Very good question. One, I have to admit, that’s had me stumped since big talk started about going into Iraq.
Because Afghanistan was a total success! That’s why a substantial diversion of materiale was possible, because everything was utterly peachy.
We established a functional Green Zone in Kabul, with an entirely decent fellow as mayor of Kabul, with a mandate that extends as much as 10 km. on any given day. The agricultural efforts that are the mainstay of the Afghan economy are thriving, bumper crops are anticipated with glee. Many former bandits and warlords have been rehabilitated and found new careers as civil servants, ministers, and the like. Here’s a picture of a school!..
Because Afghanistan is not in the Middle East! It’s in Central Asia! And to think that after 5 years compared to the 30-odd years that you’d dismantle all the warlords tribal militias and get rid of the Taliban whilst also reconstructing the country and then training its army and the drug farms viable or even sensible prediction. That conflict is very much a multi generational affair, whether the Coalition UN mandated presence (I cannot stress UN mandated enough, since some of these folks are considering even Afghanistan a lost cause, even though hundreds of thousands of women have gone into education and 3 million refugees returned back to Afghanistan) will make a success of it is too early to tell.
going after the drug farms*
What would you propose to do about those? At present, opium farming seems to be the biggest and most profitable economic activity Afghanistan has got. You can’t just go in and burn the fields without offering something to replace them.
Make it legal. By doing this, trade of the drug can be restricted. Or you can provide the farmers/villages with infrastructure which can provide a viable alternative.
Legalizing opium in Afghanistan would not solve the problem – the crop is grown for export, mainly to countries where it is not legal, which accounts for the fat margin of profit.
Excellent idea – but expensive.
Which is why alternative infrastructure investment is needed. They only grow it because it’s the only business which brings in large amounts of money.
Well considering it’s the only alternative, and 13 billion has been pledged to the Afghan Government, it seems the only option.
Afghanistan doesn’t have any oil.
Not nearly as expensive as wars. Marshall and Truman, and the Congress of the day, recognized that leaving Germany and most of Europe in shambles after WWII would only lead to a lot of grief down the line. Hence, The Marshall Plan. Even the Soviet Union was invited in but Stalin’s paranoia got in the way.
And this doesn’t mean that I now buy the argument that “we established democracy in Germany so why not Iraq.”
It simply does not follow that success in doing procedure A with country B means that the same thing will happen with country C.
Germany and France had both had the crap blown out of them during 5 years of heavy warfare.
I imagine that in 5 years’ time, were the Russians / Chinese* to enter Iraq and
- throw the yanks out
- try democracy again
the Iraqi people may well be much more receptive.
The US involvement in Iraq / Afhanistan is (IMO) part of a long-term strategoc goal to ensure a stable world ecomony in America’s favour.
The real worry for the US is Inda, Pakistan and China - all of whom will challenge the US economically in the next 20-30 yrs. The US now have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, perfect for exterting control should either I, P or C flex their muscles.
*hypothetically, not like it’s really gonna happen
But it is well positioned for a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean.
It didn’t condone it but, until made public it didn’t condemn it either. There was definitely a “whatever it takes” mentality to the whole enterprise, fed by the explicit American Exceptionalist beliefs this administration has adhered to from the start.
Organisational culture filters down from the top. If the rules do not apply to Them Up Top, they don’t apply to Us Down Here either. Explicitly abnegating the Geneva Convention where convenient, setting up Camp X-ray so as to deliberately be outside your own and international jurisdiction, and extensive use of rendition to outsource your torture, all send the same message to the troops. I guarantee that each and every one of those Abu Graib people thought they were doing what their ultimate bosses wanted.
Very ill-considered, then.
Only if the U.S. still has U.S. troops there 20-30 years from now. They might be planning for that but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. We will live to see our “enduring bases” in Iraq either handed over to an Iraqi government, or overrun by Iraqi insurgents.
The biggest mistake Bush made was not listening to his father and why he didn’t go into Baghdad in the Gulf war, he was warned that was is going on now would happen. But Wolfawitz,Chaney, and Rumpsfeld wanted to go into Baghdad then, and didn’t approve of the older Bush’s not going, so they use Dubya as a puppet, and used the war on terror as an excuse, instead of concetrating on getting Afghanistan and Bib Laden’s group taken care of first. There would have been plenty of time to take care of Iraq should it have become a problem and the rest of the world would more likely have helped; as it sees the US now they think of us as a bully and rather than using us as a hope for a better life see us as the bully on the block imposing it’s ideas on them.
Monavis
Sorry but I see the premise of Iraqi insurgents overrunning ‘Enduring bases’ quite simply laughable.
Well I do, they don’t have to be in the amount that they have now, and they don’t have to be on active duty.
Remember the Saigon Embassy? And don’t forget, by that time the insurgents might be backed up by a new Iraqi government – or by the Iranians.
Of course they have to be on active duty. Every soldier at every U.S. base in Western Europe or Japan or anywhere in the world is on active duty.
Or the “insurgents” might be the Iraqi government by then.
…maybe everything is going according to plan.
WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
I would be hard pressed to argue against anything you’ve said, but I have a few questions: how does this relate to straight up criminality of rape/homicide? Are you trying to say that the perpetrators thought they were conducting ad hoc field interrogation? Or somehow thought the higher-up’s nudge-nudge-wing-wink attitude towards “interrogation techniques” gave them carte blanche to act like the Mongol hordes?