- In view of the steady stream of bad news from Iraq -
five dead Marines in Saturday's paper, two more in Sunday's, and four soldiers
in Monday's, along with the Ba'athist element of the resistance so "weakened"
it is now striking targets in Iran - it is easy to forget that we are fighting,
and losing, not one Fourth Generation war but two. Five U.S. troops were
killed in Afghanistan last week. On June 9, the Washington Post reported
that
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- "Insurgents linked to the former Taliban regime
have set off a wave of violence in Afghanistan, launching a string of almost
daily bombings and assassinations that have killed dozens of U.S. and Afghan
military personnel and civilians in recent weeks. [A] virtual lockdown
is in effect for many of the roughly 3,000 international residents of
Kabul."
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- As recently as April of this year, the senior U.S. commander
in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, said he envisioned "most of
[the Taliban] collapsing and rejoining the Afghan political and economic
process" within a year. He seems to have projected the winter's quiescence
as a trend, forgetting that Afghan wars always shut down in wintertime,
as war did everywhere until the 19th century. Afghanistan is not so much
Iraq Lite as Iraq Slow, the land that forgot time. Our defeat will come
slowly. But it will come.
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- The reason we will lose is that our strategic objective
is unrealistic. Neither America nor anyone can turn Afghanistan into a
modern state, AKA Brave New World. In attempting to do so, we have launched
broad-scale assaults on Afghanistan's rural economy and culture, guaranteeing
that the Pashtun countryside will eventually turn against us. Afghan wars
are decided in the countryside, not in Kabul.
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- The Pashtun countryside's economy depends on opium poppies.
Columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave, an old Afghan hand, recently wrote that
poppy cultivation generates 12 times more income than the same acreage
planted in wheat. 400,000 acres now grow poppies.
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- "Ministers or their deputies are on the take. Police
cars carry opium through roadblocks. Former anti-Soviet guerillas, known
as the mujahideen, now populate the national highway police, which give
the smugglers total security on the main roads."
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- Opium is the Pashtun economy. Yet we are now waging a
war against it, a war where every victory means impoverishing the rural
population. A story in the March 25 New York Times, "Pentagon Sees
Antidrug Effort in Afghanistan," reported that
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- "On March 15 the American military in Afghanistan
provided transportation and a security force for 6 D.E.A. officers and
36 Afghan narcotics policemen who raided three laboratories in Nangahar
Province.
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- "Under the new mission guidance, the Defense Department
will provide 'transportation, planning assistance, intelligence, targeting
packages' to the counternarcotics mission, said one senior Pentagon official.
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- "American troops will also stand by for 'in-extremis
support,' the official said, particularly to defend D.E.A. and Afghan officers
who come under attack."
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- Our assault on traditional Afghan culture is also guaranteed
to unite the rural Pashtuns against us. A story in the May 10 Christian
Science Monitor began,
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- "A bearded man from the bazaar is whisked into a
barber shop, where he's given a shave and a slick haircut. After a facial,
he visits fashion boutiques.
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- "In a few tightly edited minutes of television,
the humble bricklayer is transformed into an Afghan metrosexual, complete
with jeans, sweater, suede jacket, and sunglasses."
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- This was on Kabul's new Tolo TV, which was established
with a grant from U.S.A.I.D. The story goes on to note that "Modesty
in male-female relations and respect for elders are two important parts
of Afghan culture that Tolo is challenging." Not surprisingly, in
March, Afghanistan's senior Islamic council, the ulema shura, criticized
such programs as "opposed to Islam and national values."
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- In consequence of these blunders, assailing rural Afghanistan's
economy and its culture, de Borchgrave reports that "Britain's defense
chiefs have advised Tony Blair 'a strategic failure' of the Afghan operation
now threatens." That term is precisely accurate. Our failure is strategic,
not tactical, and it can only be remedied by a change in strategic objective.
Instead of trying to remake Afghanistan, we need to redefine our strategic
objective to accept that country as it is, always has been and always will
be: a poor, primitive, and faction-ridden place, dependent on poppy cultivation
and proud of its strict Islamic traditions.
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- In other words, we have to accept that the Afghanistan
we have is as good as it is going to get. Once we do that, we open the
door to a steady reduction in our presence there and the reduction of Afghan
affairs to matters of local importance only. That, and only that, is a
realistic strategic objective in Afghanistan.
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