The Case for Humility in Afghanistan

I agree with most of the arguments presented by the author in this article. However, keeping in view the fact that the recent developments happening Pakistan, especially the attack on the Army Headquarters, have proven beyond doubt that something is not right within the Pakistani military-intelligence set-up. It is easy to point fingers, and it is even easier to accuse Islamabad's politicians and generals. What is really hard to understand is strength and the power of the Taliban sympathizers within the Pakistani bureaucracy, both civil and military.

Whereas it is heartening to note that the US recognizes the efforts of the Pakistanis to support the war on terror, an extremely pertinent argument of the critics of providing tons of aid to Pakistan is that this may turn out to be a failed operation in the final analysis for the simple reason that the powers-that-be in Islamabad are the ones supporting the terrorist attacks within and outside the country.

Notwithstanding the glamour and glitter associated with the PR exercise that the Pakistanis are indulging in vis-a-vis the operation in South Waziristan, please remember that the ‘Mullahs’ in the Pakistani Army will never allow peace to be established unless the writ of the barbaric Shariah is imposed in the area.

One is not really sure about the background of the generals conducting these anti-Taliban operations. It'll be interesting to take a second look at the 'active role-players' who are influencing the outcome of these missions.

The way the attack on GHQ was carried out, it appears that the attackers were master planners and strategists. Strangely, not many details have been given out by the Pakistanis, with respect to the origin of the weapons used, the respective identities of the insurgents, etc.

'Trust but verify' is what the US needs to do. Pakistan may have been the greatest ally in the war on terror, yet, Pakistan may not been the greatest nation on the planet earth to trust. Pakistan's Army and the Inter Services Intelligence Service (ISI) are composed of officers who were instrumental in creating the Taliban. Being that it is a nuclear country, the US needs to think hard at the options available before committing itself on a long term basis to Pakistan's politico-economic betterment.

The War in Afghanistan is over, it's all about saving face now.

http://watching-history.blogspot.com/2009/10/war-in-afghanistan-2001-201x.html

Napalm the poppy fields.

Some seven million Afghans were believed to be starving in Afghanistan when the US military arrived in 2001, and the figure doesn't seem to have changed much since. This is the sort of thing that tends to be overlooked as unimportant in most analyses. and strengthens the impression that too many people see Afghanistan's main function in God's creation as a foreign generals' playground, and too few think about, well, the Afghans other than Karzai, warlords, poppy growers and the like.

Another sign of both these things -- the blind analyses and the foreign generals' madness -- is all the recent approving clucking over General McChrystal's repeated announcements that there should be no more 500-pound bombs dropped on Afghan civilians, a ruling twice ignored since he made it. (One such flouting was by a bombing run at 0140 hours, when it would have been entirely impossible for the pilot to tell who the hell the bomb would land on and kill.)

I'm all for the McChrystal ruling, but it was almost eight whole years after this unfortunate practice of dropping 500-pound bombs on innocent civilians started in November 2001: starting thatt month, the United Nations started giving news conferences in Kabul to point to the indefensible (well, there was a claimed defense: it was claimed that the bombing was needed to knock out anti-aircraft defenses that Afghanisatan did not, in fact, have) practice. The UN was employing bomb disposal personnel to extract these monster bombs from people's houses where possible and blow them up elsewhere. The experts were giving names and addresses of those whose misfortune had been mitigated by faulty bombs that smashed through their homes and failed to explode. Yes, Virginia, contrary to normal military briefing bravado, some American bombs don't go off. Quite a few, apparently.

How come it takes the US military nearly eight years before there's a formal public ruling calling for more care about who they're bombing? How come the US public seems to have paid no attention to the long-entrenched military practice? Who thinks that Afghans' memories are so conveniently short?