AppallingWhile the international community’s prospects in Afghanistan have never been bleaker, the Taliban has been experiencing a renaissance that has gained momentum since 2005. At the end of 2001, uprooted from its strongholds and with its critical mass shattered, it was viewed as a spent force. It was naively assumed by the US and its allies that the factors which propelled the Taliban to prominence in Afghanistan would become moribund in parallel to its expulsion from the country. The logic ran that as ordinary Afghans became aware of the superiority of a western democratic model, and the benefits of that system flowed down to every corner of the country, then the Taliban’s rule would be consigned to the margins of Afghan history.
However, as seven years of missed opportunity have rolled by, the Taliban has rooted itself across increasing swathes of Afghan territory. According to research undertaken by ICOS throughout 2008, the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72% of the country.
And remember, all through those years of missed opportunity, the GOP and their cheerleaders have been telling us how we should be clapping louder and dipping our fingers in purple dye to celebrate the Great Leader’s Victory.
Coalition forces, including many brave Afghans, have brought America, Afghanistan and the world its first victory in the war on terror," the president said. "Afghanistan is no longer a terrorist factory sending thousands of killers into the world.
What has happened in Afghanistan is nothing short of a miracle. Who is responsible for it? The New York Times gives the major credit to “the Afghan people” with their “courage and commitment.” Courage and commitment there was, but that courage and commitment was curiously imperceptible until this administration conceived a radical war plan, executed it brilliantly, liberated the country and created from scratch the structures of democracy.
On this fourth anniversary we are in a bizarre situation: The war is being won — in Afghanistan, Iraq, the broader Middle East and many other places where America has changed the conditions on the ground in its favor. But at home the war about the war is being lost.
Afghanistan is a destitute country and there are huge logistical and political challenges to fighting there. But it doesn’t sound like we’re losing.
Mission accomplished.
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“Afghans Urge Obama to Send Aid, Not Troops, to Afghanistan”
It just makes me heartsick, but thank you for this post, BT
OK OK what kind of Kool Aid have YOU
been drinking…. I want some!
No doubt that Limpy Limbaugh will direct his Republic troops to say that the war in Afghanistan was being won up until January 20, 2009. No doubt that his troops will mindlessly repeat the words they are fed.
Gust Avrakotos:
DIGG is OPEN Pups!
Hmmm… Do you think that there may be any reason at all that this “country” (geographic area) is known as the “Graveyard of Empires?”
If we had any chance at all, it was at the very beginning. If we had a Marshall Plan, it might, just might, have worked. Probably not, but maybe…
But now, after killing tens of thousands – and blowing up wedding guests left and right, I don’t see that anything we do militarily will help.
Are we using the military to start a Marshall Plan in the near future? TOO LATE!!! They don’t hate us for our freedom’s, they just hate us ’cause we’ve killed a ton of people in their country. And no amount of schools, markets, businesses, etc., will help.
If we get Muslim nations with us will it help? It can’t hurt… But still, it’s too little, too late…
I hope I’m wrong…
Trained by the U.S. military, this group is called the Afghan Public Protection Force and not part of the army or police. It will provide security to Afghans.
http://www.governmentalityblog…..orces.html
Taliban presence is 72% in the country? That number is quite alarming.
Thank you George W for keeping America safe from terrorists post the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Now NoBama will follow in your foot steps and send troops to Afgan to continue your initiative.
Speaking of history, it’s as if no one at State has studied Afghanistan. That logic is strikingly misguided.
I recall an article in the National Review when we first went into Iraq. As per usual wingnut slander, the author conflated Iraq and Afghanistan and stated that since the DFH’s opposed the first, they were also against the latter. He asked dramatically if those awful awful people would feel differently if they had gone to the liberated areas of Afghanistan and seen “the cast-off burkhas, the piles of shaved beards lying in the street”. Oh, how the wingnut felt for the ordinary Afghan citizen liberated from the shackles of the Taliban.
I bet that fucker never once troubles his beautiful mind with what became of those women who cast off their burkhas, those men who shaved off their beards, after the Taliban triumphantly and viciously re-took those areas. I bet he doesn’t even spare a thought for it.
That man deserves to burn in hell.
Ugh. I don’t see any good coming out of this.
If we had just crushed the Taliban without getting bogged down in Iraq, maybe things would have worked out. But now, maybe damage control (as in, don’t let it become a safe haven for terrorists again) is the best we can do.
Thank you, George W. Bush.
If only George Bush had kept us safe on September 11th
instead of ignoring all the warnings.
RIP Pat Tillman.
Afghanistan’s ugliest legacy.
According to CNN a WH advisor is saying that intel is lacking in Afghanistan. If you ask me the intelligence was lacking in Washington.
I’d bet there are thousands of Afghanis that would disagree
Point taken.
We shouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan in the first place even if the terrorists trained in the country’s hinterlands. It’s like taking over Michigan because Timothy McVeigh learned how to make a fertilizer bomb there. Terrorism is not a national enterprise. A disgruntled individual straps on an explosive vest-who do you blame for that? And the government we created there is extremely corrupt by the loosest Afghan standard. The people prefer the Taliban to us. I don’t blame them. Tells us something about ourselves, or it should. I doubt we care to ask the mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all.
American wars of imperial aggression and colonial occupation have been going, off and on, since 1898, when we attacked the Spanish occupiers of the Philippines and what the heck, we just decided to stay on in their place. We murdered over two hundred thousand Filipinos, but as war criminal Rumsfeld said, it’s a “tough slog.” Yeah, just ask Mussolini about his imperial occupation of Ethiopia back in the 1930s. A nice bit of genocide that was…
Terrorist Obama is the biggest terrorist in the world now, having inherited the title from Terrorist Bush in late January 2009. Obama is committing war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Obama continues to support imperial Israel, by providing military aid, such as cluster bombs, napalm and white phosphorus bombs to drop on Lebanon and Gaza. Imperial war crimes we can believe in…
After seeing those beautiful ancient statues of Buddha blown up (in addition to 9/11, of course), I had very, very, very little sympathy for the Taliban.
Regardless of whether the US should have done anything in Afghanistan, I think we can all agree that the US totally screwed up its opportunity to rout fundamentalism there.
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Talking Economic Accountability David Seide