Bush ignored warnings from U.S. officials about Afghanistan

[Wetzelbill]

How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad

By DAVID ROHDE and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: August 12, 2007

Two years after the Taliban fell to an American-led coalition, a group of NATO ambassadors landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, to survey what appeared to be a triumph — a fresh start for a country ripped apart by years of war with the Soviets and brutal repression by religious extremists.

With a senior American diplomat, R. Nicholas Burns, leading the way, they thundered around the country in Black Hawk helicopters, with little fear for their safety. They strolled quiet streets in Kandahar and sipped tea with tribal leaders. At a briefing from the United States Central Command, they were told that the Taliban were now a “spent force.”

“Some of us were saying, ‘Not so fast,’ ” Mr. Burns, now the under secretary of state for political affairs, recalled. “While not a strategic threat, a number of us assumed that the Taliban was too enmeshed in Afghan society to just disappear.”

But that skepticism had never taken hold in Washington. Since the 2001 war, American intelligence agencies had reported that the Taliban were so decimated they no longer posed a threat, according to two senior intelligence officials who reviewed the reports.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp&oref=slogin

[bridgit]

1. I really no longer think bush is playing, or vying for a win, victory, success...

a prevailing; or call it what you will. I think he & his handlers are happy with never-ending chaos & strife. That's where all their portfolios are sitting, so why change a thing. bush was good for 'them' cause they knew he was not able to see much past the tip of his nose about an entire landscape of matters & affairs, that he was only there for the free pretzels. And that he'd sign anything they slipped under his nose just so long as they let him think he was "the decider"

[yardwork]

2. I have thought the same thing ever since 2003.

This is part of the neocon dream for the New American Century. Constant war equals a constant market for their no-bid contracts for services equals unequalled profits for the few. They don't care about the misery it visits on the rest of us.

[Wetzelbill]

8. perpetual war for perpetual peace make a lot of people a lot of money

that's for sure. It always seems to be the same ones who advocate the perpetual war part who rake in the most cash. Hmmmm...

[rodeodance]

3. I think Rummy saw the Taliban as backward savages, not worth this time:

. As defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed credit for toppling the Taliban with light, fast forces. But in a move that foreshadowed America’s trouble in Iraq, he failed to anticipate the need for more forces after the old government was gone, and blocked an early proposal from Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, and Mr. Karzai, the administration’s handpicked president, for a large international force. As the situation deteriorated, Mr. Rumsfeld and other administration officials reversed course and cajoled European allies into sending troops.

When it came to reconstruction, big goals were announced, big projects identified. Yet in the year Mr. Bush promised a “Marshall Plan” for Afghanistan, the country received less assistance per capita than did postconflict Bosnia and Kosovo, or even desperately poor Haiti, according to a RAND Corporation study. Washington has spent an average of $3.4 billion a year reconstructing Afghanistan, less than half of what it has spent in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The White House contends that the troop level in Afghanistan was increased when needed and that it now stands at 23,500. But a senior American commander said that even as the military force grew last year, he was surprised to discover that “I could count on the fingers of one or two hands the number of U.S. government agricultural experts” in Afghanistan, where 80 percent of the economy is agricultural. A $300 million project authorized by Congress for small businesses was never financed.

[Lisa]

4. an Afghan friend of mine has been saying that the aid promised ...

... for infrastructure, agriculture, education, etc., has not shown up in many cases. He showed me photos from there, taken when he was visiting his family last year. There were a LOT of poppy fields -- many farmers are having such a difficult time, especially with the recent drought, that it's the only way some families are able to make ends meet.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Losing Two Wars At Once

This will be booooshie's ultimate legacy...not just the fiasco in Iraq but snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan.

It's like Rummy never bothered to study how the Soviets lost in that country...to "savages with rocket launchers" in the 80s nor the tribal nature of that society. Karzai has never been more than the Mayor of Kabul, the narcotics trade (which the Taliban had cut down) is at record levels and a vast majority of the country is under tribal leaders...so much for spreading "democracy".

The absolute arrogance and ignorance of this regime to the culture and the history of the entire region is what lost these wars.

[Disturbed]

6. Afghan Autopsy

Afghan Autopsy

Published on Friday, December 1, 2006 by truthdi

Afghan Autopsy

America began its so-called war on terror with the intention of driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Five years later, the Taliban is back, Osama bin Laden is still alive, and insurgent fighters cite the U.S. presence in the country as their main wellspring of rage. How did it come to this? Truthdig contributor Christian Parenti, just back from Afghanistan, reports.
by Christian Parenti

Something significant happened in Kabul on Sept. 8 when a Toyota station wagon packed with explosives rammed two U.S. Humvees at the gates of the American embassy, setting off a massive blast.
The Taliban claimed credit for the bombing, as if to say: We can now strike anywhere. When I interviewed eyewitnesses a few days after the blast, shreds of clothing and a shoe still hung from the branches of a nearby tree. Local shopkeepers described the suicide bomber as “very clean,” “dressed in white” and “wearing eyeliner.” They said he paid $100 for a cigarette just before parking in the spot from which he launched his attack against two American Humvees.

After a month traveling around Afghanistan this autumn, I was forced to a grim conclusion: This project is lost, and nothing very good will likely replace it. The reasons for the international community’s failure here are several. First, there are the immediate blunders of the occupiers who, despite extensive European involvement, are led by the Americans. Next are deeper historical dynamics dating back to the U.S. role in the anti-Soviet jihad. And finally there are much older cultural, political and economic facts about Afghanistan that have long made this a wild, lawless place, impervious to conquest and even resistant to the modernizing efforts of its urban middle classes.
The stated goal of this latest occupation has been to create a functioning state where none had existed. Thus, if Afghan institutions fail, so too does the West’s project there.

“You can’t have development without security,” says the waxy NATO spokesman in Kabul, Mark Laity. “And security without development won’t last.” Alas, neither obtains in Afghanistan.

More here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1201-23.htm


Afghanistan: Five Years Later
by Stephen Zunes


Barnett Rubin, America's foremost scholar on Afghanistan, described the country as not having “functioning state institutions. It has no genuine army or effective police. Its ramshackle provincial administration is barely in contact with, let alone obedient to, the central government. Most of the country's meager tax revenue has been illegally taken over by local officials who are little more than warlords with official titles.” According to Rubin, the goal of U.S. policy in Afghanistan “was not to set up a better regime for the Afghan people, but to recruit and strengthen warlords in its fight against al-Qaida.”

While women are now allowed to go to school and leave the house unaccompanied by a close male relative-­rights denied to them under the Taliban-­most women in large parts of Afghanistan are afraid to do so out of fear of kidnapping and rape. Human Rights Watch reports that, despite the ouster of the misogynist Taliban, “Violence against women and girls remains rampant.”
The security situation in the countryside is so bad that groups like Medecins Sans Frontieres-­which stayed in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet war and occupation of the 1980s, the civil war and chaos of the early to mid-1990s, and the brutal repression of the Taliban through 2001-­have completely withdrawn from the country.

Yet the Bush administration continues to be in denial about the worsening situation in Afghanistan. President Bush recently declared that Afghanistan was doing so well that it was “inspiring others … to demand their freedom.” And Vice President Cheney has referred to the rapidly deteriorating Afghan republic as a “rising nation.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld earlier described the new Afghanistan as “a breathtaking accomplishment” and “a successful model.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1014-22.htm

[Wetzelbill]

7. Three if you count Iraq, Afghanistan and the rhetorical "War on Terror"

seperately.

[KharmaTrain]

9. And The War On Drugs...

I still don't understand how you wage war against a substance or a verb.

One thing they sure have won...waging war against our liberties.