So much for the prospects for a scaling back of the so-called “war on terror”…
Officials: Obama OK’s more Afghanistan troops
WASHINGTON (AP) February 17 – Defense and congressional officials say President Barack Obama has approved an increase in U.S. forces for the flagging war in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is expected to announce on Tuesday or Wednesday that it will send one additional Army brigade and an unknown number of Marines to Afghanistan this spring. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the total is about 17,000 troops.
That would be the first installment on a larger influx of U.S. forces that have been widely expected this year. It would get a few thousand troops in place in time for the increase in fighting that usually comes with warmer weather and ahead of national elections this summer.
Not that I’m really surprised.
The editors of The Nation got this right last week (as opposed to the news above)…
Don’t Escalate in Afghanistan
February 4 - President Barack Obama has wisely ordered an internal review of the administration’s options in Afghanistan before proceeding with the current plan to send 30,000 more troops, which would nearly double the 32,000 fighting there. For the sake of the country, his presidency and the peace and stability of South Asia, Obama should take US-led military escalation off the table. Instead he should focus on devising a regional strategy to stabilize Afghanistan and strengthen Pakistan. Escalating the occupation of Afghanistan would bleed us of the resources we need for economic recovery, further destabilize Pakistan, open a rift with our European allies and negate the positive effects of withdrawing from Iraq on our image in the Muslim world. Escalation would have all these negative consequences without securing a better future for the Afghan people or increasing US security…
Too bad the new president isn’t a subscriber, apparently. And he might want to re-read his Afghan history. As the editors of The Nation remind us…
If we learned anything from the British and the Soviets, it is that Afghans fiercely resist outside powers and that some in Pakistan are eager to prevent outsiders from controlling its neighbor, especially if those outsiders have good relations with India. Afghanistan is called “the burial ground of empires” for good reason…
(Photo: AFP)
Filed under: Afghanistan, History, News & commentary, Peace testimony, Ranting & raving, War & militarism, War on Errorism | Tagged: Afghanistan, News & commentary, Peace testimony, War & militarism, War on Errorism
yep, you are right.
Yes, there are other disappointing signs. I’ve recently found a Glenn Greenwald’s blog. I guess I won’t try to describe it, but take a look.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
The invasion of Afghanistand was undertaken full in the knowledge that the country’s terrain made it legendarily difficult to govern. Foreigners has attempted it since the reign of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. Even Alexander’s hold had been fleeting, records the historian Ben McIntyre. Macedonian, Mogul, Persian, RUssian, British and Soviet armies had all tried, and failed, to control the Afghan tribes. What made it any more likely that the English-Speaking peoples expeditionary force – including contingents from America, Britian and Canada – would succeed where so many others had failed? Of the five royal descendants of the Dost Mohammed Khan’s tribe to rule Afghanistan in the twentieth century, relates McIntyre, three were assassinated and two were forced into exlie. The last was Zahir Shah, who had become king aged eighteen after he had witnessed his father’s assassination in 1933. (He ruled wisely and introduced freedom of speech and voting rights for women, before being ousted in 1973 when he was on holifay in Italy.) As notorious as Afghanistan’s political instability was the viciousness of her power struggles. When the USSR had been forced by the US-backed Mujaheen to quit Afghanistan in 1990 – after 50,000 Russians and one million Afghans had been killed – their puppet ruler Mohammed Najibullah unwisely stayed on in Kabul to continue to fight. After taking sanctuary in the United Nations’ compound as the enemy closed in on the capital in 1995, he was captured, castrated, and his body was dragged around the city behind a truck and then exhibited upside down in Kabul bazaar.
The Stars and Stripes had flown over part of Afghanistan once before in history, in 1839 when the chester county, Pennsylvania-born Josiah Harlan had unfurled it at the start of his short-lived personal rule there. Relying on an alloy of the brass neck and steely self-confidence, the Quaker-born adventurer braved bandits, quicksand and sixteen-foot crocodiles to carve out an impressive fiefdom there. He put his success down to his nationality. Over the principal tent, a few feet above the apex, Harlin recalled many years later: “The American flag displayed its stars and stripes, flickering in the quietly drifting breeze. … In the midst of that wild landscape, the flag of America seemed a dreamy illusion of the imagination, but it was the harbinger of enterprise which distance, space and time had not appalled, for the indaunted sons of Columbia are second to no people in the pursuit of adventure wherever the word is trodden by man.” The 2001 campaign in Afghanistan was sucessful; American, British and Australian special forces, aided by dominant American air-power and the enlistment of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance of Afghans, quickly over-threw the Kbaul Government and expelled AL-Queda from their terrorist bases and training camps in that country. It was a impressive victory by the English-Speaking peoples and their allies in some of the toughest terrain in the world. However, Osama bin laden managed to escape, most probably into Northern Pakistan. Nonetheless, The continued failure to capture him did at least concentrate Western minds on the fact that the War against Terror was far from over. In may 2006, the British Soldier Lieutenant-General David Richards took command of the international focres in Afghanistan, in charge of significant numbers of American troops, thereby exploding another myth about US insistence on exercising military control at all times. The Frist Muslim middle Eastern country in history to replace its government through a free election was Turkey in 1950. Unfortunately, it was also one of the last. Yet on Sunday, 18 September 2005, millions of Afghans braved Taliban threats in order to vote in the country’s first parliamentary elections in over thirty years. The polling for Provincial councils as well as the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) in Kabul was hailed by President Hamid Karzai, who said: “We are proud of this day; we are rpoud of our people, even though the election strengthended the opposition parties.” Although twenty-two people were killed by the Taliban in the forty-eight hours prior to the elections, turnout was high. As Ahmed Rashid, the author of the book Taliban, wrote the next day, “Stories of the electoral heroism are as moving as the sacrifices made by the Afghans while fighting the USSR and the Taliban. Hundreds of women defied custom to stand and campaign in a predominantly male environment.” No fewer than 5,800 women put themselves forward for the Wolesi Jirga, a quarter of the seats of which were reserved for them. The return of democracy to Afghanistan after three decades was fine achievement of the english-speaking peoples, protectionf that country from Al-Queda’s re-infestation.
Point being if we can do all that where as others failed then there is no reason why we shouldn’t increase troop levels and purge the remaining Jihadist once and for all. Obama must first define victory then accomplish it. The only way we lose is
if the Jihadist break our will to fight. We can worry about cleaning up Karzai’s corrupt government afterwards.