If the UK invaded and occupied Massachusetts because the IRA raised money and housed some of its members in South Boston I think most people would say that was not just a mistake but wrong. Assuming for the moment that the GOP was in charge and had no interest in defending the state, I can predict with some confidence that Massachusetts's citizens would fight back (as they did once before) and make it very costly for the British to stay. Logistically how could the British leave without losing face and suffering a crushing geopolitical defeat? The answer is simple: use boats (and now) planes. That's it. And we can do the same in Afghanistan and for the same reasons. It's that simple. Put our soldiers on planes and get out. Because invading and occupying that benighted land was wrong at the outset and too costly by halves now. There would still be costs: we are morally required to compensate them for wrecking their country, but it'll be far cheaper than what we are doing now and enable us to do some things that really need to be done here at home. You know what I mean.
The debate over getting out of Afghanistan has started in earnest now that the costs are escalating but it was wrong from day one and we said so here (the first time almost four years ago) and many times before and since (here, here, here, here, here, here, here).
Let's go over the argument once more. As the 2008 Presidential campaign was ramping up in June of 2007 we warned -- not for the first time -- that the rhetoric of all the Democratic candidates, most especially Barack Obama, was dead wrong on saying the problem with Iraq was it distracted us from the real target, Afghanistan. That was patently false then, even stupid, but it made for good politics. Now the Obama administration is not just recreating George Bush in Iraq but recreating Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam. I lived through the years of Johnson's deadly folly. The rhetoric coming from the "wise men (and women)" of the Obama administration sounds the same to may ears. Just as stupid and just as morally bankrupt. When I argued that two years ago, few if any on either the left or right of the blogosphere agreed, I regret to say. That has changed on both the left and the right. It's only the center "moderates" that don't get it.
But two years ago it wasn't a popular idea anywhere and I intended to re-argue my 2005 position, with updating. Instead, when I looked back at what we had written I felt nothing in the argument needed to be changed. And again today, with the debate now hot, we went back and looked again, and alas, we think all we need to do is repeat it. We aren't doing it to save time and effort, but to make a point. The folly of Afghanistan was always visible In purely military terms all you have to do is look at the experience of Alexander the Great, the British, the French and the Soviets. In not many more years we'll be adding the US and its NATO allies to the list. That's the shape the argument is taking now. But it was morally wrong, too. Here's what we argued in 2005 and what we continue to argue now:
It is commonly said we were justified to go into Afghanistan because "they" were the ones who attacked us, contrasting it with the misdirected attack on Iraq who had no role in the 9/11 attack. I beg to differ. Not on the Iraq part. On the justification for attacking Afghanistan.
First let me get the (tiresome) disclaimers out of the way. I am not in favor of a Taliban style regime (hence I am not a big fan of Saudi Arabia or the current regime in Iran). Nor was I a supporter of Saddam Hussein. Nor, for that matter, am I a supporter of Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Il or Pervez Musharraf or Putin or the Chinese oligarchs. They are bad (sometimes evil, if I may be so bold as to purloin that word from Fearless Leader) and have done incalculable harm (at least I don't want to try calculating it). The question is, does that justify bombing the living shit out of their countries and then occupying them?
Afghanistan is different, you might say, because they attacked us on 9/11. Not as far as I know. Taking the Administration's word for it, the most the Afghan government did was provide a safe haven and moral support for those who did attack us. If that kind of support for terrorists were a warrant for attacking a country, then we would have also (or instead) have attacked Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (instead of giving them special favors).
Yet our sole justification for attacking Afghanistan was that they physically harbored terrorists who attacked us. As President Bush said after the 9/11 attack, we will go after any country that provides safe haven for terrorists, any terrorists. This is a global war on terrorism. There are to be no exceptions.
Except, of course, there are numerous exceptions. We don't attack Florida for giving safe haven to anti-Cuban terrorists. We didn't let the British attack South Boston because it was a hotbed of IRA sympathizers, supporters and financiers. We don't bomb Montana because it harbors anti-government militias of the type that killed 168 Americans in the Oklahoma City bombing. No, instead we attacked Afghanistan because it was essentially defenseless, was geopolitically important (at least the Russians thought so), it was politically expedient for our military-record challenged President to show how tough he was, and it was a neocon warm-up for the main show, the planned establishment of American military power in Iraq. There is no global war on terrorism, of course. Just more neocon imperial policy.
Attacking Afghanistan was wrong (too). [Afghanistan was wrong (too), Effect Measure, December 2005]
Do I want a Taliban government in Afghanistan? It's not my choice to make, but I wouldn't want to live under people like that. But then I wouldn't want to live in Saudi or Iran (the current one or the Shah's), any of the "Stans" or any of dozens of other states we don't invade and in fact help prop up. Meanwhile, we continue to do horrific damage to Afghanistan and its people, this being the latest:
In a Friday press release, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) condemned a NATO airstrike which killed 95 people, including much of the population of a small Afghan village, and renewed his call for the United States to withdraw its forces from both Afghanistan and Iraq.
“News reports covering today’s attack by the U.S. command southwest of Kunduz province show that the good intentions of NATO forces in Afghanistan are not sufficient,” Kucinich stated. “If we want to avoid killing innocent civilians, we must end the war.”
The incident occurred after Taliban fighters hijacked two oil tankers and drove them to a village under their control, where they became stuck in the mud. The local villagers then emerged to try to siphon off the fuel. Meanwhile, the hijacking was reported to German troops, who called for an airstrike. The fireball when the trucks were hit killed or badly burned many of the villagers along with some Taliban. (Muriel Kane, Rawstory)
How much more? Out now.
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Would there be a precedent for taking Bush and Blair to the International Court for their roll in the fiasco, or must we give special immunity to all crackpot politicians?
In between patients but enjoyed the piece. I Agree. And since we are focusing on our political 2 cents here is mine: As an independent I firmly believe we should retract all US troops from all territories other than the USA. Think about how much mulla that would save. The reality of our world is that it is harsh and unfair. Certain parts of the world are Barbarians-they have always been so and will always be. That area of the world has had what 3-5K years to become civilized and they haven't because nothing is fixed unless the people want it fixed. And we think our blood and treasure is going to make that part of the world civil in say 10-50 years? I think not.
Google the words "Northern Alliance".
You could probably argue that it is never right in our modern world for one nation to retaliate with force or invade another country for any reason. All this should be handled like civilized nations should. In the case of Afghanistan it is particularly dicey considering its history with other foreign armies, though in 2002 the US was fairly welcome and had a lot of support from the people who were growing tired of the Taliban and other non-Afghans presence, just as they now resent our presence. Who knows but back in 2002 if we'd acted according to our ideals instead of following the NeoCon strategy of unrealistic expectation and a bankrupt understanding of history, we might have done some good and gotten out like we did in the Balkans. Strategically Afghanistan is seen as crucial in some scenarios and so one way or another there will be foreign presence and they are unlikely to be appreciated especially when non-islamic forces are causing death and destruction on moslems in such impersonal and inhuman ways.
Sorry you didn't get the results you expected from Obama revere. McCain would have done the same as well. Our only chance to get out of the middle east was Ron Paul but MSM wouldn't cover him.
Further damage to Afghanistan is Monsanto. Monsanto is in there peddling their genetic modified seeds. Horrific stories surrounding monster weeds, damaged soil and water contamination have been reported.
Monsanto in Iraq and Afghanistan -
By Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq.
Organic Consumers Association, September 2, 2009
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18999.cfm
................
In fact, Monsanto has already been doing business in Iraq. According to a 2004 USAID Transition Plan for the Agriculture Sector in Iraq, "All the major international players in the pesticide field are now present in Iraq: Dow (USA), Syngenta (Swiss), Dupont (USA), Bayer (Germany), Monsanto (USA), Novartis, FMC (USA), Dupont and Uniroyal, BSF and Cynamide."
....................
You are absolutely right, as you were several years ago. Thank you for saying it again, and again and again...
You are absolutely wrong, for the same reasons appeasement and isolationism was wrong in the 1930s.
Contrary to what the woolly-headed post-modernists would have you believe, there is a clear difference between what is Right and what is Wrong. The Taliban is Wrong. It is Right to oppose it.
If you don't oppose what is wrong, it gets stronger, civilisation suffers and people are mass-murdered.
There is only one response available to political philosophies such as Nazism and Islam: the politics of Force. Anything else is stupidity and cowardice. You cannot negotiate with people who oppose the basic building-blocks of civilisation as we know it.
From this article, it appears some humans are willing to condemn themselves to never learn from History and to continually make the same mistakes.
I honestly don't know what the right thing to do is now. But throughout these past 8 yrs the words of this one obscure man have haunted me...since he wrote and I first read them nearly 8 yrs ago.
"Tamim Ansary Letter on Afghanistan"
http://tcotrel.tripod.com/afghanletter.html
I may agree with your conclusion (I don't know yet), but this article is a mess. The two questions
1. Should we have invaded Afghanistan in the first place?
2. Should we now withdraw from Afghanistan?
are separate questions and don't, in fact, necessarily have anything really to do with each other. Yet you keep running them together in this article in a manner that makes it hard to see what is supposed to be a support for what.
And seriously:
"The folly of Afghanistan was always visible In purely military terms all you have to do is look at the experience of Alexander the Great, the British, the French and the Soviets. In not many more years we'll be adding the US and its NATO allies to the list. That's the shape the argument is taking now."
What is this supposed to be? An argument?
"There would still be costs: we are morally required to compensate them for wrecking their country, but it'll be far cheaper than what we are doing now"
Like, 'put a lot of cash in a bag and hand it to the local warlord - moral obligation discharged!'?
"When I argued that two years ago, few if any on either the left or right of the blogosphere agreed, I regret to say. That has changed on both the left and the right. It's only the center "moderates" that don't get it."
Given the irrelevance of the 'moral bankrupcy' point (the question isn't the justification for the invasion but the moral and practical status of pulling out), what exactly is the last 'it' supposed to refer to? I guess I'm one of those who don't get 'it'.
"Do I want a Taliban government in Afghanistan? It's not my choice to make, but I wouldn't want to live under people like that. But then I wouldn't want to live in Saudi or Iran (the current one or the Shah's), any of the "Stans" or any of dozens of other states we don't invade and in fact help prop up."
WTF? It's 'not my choice to make'??? That means exactly what? Something in the vicinity of 'well, it's their culture, and who are we to judge other cultures and different sets of traditions and values'? And what happens next in the passage? Being slightly uncomfortable about the suggested cultural relativism embodied in the second sentence of the quoted passage, you try to cover it up by some sort of 'look, they might have been doing bad things, but so are a lot of other people, hence we shouldn't have intervened'? In other words, if someone you know is beating his wife and you know it, you'll refrain from intervening since you know that other people are doing the same thing and you aren't interfering with their wife-beating?
Like I said at the outset, I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions, but the arguments you offer range from the nebulous, through the confused to the downright silly.
GD: Let me respond to some of your points before having to go to work.
i. The two questions are different but not necessarily independent. If it was wrong to invade then one reaonable inference is that it is wrong to stay. If you would like to uncouple these you have to have a reason to say that what was done for a wrong reason is still OK. That is possible but some of my other points go to that.
ii. Since you don't get the moral issue, you don't get "it." You reject the premise so what follows has no relevance to you. You have stated your point.
iii. Regarding who chooses a gov't, you raise a complex issue. I won't try to dodge it. But the choice here isn't between black and white. it is, as either Kristof or Friedman said in the NYT (don't remember which, probably Friedman) the choice is between dark black and not so dark black. The Karzai gov't is not respected by its own people and is corrupt. The Taliban are respected for some things but are brutal. You'd like to choose for them. Do you want t choose for France, too, because Sarkozy is an ass? Or Berlusconi? Or Iran? We have preferences but we don't have the standing to choose for others. If I allow myself to choose -- by force, mind you -- for Afghanistan, I also allow myself the same for Saudi, Iran, Israel, Palestine, etc. And if the objective is institutions that we believe are good in the long run, then why violate that at the outset? This isn't a question of culture but of governance. I don't approve of your culture as expressed in your political views but I don't advocate suppressing them.
iv. The argument for compensation is a moral one. Since you don't recognize a moral transgression you don't recognize an obligation to make the people whole on the losses we caused. You may not agree, but there is nothing silly or inconsistent or nebulous about it. You just have a different view.
I think the crucial point is that poll after poll shows that the Afghan people do not want to be under the Taliban, and that they welcomed the removal of the Taliban government. The Afghan people are not co-terminus with the Taliban. We are fighting with the Afghans against the Taliban. That's before you mention the fact that improving their healthcare, and education, seems a strange way to wreck their country. It's actually less wrecked than it was before we went in. Abandoning them now would be akin to abandoning the Southern Koreans to the odious North Korean regime.
Even if you aren't interested in the welfare of Afghans in the broader sense, rather than regrettable (and perhaps avoidable) civilian deaths in military actions (I could cite deliberate atrocities of the Taliban on Afghan people as well), then there are geo-political reasons for remaining. The Pakistan government have only recently started to face up to the Taliban on their side of the border. Creating a vaccum on the other side of the border would be a complete disaster in terms of security in the area, and might lead to worse consequences (in terms of blood and treasure) for the US than the current situation.
I agree with the dissenting opinions above , and yet would love to be outta there as you would. There are so many distasteful regimes on the planet to not give a shit about, why we chose to give a shit about the plight of Afghanis is beyond me , was it to be "King of the Hill" and say na, na, nyn na na to the Russians after they fucked up there ( with a great deal of our help). Maybe.
Other than opiates , what exactly is it that Afghanistan has that we ( the world) might want or need, or feel the need to ensure access to ?..... Rocks, rugs, uhhhh am I forgetting something?
Just about nothing.
I love the IDEA of enriching their live with healthcare and education, roads, and infra structure it's the cost of the reality of accomplishing that, that's so is hard to justify. Particularly in the loss of trained, talented, intelligent, dedicated american military personnel that could be used in situations that would make just a little more sense .
It's about draining the swamp. The news today about the conviction of the airline plotters in the UK is a key example. Stablising the Afghan/Pakistan border is key to our security and their freedom.
I can imagine similar arguments for the US not getting involved in WWII, in post-war reconstruction of Europe, and for not making the effort to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump.
Your IRA analogy to make the case that invading Afghanistan was wrong falls apart on close inspection. How much knowledge of the IRAs activities in Boston do state and federal authorities have? What diplomatic efforts are you presupposing between the US and Britain prior to Britain invading Massachusetts? I couldn't find quick answers to similar questions in regards to the Taliban before heading to work, but their response to demands of handing al Qaeda over was weak, at best. After a week of bombing, they are said to have offered to allow al Qaeda leaders to be tried in a third country under Islamic law, provided they were shown evidence they believed that al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11.
The contrast is much more clear than that, more like between dark black and gray. 'Brutal' is being kind to a group of people that sets bombs in girls' schools.
Afghanistan has always been the "Good War" for the Democrats.
Where have all the protesters gone? Back to OFA and ACORN, I guess - their job is done.
Bravo Vince:
Contrary to what the woolly-headed post-modernists would have you believe, there is a clear difference between what is Right and what is Wrong. The Taliban is Wrong. It is Right to oppose it.
If you don't oppose what is wrong, it gets stronger, civilisation suffers and people are mass-murdered.
There is only one response available to political philosophies such as Nazism and Islam: the politics of Force. Anything else is stupidity and cowardice. You cannot negotiate with people who oppose the basic building-blocks of civilisation as we know it.
Perhaps you can can convince them that some of what Mohammed said and did (Islam) was wrong, but I think your head would end up on a pike.
As the Prohphet said "Just words..."
Oops - wrong prophet!
The Taliban (religious students) are basing their actions on faith and religion, representing Islam. Since I see no other Muslim nation actively disagreeing with them abt their religious spin, it can be taken as a tacit approval of a return to a more fundamentalist (wahhabis love it!) life with a true caliphate in charge.
They also want to stop the corrosive effects of capitalism and return to a kinder, gentler time without banking and profits... kinda like the current US govt.
It's about draining the swamp. The news today about the conviction of the airline plotters in the UK is a key example. Stablising the Afghan/Pakistan border is key to our security and their freedom.
I agree in general with draining swamps, but for me this analogy is more akin to mowing dandelions that have gone to seed. As for the border? The strategy might work well for Dutch fairy tales,
I can imagine similar arguments for the US not getting involved in WWII, in post-war reconstruction of Europe, and for not making the effort to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump.
Quashing the Nazi's and retaliating for Pearl Harbor don't feel the same as this, (nor do we get any water from Afghanistan ; ) ) .
Continuing with what I was getting at above . . .
You make your case for getting out of Afghanistan based on the premise that it was morally wrong to invade in the first place. You responded to G.D. with this (among other comments):
I, too, reject the premise. Part of your argument of why it was wrong to attack Afghanistan for harboring terrorists is that we don't attack everyone else that does. Let's look at the examples you list:
"We don't attack Florida for giving safe haven to anti-Cuban terrorists."
First, it doesn't make any sense to talk about the U.S. 'attacking' one of its own states short of an armed attempt to secede. Second, I don't know what sorts of 'anti-Cuban terrorists' exist in Florida. I live in central FL, not south FL, but I would have thought to have heard of any if they were significant or were actually killing people. If they are committing acts of violence, in or outside of U.S. territory, then we absolutely should be doing something about it. But I'm sure, in that case, we could be effective without bombing Miami and having troops patrolling the streets. [Also, calling them anti-Cuban is probably incorrect, since I am guessing that any such groups you are referring to are actually composed of Cuban and Cuban-American people. It would be better to describe them as anti-Castro.]
We didn't let the British attack South Boston because it was a hotbed of IRA sympathizers, supporters and financiers.
See my post above for what I think of that analogy.
"We don't bomb Montana because it harbors anti-government militias of the type that killed 168 Americans in the Oklahoma City bombing. [emphasis mine]
We should definitely act on any evidence of violence (past or planned) from anti-government militias in Montana or elsewhere in the backwaters of the deep red states in order to prevent another Oklahoma City. [To clarify, I have not read anything indicating that McVeigh and his 3 accomplices were active members of a militia, just that he was inspired by them and the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents.] But again, the problem with your analogy is the same as for anti-Castro and IRA situations. Your analogies make no mention of what efforts to combat the terrorists short of the hypothetical bombing and invasion were attempted and failed.
This is why the invasion of Afghanistan was necessary. There was a long record of attempts to deal with al-Qaeda before the invasion. Cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan after the 1998 Embassy bombings had little effect on al-Qaeda's ability to conduct future operations. In fact, one missile attack destroyed a pharmaceutical plant that Clinton claimed was being used for chemical weapons. That intelligence proved to be unreliable, it seems.
This is taken directly from the 9/11 Commission report:
We can see from all of this, that it is really you that doesn't get "it", revere. These groups will be satisfied with nothing less than the U.S. completely disengaging from their 'holy land' (i.e. no military or economic presence anywhere in the middle east and a military and diplomatic abandonment of Israel). They will continue to plan and carry out attacks against the U.S. and its allies until this goal is met or we can be successful at eliminating the places where they can find safe haven.
Of course, you also refer to many other countries that either directly support al-Qaeda and other active terrorist groups or at least provide moral support. However, the fact that we don't go after all of them with force is not a moral failing, but a matter of politics and diplomacy. I feel that if the West, Russia, and China were to be united and serious about putting pressure on terrorist supporting or sympathizing states like Iran, Syria, Sudan, etc., then we would see a great reduction in the ability of terrorists to do their work and we wouldn't have to invade anyone. But too many of those countries (ours included) have economic and/or geopolitical interests in those states that lower the incentive to be as tough as is necessary to actually make a difference. That, in my opinion, is why we have a literal War on Terror, rather than the metaphorical one that relies mostly on diplomacy that we should have. In either case, it is a war we need to fight. To do otherwise is unconscionable.