Why Obama’s Favorite War is Less Winnable Than Iraq

Five years after the Republicans got us into war against Iraq, Democrats want to double down on a war that’s even more unjustifiable and unwinnable–the one against Afghanistan.

By any measure, U.S. troops and their NATO allies are getting their asses kicked in the country that Reagan’s CIA station chief for Pakistan called “the graveyard of empires.” Afghanistan currently produces a record 93 percent of the world’s opium. Suicide bombers are killing more U.S.-aligned troops than ever. Stonings are back. The Taliban and their allies, “defeated” in 2001, control most of the country–and may recapture the capital of Kabul as early as this summer.

“So,” asks The New York Times, “has Afghanistan now become a bigger security threat to the United States than Iraq?” Barack Obama’s answer is yes. He spent last year parroting the DNC’s line that Bush “took his eye off the ball” in Afghanistan when we invaded Iraq. Thankfully, he abandoned that hoary sports metaphor. Iraq, he says now, “distracted us from the fight that needed to be fought in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda. They’re the ones who killed 3,000 Americans.”

Sorta. But not really.

Osama bin Laden bragged about ordering the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, yet has repeatedly denied a direct role in 9/11. He’s probably telling the truth. The hijackers were mostly likely recruited by Islamic Jihad, which is based in Egypt. Saudis, including members of the royal family, financed the strikes against New York and Washington. Pakistani intelligence funded and supervised the camps where some of them trained.

Al Qaeda may have been peripherally involved in 9/11; its leadership certainly knew about the plot ahead of time. They may have fronted some of the expense money. But 9/11 wasn’t an Al Qaeda operation per se.

Afghanistan’s connection to 9/11 was tertiary. At the moment the first plane struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center, most of Al Qaeda’s camps and fighters were in Pakistan. As CBS News reported on January 29, 2002, Osama bin Laden was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi on 9/11. The Taliban militia, which provided neither men nor money for the attacks, controlled 90 percent of the country.

It has long been an article of faith among Democrats that Afghanistan is the “good war,” a righteous campaign that could be won with more money and manpower. But the facts say otherwise. The U.S. Air Force rained more than a million pounds of bombs upon Afghanistan in 2007, mostly on innocent civilians. It’s twice as much as was dropped in Iraq–and equally ineffective.

Six years after the U.S. invasion of 2001, according to Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, the U.S./NATO occupation force has surged from 8,000 to 50,000. But the Americans are having no more luck against the Afghans than had the Brits or the Soviet Union. The U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai controls a mere 30 percent of Afghanistan, admits McConnell. (Regional analysts say in truth it is closer to 15 percent.) Most of the country belongs to the charming guys who gave us babes in burqas and exploding Buddhas: the Taliban and likeminded warlords.

“Afghanistan remains a failing state,” says a report by General James Jones, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. “The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid.”

If he becomes president, Obama says he’ll “ask more from our European allies” to win in Afghanistan. But he won’t get it. As The New York Times puts it: “Why help the United States in Afghanistan, the European logic goes, when America would be able to handle Afghanistan much more easily if its GIs weren’t bogged down in Iraq?”

Obama says he would send two more American combat brigades–between 3,000 and 8,000 troops. If 158,000 troops can’t subdue Iraq, how can 58,000 do the job in Afghanistan?

They can’t.

Afghanistan’s population is 19 percent larger than that of Iraq. Its area is 49 percent bigger, with infinitely rougher terrain. Obama’s proposed “surgelet” would result in troop strength of less than one sixth of the 400,000 dictated by official U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine for a nation the size of Afghanistan.

Afghans say spring could mark the beginning of the end of the United States’ first experiment in post-9/11 regime change. For more than a year, Taliban commanders have controlled the key Kabul-to-Kandahar highway. “On one convoy last year we were 40 vehicles and only 12 got through,” Sadat Khan, a 25-year-old truck driver explained to the UK Telegraph as he pointed to “roughly patched bullet holes in the cab of his truck.” Cops loyal to Karzai expect to be massacred. “Maybe we will lose 30 per cent of us this spring, maybe 60 per cent,” police commander Mohammad Farid told the paper. He’d already been shot.

The Taliban say they’ll retake Kabul this year and reestablish the Islamic fundamentalist government led by Mullah Omar. No one knows whether they’ll succeed. But they’ve already begun to strangle the city of Kabul. They’re destroying its nascent telecommunications infrastructure, driving out foreign NGOs and businesspeople with terrorist attacks, and cutting off access to the remaining highways. Talibs promise to continue to target NATO troops, betting that Canada and other members of the coalition will pull out under pressure from antiwar voters. Bogged down in Iraq, the U.S. won’t be able to send more soldiers to Afghanistan. Karzai’s puppet regime won’t last long.

If Obama is so eager to keep fighting Bush’s wars, he’d be smarter to focus on the more winnable of the two: Iraq.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

THIS WEEK’S SYNDICATED COLUMN: TALK NO, VOTE YES

How do Sleazy Senators Get Away With It?

A weird new tactic is highlighting the troubling extent to which the news media fails to hold our elected officials accountable. First, a politician calls a press conference where he issues a strident declaration for or against a bill. Big headlines follow. Then, when the matter comes up for a vote, he votes exactly the opposite of what he had said he would. And no one pays attention.

Ten years ago, not even the most outrageous legislator would attempt such brazen perfidy. Back then, “flip-flopping”–changing one’s mind about an issue, voting one way and then the other–was the worst sin a pol could commit. Now he can take to the Senate floor, shout about a proposed law being a threat to mom, God and apple pie–and the next day vote “yes,” secure in the knowledge that no reporter will call him on it. Thus can a reputation for courage and integrity be built. It’s just that easy.

John McCain pulls this neat trick all the time. He even did it on the same issue twice: torture.

In 2005 the Arizona senator grandstanded in favor of an anti-torture amendment to a defense bill. Bush signed it, but then took it back with one of his notorious “signing statements.” NYU law professor David Golove, an expert on Congressional politics, explained that Bush would continue to order torture in U.S. prisons and concentration camps. “The signing statement is saying ‘I will only comply with this law when I want to,'” he said.

Senator McCain earned media plaudits for trying to stop torture. But he didn’t try hard enough. He was too afraid of losing the backing of Bush and the GOP establishment for his 2008 presidential big. Bush conned him, and he shut up.

Then, on February 13th of this year, the Senate passed a bill that would ban waterboarding and other types of torture. This time, McCain came out and voted “no”.

In its typically sloppy Orwellian style, The New York Times gave McCain credit for opposing torture–in his imagination–even as he voted in favor of it in the real world, on the Senate floor. “The leading Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war who steadfastly opposes the use of torture, voted against the bill,” scrode The Times. “Steadfast”? “Formerly opposed” is more like it. Better yet, “sort of formerly opposed.”

Everyone knows that Senator Barack Obama was against the Iraq War since the beginning. He’s been blasting it in speeches since October 2002. He was still at it a few days ago, telling supporters: “John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for a war in Iraq that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. A war that is costing us thousands of precious lives and billions of dollars a week.”

Nice talk. But less than a year ago, on March 27, Senator Obama voted to fund the Iraq War to the tune of $122 billion. On April 26 he voted yes again, for a $124 billion version of the same bill. On November 16, he voted for another $50 billion. Billions of dollars a week…

Reporters don’t ask Obama why he keeps voting for the war if he’s against it. Former President Bill Clinton did: “…there was no difference between [Obama] and George Bush on the war and…there’s no difference in [Obama’s] voting record and Hillary’s…This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” He was absolutely right.

The media pressured Clinton–not Obama–to apologize.

Obama built his career on headlines that portray him as a hopeful proponent of personal liberty and opportunity. Then, when no one is paying attention, he votes like a fascist.

Passed without debate in the grim months following 9/11, the USA-Patriot Act violates our basic privacy rights by allowing the government to spy on us. “Obama’s Stand Against Patriot Act Cheered,” declared a June 26, 2005 Associated Press story that appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Finally! Civil libertarians were happy. Many would go on to support Obama’s presidential campaign. Indeed, any reasonable reader would infer that he was, as the story said, against the Patriot Act. Did he try to repeal it? No. He voted to renew it.

At a January 5th Democratic debate Senator Hillary Clinton confronted Obama: “You said you would vote against the Patriot Act–you came to the Senate and voted for it.” It takes a hypocrite to know one. Hillary voted for it twice.

One of the most accomplished big talkers/vote wimps in the Senate is Clinton’s fellow New Yorker Charles Schumer. On issue after issue Schumer, a notorious publicity hound, loudly lambastes the Republicans and their works. “The most dangerous place in Washington,” Bob Dole once quipped, “is between Charles Schumer and a television camera.” When push comes to a roll call vote, however, the Democrats’ attack dog turns into a teacup poodle.

In January 2006 the Senate held confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito. “70 percent of all Americans,” Schumer told CNN, “say they do not want a Supreme Court justice who will vote to overturn Roe [v. Wade].” If confirmed, he said, Alito “would vote to overturn.” Since the right to an abortion is a key Democratic platform plank, everyone read his statement as a declaration of jihad against Alito’s nomination.

On the first day of the hearing Schumer called Alito a right-wing extremist: “In case after case after case, you give the impression of applying careful legal reasoning, but too many times you happen to reach most conservative result. You give the impression of being a meticulous legal navigator, but, in the end, you always seem to chart a rightward course…Under your view, the President would…have inherent authority to wiretap American citizens without a warrant, to ignore Congressional acts at will, or to take any other action he saw fit under his inherent powers.”
Schumer voted against Alito’s confirmation. But, as a powerful member of the senate leadership, his support for a liberal-led filibuster could have kept Alito off the high court. He did nothing.

Eighteen months later, he issued a rare apology. “Every day,” he said, “I am pained that I didn’t do more to try to block Justice Alito…Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed.”

National news organizations chose not to cover Schumer’s apology. You see, the news media doesn’t merely refuse to call out say-one-thing-vote-the-opposite politicians. It won’t even let them call themselves out.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL