TimesOnlineUK: "Afghanistan is a nasty war we can never win". US has no strategy.

[madfloridian]

What a terribly sad paragraph to read about the failures of one's own country. Not in the US but in the Times Online. The first paragraph is striking.

The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, flies to Britain this week to meet a crisis entirely of London and Washington’s creation. They have no strategy for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan. They are hanging on for dear life and praying for something to turn up. Britain is repeating the experience of Gordon in Khartoum, of the Dardanelles, Singapore and Crete, of politicians who no longer read history expecting others to die for their dreams of glory.

Fall back, men, Afghanistan is a nasty war we can never win

More from the article. I have noticed we hear almost nothing about Iraq and even less about Afghanistan. I guess the media here is playing the "we won" game, and everything will be ok. It won't be ok. It never will.

Every independent report on the Nato-led operation in Afghanistan cries the same message: watch out, disaster beckons. Last week America’s Afghanistan Study Group, led by generals and diplomats of impeccable credentials, reported on “a weakening international resolve and a growing lack of confidence”. An Atlantic Council report was more curt: “Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan.” The country was in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.

A clearly exasperated Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, has broken ranks with the official optimism and committed an extra 3,000 marines to the field, while sending an “unusually stern” note to Germany demanding that its 3,200 troops meet enemy fire. Germany, like France, has rejected that plea. Yet it is urgent since the Canadians have threatened to withdraw from the south if not relieved. An equally desperate Britain is proposing to send half-trained territorials to the front, after its commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth.

Meanwhile Nato is doing what it does best, squabbling. Gates has criticised Britain for not taking the war against the insurgents with sufficient vigour. Britain is furious at America’s obsession with spraying the Helmand poppy crop and thus destroying all hope of winning hearts and minds. Most of the 37,000 soldiers wandering round Kabul were sent on the understanding that they would do no fighting. No army was ever assembled on so daft a premise.

The ending paragraph is equally as compelling as the first one.

To have set one of the world’s most ancient and ferocious people on the warpath against both Kabul and Islamabad takes some doing. But western diplomacy has done it. Now must begin the agonising process of escaping that appalling mistake.

The Down With Tyranny website has more on this topic today.

But the U.S. military, stretched thin by the Iraq war, is hard-pressed to send more than the 3,200 additional Marines the Bush administration is dispatching to Afghanistan. The growing insurgency there is fueling rifts within the NATO alliance as Germany and other nations refuse to allow their troops to participate in offensive operations in Afghanistan. The Afghan army is making progress but cannot operate independently.

"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," an Atlantic Council of the United States report warned last week. The report was directed by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the former top NATO commander. "What is happening in Afghanistan and beyond its borders can have even greater strategic long-term consequences than the struggle in Iraq."

That vote on October 10, 2002, caused world wide turmoil. Our party leaders have to start talking about what we have done and how to fix it. But beyond talking, there must be something done.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Golly, everybody was pro-Afghanistan war too. That was the "just"

war. Seems that the US isn't much more wise than the Soviet Union when it comes to killing & conquering.

[ixion]

2. not me... I was just as against the invasion of Afghanistan

buy hey, what's my opinion in the face of flagrant barbarianism.

[aquart]

9. Nor me.

I literally shrieked when I heard "Act of war." I knew what that meant. Knew it was the worst possible response to the situation. It was a child's response. It was a coward's response. A strong nation can absorb 3,000 dead and go about its business. We behaved like a five year old who had been given a swirly.

Besides, al qaida isn't in Afghanistan. It's in Pakistan. Which we will NOT invade because they have the bomb.

[ConsAreLiars]

12. Nor me.

Well said.

It was the most cowardly and ignorant and blindly murderous and futile decision possible, and any who think the US corporations either should or could batter them into obedient proles is being duped, at best.

(edit to slightly rephrase)

[madfloridian]

3. Talking point: "I supported the war in Afghanistan"

You would think no one ever remembered how fighting in that country can bankrupt a nation. Can you say Russia? And now us?

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. Yes, Afghanistan Good, Iraq Bad.

Probably because Afghanistan seemed to be "finished" in a week or two & we "won".

One of these days we'll wake up to the news we're headed to Pakistan too.

[madfloridian]

5. It's amazing.

The media and the politicians think we don't have a dab of sense.

[Disturbed]

6. The US Corp Media does not like to ruffle War Hawks'

feathers. Rethugs grant major favors to US Corp Media Moguls. Therefore, the Moguls instruct their
Corps. to do the bidding of the Busholini Regime & the MIC. Afghanistan was declared as a major success by the Busholin Regime. Not many are going to dispute that falsehood.

[Wizard777]

7. Not a chance! Pakistan has nukes. There sovereignty will continue to be respected.

That also sends a dangerous message. Nevermind the UN Charter. If you want your sovereignty to be respected. You must have nukes. If not the nuclear nations will rape your country at will.

[aquart]

10. Yep. Really increases the incentive, doesn't it?

We ain't repairing the damage in this century. While Bush was playing at being CIC, other nations were making plans to live without us.

[starroute]

15. You'd think the British at least would have known better

You don't expect the Americans to have any historical memory. But the British?

Have they really forgotten the First Afghan War? And the Second Afghan War? And the Third Afghan War? They have a long, long history of getting their asses handed to them by the Afghans.

How can they not remember all that? Don't they even read their Kipling any more?

[aquart]

8. Good heavens. Someone noticed.

Everyone talks about getting out of Iraq. Never a word about leaving Afghanistan. As the Russians grow stronger, they point and laugh at us, caught in the briar patch they finally managed to escape.

[malaise]

13. The Canadians threated to pull out lastweek

The Germans said they were obeying their parliamentary mandate and not taking orders from Gates.


http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/01/news/Germany-US-Afghanistan.php
<snip>
Germany's defense minister defended his army's efforts in the north of Afghanistan on Friday, rejecting a written plea from Defense Secretary Robert Gates for more help in the volatile south.

Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung insisted that German troops will remain in the relatively calm north. He was responding to a letter from the U.S. defense secretary to all NATO partners reportedly urging them to send more forces to join the fight against Taliban and other militants in southern Afghanistan.
"I have a clear mandate from the German parliament," Jung told reporters Friday. "It consists of 3,500 soldiers serving along the northern border and only helping out in the south for a limited period of time, as needed."

The refusal of Germany, along with France, Turkey and Italy, to send significant number of troops to the southern front lines has opened a rift within NATO.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/02/01/gates-nato.html?ref=rss

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and former defence minister Gordon O'Connor have repeatedly called on NATO to send more troops to clamp down on Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency, complaining a small number of countries are carrying the heaviest load.

"If friends need help, then we will respond with support for a limited time, as stipulated in our mandate," Jung said of his German troops, "but I think that our emphasis needs to remain in the north."

The exchange between Germany and the U.S. comes just days after Harper backed a report recommending Canada not remain in Afghanistan past 2009 unless NATO provides more soldiers.
--------------------
George and his PNAC backers have never read history. Just add this to his warehouse of clusterfucks.

[madfloridian]

17. From your 2nd link...this letter from Gates.

"Gates's letter complained of a heavy burden on American troops and warned of a possible split within NATO."

Well, considering it is our war to begin with...perhaps it IS our burden. :shrug:

[mdmc]

11. The Democrats will bring us home with victory!

[swag]

14. Rope-a-doped just like the Soviets.

Great job.

[Harmonicaman]

16. the more things change

When you're wounded, and lay on Afghanistans plains
and the women come out, to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
..and go to your gawd like a soldier

Rudyard Kipling - from "The Young British Soldier" 1892

[madfloridian]

18. 1892...what Kipling wrote. It's over 100 years later, and we have learned nothing.

:shrug:

[madfloridian]

19. More doubts about Afghanistan...

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/02/05/2003400375

"Despite the winter lull in Afghanistan, it is becoming increasingly evident that the US-led alliance operating there since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001 is on the brink of collapse. How did a ragtag group of ill-equipped militants manage to survive seven years of military occupation by the strongest military in modern times, backed by the strongest military alliance since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact?

From the outset, the NATO mission suffered from lack of a clear mandate. Was the long-term objective stabilization? Reconstruction? Development? Or war-making, as US forces, aided by special forces from other countries, hunted down al-Qaeda fighters and their Taliban hosts?

Midway in, contributing countries saw their mandate shift from what was ostensibly stabilization (Kabul being the only real success in that department) to counterinsurgency. All of a sudden, countries like Canada and Britain, which had deployed soldiers to support Provincial Reconstruction Teams, were venturing outside their main areas of operation and engaging in fierce battles with militants.

Though fairly successful in those encounters, coalition losses were most unwelcome back home. This was not, people argued, what those countries had sent their young men and women to do."

[JDPriestly]

20. Yet another Bush mega-failure.

Bush needs to get born again again, hopefully as a real Christian this next time. Apparently his first Christian rebirth was not sufficient to make him a successful human being. Better luck next time Bush.

Bush's obsession with Iraq has been his downfall. His presidency reminds me of the Greek tragedies. Is Bush Oedipus? Did he, like Oedipus, meet and kill his father in a moment of hubris. And just what is his relationship with Barbara? Is there something Oedipal in his miserable fate? Nothing he does seems to work out.

[Jed Dilligan]

21. Khartoum, Dardanelles, Singapore

Funny he doesn't mention Afghanistan, where a whole British army was lost in 1842.

[Karenina]

22. Written by the "victors"...

On 23rd October 1841 the 40th Regiment marched into Kandahar from Quetta.. The situation in Afghanistan was now deteriorating rapidly, with a general insurrection against Shah Shuja and his British backers, and in December the British envoy in Kabul was murdered and dismembered. The position of the small Anglo-Indian garrison of Kabul, one British and four Indian regiments, became untenable, and in January 1842, having been assured of safe conduct back to India, the force set out for the Khyber Pass. As might have been expected, the Afghans did not honour their agreement, and the withdrawing force was treacherously attacked in the wintry mountain passes and annihilated in one of the two major disasters to befall British arms in that country (the other being Maiwand in 1880). Famously, only one survivor reached Jellalabad, the remainder being killed or taken captive. It is this early debacle that has coloured British perceptions of Afghanistan ever since.

http://www.army.mod.uk/qlr/museum_archives/afghanistan.htm

Destruction of the 66th
based on the account by Bryan Perrett in "Against All Odds!"

The remainder of the 66th succeeded in effecting a rally on the south bank of the ravine at Khig when Colonel Galbraith uncased one of the Colours around which, as he fell, a group of about 200 formed. They were surrounded, their CO was dead and they were doomed but, losing men all the while, they retired slowly through Khig to a mud-walled garden where a second stand was made. There died Major Blackwood the wounded commander of E/B Battery, Lieutenant Henn commanding the Sappers & Miners, and the remaining officers and men of the 66th who in turn supported the Colours until each soldier was shot down. Even in the flush of their victory, the Afghans were awed by the end of the 66th. "Surrounded by most of the Afghan army, they fought on until only eleven men were left, inflicting enormous loss on the enemy", wrote one of Ayub's senior artillery officers. "These men charged out of the garden and died with their faces to the foe, their conduct was the admiration of all who witnessed it."

http://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/armycampaigns/indiancampaigns/campafghan1878maiwand.htm

[Squatch]

23. Great...guess where I'm heading off to this fall?