Charlie Rose

REMant  01/12/2010 06:03 PM Report

Either Adm Mullen doesn't know what he is talking about, or like the talk about returning this country to financial responsibility, Obama just says one thing and does another. Or possibly some ppl in the admin just do not understand English. The president directly nixed the proposed project of a long-term commitment of nation-building in Afghanistan. I quote: "Indeed, some call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort — one that would commit us to a nation-building project of up to a decade. I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests."

Quoting from the Al Jazeera website, James Bays, reporting from Kabul, said: "This wasn't a counter-insurgency speech; it was a counter-terrorism speech, a very different mission from the one General Stanley McCrystal has been preparing himself for. He only mentions the Taliban twice in the whole speech. He started talking about 9/11, he ended with talking about 9/11 and all the references in between were to al-Qaeda. I think there will be some in the military here in the command centre of Kabul who will be having to rethink things rather urgently."

The Vietnamese always complained that the US cared only about containing the spread of Communism and not at all about them, and the same duplicity seems unavoidable here. We are asking the Afghans to fight, when we won't, and not only that, telling them to get on with it, or else. Not, I think, much motivation to end corruption, or to fight. This is essentially what we told Diem, AND the umpteen generals who came after him. But I have no idea whether a carrot or a stick is best in situations like these. That's why a full-blown counter-insurgency might have been nice, but it would have taken, using McChrystal's own yardstick, a force of half a million, and we still would still have needed to have done something about the borders. And if we had pulled it off it would have been an historical first.

The problem in Afghanistan and the like is that what is involved is a culture clash. The "extremists'" position is basically the indigenous one, and unless the West changes that, which is more likely to happen if it does nothing than if it goes in, in force, or the "extremists" turn more dictatorial in their desire to return the society to old ways, enforce religious laws, etc, it will be impossible to achieve anything. This was exactly the situation in Vietnam, and it is usual in so-called "civil" wars.

BTW, Al Jazeera reports that the number of Afghan security forces has been greatly exaggerated with widespread desertions in the army and police, (another problem in Vietnam,) and also quotes a Taliban leader that the French and Italians have tried to bribe him.