Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Re: Lost and Found   [John Derbyshire]

John [Hood]:

Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute reports in a new public-opinion round-up that Americans believe we are at risk of losing the war in Afghanistan. At least most of them still believe the war is just and necessary.

I haven't been able to find a poll on the "just and necessary" point, and Karlyn offers no numbers. A USA Today/Gallup poll shows two-thirds approval for Obama's troop increase, but skepticism about the chance for success, whatever "success" means in the Afghan context. How many of that two thirds think the war is "just and necessary," how many only want to record their support for a new President but could not locate Afghanistan on a map, and how many hope that with more troops we may be able to rubble the damn place and then get out of there, is not known.

The Afghan war has a standing — even in Left precincts — that the Iraq war never had, just because there was good and obvious cause to attack Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban had been willing hosts to al Qaeda, who had attacked us. It is none the less the case that the Taliban is not al Qaeda; and that, as Fareed Zakaria quoted an expert on the region as saying:  "Afghans have played no significant role in any major terrorist attack before or after 9/11." Having made our punitive point by bringing down the first Taliban government, we have no further quarrel with them, or with any other Afghans, so long as they give up their support for al Qaeda, which they could surely be persuaded (or bribed) to do. A war against the Taliban per se is an unnecessary war at this point.

Afghanistan is a failed nation with dismal prospects. Its problems bleed over into Pakistan and Iran …

[A]ccording to a recent report from the US Council on Foreign Relations, "Iran serves as the major transport hub for opiates produced by [Afghanistan], and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that Iran has as many as 1.7 million opiate addicts." That is, five percent of Iran's adult, non-elderly population of 35 million is addicted to opiates. That is an astonishing number, unseen since the peak of Chinese addiction during the 19th century.

 . . . and theirs into it. This is a vast regional problem, an order of magnitude more complex than Iraq, and most probably intractable by any methods we are willing to use. Meanwhile the Dow's lost half its value — half its value — since October '07, our banking system's gasping for air, global trade is tottering, and the only good investment I can see is in soup kitchens. We have some really important stuff to attend to, and Afghanistan is not important.

After eight years in Afghanistan, coming up to 600 dead, and untold billions of dollars spent, we have nothing to show. As Secretary Gates has said, our only interest in this dustbowl is to prevent it being used as a staging area for attacks on our territory — the same interest we have in Somalia, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and other places we have not invaded (including, if you want to stretch a point, Britain). We should cut a deal with the Taliban — a deal with suitable punitive clauses — and get out of there.

02/24 02:02 PMShare