Stuck Between Iraq And An Afghan Hard Place

I’ve been meaning to point this out for a little while, and I guess I’d better get to it before the end of the month; the chart from this link tells us that our corporate media cousins would like nothing more than for none of us whatsoever to trouble our beautiful minds with tales of woe from Iraq.

And as this Baltimore Sun editorial tells us…

…it is becoming increasingly clear that the only long-term answers to the problem of insufficient troop strength are either a military draft or an end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. And neither of those options seems likely to come to pass anytime soon.

And the editorial also proposes the idea of “a bigger army for a longer conflict” (don't know how you feel about that, but that sets off all kinds of alarm bells for yours truly).

And as noted here…

… only a few thousand US troops have left Iraq since President Obama took office, and few if any are expected to go through the beginning of next year. This certainly leaves doubts as to the president’s willingness to actually withdraw troops from the nation in a timely fashion, and (Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al) Maliki seems like he may be willing to oblige a long-term stay.

And I should note that the last sentence runs counter to the withdrawal deadline of December 2011 for all forces as stipulated in the Status of Forces Agreement.

Apparently it is necessary to point out to the new administration once more that which was inflicted upon us by the Bushco cabal and its media minions (and were it not for the “fudging” on the SOFA timetable, this would be welcome news…and by the way, did anyone know about the current water crisis faced by Iraq, noted here?).

And who better, outside of the Kagans, Danielle Pletka or their like, than Tom Friedman to bring us up to date (removing my tongue from cheek now)?

As noted here…

I’ve long argued that there should be a test for any officer who wants to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan — just one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer “yes,” you can go to Germany, South Korea or Japan, but not to Iraq or Afghanistan. Well, this war has produced a class of officers who are very out-of-the-box thinkers. They learned everything the hard way — not in classes at Annapolis or West Point, but on the streets of Fallujah and Kandahar.

I call them: “The Class Too Dumb to Quit.” I say that with affection and respect. When all seemed lost in Iraq, they were just too stubborn to quit and figured out a new anti-insurgency strategy. It has not produced irreversible success yet — and may never. But it has kept the hope of a decent outcome alive.

Just think – we’ve suffered all of this misery over Dubya’s war of choice to “keep the hope of a decent outcome alive.” Peachy.

And it gets better…

At least The Class Too Dumb to Quit is in charge, and they have a strategy: Clear areas of the Taliban, hold them in partnership with the Afghan Army, rebuild these areas by building relationships with district governors and local assemblies to help them upgrade their ability to deliver services to the Afghan people — particularly courts, schools and police — so they will support the Afghan government.

Ah yes, it’s “Clear, Hold And Rebuild – The Sequel.”

Well, Peter Beaumont, the foreign affairs editor of the Guardian, tells us the following (from here)…



And this probably won’t make anyone feel better either (turning once more to "The Moustache Of Understanding," as Atrios calls him)…

Iraqis know who they were, and they don’t always like it, but they still have not figured out who they want to be as a country. They are exhausted from years of civil strife and really don’t want to go there again. Yet on the big unresolved issues — how will power be shared in Kirkuk, how will the Sunnis who joined the “awakening” be absorbed into the government, how will oil wealth and power be shared between provinces and the central government — the different ethnic communities still don’t want to compromise much either.

Given all of this, then what the hell was the point of the Iraq war; oh yes, let’s see now – to be welcomed as liberators, to spread democracy, to make the world safe for soldiers of fortune and Halliburton profiteers (and its partners and subsidiaries), to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”…

(Yes, I know that, if you’re reading this, you’re probably fully aware of the depressing history at least as much as I am, but please humor me in allowing one more recitation.)

Now, from the reality-based community, I give you the following (here)...

The subordination of women by Iraq’s religious zealots has been strengthened by the fracturing of Iraqi society brought about by the American invasion.

The zealots ride much higher than they ever did under Saddam. Mr. Friedman should give up his attempt to rationalize the irrational and admit that former President George W. Bush’s invasion was a ghastly and unforgivable mistake.

Will Jourdin
Ubud, Indonesia

And returning to the area of the world we should have been focusing on exclusively all along, we learn the following (here)...

Gates and Mullen face a raft of festering problems in Afghanistan: the Taliban and its allies are growing stronger, and they have killed 35 U.S. troops in the first three weeks of July — more than in any month since the U.S. invaded in October 2001. The Afghan government is salted with corruption, while its prisons are hellholes that turn citizens against their government. Pakistan remains a safe haven for launching attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan, and despite the Obama Administration's strenuous efforts at persuasion, Islamabad shows little interest in extending its campaign against domestic extremism into a fight against the Afghan insurgency.

We know how this movie ends, people (at least in this country), namely, with the voting out of power of the ruling political majority responsible for the military debacle that has taken place on its watch (or, at the very least, the utter emasculation of that party to the point where they can no longer govern on its own).

Obama has earned a pass on Iraq since he opposed it and has thus far sought to remove our presence over time (despite some of the worrisome information I linked to from Antiwar.com, which, God willing, will never become official policy). However, no politician has any such luxury on Afghanistan, despite the wretched Bushco bungling that has led us to our current sorry state.

And I, for one, have worked too hard doing what I can to see the Democrats rise to power once more (including the wretched “Bush Dogs” in the House and Evan Bayh’s contemptible Senate “centrists”) to see it all go up in smoke over war without end in the Middle East (as opposed to war without end in Southeast Asia about forty years ago...yes, I know the human cost as noted in the pic above is paramount to relatively minor political considerations).

Mr. President, as The Eternal Molly Ivins has pointed out (among others), when you’re in a hole, it’s time to stop digging.

And that’s every bit as true in Afghanistan as it is in Iraq.

Update 7/28/09: Kudos to the Brits, who seem to be "way ahead of the curve" (here and here).