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Another policy that the election of Francois Hollande could shift a bit is the war in Afghanistan. Hollande recommitted today to removing French troops by the end of the year, which Nicolas Sarkozy vowed as well, but only to catch up to Hollande’s position.
Last week the President announced in a surprise visit to Afghanistan that the US signed a long-term agreement with the country that would more or less keep an American presence there for an indefinite period, even as lead responsibility would allegedly transfer to the Afghan security forces. There was no sense that the numbers of troops would reduce below the pre-surge levels at any point in the foreseeable future.
And now we have an embarrassing admission, a bipartisan agreement from the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, that the surge in Afghanistan, if its mission was to stop the advance of the Taliban in the country, completely failed its objectives.
The leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said Sunday they believe that the Taliban has grown stronger since President Obama sent 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2010.
The pessimistic report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) challenges Obama’s assessment last week in his visit to Kabul that the “tide had turned” and that “we broke the Taliban’s momentum.”
Feinstein and Rogers told CNN’s “State of the Union” that they aren’t so sure. The two recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the region, where they met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“President Karzai believes that the Taliban will not come back. I’m not so sure,” Feinstein said. “The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces.”
When asked if the Taliban’s capabilities have been degraded since Obama deployed the additional troops two years ago, Feinstein said: “I think we’d both say that what we’ve found is that the Taliban is stronger.”
So that should be pretty big news. We sent 33,000 troops to Afghanistan, in the name of changing focus away from Iraq and toward the “real threat,” and at the end of the surge, the Taliban had not retreated but grown stronger? You have the very definition of a counter-productive situation there.
Both Feinstein and Rogers have different lessons to take from this, and I probably have a third (approximately, “get the hell out”). But the results really speak for themselves. The Administration’s machinations to secure a long-term basing agreement, including secret prison transfers and all the rest, amounted to pretty much nothing. The return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan is a question of when, and our end to the occupation is a matter of how many soldiers’ lives and taxpayer dollars will be lost until that moment.
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Just like every other one of our corporate-military fiascos, who is gonna be the poor sap that is the official Last Man Killed In Action.
You can bet the soldiers are already thinking about it.
I listen to a morning radio show from minneapolis (kfan) that ends each day, with the mention of an American
soldier that died on duty within the last few days. died for nothing.
Most, are stationed in Afghanistan.
Indeed. Every Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolus” they mention the service men and women lost by name. It reminds me of Vietnam. They are all from Afghanistan now.
Exactly when did the ‘war’ with El Quaeda morph into a war with the Taliban? What did the Taliban ever do to us, other than not like us (granted that not liking us is now a mortal sin)?
Let’s see, Obama bought into the surge. Isn’t that,somethiing. Petraeus wanted? Two dumb asses are always better than one. Right?
We are such likeable people. We can show you our drones so you get the idea of our enduring friendship.
I think we hung around so long our victory has turned into a defeat. Or, was it always a defeat, and we just put a good spin on it? Now there’s an argument that is totally academic.
Sounds valid. But, that conclusion may be based on a faulty premise.
Perhaps if we were dropping Totino’s Pizza rolls from the drones instead of bombs….
I’m sure McCrystal, Patraeus, and whatever defense contractor executives profitted their asses off from it would contradict that statement, the ghost of Pat Tillman notwithstanding.
nobody does fubar, like we do fubar
The Taliban is stronger this kills General Petraeus as Mitt’s VP. it discredits his *cough* strategy to win Afghanistan.
It gives us plenty to work with to end the wars.
It makes Mitt’s plan to increase military spending look like throwing money at the problem.
We need a military that can win a ground war not another high tech anti missile shield that will spark another arms race.
We need to move military funds to create jobs since the military as its now organized can’t even win wars with third world countries.
My contention has been for quite a long time that al Qaeda was broken up years ago. The mission creep was to move to the Taliban because an enemy there was needed. The Taliban and al Qaeda were never one and the same, nor were they working together. Relentless PR by the wh has built the American soldiers into “heros striving to protect us.” Who thinks that Afghanistan was going to invade the US? This war (including Iraq) with the multiple deployments was pointless, is pointless, and will continue to be pointless. Each soldier that died, has died, or will die lost his/her life in pointlessness. All we have done is develop a military that has no regard for life. There have been too many babies and children killed deliberately to think that these were accidents. Too many rapes have been commited to believe that “a few bad apples” were involved. The torture culture has become so prevalent that if one speaks against it, the speaker is disparaged as a traitor. Torture and excused murder right out in daylight now seems to be the norm here.
Its time to cut military spending to twice what China or Russia spends and use the money to create jobs.
I think many of our citizens will draw exactly the wrong conclusion from this report. It will john mccain material to state the wrong conclusion: “we need to pour more money into the mic and send more troops to kill more people; that will eventually win for us.” A sidenote will be that this report “gives aid and comfort to the enemy.”
But we’re not fighting other countries, we’re fighting terror. And we must defeat terror because terror is the only thing we have to fear, so be afraid and support murderous invasions so we can defeat terror.
….or something like that.
And in the “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeate it” category, we are the planetary undisputed champion.
I must disagree the more people hear about the wars in the media the more support for the wars drop. I expext as more people pay attention to the news because of the Presidential election that the Media will drop coverage of the wars even more.
When McCain ran missing White Women stories got much much more play than the wars did.
I worry that war stories will be ignored by the media and a public sick of war. I worry that Obama will claim the wars are over even as we leave troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Well, you have a valid point there. Perhaps that could explain the ambiguity in our strategy and the confusion with our results.
Agreed that will be their line of thinking but we just made the Taliban stronger at some point by staying longer we risk the Taliban getting strong enough to beat our army,
Its better to leave now. Its better to stop listening to pro war Generals who have been wrong these last ten years about everything.
Nice one and if insanity is doing the samething over and over again expecting different results then we the King of Crazy.
The US-taxpayer-funded construction business in Afghanistan is shutting down. Di-Fi’s hubby (Perini Construction and others) has sucked enough hundreds of millions out of the place, especially when Di-Fi was a member of the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee (MILCON) from 2001 to the end of 2005, so it’s time to get out of Dodge.
And in December 2001, at Tora Bora, we could have killed or captured Osama bin Laden and his top aides, and victoriously ended the “war on terror” then and there.
Yes.
The US is not accepting the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is the keystone to U.S. Central Asia strategy, a component of which is the so-called New Silk Road Strategy. Think money. Think natural resources — oil, gas. Think trying to grab political advantage against Russia in Central Asia (good luck on that).
Constitutionally, President Karzai must leave office by 2014 so in 2013 he will be a lame duck, if he isn’t already, besides having little power outside Kabul. Karzai is trying to get the next election moved up to 2013. The leading candidate to replace Hamid Karzai is the self-styled “Afghan Opposition Leader” Abdullah Abdullah who ran against Karzai, before dropping out, in the last election.
Abdullah has been an adviser and friend to Ahmad Shah Massoud, legendary anti-Taliban leader, the United Front’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and served as Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister from 2001 until 2005. He represents the India/Tajik/UnitedFront bloc which is against the Pakistan/Taliban bloc in Afghanistan. Look for Pakistan and the Taliban to express their disappointment with this eventuality. Oh — Abdullah is the head of the ‘Change and Hope Movement’ in Afghanistan. Who says history doesn’t repeat?
Some US congressmen have been cozying up to the United Front recently — that’s the visit when Rep. Rohrabacher was refused Entry to Afghanistan. The Pakistan/Taliban bloc read the newspapers too, and that’s why Pakistan is fighting with the Taliban to resist the US strategy. Pakistan doesn’t want to become an Indian sandwich. Pakistan knows that India is five times the area of Pakistan, seven times the population, seven to eight times the economy, three to four times the conventional firepower.And they aren’t the best of friends, having fought several times.
Afghanistan is important to US Central Asia strategy, it is a rapidly changing situation both militarily and politically. Dealing with changing situations is not a US strength especially when the realities of the situation are not recognized.
Has killing OBL ended the war on terror?
The “superlatives” just keep piling up.
Yea, yea, yea. Ask the Greeks, English, and Russians how “holding Afghanistan” worked out.
The US is not good at this “Empire” game. No follow through.
It ain’t over. Afghanistan is not Vietnam or Iraq, and the U.S. seems dedicated to hold on. One aspect of this currently is the U.S. (Clinton) kissing up to India, which has a strong presence in Afghanistan (to Pakistan’s dismay). Clinton may be overdoing it currently though, also pushing India to reduce its oil imports from Iran. India has a thriving trade with Iran and India can’t be pushed around so easily (just ask the Brits).
It’s mostly under the radar now but it’s going to be big, especially when you factor in green-on-blue. I’m particularly watching Herat in the west, on the Iran border. The US has a consulate there. Some fuel tankers coming from Iran to US bases (yes, the US is purchasing fuel from Iran) have been torched, and there is a lot of potential there. But Iran is allied mostly with India and the United Front against the Taliban, so that’s another factor.
I doubt that the current US State Department is capable of dealing with all these variables. They haven’t accomplished anything anywhere.