I'm more than a little interested in the developments in Afghanistan since my son-in-law William is supposed to go over there sometime in the Spring. He has already been to Iraq twice.

Immediately Withdraw from Afghanistan Too

Permit me to make my proposal for Afghanistan: Get out. Now. No handwringing and no delays. President Obama should issue an immediate order that all U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan and return to the United States at once. Look, they’ve had seven years to kill the terrorists. That’s longer than World War II. Longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation know that when George W. Bush declared his “war on terrorism” seven years ago, we warned that such a war would prove to be much like the drug war — that is, one that has no end. Who can now doubt that we were right? U.S. officials tell us that the war on terrorism in Afghanistan is just now getting a good start — after seven years of killing the terrorists! How many terrorists have they killed in Afghanistan since they first invaded the country? How many terrorists did they start with? What percentage have they killed of that total? How many terrorists are left? My hunch is that no one knows the answers to any of these questions. In fact, from the way they’re making things sound, there are more terrorists than ever in Afghanistan. Why else would President Obama be sending a large number of additional U.S. troops there? Heck, I’ll bet they can’t even come up with a good definition of a terrorist in Afghanistan! Does it include, for example, people who are angry at the U.S. over the killing of friends and relatives by U.S. bombs dropped on Afghan wedding parties?

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Obama May Postpone Afghan Surge;
Severe Problems in Supply Routes Afflict Aghanistan War Effort
by Juan Cole

While the attention of the US public and the news media here has been consumed (understandably enough) by the congressional debate over the economic stimulus plan, America's war in Afghanistan has nearly collapsed because of logistical problems. over which NATO trucks traveled to the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. 75% of US and NATO supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan are offloaded at the Pakistani port of Karachi and sent by truck through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Then the Taliban burned 10 trucks carrying such materiel, to demonstrate their control over the supply route of their enemy. The Taliban can accomplish these breathtaking operations against NATO in Pakistan in large part because Pakistani police and military forces are unwilling to risk much to help distant foreign America beat up their cousins. That reluctance is unlikely to change with any rapidity. Well, you might say, there are other ways to get supplies to Afghanistan. But remember it is a landlocked country. Its neighbors with borders on the state are Pakistan, China, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan; Kyrgyzstan is close enough to offer an air route. Pakistan is the most convenient route, and it may be at an end. China's short border is up in the Himalayas and not useful for transport. Tajikistan is more remote than Afghanistan. The US does not have the kind of good relations with Iran that would allow use of that route for military purposes. A Turkmenistan route would depend on an Iran route, so that is out, too. So what is left? Uzbekistan and (by air) Kyrgyzstan, that's what. US further use of the Manas military base, from which the US brought 500 tons of materiel into Afghanistan every month. It is charged that Russia used its new oil and gas wealth to bribe Kyrgyzstan to exclude the US, returning the area to its former status as a Russian sphere of influence. (Presumably this would also be payback for US and NATO expansion on Russia's European and Caucasian borders).

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Whistling Past the Afghan Graveyard
Where Empires Go to Die

It is now a commonplace -- as a lead article in the New York Times's Week in Review pointed out recently -- that Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires." Given Barack Obama's call for a greater focus on the Afghan War ("we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq..."), and given indications that a "surge" of U.S. troops is about to get underway there, Afghanistan's dangers have been much in the news lately. Some of the writing on this subject, including recent essays by Juan Cole at Salon.com, Robert Dreyfuss at the Nation, and John Robertson at the War in Context website, has been incisive on just how the new administration's policy initiatives might transform Afghanistan and the increasingly unhinged Pakistani tribal borderlands into "Obama's War." In other words, "the graveyard" has been getting its due. Far less attention has been paid to the "empire" part of the equation. And there's a good reason for that -- at least in Washington. Despite escalating worries about the deteriorating situation, no one in our nation's capital is ready to believe that Afghanistan could actually be the "graveyard" for the American role as the dominant hegemon on this planet.

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What do we want in Afghanistan?

It must be the Afghans who need Afghanistan, or do they? The various Pushtun, Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik, Turkman, Persian (in the west), Baluch and Arab (southwest) peoples of the state of Afghanistan have little in common other than an adherence to a wide variety of forms of Islam. Their main languages are mutually incomprehensible and even within the main ethno-linguistic groups like the Pushtun they are deeply divided into confederations, political factions and among local leaders. The state of Afghanistan is a 19th Century creation of the Russian and Indian (British) empires as a convenient way of creating a buffer zone between them. Serendipitously, that buffer zone contained many fractious and ungovernable peoples who were far too much trouble for permanent occupation and "la mission civilizatrice." The name, "Afghanistan" was rather arbitrarily adopted from the name of one of the larger Pushtun factions whose Khan had pretensions to royalty and who had a fair amount of power in the area of Kabul. This is a country? This is certainly not a nation, not in the sense that any self respecting political scientist would recognize the term. There really is not such a thing as the Afghan People. One thing that all these kinds of "Afghans" have in common is a deep seated xenophobia, especially against non-Muslims. President Obama's policy and strategy review seems to have as a "given" that the US and NATO should "make something" of Afghanistan, that we should fully commit ourselves to a program of building an Afghan Nation. Why should we do that? As an act of "Christian Charity?" There has never been such a thing as the kind of Afghanistan that President Obama and the newly converted COIN generals envision. It is not a question of re-building anything. It is a question of building something that has never existed. Why should we do that? Will the "Afghans" love us for it, and should we care about that?

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