Too Big to Fail?
Why All the President's Afghan Options Are Bad Ones
by Tom Engelhardt
Web Exclusive, November 2009
This piece was originally published by TomDispatch.
In the worst of times, my father always used to say, "A good gambler
cuts his losses." It's a formulation imprinted on my brain forever.
That no-nonsense piece of advice still seems reasonable to me, but it
doesn't apply to American war policy. Our leaders evidently never saw a
war to which the word "more" didn't apply. Hence the Afghan War, where
impending disaster is just an invitation to fuel the flames of an
already roaring fire.
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Here's a partial rundown of news from that devolving conflict: In the
last week, Nuristan, a province on the Pakistani border, essentially fell
to the Taliban after the U.S. withdrew its forces from four key bases.
Similarly in Khost, another eastern province bordering Pakistan where
U.S. forces once registered much-publicized gains (and which Richard
Holbrooke, now President Obama's special envoy to the region, termed
"an American success story"), the Taliban is largely in control. It is,
according to Yochi Dreazen and Anand Gopal of the Wall Street Journal,
now "one of the most dangerous provinces" in the country. Similarly,
the Taliban insurgency, once largely restricted to the Pashtun south,
has recently spread fiercely to the west and north. At the same time, neighboring Pakistan is an increasingly destabilized country amid war in its tribal borderlands, a terror campaign spreading throughout the country, escalating American drone attacks, and increasingly testy relations between American officials and the Pakistani government and military.
Meanwhile, the U.S. command in Afghanistan is considering a strategy
that involves pulling back from the countryside and focusing on protecting more heavily populated areas (which might be called, with the first U.S. Afghan War of the 1980s in mind, the Soviet strategy).
The underpopulated parts of the countryside would then undoubtedly be
left to Hellfire missile-armed American drone aircraft. In the last
week, three U.S. helicopters -- the only practical way
to get around a mountainous country with a crude, heavily mined system
of roads -- went down under questionable circumstances (another
potential sign of an impending Soviet-style disaster). Across the country, Taliban attacks are up; deadly roadside bombs or IEDs are fast on the rise (a 350% jump since 2007); U.S. deaths are at a record high and the numbers of wounded are rising rapidly; European allies are ever less willing to send more troops; and Taliban raids in the capital, Kabul, are on the increase. All this despite a theoretical 12-1 edge U.S., NATO, and Afghan troops have over the Taliban insurgents and their allies.
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