Even a Broken Clock

Even a Broken Clock in Afghanistan is Right Twice a Day

by Mark Luedtke

 

In the wake of 9/11, Congress declared war on the people who had attacked us, not knowing at the time who that was. Our intelligence organizations quickly determined that al Qaeda had attacked us from a base in Afghanistan. President Bush ordered our military to invade Afghanistan in response. By early 2002, in one of the most successful military campaigns in history, our troops toppled the Taliban for providing a safe haven and drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.

We had won. Al Qaeda had been reduced to isolated cells of resistance in the same way the Nazis had been reduced to that after we won WWII. We should have pulled out then, brought our troops home victorious and kept a wary eye on Afghanistan in case al Qaeda re-organized back there in the future. If they did, we could defeat them again.

Instead Bush tried to play God in Afghanistan and create a functioning, self-governing state where one had never existed and where none of the prerequisites for self-government were in place. The Bush
administration and many Americans made the mistake of confusing an
election with freedom. An election is the final step in freedom. Before
a nation can get to that point, it needs certain prerequisites:
security, economic freedom and an educated population among others.
Unlike Iraq, none of those prerequisites have ever existed in
Afghanistan and our attempt to nation-build there is a lost cause.

Bush must have been channelling Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, and the result will be the same for us as it was for the Soviets. The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan after nine years of futility and loss of life. We're approaching eight years of futility and loss of life. According to iCasualties.org, 61 American and 81 coalition troops had been killed in Afghanistan by the end of 2002. Since then 789 American and 1340 coalition troops have been killed, and we have nothing to show for those losses.

Like a broken clock, the anti-war left is right this time, and President Obama is stuck in the corner he painted himself into. After Democrats betrayed our Vietnamese allies and lost the Vietnam War our troops had won, Americans wouldn't trust Democrats with the presidency. Until 2008, the only two Democrat candidates who had won since were Carter after Nixon and Watergate and Clinton won a plurality twice because Perot attracted the small government vote away from Republicans.

Obama understood that while fighting two wars, no matter how unpopular George Bush was, Americans would not vote an anti-war candidate into office. So Obama made the case that Afghanistan was the good war and Iraq was the bad war. At that time, he was wrong on both counts. There was nothing to be gained by fighting in Afghanistan, but Iraq was still in danger of becoming a new safe haven for al Qaeda. Fortunately for Obama, US and Iraqi forces eliminated the threat from al Qaeda in Iraq before the election.

But now Obama is stuck fighting the war we can't win and we gain nothing even if we could win. Even if a functioning government did arise, it couldn't stop al Qaeda from using the mountains on the Pakistan border as a safe haven. Proponents of the war claim we're fighting to keep al Qaeda from getting a safe haven. Using that logic, we should invade Somalia, Sudan, northern Africa and more countries and stay in all of them forever too. Why should we lose thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars denying al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan when it's far cheaper in blood and treasure to take them out if they get a safe haven there?

And there's no good reason to think al Qaeda will ever be welcome in Afghanistan again. Al Qaeda brought the awesome destructive power of the US military down on the heads of the Taliban. If the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan, they're unlikely to want to repeat that experience.

Proponents of the war also claim that anti-war supporters want to revert to a pre-9/11 mentality. That's absurd. Americans couldn't stick our collective heads in the sand like that again even if we wanted to. And nobody wants to.

We should end the Afghan war because it costs lives, money and makes us less safe. The war has destabilized nuclear armed Pakistan. The war has put us at Russia's mercy for resupply, weakening our international position. The war has empowered and emboldened Iran. It has transformed people formerly uninterested in the United States into enemies. The longer we stay, the worse those things will get.

And there's nothing to gain by staying. The recent fraudulent elections show that Afghanistan is the same as it's always been. Tribalism still reigns. The Taliban hunt down and kill any Afghans with ink on their fingers from voting. It's a disaster. And the US Navy is capable of keeping al Qaeda from regrouping in Afghanistan.

But don't expect the Narcissist-in-Chief to admit he was wrong any time soon. The Messiah thinks he's more god-like than even Bush did. Obama told top Afghan General McChrystal to withhold his request for more troops not to reevaluate strategy but to give his administration time to appease his rabid anti-war supporters. General McChrystal gave us a hint at the truth- he said 40,000 more troops won't win the war, but without them it's lost. He should have said that with them it's lost too. All they can do is prolong the war, costing us more lives and money.

But some day in the near future, Obama will no longer be able to deny reality. Like Brezhnev before him, Obama will have to admit that there are limits to the power of the US government, and transforming Afghanistan into a self-governing nation is beyond those limits. When that time comes, Obama will blame Bush for losing the war, then bring the troops home. We should bring them home now instead of later.