a common view holds that we must resign ourselves to a world in which the Islamist menace remains a fixture of our lives — a threat we might mitigate, but never eliminate. Witness the suggestions by mainstream luminaries in foreign policy that we negotiate some sort of settlement with the Taliban, paying them to put down their arms, at least while we keep doling out cash.

That is not the punchline to a grim joke; it is what some consider to be our best option. The fact that this is taken seriously is a measure of how Americans have been demoralized by the failure of Washington to accomplish even the limited objective of eliminating the Taliban-Al Qaeda forces (to say nothing of dealing with the graver threat from Iran).

image: Flickr/tollaksen

After 20 months in prison on charges of blasphemy, an Afghani journalism student, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, has been secretly pardoned by President Hamid Karzai and allowed to leave the country for an undisclosed location. For the “crime” of possessing anti-Islamic books, starting un-Islamic debates in class, and downloading and distributing Internet articles saying that the prophet Muhammad ignored women’s rights, Kambaksh had originally been sentenced to death by a council of Islamic mullahs.

Although the pardon is obviously good news for Kambaksh personally, this case is a damning indictment of Afghanistan’s government and of U.S. military intervention there. It was only after an international outcry that Kambaksh’s death sentence was commuted to 20 years. And his release came only because Karzai was desperate to shift the international spotlight away from his government’s unchecked power to dictate religious beliefs and practices. Yet America’s soldiers continue to fight and die for the sake of a nation that is doggedly determined never to let its civil government escape the thrall of the Islamic religion.

Consider just how revolting a spectacle this is.

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It’s sad, but true: the Afghan election is a macabre sideshow. The chatter about voter turnout is beside the point. The country is in flames. What’s needed is to defeat the Taliban, once and for all, by military means–a goal that Washington has given up on: See Barack Obama’s admission on this point. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander there, believes the outlook is horrendous. Summing up his view, the WSJ headlined its story: “Taliban Now Winning.” And things are getting worse. Depressingly, Washington has reconciled itself to allowing the Taliban to remain a major force in the region.

So have politicians in Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »

July was the worst month for U.S. casualties in Afghanistan — not just in 2009, but since the war began nearly eight years ago. Keep this awful truth in mind as you read the following observation on that war from our nation’s Commander-in-Chief:

“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur,” Obama told ABC News.

Obama (echoing Bush) wants you to scale back your expectations: He’s saying, “Don’t expect us to break the enemy’s will and compel it to surrender à la Japan in WWII.” Whatever else America may be doing in Afghanistan, the goal is not to achieve anything like a genuine victory: i.e., the defeat of the Islamist enemy.

But why? Why might Obama and many other people hold this view?

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Regarding the newly announced Obama strategy for Afghanistan-Pakistan, I argued (in part one) that the administration’s solution is based on a misdiagnosis of the problem. Last time I focused on how the Afghanistan war was guided by a “compassionate” strategy that put concern for the welfare of Afghans ahead of the necessary goal of defeating the enemy. But in his speech, Obama assured the Islamists (which he evasively terms “terrorists”) that “we will defeat you.”

If only that were the focus of his strategy. But it’s not.

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In a speech announcing his “comprehensive, new strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama warned that “The situation is increasingly perilous. It has been more than seven years since the Taliban was removed from power, yet war rages on, and insurgents control parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attacks against our troops, our NATO allies, and the Afghan government have risen steadily. Most painfully, 2008 was the deadliest year of the war for American forces.” He may well have been understating the magnitude of the problem, particularly in Pakistan (consider this recent brazen attack). And while both liberals and some conservatives have commended Obama’s strategy (with minor qualifications), I regard it as fundamentally misconceived.

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Rejecting a prosecutor’s demand for the death sentence, an Afghan court has sentenced two men to twenty years in jail for blasphemy. Their “crime”? “The men were convicted of modifying the Muslim holy book into Persian while not including the original Arabic text,” said a press report. “There is no law in Afghanistan prohibiting the translation of the Koran but modification is viewed as violating Islamic Shariah law.”

As I’ve said about a previous conviction (for distributing downloads from the internet thought to be critical of the Prophet Muhammad), you must expect such injustices when a nation’s constitution makes it a religious state (in this case, an Islamic republic). When the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan, its goal was not to end the theocratic rule of the Taliban and replace it with a secular government that protects individual rights.  Rather its stated policy was to promote “democracy.” The Bush administration succeeded. The Afghan government reflects the democratic will of the people. The people want to punish blasphemers, and their constitution allows them to do so lawfully.

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