Afghanistan is in serious trouble and is reverting to Taliban control

[TayTay]

According to the foreign policy organization says in it's latest e-mail that the situation in AFghanistan is dire. The blunders of the Bush Administration risk creating a wide area where Taliban or Taliban-friendly forces control the government. From their e-mail:

A general political settlement in Afghanistan remains unlikely, and the military confrontation between N.A.T.O. forces and the insurgency will continue in the coming winter months. While the mainstream media in the West remain focused on Iraq much more than on Afghanistan, the situation in the latter country is likely to rise in importance. The longer the ongoing conflict continues, the less politically manageable it will be, especially because it will add to the already extreme political trouble that the U.S.-led coalition has had to face in Iraq.

It follows that the United States will need to re-think its exit strategy in Iraq even more urgently, since the two fronts -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- risk converging in a ruinous way for the Bush administration precisely as mid-term elections approach.

http://www.pinr.com/

Sen. Kerry spoke yesterday at Howard University on this and he is in favor of sending 5,000 troops now into Afghanistan. Kerry said:

Neither can the Administration pretend that the war in Afghanistan is over or that the peace has been secured. The truth is, we are slipping dangerously backwards by the day.

The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this Administration treats it like a sideshow. When did denying al Qaeda a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority? How did we end up with seven times more troops in Iraq – which even the Administration now admits had nothing to do with 9/11 – than in Afghanistan, where the killers still roam free? Why is the Administration sending thousands more American troops into the crossfire of a civil war in Iraq but we can’t find any more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan?

You could get whiplash watching the Administration policy on Afghanistan change from day to day. On Sunday, asked which of the 26 countries in the alliance were dragging their feet in Afghanistan, NATO’s top commander General James Jones, a four-star general and former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, replied, “All of them.” Tuesday, Secretary Rice said we’ll “pay for it" if Afghanistan again devolves into a terrorist stronghold. But just yesterday the Administration refused to heed its own warnings and refused to send the troops the commanders on the ground said we needed. That is both a tragedy and a scandal. And today? Silence.

The Administration’s Afghanistan policy defines cut and run. Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land. Cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan. That’s right – the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.

We need a new policy – the one the president promised when we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Where NATO allies have pledged troops and assistance to Afghanistan, they must follow through. But the United States must lead by example by sending in at least five thousand additional American troops. More elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces; and more experienced intelligence units. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists. And more reconstruction money so that the elected government in Kabul, helped by the United States, not the Taliban helped by al Qaeda, rebuilds the new Afghanistan.

That’s how you win the hearts and minds of the local population, that’s how you win a war on terror, that’s how you show the world the true face of America.

If the Republicans are serious about national and homeland security, why aren't they taking the situation in Afghanistan seriously and trying to get the troops in there to stabilize the region? Whatever you think about Kerry, he is right on this. (And would be backed up by most Democrats in his assessment of this situation.) Where is the 'tough-talking' Bush Administration when it comes to dealing with actual threats? Where are the troops and money on this? (Yeah, in Iraq, I know. But this transcends or should tanscend politics. It is a shame and it is shameful that it doesn't.)

[rodeodance]

1. umm I can see NATO countries pulling their troops.

[TayTay]

5. So can I. The pinr.org article makes the case that the NATO troops

are going to peace keeping in Lebanon in order to keep the cease-fire peace going. It's not like NATO is just sitting on their hands, they are activley involved in trying to do clean-up after other 'little wars' that have erupted in that region.

This is really scary. I do think that Afghanistan needs troops. That region is inherently dangerous on many fronts and we never should have just declared victory and invaded another country. Sigh!

I saw commentary that said that Dems (including Kerry) are gonig to Bush's right on this. I don't buy this.

[beachmom]

6. What do you mean not buying going to Bush's right?

Perhaps it's the word "right", but the truth is that Bush blew it in Afghanistan and now our national security is at risk. John Kerry and other Democrats are sounding the alarm that we need to put more troops in Afghanistan -- that is, decidedly, hawkish, whereas the Dems have been portrayed as "dovish" on Iraq. The truth of it all is that the Dems were never Doves in going after the people who attacked us on 9/11. But Iraq had bloody nothing to do with 9/11! It worked for Bush/Cheney for a while that Dems were wimpy "cut and runners", but those days are over. They were wrong to go into Iraq, and now we're paying the price in Afghanistan.

[TayTay]

8. A missile buildup or troop buildup is often described in the media

as going to someone's right. (It happened to John Kennedy in the 1960 debates when he discussed a missile gap with the then Soviet Union. Defense was supposed to be Nixon's strength, so Kennedy undercut him by out-Nixoning Nixon in his zeal for closing a supposed weapons gap.)

I don't think this is going to anyone's left or right. I don't think all-out war was an answer for Afghanistan, which is, after all, a desperately poor nation with almost no infrastructure. (The biggest cash industry in Afghanistan is heroin production.) I think that we needed to go in, take out the repressive system that allowed a terrorist-state to exist and then offer real aid to the people of that region. (Can't have that. That might have built up goodwill. Sigh!)

The media will protray this, if it ever gets into the wider media bloodstream, as going to the right on the Repubs on Afghanistan. The media deals in short-hand, if it deals with foreign policy at all.

[0007]

2. Load up the bombers and the burqa snatching Laura Bush

Laura will be giving a little woman to woman talk at the local library

[babylonsister]

3. Because dimson and his admin continue to try to pull the wool

over our eyes. One of his last pro-war speeches (which one, there have been so many) chirped about how great things were going in Afghanistan. I believe he claimed this on the same day that the NATO generals warned that more troops were a must there.
I honestly don't think they're living in reality, or reality is so ugly they refuse to acknowledge it.

[havocmom]

4. rule of thumb: take what he says & turn it 180 degrees

They sure don't want US living in reality.

[tenshi816]

7. I've been talking to the guy

who's painting my house about this - yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it turns out this man's son is an RAF pilot home (UK) on leave for two months from flying Chinooks in Afghanistan with the NATO forces, stationed in Kandahar, and he's been in Afghanistan off and on for more than three years.

Anyway, as I said, we got to talking about it just yesterday and my painter repeated some interesting - and alarming - things his son had told him. First of all, he (the son) said that things were more peaceful around Kabul and a lot of development is going on there (a new Coca-Cola plant, for example), but that the southern part of the country is a complete mess with constant fighting. He also said that the British forces are really pissed off at the American government for making such a big show of going into Afghanistan after 9/11, sticking around just long enough to impress the people back home and then, as he put it, "buggering off to Iraq without finishing the job they went in to do". He said that while the Brits like the individual American soldiers they meet, they've got no time for the people who sent them there in the first place.

Also, he said that the British in Afghanistan were stretched really thinly, both in terms of manpower and equipment. They've got aircraft falling to bits but they're flying so many missions that there's no time to do the necessary repairs (not something a father wants to hear from his son who is actually flying the damn things).

Bottom line, not enough people and not enough equipment to do the job.

Just a few observations told to me by the father of someone who knows first hand.

[TayTay]

9. That is horrible. Can you even imagine what that father goes through

knowing that his son is flying dangerous missions on sub-par equipment. I don't blame the UK forces for being angry at the US government. We did abandon our mission in Afghanistan to purse war in Iraq. It's just awful.

[tenshi816]

10. It is awful, isn't it?

Actually, I know the father fairly well because we live in a small community and he's painted a couple of my neighbour's houses so we run into each other a lot, but he had never spoken to me about where his son was stationed or what he was doing.

Yeah, he said he and his wife have a lot of sleepless nights worrying about their boy (even though their "boy" is now 30). He joined the RAF when he was 22 and it was peacetime so it never bothered them before because their son wasn't in a combat situation, but now he's in a desperate combat situation that's been going on for longer than anything that the UK has been part of since WWII.

I forgot something that was mentioned that I meant to put in the last post that my painter's son said. Apparently there are NATO forces from 36 nations fighting in Afghanistan now (I didn't realize there were that many countries there) and he said that's still nowhere near enough for what they're having to deal with.

And I'll bet George W. Bush still sleeps well at night.

[TayTay]

13. It is amazing that there is still anyone in Afghanistan.

The US correctly called for help in dealing with Afghanistan because they were dangerous and were harboing people who wanted to hurt innocents the world over. Yet the US has abandoned the Allies we have there by shifting the focus to Iraq.

I will pray for your friend's son. This is just awful. The repercussions from this disasterous foreign policy will last for decades.

[NewJeffCT]

11. Didn't Bush declare victory in Afghanistan in mid-2004?

You know, so he could get the publicity prior to the election?

I could swear I remember that, but I could not find it on a google search.

[blm]

12. Kerry destroyed Bush on this during the debates, but media IGNORED that

entire aspect of the debate - I guess Bin Laden didn't matter to THEM, either.

[ProSense]

14. Bush believes Saddam and Iraq more important than Afghanistan and OBL.

Then there are his crazy policies:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2829472&mesg_id=2829472