There’s a pretty strong essay by Andrew Bacevich in the November issue of Harper’s (“The War We Can’t Win”) that looks at the impasse of the Afghan 
war and the fallacy of believing we can make America safe by continuing to occupy a foreign land. One would hope that Obama reads it – I have my doubts he’s hearing this point of view with any regularity. Bacevich observes that Obama is carrying forward the legacy of failure his predecessor established in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and while I don’t agree with every nuance of his analysis, he’s spot-on when questioning the general approach to the “War on Terror” that Bush took and which has since become a matter of conventional wisdom (or lack of same). The impetus towards revenge, stoked by the Bush team, that swept us into both wars has proven a dismal failure, as Bacevich points out. It is also a criminal abuse of power that has sowed the seeds of future disasters.
The September 11 attacks represented a colossal failure of our political leaders, our commercial airline industry, our national security apparatus, and our intelligence community, as Jim Ridgeway so aptly described a few years ago in The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11 (note: not a “9-11 truth” work by any means). The problem wasn’t so much in Afghanistan as it was – and is – right here. The attacks were planned largely in Germany and in flight schools in the United States. So… are we planning to occupy Germany and Florida? Prolonging and expanding the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan is not going to make us safer – it’s simply going to inspire more people to try to take a shot at the empire that’s subjugating two Muslim nations and helping to oppress a third (Palestine). Bacevich contrasts our policy in Afghanistan to America’s relationship with Mexico, pointing out the absurdity of the notion that an army of occupation can be used to impose a more effective, less corrupt government and to disable international criminal networks operating within that country’s borders. To suggest this approach in Mexico would be to invite ridicule – even more so when you consider the degree to which our own trade policy has fueled the disintegration of the Mexican state and created a flood of economic refugees and illicit drugs across our southern border.
Truthfully, our policy in Afghanistan is the same as though we had allied 
ourselves with some of the worst drug cartels in Mexico in the hope that they might someday voluntarily adopt at least the pretense of virtue as not to embarrass us any further. The objective is not good governance for the Afghans – it is denying Al Qaeda safe haven, and we seem willing to do anything to bring that about… including a lot of things that seriously undermine that very goal. Like support for figures like the warlord Dostum and his ilk who would, I’m sure, tolerate their former jihadist allies if they saw benefit in doing so. Like killing senior Taliban leaders, so that younger, more energetic, more zealous militants can take their places. Like sacrificing some of the best among us for an unworthy cause.
Cheney and family are more than happy to trumpet this as some kind of triumph. Obama should know better than to follow in their footsteps.
luv u,
jp
such a hopeless legislative clusterfuck as the Baucus bill. Maybe it’s our recent experience with the topic of global warming that nudges me in that direction. Think of it – a few short years ago our leaders were disputing the science of climate change with some confidence. Now that skepticism is the province of the tin hat patrol and the policy debate is over how much (or how little) to do about the problem. Too little, too late? We did lose precious years during the Clinton and Bush administrations (particularly the latter) when fundamental changes might have been set in motion, but were stonewalled. Those changes will come harder now, and perhaps to insufficient effect. Nonetheless, there was a kind of sea change in 2007 and I suppose something like that could happen with health care in America. If we could all recognize the existence of the problem and its fundamental nature, that would be a big step forward.
compromising right-ward from there, as if the “magic of the marketplace” still holds a great deal of promise in the wake of last year’s economic meltdown. The rhetoric, by and large, has been anything but inspirational. A lot of talk about “bending the cost curve” – whoa, there’s something that will get the rank and file heated up. And yet, single payer is avoided by the liberals and used as an epithet by the right… even when it’s clear that it would be the most cost-effective means of providing health coverage. I’m convinced that the reason why there is so much talk about “choice” in this debate is to undermine the case for single payer… as if “choice” of health plans is the highest value one can imagine. I’m in the goddamned private market, and what choice do I have? One freaking plan that pays for anything. That’s it. And I’m among the luckiest. Seems to me we should concentrate more on giving people security. Seems like we should think of it more like we do about our fire departments or other life-saving services. It’s really about having that reliable resource, not choosing between competing vendors as a value in itself.
from the 9/11 attacks, lashing out at one utterly destroyed by decades of warfare, much of it stoked by our government (with the cooperation of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). We are now told that the place is being overrun by religious fanatics – the Taliban – who want to bring the place back to the 13th century. From where it stands now, that wouldn’t be a very long trip.
Russians and, into the bargain, any thought of secularism in that country. When the Russians left, we lost interest and the place went even more profoundly to hell, descending into fratricidal war and chaos that made even the Taliban’s tenuous rule seem stable by comparison. But the one-eyed mullah and his pals, along with Sheikh Osama and his, were creatures of our own manipulative foreign policy.