UPDATE: In The Muck of Afghanistan
After reading as much as I possibly could about today’s news on the Afghan War only one thing appears to be clear: This thing is a mess. The news of this seemingly insurmountable mess comes on top of a report earlier this week that there may be $1 TRILLION dollars worth of minerals in the hills of Afghanistan. And as we know, anytime an American politician sees potential to take another countries natural resources we will figure a way to do. The hope is that Pres. Obama will stick to his 2011 troop withdrawal deadline, but my guess is that if we start letting companies come into Afghanistan we certainly can’t just leave them there to get taken over by unfriendly forces. The issue at its core is a simple one. There is no long-term strategy for the region. The nation building efforts have failed and will continue to fail simply because the Afghani people are not willing to hold up their end of the deal and the Afghani’s with power and money will continue to exploit the rest of the country until we all die in 2012 or the next 100 years. To be fair, it isn’t 2011 yet, so if our timetable is set for 2011 we should wait and see what happens, but the Dems appear to be getting restless and need a win to save some of their seats during this midterm election and forcing an early troop withdrawal could be a win in a battle against an unpopular war. Not that any war is popular, but you know what I mean.
UPDATE: CNN.com ran this article this afternoon. Farheed Zakaria, who shared a stage with me during college graduation, discusses the deep trouble we are in if we think nation building is a legitimate option in Afghanistan.
CNN: It’s been reported that Karzai doesn’t believe that the war against the Taliban can be won on the battlefield?
Zakaria: I think that’s a fair statement, and I think he’s right. If the Taliban is to some extent an expression of Pashtun resistance to this government … this is not an alien force coming from outside that you can defeat and they will go home to Saudi Arabia or wherever it is.
Most of them, the vast majority, are Afghans, so you’re going to have to live with them. And that means while of course you have to defeat militarily the most radical, the most intransigent elements of the Taliban, you also have to make deals to include some of them, particularly in mid- and low levels in some kind of new consensual framework.
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[...] we already knew that the situation in Afghanistan sucked. We’ve known for years. I’ve written on this before and even though I’m not an international sensation, I’ve only been around for a couple [...]