In Which Afghanistan Suddenly Becomes Far More Interesting

This could go one of two ways.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

I wonder how long it will take to find out which way our road will fork.

Stop the Presses; Boltgirl Disagrees--Gasp--with Rachel

Oh, it was bound to happen eventually.

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I don't see yesterday's escalation announcement as a new iteration of the Bush Doctrine so much as a response to the original Afghanistan situation continuing, albeit in a different venue; instead of blowing the whistle to stop the game and issue the Taliban a well-deserved red card, some cosmic referee has shouted play on as the action has spilled across the border into Pakistan. Except in this case the Taliban have grabbed the ball and taken it up into the stands and both teams are lobbing flares and batteries at each other, and we're somehow simultaneously opponent and referee, and the metaphor falls apart before our eyes. Much like the NATO coalition.

Anyway. Bad shit in Pakistan by the CIA and Blackwater Xe, drones and abduction teams and all, but even that doesn't make it a pre-emptive war by Team Obama. It's simply a new vector in an existing war, just as it's a new vector for Pakistan's ISI and a new vector for India's intelligence service, and for the warlords depending on support from one side or the other, a giant triangulated chess match that devolves into Red Rover more often than not. The Taliban are operating with impunity from Quetta, just as they operated from Kandahar before we got there. Same shit, different day, slightly different setting, same problem.

Amazingly, this has diminished my ardor for Dr. Maddow exactly not at all. Shocker!

War Footing

Argh. What to think, what to think? It was a long speech that boils down to 30,000 additional troops going to Afghanistan with the goal of stabilizing the country within 18 months and then leaving the former factional warlord-and-druglord driven shithole of corruption as a shiny new intact unified nation with a nice new transparent government and equal rights for women and people who can read and a marked lack of support for Taliban and roses instead of poppies.

No word as yet on where Obama plans to find the pod people for the replacements that will be necessary for this to work.

I am torn here. The Afghanistan adventure was doomed from the outset when Rumsfeld and his ilk decided to go in on an economy plan that was light on troops and heavy on cash payments to bribe warlords, tribal leaders, and drug dealers, with an exterminator's mindset rather than a community organizer's. The NATO alliance failed to focus on infrastructure building and thus failed to address the underlying issues creating the climate that made the Taliban such an attractive option to the populace in the first place, and whose resolution would have eliminated the conditions that allowed the Taliban to maintain a stranglehold on the people when they replaced the original despair with a newer, Sharia version of misery.

If you have not yet picked up Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, please do so now and spend the next week reading it, as well as hoping fervently that either Obama or someone with his ear has done the same. Eighteen months to undo decades of pure chaos and malfeasance? I hope it works. Without a parallel level of effort, money, and manpower on the part of just about every country in NATO, directed as much at infrastructure and civil affairs as military objectives, I'm not sure how this happens in eighteen months, if at all.

Friday Summary

It was a crap week, topped off by an Army shrink losing his shit and gunning down a dozen soldiers at Hood. What a blow, what horrid implications.

People got blown up in Iraq by the dozens. Five British soldiers in Helmand were murdered by the Afghan cop who was working at their side. The Iraqi elections are pre-emptively fucked. Obama still hasn't come to a decision on Afghanistan. Can't say I envy him, but let's step it up just a touch.

Arizona is stripping tens of millions of dollars from the education budget, so Tucson--which failed to pass a school district budget override--can kiss art, music, and PE goodbye next year, as well as more teachers and classroom supplies. Possibly with an eye toward making sure education isn't lonely in its misery, equal amounts will be stripped from the Division of Economic Security, which includes the department that takes care of developmentally disabled people, thus ensuring that hundreds of folks who need just a little help will be left floundering to the point that they will end up homeless and committing crimes. Do you own stock in private prisons? The legislature is setting them up to be Arizona's only guaranteed growth industry--well, that and topical chemotherapy creams for melanoma--so buy now!

And, of course, we had the Maine vote on Tuesday re-affirming that a majority of Americans will jump at the chance to relegate me and mine to second-class citizenship whenever it's offered. But I'm supposed to take Chapel Hill's new mayor and Kalamazoo's anti-discrimination policy as a palliative (well, and Washington state's new everything-but-marriage DP legislation, although we've seen how well that worked in, say, New Jersey), so hey, meet me in Kalamazoo!

That's the news for the week. Whee.

No, Seriously

Really, Abdullah Abdullah. So the election in Afghanistan last month was rigged in a fairly blatant and amateurish fashion, and over the past few days we have (1) Karzai's runoff opponent Mr. Abdullah threatening to pull out if the same bunch of jokers that fixed the first election run the second, (2) Abdullah making good on his threat and quitting on Saturday, and yesterday (3) the US saying it's troublesome but we'll go ahead and fully support Karzai because polling indicates Abdullah would have lost anyway.

Meanwhile, Wali Karzai laughs all the way to the bank.

Is there a better solution here? If there is, it's escaping me at the moment. I spent part of my swine flu downtime finishing Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, a complicated, detailed, extremely bothersome account that explains why "graveyard of empires" barely scratches the surface. Pakistan's secret intelligence agency (ISI) has spent the past couple of decades propping up the Taliban, effectively making them the ISI's western franchise in Kabul, Kandahar, and Helmand, all while the military either turned a blind eye or flat-out lied about their involvement and Pervez Musharraf conducted the government's business with the sole aim of maintaining his hold on power.

Meanwhile, since the September 11 attacks the CIA has been paying off first the warlords of the now-defunct Northern Alliance and now the drug lords in the south, with the mission focus remaining always Arab-tied al Qaeda operatives rather than the guys who are poppy farmers today, Taliban fuckwits tomorrow, a-Q sympathizers the day after that, and then poppy farmers again when the local warlord makes a power grab. Oh, and we've thrown a few billion dollars at Pakistan, which has promptly turned around and handed most of that to their military, which has promptly funneled wads of it to the Taliban holding court in the Waziristans, and you can see where this is going.

Most of our UN partner nations have greatly limited their involvement in Afghanistan (Germany, for example, refused to conduct combat patrols after dark) while all of us have pretty much left infrastructure development and repair--the one thing everyone seems to agree would go the furthest toward weaning the populace away from the Taliban toward nonsectarian stability, and which represents the most efficient use of cash resources sent over there--to NGOs, most of which can no longer operate in-country because the Taliban kill them. The UN food program gave up years ago after too many food convoys were hijacked and the supplies stolen or simply burned. This in a country where only about 16 percent of the land is arable.

Tribal factionalism, ISI intervention, Indian intervention, Pakistani Taliban infiltration, an abysmal literacy rate, and seven years of US policy constructed by people with no Pushtu language skills, let alone even a rudimentary understanding of the dozens of cultural and political vectors crisscrossing the country, have fed on each other to create a damn near unwinnable situation.

Hahmid Karzai has been the target of at least three assassination attempts--the ones that have been publicized, anyway--since he's been in office, and now a good faction of his countrymen think he got his second five-year term by cheating his way there as a puppet of the Americans. And all we can do is shrug and say this is our guy? Good luck, Mr. President. I hope you've read Rashid's book. A little history might go a long way here.

Just a Question

If a featured MSNBC commenter called for a terrorist group to execute a captured American soldier during wartime because said commenter decided from the comfort of his stateside rumpus room that the soldier was a deserter, what would the FOX reaction be? Seriously, what manner of imprecatory hellfire and death threats would they rain down on the commenter, who they would certainly brand an un-American, troop-hating traitor? But Fox let Ralph Peters spew this crap unchallenged?

Hey, for all I know, he's absolutely right. But--and this is the kicker--I don't know. And neither does Ralph Peters. Until Bergdahl is returned and some semblance of truth that can withstand critical questioning is slapped together on this one, Peters and his ilk need to STFU and devote their considerable energy to praying to their god that an American kid in the stress of combat in Afghanistan comes home safely.

Interlude

The Aztecs knew the deal with the end of the year. Their calendar couldn't handle 365 days, so at the end of day 360 they hunkered down for a workweek's worth of days and laid low to keep the world from ending. Coinciding as nicely as it does with our own cultural dead time between Christmas and New Year's, I fully advocate doing the same, with my own personal hunkering involving a comfy chair, a blanket, many hot drinks, the 2009 NY Times crossword calendar, and random bowl games.

Probably not going to happen to the standards set by my rich fantasy life, but so far so good.

In other news, we're busy bribing Afghan tribal leaders to cooperate with us and rat out the Taliban. With something better than guns!

In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency's operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocket knives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.

Ew. Sorry, women/child brides of Kandahar province! Just when you thought the old geezer's willy had finally shriveled up and flopped over for the last time, here come the Special Forces and the magic blue pills! And a happy Eid al Adha to you too!

Remember

Three years ago today SSG Travis Nixon was killed in action in Afghanistan. He was my brother's best friend in Ranger school, and they served together with the 82d Airborne in Kandahar and Baghdad. Then my brother got out and Travis stayed in and was redeployed. His patrol was ambushed and he was hit while spraying suppressive fire to protect his men. He died on the helicopter.

Let's not forget Afghanistan. My brother will never forget Travis.

Meanwhile, In Kabul

Remember Afghanistan? Land of the Taliban, vacation home of Osama? Place where 300+ of our guys left their blood only to see their president turn his squint to Iraq? Yeah, well, things aren't going so well there, says a study chaired by a former Marine general and a former UN ambassador.

"Afghanistan stands at a crossroads," concludes the study, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. "The progress achieved after six years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country."

A major issue has been trying to win the war with "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," the study adds.

Too few forces and insufficient aid. This was the war that made sense. This is where Osama and the boys hatched their plans and spread Taliban insanity. This is the administration that has repeatedly told us that leaving Iraq will dishonor the sacrifice of the troops who died there. Bush either thinks the deaths of the soldiers killed in Kandahar province weren't real sacrifices or they aren't worth honoring or dishonoring either way, since the administration has had no compunction about sticking their fingers in their ears and la-la-laing away any recognition that the organization actually behind the 9/11 attacks is regrouping and operating at will both in Afghanistan and right across the border in our great ally state of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Dear Leader's rosy glasses are duct-taped to his face.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush called Afghanistan a young democracy where children go to school and Afghans are hopeful.

But he didn't mention the violence that has killed 147 students and teachers and closed 590 schools in the last year — almost as many as the 680 the U.S. has built.

Bush said the sending of an additional 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan — a decision made just this month — would help continue the country's successes. But it came only after U.S. officials couldn't persuade other NATO countries to send more soldiers to bolster the 28,000 U.S. troops already there.

This is the war we should have thrown everything at and finished in the first place. This is the actual enemy.

Dick, Dick, Dick

Two heartwarming moments from the assassination attempt on VP Cheney at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan: Well, the first technically wasn't a moment since it didn't actually happen. That would be Cheney expressing regret at the loss of life (23 at last count) directly resulting from his presence at the base. It must be especially heartwarming for the family of the lone American killed that Cheney couldn't muster the decency to recognize the sacrifice of one of the guys standing guard to protect his sorry ass that afternoon.

The second moment was this:

"I think they clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government," Cheney said during a brief interview in a luxury-cabin mounted inside the cargo bay of the C-17 military transport, dubbed "The Spirit of Strom Thurmond," that had carried him in to Pakistan and Afghanistan and out again.

The Dark Lord is flying around in a plane named after Strom Thurmond--no, wait--not just the man Strom Thurmond, but the fucking spirit of Strom Thurmond. They named the plane in honor of segregationism, racism, and servant impregnation. Why the hell didn't they just name it "Massa Pokin' Slaves Out In The Barn And She Oughta Be Grateful For It?"

Jesus. You go, Dick. Take your trip in your grand coach and don't even notice the bodies under the wheels unless they spatter your fine boots. The plane's name could not have been more apt.

Sacrifice

President Bush thinks that watching 30 seconds of footage from Iraq on the nightly news is a sacrifice (of our "peace of mind," as he put it to Jim Lehrer) on par with the sacrifices of the troops and their families. If he thought average Americans should be doing more for the war effort than simply shopping, those asinine words "I think we have a lot of people in this fight" never would have slipped from his lips.

I watch the news and read the paper and most definitely haven't seen my peace of mind since sometime in early 2003.

That is not sacrifice.

This is sacrifice. This is the story of a soldier who was in Ranger school with my brother. This is the story of a guy who was KIA in Afghanistan on 29 October 2005, and of the guys who were beside him when he was killed, who hadn't been able to even put that story into words until this past December. This is the story of an American soldier who died in the war George Bush forgot in favor of his Iraq ego trip. I have changed the names out of respect for the soldier's family and buddies, none of whom would likely appreciate landing on a liberal dyke's blog after Googling his name. Otherwise, it's verbatim as I received it from my brother, written by a buddy who was there.

I've been writing this out for a while,Getting it out is all I can think about....This happened on the morning of Oct. 29th 2005, I was on guard on top of the truck,it was almost daybreak,CPT. T woke up and told me to start getting ready to move and to call up top and tell SSG Knox to start getting ready to go,SSG Grant came up to relieve me,as i was getting down I heard Knox call up and say that they heard movement right beneath them,as i jumped down I heard gunfire explode everywhere,i looked up top and saw rounds flying all over the place,i realized that we were getting shot at too,i heard an RPG fly right over us and saw SSG Grant duck,I thought about our rear and went to put Leandro and Doc in to watch our backside,I ran back to the truck and found Donkey and Lt. T shooting at everything,Donkey was yelling at Mash that he had called up for air and they were coming,Lt. T was trying to shoot and call up a fire mission at the same time,I directed Donkeys' fire and told Lt. T where the fire was coming from,I kept trying to think of what i had to do next,I heard knox on the radio saying that they were running low on ammo,we had only been in the fight for a few minutes it seemed cause everything happened so fast,as soon as i heard ammo i ran to the trucks to get it ready,i asked Cpt. T who he wanted me to take with me,he said to take Doc,i gave doc some rounds and told him to follow me,i looked over and Cpt t. told me to head up,i heard another RPG fly over us and thought that this was gonna be fun...

me and doc headed up,we were about halfway there when the weight of the rounds got to us,as i slowed down rounds started hitting all around us,i thought to myself,"dumbass, you're right in their sights",if you ever need motivation,try getting shot at,we took off again,as i got to the top i saw bo sitting against a tree and rotty on the radio,knox was on the gun and pierce was right next to him,i went to knox and asked him what he needed,he said that mears and speck needed ammo,and gammons needed 203 rounds,i threw gammons the 203 rounds cause he was on the other side of knox,then i asked him if he wanted me to take the gun,he said that he was fine and that he needed me to get the ammo to the guys,i ran to mears and speck,speck had this dumb smile on his face and was telling me that he had hit one of the guys dead on with a 203,mears kept saying that i got there right in time with the ammo,doc was still with me,i looked back to where knox was,i heard three distinct shots,i saw knox stand up,i heard him say something like "I'm sorry,I'm sorry"someone else says that he said something else,I'm not sure,after he said that he hit the ground,doc took off and i was right behind him,when we got over there doc pulled knox back about two feet and started working on him,i saw the gun and picked it up,i saw hajis running and i fired all the rounds left on the gun,as i was reloading it i saw two of them crawling into the bushes,i got the gun back up and fired some more into the bushes i had just seen them crawling into,i remember thinking that doc was exposed to fire while he was working on knox but he didn't care,i asked doc how he was and heard rotty yelling for a status on knox,i asked doc to help him,doc said he was trying but we had to get him down,gammons kept yelling for cover fire,i slapped knox and pinched him to try to get him to respond,this was when i realized i was scared to lose him,i kept hearing gammons so i turned back and let loose with the 240 thinking that i was gonna put as much lead into them that i could,i looked over and gammons and pierce were gone,i realized we were pulling back and thought to myself that it was about time,rotty was still with us and thomas had appeared,i remember thinking that i didn't know where thomas had been cause i didn't see him until then,doc said that he needed help moving knox,i handed him the gun and me and thomas picked him up,i remember hoping that it wasn't that bad cause there wasn't any blood,knox was limp...we kept slipping trying to hold him,i told thomas it would be easier for a one man carry and he helped me put knox on my shoulders,he kept slipping down,i carried him for about 50 meters before he fell off,thomas came up and i helped him get knox on his shoulders,i grabbed thomas's weapon for him and we headed to the trucks,when we got down leandro had a truck ready and we got knox on it,i kept hoping that we had made it in time,leandro started hauling ass to the HLZ to get knox on a bird,i went back to my truck and saw rotty,he asked me how knox was and i told him that i didn't know,he said that knox was his best friend and that he didn't know what he would do if he wasn't alright,i told him that we still had a job to do and that we should concentrate on security,i was talking more to myself than rotty cause i didn't want to think about what i already knew in the back of my mind,i went to check the perimeter and to get away from my truck,i had a tacsat in there and i knew that they would be calling soon with a status on knox,our re-enforcements started showing up a little while later,Cpt T. called us in,I could tell already what he had to say,i couldn't look up,i heard him say that knox had died on the bird,rotty started screaming "those motherfuckers" "i'll kill all of them",he hit his knees,i got down beside him and hugged him...he kept saying"those motherfuckers"Cpt T. said that we needed to move out,i kept thinking that none of this was real,that this hadn't just happened,i got my truck ready and got in it,i didn't want to go to the bottom of the mountain cause i knew my friends were down there and SFC Shaw too,i felt like we had let everyone down.i couldn't think,i wanted to drive my truck off the side of the mountain to get it all out of my head,we got to the bottom and everyone was kinda standing around,i could tell that everyone already knew,i could tell that SFC Shaw was hurt and pissed,i didn't want to look at anyone,i stood by my truck until Cpt T. called everyone in to tell them,I couldn't look up from the ground,i felt like everyone was staring at us and calling us failures,i remember someone asking me what had happened and i couldn't even talk,i just walked back to my truck,we loaded up the vehicles and moved back to base,that was the most silent that truck had ever been,i could hear someone crying in the truck,i don't know who it was,maybe it was me,or Cpt T.i can't remember,we got back to base and SSG Grant helped me download the truck,i hadn't cried since i was 12 years old,but for the next two days i couldn't stop,

we had a memorial for him at camp tillman and i've never seen more grown men crying as i did that day,i couldn't let go of my friend wallace,and i was glad he was there cause i needed a friend with me,losing a friend or family member sucks,it's a part of life,i guess this is so hard even now because when you're in a platoon with someone,you don't realize how much they become a part of your life,knox was the guy that was screaming in the back of the plane to open the doors cause he was "all dressed up and nowhere to go",he was the guy that told sgt macomb that i said i could take his smokings all day cause i was a rock,then sgt macomb smoked me for three hours,he was the guy in ranger school that made me sit on the steps with him for five hours when i was dead tired cause he was scared that he wouldn't pass and come back to bragg a failure,he was the guy that would look you in the eye when he talked to you because he wanted you to know that he cared,he was the guy that left his door open after the duty day cause he liked it when guys would randomly walk into his room,he was the guy that was always trying to make a joke but they were never very funny,you had to laugh anyway because it was knox,he was the guy that made me drive him to raleigh because he wanted to see kelly but he had to study for a test,he was the guy that died fighting because he stayed on the gun to protect his men, i know that all us b co. guys have all had a hard time living with this,i think everyone feels some level of responsibilty, everyone thinks if i had only done this a little differently,but lately i've been thinking if knox would have done things differently,i don't think he would have,i'm grateful to have known him....

i post this for a few personal reasons,but also this,i don't want him to be forgotten,i want people to know what happened that day,the day that an american hero layed down his life for his friends,his brothers...

George Bush doesn't know the first fucking thing about sacrificing anything that actually belongs to him.

Iraq-Afghanistan Disconnect, Part XXXVIII

Explain this to me. Explain why Afghanistan has now officially been forgotten and written off.

The Taliban have been the acknowledged enemy since day one (that being September 11). Joined at the hip with al Qaida, supporters of Osama, bastards who managed to make "pathological repression" the understatement of the century... Bill Frist yesterday said the Taliban need to be brought into the government of Afghanistan as full partners.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

The Afghan government prior to the invasion was plenty transparent. You looked at it and you saw the Taliban. You looked at the country and saw people trying to live under one of the most repressive regimes in recent memory. A place where women were confined to the home and allowed out only when draped head to toe and accompanied by a male relative. A place where men weren't allowed to shave. A place where nobody could listen to music or fly a kite. A place where females were not allowed education. That's the kind of existence Bill Frist is ready to consign to Afghanistan.

This is an issue quite distinct from the situation in Iraq, where our unprovoked intervention has fomented chaos and a very different form of sectarian hell than the people there were accustomed to. We are supposed to "stay the course" on the disaster of our own making in Iraq because to do otherwise somehow dishonors the thousands who died there, as if their senseless deaths could be further cheapened by pulling out and preventing thousands more.

But in Afghanistan, the home territory of the group that pulled off the attack that "changed everything," we're supposed to cede power back to the Taliban because our woefully underfunded, undermanned forces there--thank you, Dick and Rummy and Wolfie, for going all in on Iraq before Afghanistan was even close to being finished--have been unable to establish control over the countryside after early successes. We're supposed to return to the status quo there, after a couple hundred paratroopers and Rangers have died, giving control of the country back to the very people that have been determined to wreak havoc with us from the beginning.