We Can’t Make Afghans Accept Karzai Now

Eight years. We’ve been in Afghanistan longer than any other war in American history. The party of the president who invaded Afghanistan has been repudiated at the polls. Yet we still haven’t altered the flawed strategy that allowed uneducated tribesmen with outdated weapons to defeat us year after year.

We haven’t learned a thing.

You can see the myopia in our leaders’ talking points. “Our goal [in Afghanistan] is to disrupt, dismantle, defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies,” secretary of state Hillary Clinton told ABC News’ “Nightline.” “But not every Taliban is Al Qaeda. There are people who are Taliban, who are fighting because they get paid to fight. They have no other way of making a living.”

So few words. So much stupidity. Where to start? Here: Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan in 2001 was negligible. Al Qaeda was a Pakistani phenomenon. Still is.

You’re welcome, have another: Not only is every Taliban not Al Qaeda, there’s no such thing as a Taliban, as in: “That guy is a Taliban.” Members of the Taliban are called Talibs. You invade a country, send in 100,000 troops, presume to decide what form of government it should have and who should rule it—yet you still don’t know something as basic as what the members of the nation’s majority political movement are called? Still wondering why “they” hate us?

Last and not least, actually, while it’s true that the neo-Taliban (as South Asian experts call them) sometimes pay stipends to their fighters, it’s one hell of a stretch—not to mention reflective of an utter misunderstanding of the situation—to depict them as a bunch of greedy and/or desperate entrepreneurs trying to scrape together a few afghanis to make ends meet. (Afghanis are the national currency. Afghans are the people of Afghanistan. Neither the president nor news reporters know this.)

The neo-Taliban are merely the most recent reflection of a historical truth: Afghans set their political differences aside when it’s time to kill invaders. Nothing the U.S. can or will do can or will change what we are: a hostile occupation force. Nothing the U.S. can say will change why the Afghans think we’re there: to kill them and steal their land.

Eight years. Look, we were never going to win. No one does empire like the British, but the Afghans beat them like a drum. Next-door neighbor Russia knew all about the Afghans and their culture; they lost too. There was no way we were going to outperform the English and the Russians. Still, even if America’s political class doesn’t read history, you’d think they might catch a clue about crushing the hopes and aspirations of ornery brown people over the course of eight years of occupation. At least by osmosis.

Of said clues, Number One If-You-Forget-Everything-Else-I-Tell-You-Remember-This-One Clue goes as follows: Hamid Karzai, appointed as a U.S. puppet in 2001, has never been considered the legitimate president of Afghanistan by the people who count—Afghans. We’ve done a lot to piss off the Afghans—slaughtering wedding parties, dropping depleted-uranium bombs on civilians, encouraging opium poppy cultivation—but the biggest single reason every single American soldier who died in Afghanistan has died for nothing is that they died fighting for Hamid Karzai.

Karzai’s Afghanistan is a disaster. The average Afghan has received zero assistance from the U.S.-led coalition, has seen zero improvement in his or her life, and has seen no reconstruction whatsoever. Most Afghans never even see American aid workers, who never leave their compounds in Kabul. $13 billion has been allocated for aid to Afghanistan—but there is no evidence that a single cent has ever been spent. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says the overall effort in Afghanistan “has been a nightmare; vast amounts have been wasted.”

“The [Afghan] judiciary is so weak,” reports the Times, “that Afghans increasingly turn to a shadow Taliban court system because, a senior military official said, ‘a lot of the rural people see the Taliban justice as at least something.'” Which is how the Taliban came to power in 1995-96. There was chaos. They brought order.

Di. Sas. Ter.

But President Obama doesn’t understand a thing.

“Administration officials describe Mr. Obama as impatient with the civilian progress so far,” reports The New York Times. “The president is not satisfied on any of this,” a senior administration official tells the paper.

Mr. President: The Afghan war was lost the day the U.S. invaded. It was doomed to disaster the day it installed an illegitimate stooge. Not only is he a puppet, he is a puppet on a shoestring budget—so he can’t try to buy the kind of public support that other Afghan politicians have earned with bravery on the battlefield.

Now the U.S. is trying to retroactively legitimatize the Afghan pseudo-president. But it’s a sucker’s bet. Leaving even one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan means only one thing: more death.

(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the upcoming graphic memoir “The Year of Loving Dangerously.” He is also the author of the 2002 graphic travelogue “To Afghanistan and Back.”)

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

It’s 1933 Again. But FDR Lost.

NEW YORK—When the economic collapse began a year ago, many Americans took comfort in the historical parallels with the Great Depression. As it had in 1929, the current crisis began under the clueless reign of a Republican, George W. Bush. Universally reviled since his non-response to hurricane Katrina had exposed him and the men around him as both uncaring and incompetent—either one was forgivable, not both—Bush had reacted in the classic cold-blooded Republican form embodied by the president who gave his name to the Hoovervilles.

But all was not lost. The Democrats were coming in! Barack “Yes We Can” Obama was running well ahead in the polls. Soon our new FDR would clean up Bush’s mess.

In the late fall of 2008 Bush looted the stripped-bare U.S. Treasury one final time. Hundreds of billions of dollars in “bailouts,” this time for the benefit of the banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers whose profligate ways had contributed to the crisis, were doled out without pre-conditions. Millions of homeowners who faced foreclosure got no help whatsoever.

The way to stimulate a consumer-based economy is to put money directly into consumers’ pockets. Instead, Bush deployed the standard GOP trickle-down approach. Boosting the banks would encourage them to restore liquidity, allowing individuals and businesses to resume borrowing. But the banks weren’t stupid. They no longer wanted to lend to people who couldn’t repay them. They held on to the cash. Credit markets seized up.

Like his father in 1992, Bush finished his reign as he had begun it: tone-deaf, cheerful, obliviously floating above the mayhem, utterly unconcerned with the fate of the average American staring at a stack of bills (and, in the case of a half a million Americans each month, a pink slip).

We were a nation without leadership. We knew there was no point looking to Bush and his GOP gangsters for help. But we weren’t too worried. Obama was coming. He would be the neo-FDR. He would get things rolling again.

During the 1932 campaign Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised that help was on the way. In radio addresses and in speeches across the country, FDR argued against Hoover’s trickle-down approach. He spoke on behalf of the “forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”

In his lucid biography of FDR, “Traitor to His Class,” the historian H.W. Brands described FDR’s sales pitch: “For too long, he said, government had operated for the benefit of the wealthy, consigning the poor to the margins of public life. The Hoover administration had responded to the crisis by furnishing aid to big banks and corporations. This approach was characteristic of the Republicans, Roosevelt said, and characteristically wrong. It treated ordinary men and women as secondary to the powerful firms that had long dominated American life. And it certainly hadn’t done anything to alleviate the Depression, which grew worse with each passing month. Roosevelt advocated “building from the bottom up,” as he put it; supplying aid to those who most needed it.”

Attacking the 2008-09 Great Recession wasn’t rocket science. The causes of the economic collapse were strikingly similar: a real estate bubble feeding a stock market bubble, excessive borrowing and lending. So were the results: by the time Obama became president in January, the real unemployment rate—calculated the way it was calculated in 1933—was the same 20 percent it was when FDR took the oath of office.

Keynesian-influenced economists such as Paul Krugman pushed the incoming Obama Administration to repeat FDR’s successful approach. Putting job creation first, FDR’s New Deal programs directly put millions of people to work on government projects. The WPA, which employed eight million Americans during its existence, built bridges and highways. The TVA put up dams and the CCC improved national parks. The federal government even hired artists and authors to paint murals in public buildings and write travel guides to the 48 states.

Long after World War II ended the Depression once and for all, Americans made use of New Deal-era labor: “The WPA built or improved 651,000 miles of roads, 19,700 miles of water mains and 500 water treatment plants. Workers built 24,000 miles of sidewalks; 12,800 playgrounds; 24,000 miles of storm and sewer lines; 1,200 airport buildings; 226 hospitals; more than 5,900 schools, and more than two million privies,” according to a PBS special about the New Deal. There’s plenty of work to do now: the U.S. needs a national high-speed rail system to compete with European and Asian countries, not to mention new mass transit systems and school buildings. Pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq and hire Americans to start building!

Nine months into his presidency, however, it is clear that Obama is more Hoover than FDR. There has been virtually no investment in public infrastructure. There will be no public jobs programs. According to The New York Times, “Obama’s economic advisers are sifting options for a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures to be unveiled in next year’s State of the Union address.”

No one in Congress has proposed a single jobs-creation bill. Instead, they’re working to extend unemployment benefits to 79 weeks. “As Democrats have found, aiding those who have lost their jobs,” comments the Times, “is simpler than preventing more layoffs and creating more jobs.”

Is Obama stupid? Or is he crazy? More than one out of five Americans is jobless. Many more are underemployed. There are six jobseekers for every job. Inflation is out of control. Yet he thinks we can wait until January 2010? Does he really believe that tax cuts create jobs?

Other ideas include “a tax credit for homebuyers and accelerated depreciation for businesses.” There’s also “a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire” and “allowing more businesses to deduct their net operating loans going back five years instead of the usual two.”

When Bush flew home to Texas, we thought we were getting an FDR to replace a Hoover. Instead, we got another Hoover.

Even if we had a president willing and able to offer the bold and decisive leadership that FDR offered in the 1930s, the challenge posed by the fiscal crisis would be daunting. But we’re not as lucky as our grandparents. We’re stuck with a small-minded schmuck with the vision of a small-time Chicago alderman. Think about it: this is a guy who thinks tinkering with the tax code is going to save American capitalism!

It’s 1933. This time, however, Hoover got reelected. Can we hold out until 1937 for a president who understands that we need 10 million new jobs, and that we need them yesterday?

(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the upcoming graphic memoir “The Year of Loving Dangerously.”)

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

In Afghanistan, Pull Out Soldiers and Send in Engineers

Eight years into the longest war in American history, we’ve learned what doesn’t work in Afghanistan. What will?

More troops won’t help. But neither will the prescription now being floated in Washington: maintaining bases of small commando units that could be called upon to wage covert counterinsurgency operations across the border in Pakistan.

Now it’s time to fight the war for hearts and minds the way it ought to have been done from the start—instead of hostile troops, Afghanistan needs civil engineers. Stop blowing up wedding parties and start building bridges. Pack away the Predator drones and string up fiberoptic cable. It’s time to give Afghanistan what it needs most, and what Afghans crave: the gift of infrastructure.

More than anything else, Afghans need paved roads. The second priority is electricity. Third is telephone service. An Afghanistan possessing these three building blocks of nationhood could modernize its own economy and political system at an astonishing speed. And it would have the people of the United States to thank.

According to the Pentagon, fewer than 15 percent of Afghanistan’s roads are paved, but most of these include roads that no American driver would deem passable. NGOs say fewer than one percent are in decent shape. Either way, moving people or goods from one place to another is a daunting prospect in Afghanistan. Distances that can be covered in the U.S. by a 15-minute drive require hours of torturous travel over backbreaking, axle-shattering ruts and blast craters.

The U.S. recently spent $1 million to help Afghanistan open its first national park, in the relatively peaceful Bamiyan province. But no one visits the park—due to the state of the roads. “The drive to Band-e-Amir from the Afghan capital of Kabul, 150 miles away, takes as long as 12 hours over rocky roads,” reports USA Today. “Trucks easily overturn, and the talc-like dust of the high desert regularly chokes the air filters of even the hardiest vehicles.” In addition, hundreds of bridges have been blown up during 30 years of civil war, forcing motorists to ford rivers. Cars get washed away all the time.

A local eco-tourism guide says the park is a waste of money. “We need a road. We need electricity. We need an airport,” says Jawad Wafa, 22. Afghans have been pleading with the U.S. to stop bombing and start building for years. The U.S. makes promise after promise, but the bulldozers never arrive. Americans blame corrupt Afghans. Afghans complain that the Taliban makes construction too dangerous. Billions of dollars have vanished; little has been accomplished.

With relatively few natural resources and little arable land, Afghanistan is economically most notable for the countries it separates. Its only hope for prosperity relies on trade. Pakistani truckers want to ply a new Silk Road by shipping cheap manufactured goods from India and China into Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia and eastern Europe. The Afghans could collect tolls and customs duties on products passing through their territory. But this traffic will remain a mere trickle as long as the roads remain impassable and unsafe.

Farmers currently account for 85 percent of the population, and some of them could be persuaded to stop growing opium and return to traditional Afghan crops—pomegranates, apricots and almonds—if decent roads allowed them to get their produce to markets.

Electricity is another vital component of a modern state. But only seven percent of Afghanistan has any electricity whatsoever. Even Kabul suffers daily blackouts. Were the Afghan electrical grid to become widespread and reliable, people wouldn’t have to rush home before dusk to avoid gangs of roving rapists and murderers. It would be harder for Taliban forces to plant roadside bombs and ambush vehicles on brightly lit highways. Factories and offices could remain open, run computers, and operate after dark. Water pumps would become more efficient and ubiquitous.

A broad communications network is the third prerequisite for economic viability. When I was in Afghanistan during the fall of 2001, I was struck by how easily misinformation could be used to fleece people. “The U.S. dollar is down versus the afghani,” a moneychanger told me, “because many U.S. cities have been destroyed.” By whom? I asked. “The Taliban!” Nice try. But others believed him.

On another occasion, I needed to know whether the Uzbek-Afghan border crossing at Termiz was open. There was no way to find out.

It’s impossible to conduct business without the reliable exchange of information. But only eight percent of Afghans have access to any form of telephone service, including public call booths. Those with a dedicated phone number—where people can reach them any time—are even fewer. Without telephone service, it’s impossible to know when a truckload of goods is due to arrive. Casual conversations that could lead to innovation (“What? You can’t get them in Kandahar? They’re cheap here in Herat.”) never have a chance to take place.

Investment in infrastructure would allow Afghans to stand on their own feet economically. As happened in the U.S. a century ago, rural electrification and highway construction would bring outsiders to communities cut off by war and rugged terrain. Radios and televisions, currently useless, would introduce 21st century mores to 14th century cultures. As has occurred in many parts of the world—whether for better or for worse—popular culture would have a liberalizing influence on Afghans. How long would women tolerate the burqa after they learned that it’s an anomaly within the Muslim world?

The United States should offer its expertise in building infrastructure with no strings attached, while renouncing all interest in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Regardless of who runs the show in Kabul—even the Taliban—we should continue to help. And it should be free. No loans.

First rebuild Afghanistan. Then leave. After all, we broke it.

(Ted Rall is author of the books “To Afghanistan and Back” and “Silk Road to Ruin.”)

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Why Are Insurers Blocking H1N1 Treatment Prescriptions?

I got swine flu. Five days later, I was at death’s door—because my evil insurance company wouldn’t honor my doctor’s prescription. Memo to future revolutionaries: if you require a firing squad for the executives of the Health Insurance Plan (HIP) of New York, I’m handy with a rifle.

I wasn’t worried at first. A little sneezing, slightly achy joints. I figured it was my usual bout of fall allergies. There’s usually nothing to do but suffer. But I felt worse each day: achier, more congested, stiffer, headache, fevers. The third night was bad. I went to bed under a pile of comforters, chattering uncontrollably. Then nightsweats. I checked my temperature: 103.7. When your temperature looks like a classic rock station, it’s time to see the doctor.

I’ve known my general practitioner for decades. So I pay out-of-pocket to see him even though he’s not on HIP’s list of plan-approved doctors. Hey, what do you expect for $749.01 a month?

My ordeal with the insurance company began when I went to fill my prescription for Tamiflu, an antiviral medication that is widely considered the standard treatment for swine (and other types of) flu.

“Your insurance isn’t going to cover this,” the pharmacist said. “You would need a pre-approval from your doctor.”

“But that’s a prescription,” I said, motioning to the white slip of paper in her hand. For younger readers, I come from a generation when a doctor’s prescription was all you needed to get a medication.

“It’s not going to work,” she said, slowing her speech for emphasis. “This drug is for people who have the flu.”

“Um…I have the flu.”

“You have the flu?” She looked shocked.

Because Tamiflu or another drug called Relenza can significantly reduce flu symptoms if taken less than 48 hours after the onset of symptoms, people have been hoarding and taking anti-viral drugs prophylactically—especially in New York City. Given what was about to happen to me, I admire the hoarders. Smart.

I called my doctor. No answer; left a message. Waited. I called back. Got his assistant, who patched me through. I explained the situation. “Put her on,” my doctor said.

I offered my cellphone to the pharmacist. She recoiled in horror. “You have the flu! I’m not using your phone!” She believed I had the flu enough to shriek like a wee girl. So why did she need to confirm it with my doctor?

I asked my doctor to call the pharmacy. “Right away,” he promised.

Wait. Wait. Wait more.

I called back. “Wait. Are you already at the pharmacy?” he asked. “You want me to call where?”

At this point I began to lose my mind.

An hour passed after my doctor and pharmacist exchanged the required bureaucratic pleasantries. She returned to the counter. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rall,” she said, “but your doctor is going to have to call HIP to get their advance approval. It will take him quite a bit of time…it’s complicated, especially for doctors.”

Especially for doctors?

Remember, this isn’t heroin. It’s Tamiflu. The street value of this stuff isn’t that great, and it’s a really, really bum trip. My brain may be baked from a week of triple-digit fevers, but I want to know:

Why the hell would an insurer make it more difficult to get the main drug prescribed to treat the number-one most-talked-about disease in America, one that’s a probable pandemic?

Shouldn’t HIP and other insurers be shoveling these yellow and white capsules out the door, trying to keep their own costs down by getting as many flu victims to recover as quickly as possible?

What the hell is a “pre-approval”? If a doctor prescribes a drug, why isn’t that good enough for the health insurance company?

Oh, and why doesn’t the federal government make Tamiflu available free? Hey, President Obama: What part of “pandemic” do you not understand?

Another hour went by. My pharmacist’s phone rang. She winked at me. “Everything should be fine now,” she said.

Everything was not fine.

I was getting sicker and sicker, just sitting there. My head reeled; an invisible C-clamp tightened behind each ear. I could barely breathe. It felt as though there were shards of glass stuck in my lungs. Every breath hurt. I barely had enough energy to stand up and take a step. My fingers were bluish-gray (an early sign that breakdown of the cardio-pulmonary system is imminent.) I coughed and caught a ball of phlegm in a napkin. It was soaked in blood.

Four hours and 12 phone calls after I arrived at the pharmacy, I went home empty-handed. HIP’s approval still hadn’t appeared in the pharmacy’s computer system.

When swine flu appeared in the U.S. this spring, the government prompted hysteria, predicted the deaths of as many as 90,000 Americans. Now they’re going to the opposite extreme, downplaying a genuine threat by trying to ignore it. They’re no longer even tracking new cases. And Obama Administration health officials are now selling an official line—for most people, swine flu symptoms are no worse than those of any other random flu—that isn’t quite accurate.

For example, while it’s true that children and the elderly are in high-risk categories for swine flu, “40-year-olds are the group most at risk of developing life-threatening complications from H1N1,” according to Canadian researchers cited by the Montreal Gazette. (Centralized data collection is a big advantage of a national healthcare system.)

Another difference is that swine flu is much more likely to cause viral pneumonia, the most common life-threatening complication of flu. It is not just another flu.

Lord knows, it’s not like any other flu I’ve had. I spent that night coughing up blood and downing aspirins to try to keep the fever down. By way of comparison, I’ve been thrown down two flights of stairs—and swine flu is worse. I had pneumonia last year; it sucked hard, but it was a joke next to this.

I went back to the pharmacy in the morning. Still nothing. I called HIP. Unsurprisingly, their voice recognition voicemail tree had some trouble understanding my voice by this time. God forbid they should hire someone in India to actually answer the phone. Finally—success. Sort of.

“The pharmacy needs to enter the approval code,” the HIP lady explained. She read me a long number. I gave it to the pharmacist. She typed it into her computer. “No. Still nothing,” she said.

She didn’t look surprised.

“Would you like me to call HIP?” the pharmacist asked.

“I thought you’d never ask,” I replied.

Half an hour, an overnight and about two pints of phlegmy blood later, I had my Tamiflu in hand. “$87.12,” demanded the pharmacist.

I asked her how much it would have been out-of-pocket, without insurance.

“$112,” she said.

Losing that night has diminished the effectiveness of the drug. It took three days more of feeling like death just to advance to the stage of feeling like crap. Now I’m settling into a nice, comfortable state of wretched.

I just read that a recent ABC News poll says that 32 percent of Americans think the current healthcare system is just peachy. Let’s hope they don’t catch swine flu this winter.

(Ted Rall, President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, is author of the books “To Afghanistan and Back” and “Silk Road to Ruin.”)

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL