The Worst Possible Outcome: Iraq & Afghanistan
Today the news was unsettling. Despite ongoing statements for years now from people in the Bush administration that the end to hostilities in Iraq are “just around the corner”, we hear that more, not less troops are going to be deployed in that country.
Over two years ago, I wrote about my deja-vu experience relative to what I was hearing from government and military leaders about Iraq in September 2004 compared to what I had heard in 1968 from government and military leaders about Viet-nam. The words then out of the General’s mouth to a bunch of young cadets was that “we” were killing so many Viet-cong that that war would be over in 6 months. (None of us believed it).
Fast forward to today. Our time of engagement in Iraq is fast about to surpass the length of time American soldiers fought in World War II.
Worse yet, there is the small issue of that other war, the one in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? That country that we (in my opinion) rightly attacked in response to the September 11 attacks. The place where Osama Bin Laden was hiding and where the Taliban provided Bin Laden refuge. Thought the war in Afghanistan was over? Think again. That war is ongoing and the Taliban are now fighting some of their fiercest battles been since they were ousted from power in 2001.
In an interview, the European Union’s special envoy to Afghanistan, said the Taliban is stronger in southern Afghanistan than it has been in the past three years.
The special envoy said:
“It had been somewhat assumed that Afghanistan was a success, that the mere toppling of the Taliban and the arrival of a person that we trusted like President Karzai was enough to ensure a success. That was … a facile assumption.”
As I stated in March 2004, one year after the Iraq invasion, “George W. Bush and others in the administration took their ‘eye off the prize’ goal of making America safer to pursue some ideological goal of bringing democracy to the Arab world.”
We now have both the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan going badly. We have lost the support of our allies around the world. Americans are less secure from harm due to natural disasters (Katrina) and due to our ever increasing dependence on foreign oil.
The American people are “finally getting it” as support for the Iraq war dissipates. Now with the increasingly likelihood that atrocities were committed by American soldiers in Haditha and possibly elsewhere in Iraq, we may have another deja-vu moment for the American people. The My Lai massacre of civilians was a major turning point for the Viet-nam conflict. The massacre of unarmed Viet-namese civilians by American soldiers in March of 1968 prompted worldwide outrage and greatly diminished support by Americans for that war. History may repeat itself if the initial reports of a civilian massacre in Haditha turn out to be true.
President Al Gore