Instead, we had a perfectly normal sort of reason for going to war -- the Taliban's refusal to co-operate with American efforts to go after al-Qaeda.

 

Hmm, but didn't they have a perfectly normal sort of reason for refusal to co-ooperate -- considering Bushies' refusal to present their 'secret evidence' of bin Laden involvment? Gevernments don't usually extradite people just on 'we know he's guilty'.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq you had a thin American force toppling the reigning dictator fairly quickly and then essentially engaging in a big mop-up operation that continues to this day. In Afghanistan, things are relatively stable, with sporadic violence, but in Iraq, as we all know, there continues to be chaos.




The biggest difference between the two places is that Afghanistan does not have oil and Iraq does. Furthermore, while there are ethnic differences and rivalries, there is no religious divide. So Afghanistan has been able to essentially be split into fiefdoms ruled by various warlords with only a thin patina of control by the central government in Kabul. Iraq, because of the religious split and the imperative that all parties have of getting a piece of the oil revenue, is much harder to govern is this decentralized way. The Sunnis will never accept an arrangement that does not guarantee them oil revenue, even though their area does not have any. Hence the insurgency and hence the inability to agree on a workable constitution. The only way Iraq has ever held together is through an iron fist.




In other words, I don't think the moral underpinnings of our involvement have made a big difference one way or another to the relative success of one and the relative failure of the other.

I think Matt hit on just the right distinction.  In Afghanistan, we had cause for war and because we had real, hard to argue against, cause, we could all except the long commitment.  It wasn't just to punish the Taliban for aiding Al-Qaeda, after all, it was to recreate the place so that it will hopefully never be another staging ground for an attack against the US again.  Every aspect of that war, from invasion to aftermath, serves that purpose and most people in the US and even in the world, recognize the purpose as legitimate.  I have serious complaints with specific things we've done there (Tora Bora, especially) but we had cause and the cause gives us reason to see it through.

Iraq was, as we've been saying, a war of choice.  We didn't have to do it when we didn't and I even accept that we might have had to do it someday but I kind of think that it wouldn't have come up.  It's also a war that we chose to pursue without first finishing what we'd had to start in Afghanistan, thus dividing our resources which, though ample, are not without limit.

In the world community, we completely gave up our tenuous position as a major power that only goes to war when absolutely justified and, in so doing, we insulted a whole host of allies who, after 9-11, were willing to help us.

But, one thing is true and this troubles me about Iraq -- when we topple a government, we're responsible for the consequences.  I really want to bring our troops out of Iraq.  I wish I could beliebe Matthew's earlier argument that our presence is causing the chaos and that it would be reduced by our leaving, but, I fear the consequences of that being wrong.  If I were made President tomorrow, I'd want very deeply to pull our forces out of there and I would kiss every butt in the UN to get an international force in there to stabilize the situation however, on the likely chance that our insulted allies would be unwilling to step in to help clean up the mess, I don't know that I could just leave the Iraqis to their fate.

The US has fought meaningful and justified wars in the past, like both World Wars and Afghanistan and though I say this with a lot of reservations, even Gulf War I (where we at least had a lot of international support).  But once you've done it, once you've gone to war, the consequences are yours, are they not?  Powell called it "The Pottery Barn" rule and he was right and when he said that, it was meant to be a warning.

To me, everything about starting the Iraq war was wrong.  The motive, the timing, the assumptions about how it would go, they were all wrong.  But we still did it.  I don't consider myself a "Stay the Course" Democrat.  The current course is obviously wrong.  Like I said, were I in charge, I'd kiss butts, make bribes, make concessions, do anything to change the course by winning some international support, but... just leaving?

I wish we weren't there, but there we are.  In a sense, you could argue that we owe the Iraqis even more than we would ordinarily, since we started this without reason and without a proper plan. 

“Under the circumstances we still had -- and have -- a moral obligation to do the best we can in terms of consolidating a decent government for Afghanistan an securing a better future for its people,”

Typical redundant idealism! I hope some day our intellectuals, politicians, political analysts and general population would drop this kind of demagoguery.  Somehow the other, we have begun to believe that the US is there to do good stuff and this admin is taking full advantage of this naiveté.

We went into both Afghanistan and Iraq for one and the same purpose and that was to attack enemies. Making the case for Afghanistan was no brainier but we did add women emancipation to it. Iraq was a tough sell as there was no direct link but three US administrations Bush-Clinton-Bush had no love lost for Iraq.

To attack Iraq, we had to dig deep and invented one lie after another and now we are down to putting Iraq back together.

Instead of living in denial, we must first admit that in both cases our intentions were never benevolent. Therefore, we have no duty/obligation to do anything good and make that an excuse to stay in those countries.

We have no knowledge about Afghanistan. It is a tribal country and a county which is under civil war conditions for the last 30 years. The US army or even the US government is in no position to change anything there in the next few years. It will require a minimum of 30 years commitment to put that country back together. The best deal is to let Afghan decide what they want to do with THEIR country instead of the US deciding for them. Only constructive thing the US can do there is to finance some schools and find a way to educate the next Afghan generation so that hopefully, Afghans begin to change things around.

Afghans never had a “decent” government in the history. What qualification US has to change the history? They don’t have a concept for a central government. All previous authorities in Afghanistan worked on the basis of non interference in the tribal affairs and that was “decent” enough for them. And that is how it is going to be.

While you're right about all of the strategic mistakes and while I approach every potential war from the point of view that we should find another way, it does seem to me that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were so intertwined as to make the invasion of Afghanistan a justified act of retaliation and deterrence.

I also agree with criticisms that we didn't properly prove that Osama was behind 9-11 when we attacked, but I mean "properly" in that case in terms of domestic criminal procedure.  Osama has since basically taken credit for 9-11, so it's not like we went after the wrong guy.

We just, as you pointed out, went after him in the wrong way and so he's still roaming.  That's actually surprising to me.  If you'd told me, a few days after 9-11, that Osama would still be at large 4 years later, I'd have laughed at you.  I was sure we were going to get the guy by now.  But, as you pointed out, we've made every mistake we could make since we sent troops into Afghanistan.  It's frankly depressing. 

There is so much wrong about Afghanistan in this comment it's hard to know where to start.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq you had a thin American force toppling the reigning dictator fairly quickly and then essentially engaging in a big mop-up operation that continues to this day.

In Afghanistan you had a coalition of ethnic groups - the Northern Alliance - that toppled the government of another ethnic group - the Pashtun - with the aid of US air power, Special Forces, and some light infantry.  There isn't a big mop-up operation in Afghanistan.  Most of the country is controlled by the Northern Alliance ethnic groups who were allied to the US and NATO forces.  The president of the country comes from one of those groups.  The Pashtun - who were led by a faction called the Taliban - were routed in 2001, but have regrouped to t he extent that they fight the Northern Alliance groups and such as there is of the central government.

The biggest difference between the two places is that Afghanistan does not have oil and Iraq does. Furthermore, while there are ethnic differences and rivalries, there is no religious divide. So Afghanistan has been able to essentially be split into fiefdoms ruled by various warlords with only a thin patina of control by the central government in Kabul.

The ethnic divides in Afghanistan are at LEAST as powerful as the religious divides in Iraq.  And there are more of them.  You are right that Afghanistan is split into fiefdoms ruled by warlords with light control from the central government.  They are ethnic divides with a tribal leader. That is the way Afghanistan has ALWAYS been and the Soviets found their attempt to smash that paradigm and assert central control doomed to failure.

The approach we have taken in Afghanistan recognizes that central fact about the country and has been much more successful than what the Soviets tried.  

You are exactly right.  I stand corrected!

I think everyone who holds 30-year US Treasury bonds should sell them. Because the Americans of 30 years from now are going to repudiate them, the history that the government of their parents sold these bonds will escape them.

Why does history begin from 9/11? Why does the history of Afghanistan begin from 9/11? If one does not repudiate 30 years of history, then the US had obligations with respect to Afghanistan even if 9/11 had never happened and there was no al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

There are plenty of books on the subject of US involvement in Afghanistan, but a quote from Mark Danner's article in the NYT Magazine of 9/11/2005 will suffice:

"It was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul," Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, recalled in 1998. "And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." It was a strategy of provocation, for the gambit had the effect of "drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap.. . .The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War."

Let us be very clear - the US deliberately fomented civil war in Afghanistan as a bear trap for the Soviets, and then helped create the jihad factory; but after the war was done, and the Soviets had collapsed, America turned its back on Afghanistan. 9/11 did not suddenly create an obligation for the US to act, the obligation already existed and was being ignored.

But there will be no 9/11 for holders of US Treasuries that will awake Americans to their obligations.

Ellen I found your post very interesting. Do you have any references where I might learn about the oil sheikdoms and their history. Also, forgive my ignorance but what is ISI?

Sorry. Try here.

Bush attacked Afganistan because he had to bomb somebody to prove he was doing something about 911 by killing other people.  Bush had no evidence that bin Laden was responsible for 911 when he started bombing and bribing local war/drug lords to fight against the Taliban.  The only proof we have of bin Laden's involvement is the Bush soundtrack of a video of bin Laden; less biased translations of the video conclude that bin Laden did not cop to 911 although he approved of it.  If we thought bin Laden and his group were involved, why didn't we target them rather than start a war which killed, maimed and displaced tens of thousands of innocent civilians?  We pay billions to support special operations troops and an intelligence apparatus, but apparently they weren't up to the task of taking out bin Laden without the occupation of the country.  Oh, I forgot, we did occupy Afganistan and still do not have bin Laden and his inner circle in custody.  It must be the most expensive botched manhunt in history.

Everthing I have read is that outside Kabul the war/drug lords are every bit as fundamentalist as the Taliban had been, if not more so.  At least with the Taliban, there was the rule of their fundamentalist take of Islamic law not the rule of the whims of the local war/drug lord.  As far as security is concerned, Karzai, even with his mercenary guard, could not even leave Kabul in the recent election campaign.  Meanwhile, there are reports of women burning themselves to death because things are worse han they were with the Taliban.  And, of course, there is the little matter that Afghanistan now supplies about 80% of the heroin supply, while Bush had paid the Taliban millions for eliminating the drug trade before 911.  

What are we accomplishing with our current counter-insurgency operations?  The Carter group and the Red Cross estimate in these types of situations nine civilians die for every insurgent killed.  Does anyone seriously think that once we have left, a war/drug lord would not welcome al Queada with open arms for the right price?

And, of course, Afghanistan gave us Gitmo:  Bush's self-delegated authority to disappear anyone anwhere without charge or judicial review which Judge Roberts' just confirmed while he was interviewing with the White House for the Supreme Court slot.  We originally peopled Gitmo with individuals handed over to us by our war/drug lord allies for a bounty.  Based on the people that have been released, an awful lot of innocents ended up it Gitmo.  In Iraq, the military told the Red Cross that 70-90% of the people it detained were "mistakes."  The real reason why Bush is so secretive about  who is in Gitmo is that they've detained innocents or just foot soldiers who were defending their country from a foreign invasion and posed absolutely no threat to the US homeland.

Bush has nothing to offer Afghanistan but more pain and we've run-out of money with Bush's fiscal policies and priorities.  

Matt Davis catches an important point. We didn't invade Iraq in order to rebuild it...that was very much a post-facto justification, though it may have been something that motivated certain neo-cons whose influence may have encouraged Mr. Bush towards the invasion.

Of course, the vast stores of WMD were illusory as well, and its hard to believe that everyone in the administration actually believed in them, no matter how convenient a fig-leaf the "everyone thought they were there" trope has become.

Indeed, what drives me to distraction about the invasion of Iraq is that I can't discern any systematic rational reason why the United States committed itself to the massive invasion, though I agree that the invasion in and of itself created certain moral commitments to the population of Iraq that we have been doing a rather poor job of fulfilling (no surprise, given the people in charge of fulfilling them).

I cast my mind around (and try to avoid conspiracy theories, unless, Holmesianly, they are the only remaining explanation):

Was it in fact for oil? It seems plausible that the dream of oil (and the interest of US oil companies, a key Bush sponsor-group) helped, er, "oil the machinery" that made the invasion possible. But the negative policy effects in terms of energy policy that the invasion would have (and did have) were so predictable, it's hard to point to oil as a coherent and rational motivation.

Was it really just W's chipped shoulder vis-a-vis his dad: "they dissed Dad for not 'completing the job', and Saddam tried to kill my daddy, and besides I am a tougher president, I am I am!"? It is painful to think that US policy is shaped by the peculiar weaknesses and limited strengths of our current president...though it's certainly plausible that various power centers around Bush were happy to manipulate his obvious personal weaknesses to push him in the direction they wanted.

Alas, in the end, I can't reach any conclusion aside from "There was no reason that the United States invaded Iraq", (if by "reason" one means a conclusion reached through the application of rational thought). 

And if there was no reason, it is not very surprising that the outcome looks as confused and harmful as it is. 

How does the fact that we went to war in Afghanistan for *other* reasons than ensuring a decent government for them mean that we have *more* of a *moral* obligation to see things through there than in Iraq? I don't see the moral calculas that gets you to that conclusion.

Carter started arming Afghan factions in July 79, the Soviets invaded in December.

This notion that we can invade a country and impose a government is a huge delusion. Did any country invade the US to give us democracy? Or the French? Or the English? The Poles? The fact is, democracy MUST be won by the citizens themselves. If it is not valued enough for the people to fight and win it, it will not survive if imposed.


Wow!  So that whole World War II thing where we invaded and conquered Germany, Italy, and Japan and imposed democratic governments never happened. 

Bush's failure to get bin Laden and to end the Taliban while distracting us with his failures in Iraq will be one of this many but perhaps his greatest failure.


Unfortunately our news organizations tend to conflate the Taliban and the Pashtun.  The Taliban are merely a religiously extreme faction of that ethnic group.  Afghanistan being  the coalition of competing ethnic groups that it is, there will ALWAYS be tension and at least low level conflict between the Pashtun and other groups.  This will probably mostly reported in our news as the revival of the "Taliban".  People should understand this for what it is and not in the simplistic terms it gets told to us.

Bush (or anybody else) could not have ended the "Taliban" without exterminating several million Pashtuns.  

Frankly, I think the whole losing Bin Laden thing is overrated.  It doesn't appear that he is really operational now.  He has become only a symbol.  Of course he would still be a symbol if he was dead.      

I would go a step further.  Democracy while an invention of the ancient Greeks is largely a gift of the British Empire.  The United States is a Democracy because British colonists, at least a third of them, thought they had the rights of Englishmen and the Parliament and then the Crown did not respect those rights.  Without the French Navy we would not have defeated the British.

As for the French and the Poles without American and British arms both defeating the Nazis and containing the Soviets there would be very little Democracy to go around.  

Devil's advocate: Italy is tribal in some ways by region--Florentines are not the same as Milanese, and goodness knows Sicily is a foreign country to the mainland, not really an ethnically cohesive place like Japan. And for goodness sake, the U.S., what is the culture there anyways? (Red state, blue state, purple state, Mormoms, latte liberals, Pat Robertson groupies, Detroit Muslims, Brooklyn Hasid, Brooklyn's Little Odessa, Pennsylvania Amish, LA's Little Iran, Santa Monica yuppies, the Tim McVeigh gun show people, Eric Rudolph protectors, Hmong emigres in the upper Midwest, gay Episcopal parishes, Creoles....)

Check out the unemployment rate for young males in this story about a recent development in an ongoing saga:

September 17, 2005

Italian Police Arrest Fugitive Crime Leader in Naples Gang War

By IAN FISHER

ROME, Sept. 16 - The Italian police seized the head of a major crime family in Naples on Friday, in an arrest the authorities said they hoped would put an end to a yearlong gang war that had been responsible for the deaths of some 50 people.

The suspect, Paolo Di Lauro, 52, who had been on the run for three years, was arrested in an apartment in Secondigliano, on the city's poor northern outskirts. Mr. Di Lauro was the head of one of the most powerful families in the Camorra, the Neapolitan criminal society.....

The gang war over the past year has dealt a deep blow to Naples, which had made significant strides toward cleaning up its image in the 1990's as a chaotic and crime-ridden city. The deaths - on streets, in burned cars, in pizza parlors - stood as a reminder of the pervasive problems of poverty in a city in which half the young people are unemployed. "The Camorra also has a strong power of attraction on young people to offer a way to get by," Felice Di Persia, an anti-Mafia official in Naples, told the Italian news agency ANSA. "This means that there should be not only the intervention of magistrates and the police but also a strong commitment of institutions."....

Mr. Pisanu said the huge police presence in the neighborhoods where the Camorra was active had helped reduce the overall number of murders in Naples from 78 in the last half of 2004 to 50 so far in 2005.

But Mr. Pisanu said the police action alone would not overcome Naples's crime problems. "Most important is that we add to this crackdown phase a fight against the worsening living conditions in these neighborhoods, which act as a recruiting agent for the clans," he said....

"In Iraq, by contrast, we went to war in order to undertake the difficult project of putting the country back together."

Am I Lost in Space? I am reading a really smart person and yet encounter this. Whatever you think of Saddam (and I suspect like most people you think sadistic, heavy handed dictator) pre-war Iraq was not Somalia. Irag was "together" because the heavy thumb of Saddam and the Baath Party made it so.

I am willing to go a long way towards excusing those people who supported the war on Iraq because they believed one, there was a link between Iraq and 9/11 or two, Saddam had WMDs and was willing to supply them to terrorists. Because although both propositions were counterfactual and to thoughtful and informed people were known to be counterfactual at the time, if you were not paying close attention and just reading and watching the news you wouldn't have known better. But the notion that we went to war on Iraq with the goal of "putting the country back together" bends the whole time-space continuum.

Please, please tell me I have my irony meter dialed down to zero and that I am just missing Matt's bitter joke.

The Pakastanis will intervene in Afghanistan again to try to make sure they have a friendly (client) country behind them with their enemy India in front of them.