Spring on the Afghan Front Lines

Why and what? These are the only questions one can ask. First why do these people think anything will change in one week or one year. The killing will go on. What do these deaths accomplish? Defeat what? The US can spend another $60 billion and it will change nothing. The future? Make no mistake, the US will be there, like Korea, forever. No President will want to pull all the US troops out, for to do so will put our total defeat on their door step. A political solution? Impossible, given with the Taliban this is a religious war. Maybe in a few generations from now the Afghan people will realize life is precious and stop the madness..

Where is the wisdom to know our limitations? The strength of character to admit that we have not and can not accomplish our objective in Afghanistan? The courage to call it quits and leave Afghanistan: all our troops, operatives, advisers, money and arms?

In the from the late 50's thru 1960's Helmand province was called "little America". The Morris Knudson corporation ( the Hoover Damn, San Francisco Bay bridge) was building a damn and canals to tame the Helmand River.They constructed minature American suburbs complete with Coke, tract homes, and movie nights. In his classic "Little America" Rajiv Chandrasekaran picks up the narrative some 50 plus years later as the Americans and British try to wrest control of Helmond province from the Taliban several years ago. The book chronicles the serial corruption of the Afghan government, mistakes of both U.S. civilians and military, and the sacrifice of hundreds of American and British lives. What a waste of precious lives and resources. Danielle Moylan's article picks up the Helmand narrative and shows us by the dominance of the Taliban the futility and waste of American policy. When will we learn that military intervention in foreign cultures can never be dispositive and is a fool's errand.

"The Taliban" are not an invading army. They are Afghans in Afghanistan. All we've done is arm and shower money onto one group of Afghans that are willing to support our vision of that country; we hope they will not be slaughtered by another group of Afghans with a far different point of view.

Readers might remember that we were never attacked by the Taliban. Unable to get at al Qaeda in 2001 we decided to attack their hosts, the same people that we had armed against the Russians in the 1980's.
This might be a metaphor for our entire Middle East policy, one foolish intervention after another. The interventionist foreign policy establishment of the United States thinks that having the most powerful military force in the world means that we can control the world. How many more years of failure will it take to convince them that this is just not true in an age of irregular conflict?

Things are only going to get worse. Imagine an Islamic insurgency in Pakistan, nuclear armed and with a 200 million population. The only reason Pakistan has not become Afghanistan is because of the remittances of 3 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia and UAE who send home $ 18 Billion a year which keeps the nation afloat. The Pakistanis are all returning home by the planeloads, unpaid for months as the Saudi construction bubble bursts along with the oil price. Their savings have already been spent by their venal government on expensive motorways and shiny weapons and to sustain the worlds fifth biggest armed force along with its retirees. As the Gulf Returnees try to draw on their savings which have already been spent, the Government will print money to conceal its theft. The result will be hyperinflation and economic crisis which is the ideal breeding ground for an Islamic insurgency.

After 8 years of HRC, we'll still be there, and so will the people who live there. Eventually, we'll get tired and slip away. And the people who live there will still be there. We'll have spent trillions by that point, more than enough to fix US infrastructure twice over.

But if, by some miracle, enough Dem superdelegates wake up and switch to Bernie, we can leave that benighted land to the people who live there, and get straight to work fixing our own crumbling land.

Things are improving in Afghanistan at a glacial pace, though President Ghani seems to be a large improvement over Karzai. I don't think the Taliban will ever take Kabul its too fortified and too cosmopolitan. If the government can hold on it might just make it.

It's not all doom and gloom though. Since 2003 thousands of schools have been built or rehabilitated. Millions of girls have access to education for the first time in years. The average life expectancy in Afghanistan in 2001 was 55, now it's 60. There are women's shelters and women's rights groups struggling in Afghanistan but they exist, so long as the Taliban doesn't take control of the rest of the country. The Taliban might try to stop positive improvements, but I think they can only delay them so long as the government troops hold on.

An article indispensable ,apposite and unpolished.
Thanks.

Frederick the Great said, "He who defends everything, defends nothing." It was one of Napoleon's favorite quotes from Frederick, which he put into play many times.

Scattering 18 guys per post across Afghanistan will use up a few hundred thousand guys, and leave them all helpless to defend themselves, much less anything else.

Proper fortification can allow small numbers to defend themselves, but proper fortifications cost a lot in time and resources, and can't be put everywhere. Also, any fortification can be taken, especially if not relieved quickly, it is just harder to do. It won't make it possible to hold down an entire country by scattering forces across it.

Those Afghan forces are trying to make up by numbers what they lack in quality and deployment. Yet the also don't have the numbers reported, due to massive fraud and corruption in higher ranks, and huge rates of desertion.

The resulting reality is tiny numbers poorly equipped and scattered hopelessly.

Worse, Afghanistan can't afford those forces. Even those exist only because outside nations pay for them. If the pay stops, it all collapses.

This is worse than ARVN in South Vietnam. It can do even less, and would last an even shorter time on its own.

"the poppy harvest, a major source of income for the Taliban"

That is very misleading. When the Taliban controlled the country, they suppressed the poppy harvest with great effect. It resumed after the US drove the Taliban out.

It is now the major source of income for the whole country, both sides. All sides.

The US invasion did that, not the Taliban.

Once the seeds of ethno-religious insurgency bred with distrust and sown on the explosive geopolitical soils of the tribal badlands could sprout only in the toxic crops of revenge and violence. Any impression of spring on the frontlines thus remains at the most an elusive only.

Just imagine if all of the Middle East were denied access to weapons and ammunition. If all of the world's producers of mass destruction stopped supplying weapons and stopped making a profit off of these wars. And stopped the supplying of the black market in weapons and ammunition.

Nobody wants to fight in a war of course, peace would be the ideal scenario. For American military members, even with comparatively well-equip troops and technology, war is ugly and terrible (to put it lightly). But for these men who are so fearless that they would stand up in line of enemy fire to be able to call home, so committed to what they're fighting for, it's tragic to see their purpose not met with appropriate tools to get it done.

The US has accomplished nothing in Afghanistan, and should bring our troops home. The US should cut off all aid to Afghanistan, so long as it remains a country ruled by Islam, the religion of emotionally deranged and violent children.

Let the Saudis send in their imams and petrodollars. If the Pakistanis continue to fund and aid and abet violence in Afghanistan, the US should cut off all of its aid as well. The US should hold up next month's delivery of aid to Pakistan, to demonstrate what a lack of one month of cash can do to the mullahs.