The Lost Opportunity
Dexter Filkins writes about corruption in Afghanistan. I don’t have much to add — suffice it to say that there’s a lot of corruption in Afghanistan and that this is a big problem.
What I do think it’s worth reflecting on is what a big deal it really turns out to have been that the Bush administration screwed up back in the winter of 2001-2002 and failed to capute Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and the rest of the top al-Qaeda / Taliban leadership. Had we done that, I think we still would have been under a general moral and prudential obligation to try to assist the people of Afghanistan. But transforming Afghanistan into a prosperous, stable government with an effective central authority has always been a tall order. And if we’d achieved our core security objectives back six and a half years ago, then the stakes would be much lower if down the road foreign troops started to wear out their welcome for whatever reason. We could just leave.
But since Bush blew it back in the day — in part because he was always short-changing the war in Afghanistan in order to horde resources for his planned invasion of Iraq — the effort to build-up a workable Afghan central government shifted from a secondary objective to a primary one. Rather than being something we were trying to do since we were engaged in Afghanistan for other reasons, it became the reason that we were engaged in Afghanistan. For a few years that seemed to be working out okay. But the job was an objectively difficult one, and over the past two years it’s run into a lot of problems, not least of which is plunging Afghan support for the foreign presence. And having committed ourselves in this way, while leaving our main objectives un-achieved, it’s now much more difficult for us to leave than it would be if the nation-building had stayed in its proper, secondary status.
28 Responses to “The Lost Opportunity”
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January 2nd, 2009 at 10:46 am
But since Bush blew it back in the day…
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
in order to horde resources for his planned invasion of Iraq
I kind of like that one.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:02 am
I’m of the opinion that getting a pro-American government in power in Kabul - “the effort to build-up a workable Afghan central government,” to be kind - was ALWAYS the primary goal of the Bushies in their invasion of Afghanistan. When we all thought they were going through the Taliban in order to get at bin Laden, they were actually using bin Laden as a pretext to overthrow the Taliban, occupy Afghanistan, and make it a client state.
On the day bin Laden was escorted out the back door at Tora Bora by the Talibuddies we’d hired to watch the flank, there were 30,000 American troops garrisoned in Kabul.
These people simply do not understand the security challenges we face. This is why the downgraded terrorism as a priority when they took office, in order to focus more on great-power jousting with China and Russia. Even after the stateless terrorism of 9/11, they still think of security and international politics in terms of states pursuing their geopolitical interests. That’s why they made control of the Afghan government a higher priority than getting bin Laden, and that’s why they invaded Iraq.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 am
Matt,
Take consolation in the fact that neither objective would have worked, as long as Pakistan is left to control the aftermath. Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan is like mopping up one side of a room.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
If Matt had had his way, we wouldn’t have been conducting any military operations in Afghanistan in November and December of 2001. We’d have been preparing for a massive invasion with several hundred thousand US troops, sometime in the spring of 2002.
Matt is surprisingly uninterested in “root causes” when it doesn’t fit his preferred narrative. Matt, what’s more important–the leadership of the individuals you mention or the facts of the existence of the average Afghani?
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am
If Matt had had his way, we wouldn’t have been conducting any military operations in Afghanistan in November and December of 2001. We’d have been preparing for a massive invasion with several hundred thousand US troops, sometime in the spring of 2002.
And looking back at the escape of the top al Qaeda and Taliban and the inability of US and allied troops to finish them off over the past seven years, that would have been bad, why, exactly?
Shame on you, Matt! You would have done things differently in Afghanistan!
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
I think (due to my vast underground intelligence network) that bin Laden is either very sick or dead already. Is there any hard evidence that he isn’t? There haven’t been any videos of him for a long time, and one would think that he might have some parting words for Bush Jr. That’s just speculation of course - it’s impossible to say if bin Laden is even alive, never mind whether he has had any impact on military strategy or the Islamic movement in general.
Hasn’t a big factor in the re-enrgence of Afganistan as a priority been the movement of good number of foreign fighters with experience from Iraq to the Taliban? I think what we’re seeing in Afganistan isn’t some re-awakening of old elements of the Taliban, but the arrival of battle-hardened reinforcements from the Iraq conflict.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I wish I could agree, ed.
Because the other option is that Osama bin Laden still has access to an underground network of sufficient operational and technical capacity that he can get dialysis equipment, kidney specialists, and everything else necessary to keep someone with his infirmities alive to a remote section of northwest Pakistan.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
The Long Night.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
The Long Night - WINNER BEST DOC AT MECAL BARCELONA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2008
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
The Long Night -
Please post the credits, screenplay, and musical score. Then I might consider it.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Oh, puleeze! Our attack on Afghanistan was never about bin Laden or Afghanistan–it was about a pipeline. Bechtel. Enron.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Take a look at this 1939 Tata Airline Route map. Tata Airline now has become Air-India, but if you look at the top left of the map which shows the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the situation is till the same. 70 years! and we have not seen a change here. Something to consider when planning a surge.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Matt still doesn’t get it.
There was very little chance of capturing the entire Taliban OR the top leadership of Al Qaeda - and it wouldn’t have mattered if the US had, since all of those people are replaceable.
The Afghanistan war was simply STUPID. Negotiations with the Taliban might have resulted in bin Laden being turned over had not Bush wanted to curry favor with the numbnuts by attacking militarily without evidence of bin Laden’s direct involvement.
Even if bin Laden had not been turned over, it would have been easier and more effective to make a sneak attack on him directly at some later point. It would not have been even more effective to have some competence in the Bush Justice Department and intelligence community to detect and capture Al Qaeda operatives outside of Afghanistan before their plans could be put into operation.
Regardless, once the invasion of Afghanistan failed - and it was a direct failure immediately the Taliban and Al Qaeda escaped - the US should have instantly pulled out. There was no “moral and prudential” requirement to try to rebuild Afghanistan. Afghanistan was and is not relevant to US national security. The Taliban were not. Only Al Qaeda was an issue, and as I’ve said, that could have been handled differently.
Now the situation is infinitely worse, but can still be handled by appropriate law enforcement and counterintelligence and intelligence operations, with the odd small covert military action as needed to hit a specific target.
Instead, Matt’s god, Obama, is going to turn Afghanistan and Pakistan into Iraq.
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