No doubt it’s a tragedy that a U.S. soldier marched into an Afghan village on Sunday and slaughtered 16 people in their sleep; especially so because among the casualties were nine children, including a two year old. But there’s something perversely American about this shooting rampage. After all, people (even soldiers) “going postal” like this in the United States has become almost as American as Baseball and Apple Pie.
Granted, this is hardly what President Bush had in mind when he set out in 2001 to remake Afghanistan in America’s image. But there’s no denying that U.S. soldiers are no closer to winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people (let alone establishing a Jeffersonian democracy) today than they were 10 years ago.
Meanwhile, just as they did after other notorious incidents recently (namely, soldiers pissing on the bodies of slain Afghans and others torching copies of the Quran), the Taliban are already doing all they can to incite Afghans to take revenge on U.S. troops, many of whom are stationed throughout the country like sitting ducks.
Americans often wonder with righteous indignation why it is so easy for the Taliban to manipulate so many (illiterate) people in Afghanistan this way. But surely the greater wonder is why it is so easy for right-wing Republicans to manipulate so many (purportedly literate) people in America this way. After all, a recent poll by Public Policy Polling showed that over 80 percent of voters in Mississippi either think President Obama is a Muslim or are not sure if he is the Christian he has repeatedly professed to be. But I digress….
The point is that this latest incident is causing even war-hawk Republicans like Newt Gingrich to openly question why the hell U.S. troops are still there…?
I think it’s going to get substantially worse, not better, and I think that we are risking young men and women in a mission that may frankly not be doable.
(Gingrich, CNN, March 11, 2012)
No shit! But I was warning it would be thus long before Obama decided to escalate this patently unwinnable war. And nothing proves how foolhardy and deadly his decision was quite like tolls showing that more than two-thirds of the almost 2,000 troops who have died in the killing fields of Afghanistan since 2001 have died in just the three years since the “Obama surge” in 2009. And for what?!
The United States’ legacy there will be distinguished either by a terminally wounded national pride as American forces beat a hasty retreat in defeat (following the Russian precedent in Afghanistan), or by thousands of American soldiers being lost in Afghanistan’s ‘graveyard of empires’ as they continue fighting this unwinnable war (following America’s own precedent in Vietnam). More troops only mean more sitting ducks for Taliban fighters…
Obama would be well-advised to cut America’s losses and run ASAP; to let the Afghans govern themselves however they like; and to rely on Special Forces and aerial drones to ‘disrupt and dismantle’ Taliban and al-Qaeda operations there.
(“‘Without (or even with) more forces, failure in Afghanistan is likely,’” The iPINIONS Journal, September 23, 2009)
Again, that was over two years ago folks. Which means that I cannot be among those Obama is now dismissing as reckless for advocating a “rush to the exits that could endanger America’s interests.” Frankly, he seems to channel Sarah Palin whenever he’s asked to explain exactly what American interests are being served by having so many troops there. In fact nothing is more reckless than sending a soldier with obvious signs of PTSD back into a war zone for a fourth tour of duty – as was reportedly done with the soldier in this case.
What’s more, I’m on record warning as early as September 18, 2006 (in Afghanistan: Snatching Defeat from the Hands of Victory) that America’s misadventure in Iraq had allowed Taliban fighters to regroup to such a degree that they had become more than capable of terminally undermining all U.S. efforts at nation building in Afghanistan. Yet here we are….
All of which begs the question … again: why is America continuing to suffer these kinds of indignities, to say nothing of the loss of life and treasure, for a cause that is making its misadventure in Vietnam seem beneficial, prudent, and honorable?
(U.S. Apologies Add Insult to Folly of Afghan War, The iPINIONS Journal, February 23, 2012)
Despite this, 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain insists that U.S. troops should remain in Afghanistan for 100 years if that’s what it takes to “complete the mission.”
Of course, this is the same trigger-happy senator who recently challenged the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, to tell the world how many more people will have to die in Syria before the United States intervenes there too.
God help the people dying in Syria. But I challenge McCain to tell the American people how many more of their sons and daughters will have to die in Afghanistan before he realizes that they are being sacrificed for a lost cause….
NOTE: It is curious, perhaps even craven that U.S. officials are offering more abject apologies to the “noble people of Afghanistan” without ever uttering the word “apologize”. No doubt this is because Obama does not want Republicans ranting all over the airways about how weak it makes America look for him to apologize for anything any American does – no matter how unconscionable.
Related commentaries:
Afghanistan: snatching defeat…
U.S. apologies add insult…