And with all the shale gas in the US right now, why bother?
I love your last line, really.
How is it a much more worthy exercise? From a military standpoint, The Iraq war had clear cut objectives (which were reached). What are they in Afghanistan?
We are still having problems with the President insisting that we maintain a presence in Iraq, why?
We don’t need to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or any other foreign country, we have quite enough on our plate here at home.
GTFO, NOW.
We already have a withdrawal timetable in place and a deadline. To move all the supplies and equipment we’ve set up in the past 6 years takes a lot of time, particularly because the military loves stockpiling. In addition, withdrawing in a gradual, phased fashion helps ensure (or at least attempts to ensure) that there aren’t sudden gaps in security as well as preventing large targets for insurgents (in the form of massive columns of retreating troops and convoys concentrated on just a few roads).
If we leave now, Karzai’s government will fall and the Taliban will come sweeping in. Al Queda won’t be far behind. It would be like the 2001 invasion never happened. While we could try to target only Al Queda from afar using predators and cruise missiles, we probably wouldn’t be any more successful than what we’re doing in Pakistan now. The US can kill a lower level or mid-level Taliban or Al Queda commander a few times a year, but they’re always replaced and it probably doesn’t affect their medium term or long term operations.
America has been trying to get a pipeline deal with the Afghans since the mid-90s to get mainly Turkmen gas to head our way instead of towards Beijing. Turkmenistan is the Iraq of the gas world, possibly the biggest gas deposits of any country, even Russia, huge areas unexplored etc. The Taliban were invited to Houston in the 90s to meet with the CEOs of relevant firms and pretty much agreed a deal but then they reneged on it, wanting more money per unit of gas transit fee. There were photos taken of them walking round Houston zoo in their turbans, I’m sure they’re on the internets somewhere. The Afghan guy that US energy companies (mainly UNOCAL) used to do their negotiations with the various Afghan factions over the 1995-2001 period was Hamid Karzai. I’m not sure exactly how much part promotion of democracy and democratic ideals played in our negotiations with the Taliban but I’m guessing not too much.
I agree with you about the freely elected government. The thing is, the number one priority of any independent government would be to get a date for us getting out, like it was in Iraq. That’s the absolute last thing we want so we don’t want any independent politicians or free elections going on. Most Afghans just vote the way their tribal elders tell them anyway, and Karzai was convinced that enough big players all agreed to support him at a meeting in Dubai months before the election. It would take decades for the Afghans to go from their current situation to having anything resembling a fair democratic process, require mass education, massive cultural change etc. And require its neighbours to stop interfering and supporting various ethnic groups over the others for various reasons. Forget it. Impossible. And this is the least silly reason we’re being given for having to stay there.
And we really don’t give a shit. Our main aim is to remain squatting there until whatever government legally recognises our right to stay there and lets us build our pipeline westwards. Democracy is just a word to help keep US public opinion onside, like it was in Iraq. What we actually want nation building-wise is a compliant government not strong enough to stand on its own feet and its pro-western leader requiring US help to remain in power. We tried to do this in Iraq and were defeated by an Iranian Ayatollah but we appear to be having more success in Afghanistan.
Reading some of this it’s lke Vietnam never happened.
Given that even if things did somehow improve dramatically overnight, Afghanistan would still be a volatile place, I can’t see too many oil/gas execs right now pushing for such a cross-country pipeline. It would likely be much more expensive, but an underwater pipeline across the Caspian Sea seems like a smarter short term and long term investment. Besides, Europe likely has much more of an interest in the natural gas than the US.
I’m always a bit hesitant to say that any people’s culture makes democracy virtually impossible without massive cultural/educational change. This makes any kind of dictatorship or totalitarian state a self-fulfilling prophecy. Setting aside all the massive blunders and the cost of potentially hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, there were a decent number of commentators who said that Arabs, and in particular the Iraqis, just weren’t conditioned or culturally capable of participating and maintaining a democracy. While there have been numerous problems just with the political situation in Iraq alone (setting aside the insurgency, civil war, etc.), the voting process itself in Iraq so far seems to be one of the very few bright spots. Despite the boycott by Sunnis in several of the elections, it does at least appear that democracy isn’t something that will require generations to become accepted in Iraq.
Why the hell don’t we like peace? we have been at war forever, one after another. We interfere in other countries governments with no respect for their sovereignty. We have 800 bases all over the world. What have we become? Does anyone think Afghanistan is the last one?
Suppose that Pakistan closes down our resupply roads-and Putin decides to stop allowing us to overfly Russia?
We would be in bad shape indeed-would we be forced to withdraw?
I was reading aout the British retreat from Afghanistan-the Army of the Indus was continually attacked-only a handful of Brits made it out alive.
I think American hegemony is overall beneficial to the world as it while can’t impose total peace establish some peace and lay the roots for a future world government. Indeed a world with American hegemony will be far more peaceful then a world with an isolationist America. For instance the Taliban would grow even more violent in Afghanistan and Pakistan if the US didn’t intervene. Your hippieism is not grounded in reality.
But the thing is, you keep losing.
What do you mean by “you”?
Imperialists.
Stop calling us “imperialists”.
Vast amounts of oil is produced every day in countries that have ongoing civil wars, insurgencies, etc., or at the very least are unstable countries. Our traditional method for working in those countries has been to get a cooperative government and send in troops and/or train the native army to be an oil protection force. Even countries like Saudi are like this. The native army protect the oil infrastructure while a mercenary army put together by Vinnell corp. protect the Saudi royal family from their own security forces. Nigeria is another good example. We send them tons of military aid and expertise though they won’t let us buil a base there, the civil war rages, pipelines are blown up but oil production continues. Afghanistan is a problem that in the eyes of the US can be fixed with money and guns. They’ll bribe the Afghans and the relevant Pakistanis with pipeline transit fees and let the military presence keep them honest regarding this. And this isn’t unusual. Currently the Kurds wanting to negotiate to get a pipeline through Iraqi Sunnistan to Basra so they can export their oil, they’re also talking to Iran about one too. Europe does have an interest in Asian gas, and the US owners of the pipeline will happily sell it to them when it comes out the other end.
Elections don’t make a democracy. You can have a wonderful election with all the democratic mechanisms, parliament, constitution etc. in place but it doesn’t mean anything. Iraq’s three main ethnic groups voted for three separate ethnic parties. In the Sunni and Shiite case they voted for the people their Ayatollahs told them to, the Shiites taking voting instruction from an Iranian Ayatollah. The winning Sunnis were an Iraqi version of the Muslim Brotherhood Hamas are a Palestinian version. Elsewhere in the world we vilify and support repression of the Brothers and their offshoots like Hamas but in Iraq we’re forced to negotiate with them and call them democratic. The Shiite party was three groups.
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The Dawa party, or Islamic Mission. The Dawa are historically famed for their expertise in the democratic institutions of car bombing and hijacking. They also blew up the US embassy in Kuwait in 1982. Their spiritual leadership is the Al-Sadr family of clerics. They’re based in Iran and the families of their leadership still live there.
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The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Not the most democratic name or sentiment. These guys, again based in Iran, fought for Iran against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Their military wing now makes up the Iraqi security forces which means that lots of the new democracy’s security people are recieving pensions from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
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Moqtada Al-Sadr. Not known for his liberal democratic leanings.
Now it may be that these guys eventually develop democratic tendencies, start respecting womens’ rights, minorities, gays etc. but currently that’s not the case. Women were much better off under Saddam and gays are now being tracked down and murdered. Iran is on the glide path to becoming a heavily Islamic state (Arab region), an Iranian colony (Shiite region with 80+% of the oil), a Sunni region disenfranchised and a terrorism breeding ground, and a kleptocratic Kurdish state that’s already locking up jounalists it doesn’t like. It’s also worth noting that when the Brits left in the 1950s they left Iraq with a working parliament, government, democratic system but this lasted exactly five minutes before a dictator took over and the only change in leaders after that till we invaded was by military coup.
What is it you think you’re describing in the first post?
Did you notice in the latter part of the 20th - as well as the early part of the 21st centuries - a little resistance to “American hegemony”, especially when it involved invasion and occupation?
There are still believers in the American myth. Congrats, Lemay but reality should begin to creep in sometime. Who is better off when we go in?
What do you point to as an indicator that America makes places more peaceful. Iraqis are going to pay the price for our intrusion into their life for a long time. We destroyed venerated churches and buildings. We destroyed their infrastructure. Millions of the educated fled. There are orphans and widows that will never forgive us. There are thousands of homeless. Your type are not the solution. You are the problem.
The Taliban are in Pakistan cooking up more soldiers to fight us. I suppose you want to go in there next. Then what? They will just wait for us to come. Nope. They will move away again. They do not have fixed bases to bomb. They do not sit and wait for us. They contol 80 percent of Afghanistan now. We keep getting whipped by backward countries with no air force or navies. Yet people like you don’t learn. Lets do it again, and again and again. Maybe sometime it will work.
Well, the only issue with your statement is that you forget about a fellow named Saddam and the terrorists who continue to fight and thus cause the US to react.
If we continue to fight the way we do we’ll certainly keep losing. We give the enemy something to fight against by having troops on the ground. This may mean that we keep the enemy there rather than attacking us at home, but it also makes people think the threat isn’t real against terrorists by removing the issue from their day to day lives.
Or it may mean that we actively convince legions of new people to become our enemy.
I thought they were the enemy in the first place because of what we did - as well as our influence - in their lands?
Saddam was a bully but life was far better when he was in charge. Over half the people attending college were women. They could dress how they wanted. The different religions lived next to each other and intermarried.
The professional classes have left. The educated have fled or been killed.
Saddam was a paper tiger. He had no weapons of significance and was only a threat to his own people. He was their problem, not ours.
Read the blog" A Family in Iraq" and hear what the educated people went through because of us. Some vague concept of liberation for the Iraqis has destroyed their lives and opportunities. orphans are everywhere, the homeless are waliking about looking for alms. We have partitioned their cities .