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InvisibleBlack -> RE: 34,000 (11/24/2009 9:56:55 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
We weren't exactly asked, although you could say that letting al Qaeda use their country as a safe haven from which to stage the 9/11 attacks was (in a sense) asking for it. We invaded Afghanistan in response to that, and putatively to establish a more stable government there to prevent it from happening again. (Like that word, "putatively"? I used it to get back at Kirata for "abstuse;" although I suspect he knows what it means anyway.)
I have no idea what the current feelings are, but Osama bin Laden was a hero in Afghanistan. He was a rich Saudi millionaire who abandoned his wealth and his family to join with the mujahideen to fight off the Soviet invasion. From what I've read, he was personally quite heroic in his efforts. When he ended up on the outs with the Saudis, he was welcomed with open arms in Afghanistan due to his efforts on their behalf. I somehow doubt he informed them that he was supporting people who were planning on flying passenger planes into the World Trade Center.
After 9/11, the Bush administration gave the Taliban a deadline to expel Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. At the time I thought this was a pretty specious casus belli as, really, no one rules Afghanistan. It's really a collection of tribes, many of whom don't get along at all. The Taliban couldn't have "expelled" Al Qaeda from the country even if they'd tried.
Since then - well - Al Qaeda no longer operates in Afghanistan (nor Pakistan, really) - the recent reports I've seen place their bases of operation in Somalia or Darfur. They're a terrorist organization, mind, so they're fluid, have no fixed assets, and can move around easily. We've basically been bombing the crap out of two countries and killing all sorts of innocents along the way to no purpose if our goal is to "stop Al Qaeda". Currently we're fighting the Taliban and a whole bunch of the more devout Pashtun clans (there are something like 400+ clans and I don't know enough to even begin to differentiate them) who are, for all intents and purposes, simply fighting to drive us out of their country.
We've already completely destabilized both countries (does anyone have any doubt that if we bailed tomorrow both "governments" would fall?) and pretty much pissed off all the inhabitants and, again quite frankly, anyone who thinks you can use a military force to create a stable, peaceful and friendly society in a foreign nation by force has rocks in their head - especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have never been stable.
Sending 34,000 more troops in isn't going to solve the problem. It's not enough to come close to a guaranteed victory - I think the Army counter-insurgency estimates based on the manual claim that 600,000 would be needed. I find this whole thing eerily similar to Viet Nam. We just kept escalating and escalating, and then we blamed the government of South Viet Nam for not doing enough and assassinated their President and the whole South Vietnamese army fell apart - so we had to commit orders of magnitude more troops just to maintain the status quo. I doubt that President Obama is going to reveal some brilliant Bismark-esque solution and end the war in a masterstroke. It looks to me like they're already setting up Hamid Karzai to be the "fall guy" for things not working well - never mind that President Karzai really doesn't control very much outside of Kabul.
At this point, given the level of commitment we're in for - and the fact that we're in there for the long run - my suggestion is to truly stabilize the region you need to dissolve the two countries and redraw all the lines. Create borders based on prior, historical boundaries with like and compatible groups in them, and then declare victory and walk away. Of course, that would mean you'd have to involve India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in negotiations where one or more them might lose or gain territory and you'd have to offer the losers some pretty enticing stuff to convince them to sign on - but at least if you got them talking about it and you derived some commonly accepted borders, you'd have done some global good and those lives and all the money spend wouldn't be just wasted.
Oh, and as a total aside, Benazir Bhutto, shortly before her assassination, claimed that Osama bin Laden was dead and that Ayman al-Zawahiri was running al Qaeda.
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