Every time I post something about an Eric Margolis article I manage to piss off people on both sides of the table who seem to be far more interested in condemning Margolis for some perceived past indiscretion than actually reading his current article. However, I see that both Tim and Skdadl recently quoted Margolis indirectly without the sky y'know falling and such.
In the article written after the one from which they quoted, Margolis does an assessment of Bushco's four fiascos to date. Whatever his past indiscretions may be, I think he hits it with this piece:
Amateur Warlords
For a leader who styles himself "the war president," U.S. Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush's military record now stands at 0 for 4. Even Italy's born-again "imperial Roman conqueror," Benito Mussolini, fared better.- Fiasco I: Five years after Bush ordered Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed "total victory," U.S. and allied forces are fighting a losing war against Afghan resistance groups. Afghan heroin exports are up 90%. The U.S. just quietly deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan to hunt Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate attempt to save Republicans from getting clobbered in November midterm elections.
Notice: This is a hit & run post. Things are still very busy here at The Gopher Ranch and I won't be around much in the comments. So play nice among yourselves or I'll have to take you out behind the barn, strip you naked and roll you around in a nice big patch of poison ivy for awhile.
Heh -- the "neocon couch commandos." I have seen pogge elsewhere refer to them as the "101st Chairborne."
I usually enjoy Margolis, mahigan. He comes from a certain kind of conservative space and I doubt he has a lot of love for moonbats such as us, but he is a serious foreign correspondent -- he has been there; he knows the people; he's not interested in propagandistic demonizing -- so he has an interest in maintaining his self-respect as a reporter. He actually bothers to remain reality-based, as I believe we say nowadays.
I'll agree with Margolis on Iraq and Somalia as fiascos, but disagree with his assuptions on Afganistan and Lebanon. Lebanon was a fiasco, but I think the blame should rest with Israel. Bush backed them up, and stalled the international community from imposing a ceasefire until the Israelis were ready to give up anyway, but I doubt he called up Olmert and said "Invade, do it, do it, do it!!" This was an Israel boondoggle, start to finish.
I'm not ready to give up on Afganistan either. I don't remember stopping the production of heroin as being one of the mission goals. It's not something we should be allowing, but it's not the only measuring stick for progress either.
In the past week some Taliban fighting groups have begun negotiating for an amnesty, and another has just suffered a major defeat at the hands of Karzai's security forces, backed up by Canadian military, losing 71 fighters. Our own casualties have been fewer than feared, with some critics earlier in the year predicting as many as 200 dead over the course of the summer. Now the summer isn't over yet, and no offence to the families of the fallen, but we are a long way from things being as bad as was feared. I also remember that at the very begining of this Afgan mission, years ago when we first went in, that this could take 10 to 20 years to do properly. We're not close to that target yet either. The southern regions will always be a problem, probably long after we do leave, but most of the rest of the country does seem to be improving.
Whooee! YetiFeller, I reckon as Canajuns we wanna stand up fer the troops an' we don't much like it if we think our army men is dyin' fer nuthin'. But, dang it all, Snowman, we gotta face facts.
The biggest fact is that the Merkins sed they was gonna turn Afghanny inta a bloomin' democracy an' a shinin' beacon o' truth, justice an' the Merkin way. They got sum support on accounta they made a good pitch an' the rotten Talibans needed slappin' down after 9/11.
The troublem is that the Merkins got their stoopid asses side-tracked by Dumbass Dubya the Decider pullin' mosta the Merkin effort outta Afghanistan an' goin' t' war against Saddam Whosinsane. If the Yanks'd stayed the course, mebbe we'd be part o' sumpin' has a snowball's chance. They din't, we ain't an' it don't.
It's a damn shame that our army men is gettin' killed in a fight they can't win. We coulda won if the Merkins put their billions o' greenbacks t' work in Afghanny instead o' Iraq. The BushMan made so many goof-ups that there ain't any way anybuddy oughta be follerin' their numbnuts lead. But we got King Steve kissin' BushBoy's keester an' doin' his biddin' at the expense o' good an' decent an' brave young fellers an' gals.
I see the latest Maclean's has gotta bigass article tellin' us what a great job we're doin' in Afghanny but whoever wrote that piece never even signed his name to it. Mebbe it was King Steve hisself.
JB
Yeti - A few setbacks for the Taliban don't translate into a victory for anyone much less the corrupt, warlord riddled Karzai government. The recent "victories" may mean the beginning of the end of the Taliban which might make some of the locals happy but certainly doesn't necessarily indicate a rush to support the central government.
There is just as good a chance the that western countries are being played. After all, it was just weeks ago that Karzai rearmed the warlords to support the Afghan army. The warlords would certainly love to see the Taliban gone - they were bad for business - and I'm sure they are more than willing to sit in the bleachers cheering while western troops take care of that little problem for them. But that is in no way going to transform the country into a democracy.
The central government controls virtually nothing outside of Kabul and exists only due to the presence of foreign troops without whom the government would collapse in a week. Getting rid of the Taliban, who have more support in a large part of the country than the central government, is only one fairly small step toward a democratic country and will not guarantee such a result.
Democracy will not come to Afghanistan until the power of the warlords is broken and, since they are now the government, that won't be happening anytime soon. The creation of a democratic Afghanistan is still a project more likely measured in decades rather than years. Our 'allies' in this venture, particularly the US, don't have a great track record when it comes to that kind of long term commitment. I expect victory to be declared long before it is actually achieved.
The problem of Afghanistan is that the problem is bigger than that. No discussion of Afghanistan that does not focus even more on Pakistan can go anywhere very useful.
Pakistan has, at the moment, very complicated but important relations with the U.S. As long as that is true, anyone else involved in Afghanistan is basically a pawn, a victim of crooked power games being played out at many levels in Pakistan and in Washington.
Something similar is true of everyone trying to figure out those "home-grown terrorists" in Britain and Canada, eg, with connections in Pakistan. So Pakistani intelligence services helped you to break those cases, did they? How about they also helped to create those cases in the first place? The New York Times will run the first headline the day after the airline plot was revealed, implying that the Pakistani allies are helping so much!, but it is not gonna run the second one. Not yet.
Yeti wrote:
I don't remember stopping the production of heroin as being one of the mission goals. It's not something we should be allowing, but it's not the only measuring stick for progress either.
Actually, the picture is unclear. Certainly, the Afghanistan Compact (successor to the Bonn agreement) does set some vague goals for poppy eradication:
By end-2010, the Government will strengthen its law enforcement capacity at both central and provincial levels, resulting in a substantial annual increase in the amount of drugs seized or destroyed and processing facilities dismantled, and in effective measures, including targeted eradication as appropriate, that contribute to the elimination of poppy cultivation.
Of course, the same compact also sets the goal of disarming all illegally armed groups by the end of next year...
Certainly, support for poppy eradication was one of Operation Enduring Freedom's features, though I don't believe Canadians participated directly in that kind of action when we were under OEF.
Now that we're under ISAF, NATO says one of its key 'supporting' tasks will be
Supporting Afghan government and internationally-sanctioned counter-narcotics efforts within limits (NOT participating in poppy eradication or destruction of processing facilities or taking military action against narcotics producers);
The limits aren't fully explained: this *could* mean standing guard while Afghan troops or officials carry out the eradication; or it could mean training them or transporting them to their destinations, as was done by US forces under OEF, according to the June Senlis report, Section 3 of which paints a quite dismal picture of the legacy of poppy eradication plans in Kandahar and elsewhere.
It's hard to tell, though, how much difference there will be in practice between NATO's ISAF mission (stabilization, some support for counter-narcotics) and OEF (counterterrorism, some support for counter-narcotics): while NATO's own website maintains a distinction, Gordon O'Connor, when challenged in the House of Commons, said there would be no difference in Canada's approach as we switched from one to the other.
Returning to narcotics, Hamid Karzai has recently made it *the* yardstick, calling it a greater threat to his country than terrorism.
Not surprisingly given the reluctance of western donors to allocate adequate resources to improving alternatives for poppy farmers (we're spending much more on what Karzai has called the lesser threat, and our approach to narcotics has been irrational), the president isn't happy:
"We are not happy about the aid so far. The effects are not really visible," he told the conference, attended by government and aid officials and diplomats.
"The aid has been scanty and minor ... we ask the world to help us in this regard substantially," he said.
One of the few bright spots in all this is that Karzai has not yet agreed to aerial fumigation operations against poppy crops: a strategy that has visited great misery on many poor farmers in Colombia for many years now.
I have always wondered .....
Where these Taliban folks came from. They seem to have defeated a bunch of "drug growing warlords" a few years back, and played no small part in tossing out the Soviets.
When they finally came to political power ZHAZOOM - they no longer were democrats. I may not believe in some of their actions, like blowing up several thousand year olf statues for ideological reasons. But, damnit, it is their country - not mine. I can think of any number of major corporations that have done worst than that - and they are given tax breaks.
Then who-da-fuck are they. No one seems to claim that, like the some of the violent types, in Iraq, they are outsiders. They must have more than some support - they must have major support from somewhere .. and somewhere inside the country.
They are not like those freedom fighters, the CONTRAS, that were at heart a bunch of criminals that Ronnie Reagan only loved.
How did stomping out Ossam's training grounds become a great fight for democracy. I like to consider myself a democrat and tend to get owley when folks go out saying they are defending me and they are really messing around for their own, dubvious, ends.
Croghan27
Stephen - Sorry for the delay in your comment. It contained enough links to run afoul of our spam filter and was held for moderator approval until I saw it a moment ago.
azerbic has a good post about Margolis, including news that he will be on a new TVO show. Opinions in comments there are mixed as well.
http://thestar.blogs.com/azerb/2006/08/nearly_three_ye.html
I've been a fan of Margolis for years. He has some of the best commentary about these issues and it proves that the conservative print media isn't entirely rancid for giving him a corner to write in.
Wow, looks like I threw a rock at the hornet's nest.
First, JimBobby, I had to read your post four or five times just to understand what the hell you were saying. I think the gest of it is that because the americans pulled out, we can't win anymore, so we should give up and go home. uhhhh - no. oh, and the cause for invading Afghanistan wasn't the spread of democracy, or the liberation of a people, it was that 9/11 was an act of war by a group being sheltered and supported by the Taliban. No one argued with that (except some who want to give the Taliban more time to arrest Osama on their own - we'ld still be waiting).
Now onto the intelligent arguements, Mahigan, yes the Karzai govn't would collapse in a week without outside support, yes some warlords who are not nice people, and many of whom are involved in the drug trade are now in his government. Karzais options were to let them in, or fight a continous string of civil wars depending entirely on foriegn soldiers (ours). He let them in, and will slowly push for change with them in. As long as he recieves strong support from the west, and finacial aid, and support for poppy eradiaction from the west, it will happen. Maybe not in the three years he's got left to do it in, but it will happen. NATO goal in not participating in poppy eradication because it (and we) are not to eager to piss a lot of farmers off while still fighting Taliban.
We need to get over that. More casualties short term for fewer long term.
Yes the Taliban has support of wide areas, but these are the poorest, least populated areas of the country. They border on Pakistans tribelands, which are really just ungoverned by any reasonable standard.
We need now to focus on the forgotten 3 d's. Defence - diplomancy - development.
Remove those who cannot be negoatiated with, deal with those who can be (warlords granted power in exchange for falling in line with larger goals), and finally replacing poppys with alternatives that will still allow Afgans to put food on the table. ( hey, maybe they should grow food?) Karzai is absolutly right in calling it a greater threat to his country than terrorism, or governments should see that too, and focus more attention in that direction.
This is a winnable fight. It will take another decade, but it is winnable if we contribute the reasources.