On Afghanistan, Democrats and Republicans Equally Dumb
As I pack for my return trip to Afghanistan next month, many people are asking me: Why are we losing? What should we do there?
The short answer is simple: Afghan resistance forces live there. We don’t. Sooner or later, U.S. troops will depart. All the Afghan resistance has to do is wear us down and wait us out. As I have pointed out before, no nation has successfully invaded and occupied any other nation since the 19th century. All occupations ultimately fail.
For those who prefer their punditry longwinded, here’s a longer answer.
Even taking historical precedent into account, America’s post-9/11 occupation of Afghanistan—its longest war ever—has been notably disastrous. Wonder why? Everything you need to know was contained in this week’s war of words between the chairmen of the two major political parties.
The Afghan War kerfuffle that revealed the boundless stupidity of our national political leadership began on July 1st. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele told GOP donors in Connecticut that the war in Afghanistan could not be won and should never have been fought: “If [Obama is] such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right? Because everyone who’s tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed,” Steele said.
Steele’s main point is beyond dispute. There’s a reason Afghanistan is known as “the graveyard of empires,” as opposed to as, say, the “number one producer of tasty, nutritious pomegranates.”
Steele’s all too typical ahistoricity is in the details. Which he gets wrong.
Would-be conquerors have had trouble with Afghanistan not for over 1,000 years, but for 2,000 years. Alexander the Great sent supplies through the Khyber Pass in 327 BCE in an attempt to subjugate the Konar Valley. Characteristically, the locals waged a ferocious resistance. The Macedonian conqueror, nearly killed by an Afghan arrow, beat a retreat to the Indus River and withdrew.
But it’s Steele’s “land war” qualifier that really gets me. According to the GOP chairman, the British Army might have spared itself total annihilation in 1842 if it had conducted an air war instead. Using what—hot air balloons?
Then things got really weird.
“This was a war of Obama’s choosing,” Steele said.
Huh?
True, Obama made the Afghan war his own by sending in more troops. But Bush started this mess. Doesn’t Steele remember that? Or—this thought is even more frightening—does he really think WE forgot?
“This is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” he continued. This surely comes as welcome news to the tens of thousands of Afghans killed by tens of thousands of American bombs. Chin up. Imagine how many more would have died if the U.S. had “actively prosecuted” this fiasco!
Not to be outdone in the moronitude department,
Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse retorted that “we are there because we were attacked by terrorists on 9-11.”
Um…We were attacked by Saudis and Egyptians. Who were trained and funded by Pakistanis. None of the major figures linked to 9/11—including Osama bin Laden—were in Afghanistan on 9/11. (Bin Laden was in a Pakistani military hospital in Islamabad.) By 9/11, both Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan had been closed. Al Qaeda’s operations were based entirely in Pakistan.
Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11.
Nothing.
None of the Afghans I interviewed in November and December of 2001 had even heard of 9/11. None had heard of Al Qaeda. Other journalists reported the same thing.
As far as I can tell, we attacked Afghanistan for fun. To disrupt Iran and India. To test weapons that would be used against Iraq. To test the resolve of the American antiwar movement. And to build an oil and gas pipeline between Central and South Asia.
Not because of 9/11.
Woodhouse continued: “It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.”
Dubya—is that you?
Can we even tell which party is which anymore?
No wonder we’re losing. The parties have forgotten what they stand for—and they never learned the history of the countries they invade.
(Ted Rall’s “The Anti-American Manifesto” will be published in September. He will return to Afghanistan in August.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
18 Comments.
“no nation has successfully invaded and occupied any other nation since the 19th century”
Tibet? Maybe? I guess it’s been sorta occupied by China for 350 years, so… probably not a valid nitpick.
How about the U.S. invasion, occupation, and annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii?
Oh, well, I guess that the conquest was, indeed, in the late 19th century, although the final annexation didn’t occur until 1959.
I think the reason for the war is the classic 60s “Conspiracy Theory”.
“The Millitary Industrial Complex”
The long and short is that they profit at least a dime for every dollar borrowed to pay for the war. What about America? What about it? Corporate systems operate on the “Fiscal Quarter” or next three month’s profits. As long as they can show a profit in the short term, they are OK.
IMO, that’s the direct cause of the BP disaster. If the exec that ordered them to disregard safety and drill hadn’t he’d have been playing roulette with his job. Most corporate systems you report a loss/less earnings one quarter, at best you are on “Notice” and if you ‘mess up’ again, you are fired and that’s that unless your next quarter is “Mega Profits”. So, by simple math, anybody who’d care enough not to cause an oil spill/other disaster gets weeded out and replaced by people who’ll keep recording record profits till they bankrupt the company or the FBI takes ’em away.
Green, glad you put “conspiracy theory” in quotes. MIC is, of course, an open fact. So-called conspiracies are conducted in the open because no one is paying attention, and it would not matter if they were paying attention, because they would only be paying attention to the fix.
Can we even tell which party is which anymore?
Could you ever, really?
For once, we agree Oleg. People that would like you to believe the military-political complex is just a conspiracy theory are the ones profiting from it. Don’t forget the establishment media’s part on the deal, too.
Anyways, I was still hoping Rall would sketch something, event if only a little cartoon, about the Bradley Manning case. Odds are, our Trotsyite cartoonist doesn’t care about this hero because wikileaks is proof that the ‘net beats the crap out of his beloved, soon to be history, printed media.
Really, you people can’t tell the difference between Ronald Reagan and Dumbo Ears?
1. The Second British War in Afghanistan accomplished all the British objectives. They selected a powerful warlord with aristocratic blood and supported him as King. The result was a stable, non-Russian controlled country on the borders of the Raj. And one must understand that the Raj provided much of the UK’s raw materials that supported its mercantile society.
The First British War in Afghanistan was a complete disaster, since they conducted it like post-WWII Americans, who have only been able to defeat Grenada, Panamá, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Afghanistan is NOT Grenada or Panamá.
2. Neocolonialism for Dummies
If one is going to install a puppet who will protect your national interests, it is essential to look at the leverage. A very weak puppet means the neo-Imperialist power must run the neo-colony, and they can run it as they wish, but they must expend all the resources needed to run the neo-colony, which costs a great deal of resources. The alternative is to support a very strong puppet, one who needs only a modicum of help to completely control his country, so supporting such a puppet is cheap, but he will generally balk at some of his neo-Imperialist’s more outrageous demands. Given the favourable logistics, the US always selected weak puppets in Latin America, and managed to dominate the continent thanks to favourable logistics. Trying to apply this in Korea had mixed results, while Vietnam was an unmitigated disaster. But the US doesn’t seem to learn from its mistakes.
Having learned how to manage neo-Colonialism Latin America, the US attempted to apply the same procedures in Korea, with limited success, and in Vietnam, which was a complete and utter failure.
Now, the US is using the same approach that it used in Vietnam in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I can’t. They’re both dirty rotten professional politicians, though I’ll give you good ol’ Ronnie didn’t seem as arrogant as the Obamanable.
And Ronald Reagan loved his country. Does Obama (I mean the USA not Kenya)?
I finally got around to reading this Ted. Nice essay (journalists have a strange view of what an ‘article’ is), I like it. Yep, we’re screwed. It’s life, deal with it. All we can do as peasants is fling verbal crap at each other. Stupid is as stupid does.
Bucephalus, when they lock down the net, which they are doing now, we will wish we had the newspapers back. Granted, the newspapers of 50 years ago…
>>>And Ronald Reagan loved his country. >>>
Nah. He certainly didn’t. He loved Milton Friedman better.
Susan, don’t forget Ayn Rand, an unofficial adviser to his presidency. . .because a couple of fiction novels being the blueprint for a political philosophy is good enough for the ultra rightwing.
See there is a difference between Barry and Ronald Reagan.
Oleg, if you’re referring to Lieberman’s stupid “project”, here’s my two bits for ya: it won’t work, even if the monster gets all the “bi-partisan” he can. Anyways, I still prefer Wikileaks to your rags of yore, though I understand why you miss those press rooms full of hacks taking their leads from Moscow, I mean, the glorious guide of mankind or some such silliness.
Anyways, those printing presses have a lot more chance of being “locked” by a tyrannical government than the internets, which is one the reasons they grovel before power so much.
Anyways, those printing presses have a lot more chance of being “locked” by a tyrannical government than the internets, which is one the reasons they grovel before power so much.
In the US, they grovel before power without being threatened. The free market will lock them for not being entertaining enough. But wiki leaks will suffer the same fate. “BOOOORING”. you know. Raw facts in a big pile never interested anyone. People need to be spoon fed. And if you think governments and NGOs cannot filter unencrypted information they do not like about themselves, I have a rag to sell you.