A problem with criticism of the Afghanistan War:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms to make of the US intervention in Afghanistan. Some targets of legitimiate criticism are such things like use of UAVs that end up missing targets and killing innocent people, things like eschewing an offer to co-operate with the Islamic Republic of Iran on an issue (which in hindsight takes on an uglier edge than it did at the time) and to a very real extent bailing out of this war to go fight Iraq a second time. Another reality is that he's risking either war or much greater involvement of Pakistan, and if we go to war with Pakistan it magnifies every disastrous consequence of a war with Iran sixfold or more.

One area that I neither understand nor consider legitimate is to attack the current President over how he's handling things like the (complete lack of leadership on the part of) the government run by Hamid Karzai. Afghanistan's been in one or another war since Leonid Brezhnev approved the Soviet Armed Forces' invasion of it. This was a long and bloody conflict, and once the Soviets withdrew there was a civil war that the Taliban proved the most formidable faction in until we came in. Either way, this will be in December 30 years of war in Afghanistan.

Thirty years of war in Germany were sufficient to level the place and critically weaken it. Germany didn't recover for a matter of centuries. 27 years of war in what is now the People's Republic of China arguably contributed a great deal to why the PRC is what is today. Long periods of war tend to malform societies affected by them, and they tend also to encourage corruption, graft, and to weaken over time desire to participate in or to even bother with the infrastructure of society. Afghanistan's already seen the results of one superpower fighting in it, and in October the USA will have spent eight years there. And if we still have significant number of troops there in October 2011 then we will have been at war there as long as the Soviets were.

President Obama is an average leader. He's capable of more than even his supporters sometimes profess that he is, but he's also capable of seeing through at least enough of a military victory to suppress the Taliban. President Obama has inherited a crisis 30 years in the making, and IMHO, while as noted there are many legitimate criticisms of his war effort there to make, I feel that the President should be given some leg room to fight the war as he wishes, by both his supporters and his critics, to shape up what's not working and to improve what is. Because to expect an average leader to improve on a legacy that started with Premier Brezhnev is frankly to expect him to work miracles. The President is just a man, and he does make mistakes.

I suppose if I were to sum this up in a sentence or two it would be that Afghanistan's been in chaos for 30 years. President Obama as an average leader has more promise to work through the legacy of 30 years of war than his predecessors. Yet it is not fair to blame him for all the mistakes dating back to President Carter and the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev.

Comments

[frenchpresser.livejournal.com]

A really shaky claim at best. The theories about Osama Bin Laden ever directly having received US training or equipment were started largely by the fact that we shared a common enemy, which is often mistaken for having shared an alliance. Note that I'm not saying we didn't somehow aid him - with all the money we poured into supporting the anti-Soviet Mujahideen it's quite plausible that some of it found its way to Bin Laden's group through simple economics and the elbow-rubbing between differing counter-occupation groups, but I think if we deliberately propped him up the same way we helped prop Saddam up back in the day there'd be a lot more evidence for it.

Additionally, Bin Laden was rich as hell and had plenty of Saudi money to throw around, and it's unlikely that he would've accepted US assistance, considering how his initial beef with us in the first place was when we defended Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Bin Laden is well documented for despising idea of western, non-Muslim troops on what he viewed to be sacred Muslim soil, and that the conflict between Iraq and its Arab neighbors was a fight where the help of foreign "Crusaders" was undesired.

Also remember that many of the so-called "Afghan Arabs" like Bin Laden who came from abroad to fight the Soviets were still untrusted by the CIA, since it was known that unlike the local Mujahideen (who were thankful for the American support), had ties to militant groups that'd been giving us and Israel trouble at that time period. Whatever money or materials of ours that made it to Bin Laden, if any, would've more than likely occurred by exchanges that went on outside our say.

A more appropriate criticism of our policy on Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion would be how we pretty much dusted our hands free of the country once the Russians left, and didn't bother helping with repairing the civilian government and infrastructure or providing further humanitarian support, which may have made it more difficult for people like the Taliban to take control. This is more likely to have been a contributing factor to our present day woes than still-unsubstantiated claims of US handjobs to Bin Laden in the 80s.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

While much of what you say is so, Bin Laden and the other Arab Afghans gained from the Soviet invasion experience of how to fight a Western mechanized army. I am not saying the USA gave arms to Bin Laden alone, at the time he was a nobody. And what would become Al-Qaeda did so much later in response to the Second Gulf War, as his primary grievance was when we shielded Saudi Arabia and thus had US soldiers in Mecca and Medina as opposed to anything else.