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Friday, Nov 6, 2009
Despite Karzai's tireless efforts, government in Afghanistan remains a pipe dream. His own cabinet has been torn by sectarian violence, with assassins from one faction throwing his aviation minister from a plane and stabbing him to death on the tarmac two weeks ago. Government agencies, which have so far received just a sliver of the foreign aid promised them, cannot pay their own staffs. And with less military clout than a highway brigand, Karzai has no power to enforce his government's will. "Basically, Karzai is a hostage in his own palace," a Kabul businessman told Jones. "He doesn't have an army, and if you don't have an army in Afghanistan, you don't have power."
As Rumsfeld has acknowledged, "It's not a pretty picture." And administration officials are making the right noises about helping set it straight. They're telling the press that this Bush won't abandon Afghanistan, the way the first one did after the Soviet defeat there in 1989. They won't allow Afghanistan to slide into chaos and once again become a breeding ground for terrorism. But at the same time, Rumsfeld and his lieutenants are declaring they're dead set against "nation-building" in the ravaged country and "mission creep." The Pentagon has offered to help Afghanistan build its own military -- but that could take more than a year, and in the meantime, the country is at the mercy of its most savage forces.
The rock-jawed defense secretary who makes conservative pundits go weak in the knees won't even flex his muscles on behalf of the international peackeeping force. Karzai has pleaded with Washington to help expand the force so it can bring peace to more than Kabul, but Rumsfeld has told him, sorry, the bugles in the war on terror are calling America's armed forces elsewhere -- and besides, we don't want to get our hands dirty with the messy work of peace enforcement. We just do the glamorous opening salvos -- our allies can clean up behind us. But abandoning Afghanistan would be inexcusable, for both practical and moral reasons. Practically, if we don't put Afghanistan on the road to recovery -- and yes, that means nation-building -- it will collapse into terror-friendly anarchy. And morally, we owe something to the blameless Afghan people: After all, we just bombed their country. Yes, it was necessary and yes, we rid them of their tyrants, but in the process we created more rubble and misery in a country that has seen far too much of both.
Speaking of Rumsfeld, just what is the secret of this man's appeal? I can understand why some conservatives, with their deep need for strong father figures, get all gooey over his man-of-few-words Pentagon briefings. But why is the so-called liberal press so enamored of him? Are they grateful that a Washington authority figure "respects" them enough to tell them he's not going to tell them the truth? Are they relieved that an administration presided over by a goofy and inexperienced leader -- someone who still seems weirdly young at age 55 -- has a grown-up at home? Where was the blast of criticism from the media that should have immediately followed Rumsfeld's outrageous refusal last week to apologize for the screwed-up U.S. raid that killed at least 16 anti-Taliban fighters? Apparently apologies are for wimps like Clinton. This is precisely the kind of attitude that has so endeared our country to the rest of the world in recent weeks.
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran yet another story about our European allies "seething" over America's "we are the champions of the world" act. After Sept. 11, Europe rallied to the American cause -- the attacks gave President Bush "the wind of virtue," in the Times' words. But this international solidarity has now disappeared, gone with the winds of Bush administration arrogance.
The Europeans aren't the only ones feeling royally had by the White House these days. There are many of us at home who fully supported massive military retaliation against bin Laden and his terror apparatus. We still do. But as Chris Matthews astutely commented on Saturday's "Hardball," the war against bin Laden -- what Matthews calls "the firefighters' war" -- has been "hijacked" by neoconservatives with their own agenda. Somewhere around Tora Bora, Bush took a wrong turn and ended up on the road to Tehran and God knows where else. What is this neoconservative agenda? Matthews has suggested it's related to this lobby's support for Israel. But it's arguable whether putting aside bin Laden in favor of chasing evil around the world serves Israel's interests. And it certainly doesn't serve America's. (Talk about mission creep!)
On Sept. 11 the smug, amoral Saudi princeling named Osama bin Laden escalated his war on America. And with his galling air of superiority, bin Laden keeps promising to see this war through to its conclusion. Unfortunately, our own well-born leader lacks bin Laden's sense of focus. Bush's mission has struck off hither and yon and is in danger of losing not only international support but its very meaning. "Those who've escaped [the U.S. military] and are in Pakistan or Iran say al-Qaida and the Taliban are in safe places and preparing a counteroffensive," a Saudi sympathizer of bin Laden gloated in the Financial Times last week. "This tells supporters that the U.S. is living a fake triumph." If the United States is to win a real victory, it must single-mindedly track down the bin Laden cabal and make sure Afghanistan never again becomes a garden for their type of pestilence.
