I don't agree with this guy but a lot to consider though. This is a fairly long article so I am only posting the first couple of paragraphs. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33489374/ns/world_news-washington_post U.S. official resigns over war in Afghanistan Foreign Service officer: GIs dying for what is essentially a foreign civil war When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan. A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency. I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end." The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay. U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. 'Wasn't worth the fight' "We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him." While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?" Hoh accepted the argument and the job, but changed his mind a week later. "I recognize the career implications, but it wasn't the right thing to do," he said in an interview Friday, two days after his resignation became final. "I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve. "There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys." But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there — a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war. As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops, Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.'" "I realize what I'm getting into . . . what people are going to say about me," he said. "I never thought I would be doing this."
I just read the whole thing...good find. I find Hoh's arguments compelling: The area is defined by tribal boundaries where loyalty goes to the highest bidder, and the Afghani officials are as corrupt, coercive and as disdained as the Taliban. Afghanistan is barely a nation-state by any modern definition and unless the US wants to commit itself into building one (good luck with that) the only thing the US government should be trying to do is find the people directly responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center. The insurgents, aligning themselves on and off again with the Taliban, are not those people.
But of course. It is usually forgotten by war supporters as the imperialist mindset is so firmly in place, but Afghans are people too and tend to resent foreigners coming in killing their relatives and trying to get them to do what the foreigners want.
If I could rep you, I would. Our mission should always have been find Osama, kill Osama, annihlate Al-Qaeda, and maybe give the Taliban a beating for sheltering them. Setting up a democracy among a bunch of people with no tribal loyalties and whom I would barely call civilized is a waste of time and resources, and frankly I would have no problems installing a strongman who if not even friendly towards us, could keep them in line and terrorists from setting up in a place like Afghanistan and call it a day. You can't use war to set up as delicate as a democracy, unfortunately.
This is why you find few intellectuals in the military, law enforcement, dare I say, government, etc. The good ones awaken to reality very quickly and quit. This is supposed to be a free country, yet we are constantly fighting geopolitical wars that most people here don't want to be a part of. Pretty soon kids will be taught that this country was founded on the principles of safety and security, and no one will blink an eye.
The problem with the just hunt down Al Qaeda and kill them ignores the root causes for why Al Qaeda exists and why the Taliban sheltered them in the first place. Its also only slightly different from the strategy we had during the 1980's where the mindset was help Mujahadeen defeat the Soviets and once that's over forget about Afghanistan. Just bombing AQ targets and assasinating its leaders isn't going to change attitudes towards the West among most of the Afghan populace. Given that even Hamid Karzai complains about the toll that aerial bombardment takes on Afghan civillians its probably going to embitter them more.
I think you are a little to glib with the term "imperialist". Can you tell me what are the US's imperialist mindset in Afghanistan considering it is a country with few resources and limited strategic value? Or do you consider anytime the US uses its military as imperialism?
Tom Friedman's op/ed Don’t Build Up By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan. I base this conclusion on three principles. First, when I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face — all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it. America helped build out what they started, but the breakthrough didn’t start with us. We can fan the flames, but the parties themselves have to light the fires of moderation. And whenever we try to do it for them, whenever we want it more than they do, we fail and they languish. The Camp David peace treaty was not initiated by Jimmy Carter. Rather, the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, went to Jerusalem in 1977 after Israel’s Moshe Dayan held secret talks in Morocco with Sadat aide Hassan Tuhami. Both countries decided that they wanted a separate peace — outside of the Geneva comprehensive framework pushed by Mr. Carter. The Oslo peace accords started in Oslo — in secret 1992-93 talks between the P.L.O. representative, Ahmed Qurei, and the Israeli professor Yair Hirschfeld. Israelis and Palestinians alone hammered out a broad deal and unveiled it to the Americans in the summer of 1993, much to Washington’s surprise. The U.S. surge in Iraq was militarily successful because it was preceded by an Iraqi uprising sparked by a Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who, using his own forces, set out to evict the pro-Al Qaeda thugs who had taken over Sunni towns and were imposing a fundamentalist lifestyle. The U.S. surge gave that movement vital assistance to grow. But the spark was lit by the Iraqis. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and Lebanon, the Green Revolution in Iran and the Pakistani decision to finally fight their own Taliban in Waziristan — because those Taliban were threatening the Pakistani middle class — were all examples of moderate, silent majorities acting on their own. The message: “People do not change when we tell them they should,” said the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. “They change when they tell themselves they must.” And when the moderate silent majorities take ownership of their own futures, we win. When they won’t, when we want them to compromise more than they do, we lose. The locals sense they have us over a barrel, so they exploit our naïve goodwill and presence to loot their countries and to defeat their internal foes. That’s how I see Afghanistan today. I see no moderate spark. I see our secretary of state pleading with President Hamid Karzai to re-do an election that he blatantly stole. I also see us begging Israelis to stop building more crazy settlements or Palestinians to come to negotiations. It is time to stop subsidizing their nonsense. Let them all start paying retail for their extremism, not wholesale. Then you’ll see movement. What if we shrink our presence in Afghanistan? Won’t Al Qaeda return, the Taliban be energized and Pakistan collapse? Maybe. Maybe not. This gets to my second principle: In the Middle East, all politics — everything that matters — happens the morning after the morning after. Be patient. Yes, the morning after we shrink down in Afghanistan, the Taliban will celebrate, Pakistan will quake and bin Laden will issue an exultant video. And the morning after the morning after, the Taliban factions will start fighting each other, the Pakistani Army will have to destroy their Taliban, or be destroyed by them, Afghanistan’s warlords will carve up the country, and, if bin Laden comes out of his cave, he’ll get zapped by a drone. My last guiding principle: We are the world. A strong, healthy and self-confident America is what holds the world together and on a decent path. A weak America would be a disaster for us and the world. China, Russia and Al Qaeda all love the idea of America doing a long, slow bleed in Afghanistan. I don’t. The U.S. military has given its assessment. It said that stabilizing Afghanistan and removing it as a threat requires rebuilding that whole country. Unfortunately, that is a 20-year project at best, and we can’t afford it. So our political leadership needs to insist on a strategy that will get the most security for less money and less presence. We simply don’t have the surplus we had when we started the war on terrorism after 9/11 — and we desperately need nation-building at home. We have to be smarter. Let’s finish Iraq, because a decent outcome there really could positively impact the whole Arab-Muslim world, and limit our exposure elsewhere. Iraq matters. Yes, shrinking down in Afghanistan will create new threats, but expanding there will, too. I’d rather deal with the new threats with a stronger America.
I just have to put it out there that people who think the Karzai administration is equivalent to the Taliban are sadly mistaken. I'm no expert in the field, but for heaven's sakes just look up Mazar-e-Sharif and how the Taliban have treated Hazara minorities; this is a potentially genocidal group! See what they have done to Afghanistan. Now, by all means, use your other arguments with the force of moral clarity but realize that succumbing to the Taliban is in all ways a failure even if they give up their AQ allies (which is highly unlikely anyways). Yes, the US once had nice and dandy relations with the Taliban but this is one area where America's human rights stance finally made sense. America, as a great power, has a responsibility to not only Americans but to other citizens of the world as well, especially when it comes to a mess that America herself has created. Shirking away from that by giving the nation back to the Taliban represents failure of the highest degree. Do not delude yourselves. If America pursues this option then at least let's be honest; America would be negotiating with the scum of the Earth. If America refuses to be the champion of human rights for others that she so idealizes herself as and instead decides to wallow in self-interest, rapidly deserting a nation that she herself helped to destroy, then it is a sad day indeed. Countless criminals and genocidal organizations would be glad. Their confidence would be restored. Darfur will continue because there is no strategic value in blacks with no resources. Why should international criminals fear anyone? No nation will stop them if America, the greatest power out there, refuses to even engage in a war with a moral impetus over a country of strategic importance. What then does that say for the millions of people Americans do not care about? Finally, just as a friendly reminder... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...raves-of-hazara-killed-by-taliban-656771.html
I've done so before and the biggest thing seems to be the idea of running a pipeline through there followed by containment of Russia. Even if Afghanistan was calm the pipeline idea has some other problems and anyway can go through other more stable (relatively speaking) countries. Russia while still wishing for an empire isn't in a position to exert total control over the former soviet states and the US has been able to deal with them to some extent already. Afghanistan isn't of no strategic value but its not critical other than in regard to Al Qaeda basing there.
Its amusing when the "imperialist" term is brought up. A heard a British guy once correct this statement. He laughed at the notion that Americans are imperialist. As he kindly put it, in grade school, they have maps on their walls showing the once glorious British empire stretched around the world. America? Atlantic to the Pacific, from Mexico to Canada. Hawaii, Alaska, Virgin Islands, PR and Guam. Of course, setting up puppet nations is a completely different topic, but it certainly isn't imperialistic.
But naturally, "imperialist" is not a moderate word, so you are ideologically opposed to it. My question to you is do you only consider imperialism to be conquering the country and putting in an American for prsident? --though if I recall Karzai is an American citizen. No, the US military can be used abroad without it being imperialism. Straw man eliminated. It has long been talked about that Afgthanistan has great strategic value. It abuts IIRC correctly Iran and Iraq and other centers of oil and gas. It is valuable territory for putting pipelines in, which is why Clinton and Dubya were negotiating with the Taliban to do so prior to 9/11. If a foreign power invades and puts in a ruler of their choosing to do what they want, isn't that even a little bit imperialistic in your opinion?
Of course the United States is imperialistic. Not all empires are in the model of a 19th century Victorian one. This one we enjoy is more sustainable.
[rquoter] This excerpt from Iain Banks’s novel, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, I think, is hilarious and says a lot about branding in general and America in the world: <blockquote>The USA, not surprisingly, proved reluctant to accept [the British board game] Empire!; sales were miserable. Henry tried a version of the game based on a map consisting only of the contiguous states of the US, but that did little better. Finally, he bought up a small printing firm in Pittsburgh, so that the box and board could each bear the legend Made in the USA, altered the map of the world on which Empire! was based so that the USA was centred – the boundaries of the board cutting through the heart of Asia – renamed the game Liberty!, changed nothing else, and watched the dollars roll in.</blockquote> [/rquoter] source "Liberty" is how we've branded our Empire to make it seem kinder and gentler. Has everybody forgotten how incredibly upset the mouthpieces of the far right were when French, German, and Chinese firms started doing jobs for the Iraqi government? The logic was, "We gave them Liberty!™©. They owe us." The group behind the Iraq invasion definitely envisioned the Iraqis all becoming little Americans in funny clothes who would become slavishly devoted to repaying us for our great gifts. It sounds a whole lot like the whole White Man's Burden argument for Empire. Fundamentally, the British rationalized their Empire the same way as is occurring here. They really, really thought they were saving the savages by turning them into funny looking Englishmen. They believed they were doing these people a favor, and it was only right to treat them as junior partners in their own country for the honor of being civilized. Pointing at 19th century empire and saying, "That is empire, we aren't that." is like looking at Desert Storm, finding no massed cavalry charges with swords on horseback - no Charge of the Light Brigade - and concluding that the absence of horses clearly indicates that what the USA did in Iraq wasn't really war.
You should read more into the geopolitics of oil then. The fact that you brushed off the geo-strategical importance of the country by remarking "just a pipeline" and then dismissed the idea in one sentence without elaborating the "problems"/alternative countires means you definitely need to read more on the subject. There is another "Great Game" taking place in Central Asia between the US, Russia and China who are competing for the control of energy export routes that can influence the regional balance of power. The region is home to some of the largest, untapped hydrocarbon reserves on the planet. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the region has between 17 and 33 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and 232 trillion cubic feet of natural gas; potential reserves are estimated near 200 billion barrels for oil and almost 350 Tcf for natural gas. Oil pipelines are the railroads of the 21st century. There is no "just a pipeline". Read more into how Russian foreign policy, Ukraine, and Europe' 's energy security are all tied by one pipeline. We are talking about a huge energy security falw for the EU (highest GDP by PPP in the world) and this Achilles heel determines its relationship with Russia. One of the biggest achievements for the US was building the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline to hedge against Russian influence. And what other rel. stable alternatives are you talking about?? Modern Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan share the majority of the region's hydrocarbon wealth. That these countries are all landlocked means that they all depend on their neighbors for access to Western markets, via pipelines. Players must vie for control of oil and gas production and for the pipelines that deliver the resources to markets. Turkmenistan is our most feasible partner with access to the Caspian Sea Basin. The pipeline that goes from there through Afgh and Pak to the port of Gwadar would be a huge move on the chessboard. Read Yergin's "The Prize", Michael Klare's "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet", and Brzezinski's "The Choice" if you want to truly understand the future of American involvement in the region and why this bodes ill for American troops. If a senior FSO who has been in the field resigns, don't you think he has some awareness of the strings which huge money interests hold to play geo-politics in the region. You seem like an intelligent person, but I don't think you acknowledge the disparity between our initial goal of blood revenge for some religious extremists involved in 9/11 and vs. a long-term nation-building/holding strategy that just costs American/Afghani lives, tax payer money, our image abroad, etc. This will turn into another quagmire because those money interests eclipse any of the above costs. I'll leave you with some quotes relating to the discussion: "Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographic position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multi-trillion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through Afghanistan." U.S. Department of Energy Source: "Afghanistan," Sept. 2001, Energy Information Administration, <http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/afghan.html> "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as globally strategically significant as the Caspian." Vice-President Dick Cheney Then-CEO of Halliburton (to oil industry executives, 1998). Source: Cited by Sitaram Yechury, "America, Oil and Afghanistan," The Hindu, Oct. 13, 2001. <http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/10/13/stories/05132524.htm> "This is about America's energy security. Its also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We are trying to move these newly independent countries toward the West. We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and political interests. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian and it's important that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right." Bill Richardson Then-U.S. Secretary Energy (1998-2000) Source: Cited by George Monbiot, "A discreet deal in the pipeline," The Guardian, Feb. 15, 2001. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,438134,00.html>
