Have Obama and Romney Forgotten Afghanistan?

[rug]

August 13, 2012
Posted by Dexter Filkins

How’s this for a conspiracy of silence? With less than three months to go until Election Day, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have successfully avoided saying almost anything about America’s war in Afghanistan. Remember that war? You will at some point, however little the two candidates talk about it.

You can make your own guesses about why the candidates have said so little about Afghanistan—their positions are virtually identical, the economy is more important, etc. My own guess: neither of them knows what to do about the place. In a mere twenty-eight months, the United States is scheduled to stop fighting, and every day brings new evidence that the Afghan state that is supposed to take over is a failing, decrepit enterprise.

The latest bit of evidence: in the past several days, three of the most powerful people around President Hamid Karzai have come under fire, and now either are gone from their jobs, have promised to leave, or are hunkered down while clinging to what’s left of their legitimacy. Earlier this month, the Afghan parliament voted to impeach the two Afghan officials responsible for overseeing the war: Abdul Rahim Wardak, the minister of defense, and Bismullah Khan Mohammadi, the minister of the interior, on allegations of corruption, favoritism, and incompetence. (The charges are as yet unproven, and both men have denied them.) In the case of B.K., as Mohammadi is known, there were also concerns that he was stacking the Afghan police forces with men more loyal to the largely ethnic Tajik militia that he used to help lead, Jamiat-e Islami, than to the Afghan state—heightening fears that an American withdrawal could precipitate a civil war. (I wrote about those dangers in a piece for The New Yorker last month.)

But the most interesting case concerns Omar Zakhilwal, the Afghan finance minister. Reporters for Tolo, the country’s largest private media network, obtained bank statements for at least two of Zakhilwal’s accounts, dating back several years. Those accounts show deposits totaling nearly a million dollars, most of which were made while Zakhilwal was a public servant. Many of the deposits—like the hundred thousand dollars he deposited on July 16, 2009—were made in cash. At the time of that deposit, Zakhilwal was Karzai’s minister of finance as well as the finance chairman for his reëlection campaign.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/08/have-obama-and-romney-forgotten-afghanistan.html

[JoePhilly]

1. Only one of them has thought at all about it.

The other is trying to figure out how, if elected, to start a war with Iran.

[KG]

2. DURec

[WooWooWoo]

3. I don't think they've forgotten it

There's just not much to say about it. Everyone knows how the story will end. We will leave, the Taliban will resume control and the people there will suffer. It sucks, but there was no happy ending there.

The only thing I fault Obama for and hold against him is his willingness to continue and expand the war in 2009. I know why he did it, understand the political reasoning and all, but it was still a cowardly thing to do when he actually had the executive power not to do it.

He could have had this war over by now if he chose to do it then, but he didn't, even as he knew the surge wouldn't achieve its goals.

I spent 300 days in Afghanistan as part of that surge. The day I left I knew I hadn't done anything other than succeed in not dying. The people immediately around my AO might have been slightly better off than before we got there, but once we fully pull out, nobody is going to be building them schools or getting them to meet at Shuras or handing out cash so they can cut down elephant grass.

But hey, its not like anyone back in America really cares.

[rug]

4. I was outside West Point protesting on December 1, 2009 when he announced it.

I'm glad you made it through.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. No political upside for either one

Rmoney doesn't want to give President Obama credit for anything that he has done and President Obama does not want to take credit for some of what he has done.



If anything at all is said it will be that we are winding down and that we have an exit date etc etc etc.