From Bad to Worse

I’ve been struggling for months with how to respond to the question everyone keeps asking me: “What do you thing about the surge in Afghanistan?” It’s always worded a bit different. Some ask it seemingly reluctantly, wanting to know but not sure how to ask it. I do love Afghanistan. I long to see more of the country… but cannot. I want so badly to see a chance for improvement. I want to but the final card just dropped. I just read that Abdullah Abdullah is going to drop out of the runoff election with Karzai. Abdullah has been pushing for a power sharing deal and the sacking of the head of the election commission. Karzai has been stonewalling and apparently all bets are now off.
I was listening to an interview with the former deputy head of the UN’s mission in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith. He was sacked by Ban Ki Moon prior to the primary election for pushing too hard for free and fair elections. His specific complaint was that too many polling places were going to be designated. Now before you scoff and ask why that is a bad thing it’s important to remember that many parts of the country are still outside the direct control of Kabul. Mr. Galbraith’s complaint was that to open polling places that likely would not be manned would allow easy ballot stuffing. If the polling place never opens except on paper it’s too easy to make up imaginary votes and record them. He made these specific complaints before the first election and low and behold what happened? Exactly that! The UN threw out so many votes for Karzai that a second election was warranted.
A few days ago I heard that the “Independent “ Election Commission in Afghanistan was going to open even MORE polling places for the runoff election. I heard that and thought “it’s over”. It’s a bold move to be sure. Even more phantom polling places to record make believe votes. It was clear to me Karzai was going to steal this election at any cost, the greedy bastard. Now the story about Abdullah, I no longer have any hope that we can have a positive impact on the country.
In 1963 we supported a coup d’etat against Diem in South Vietnam. This was a regime change of a government we were “supporting” we all know how that one ended. So now we have an illiterate government, of our own creation, running the country we are fighting in. This can’t possibly end well. More cash, more troops, it won’t matter. You simply can’t bring peace and stability to a country without a central government short of straight up colonization and that is but a short tern solution which also generally ends badly.
I was hopeful that General McCrystal’s strategy of protecting the populace would improve conditions but how can that possibly work when the central government is horribly corrupt? How do you hand off control of a country to someone only interested in raping it?
Does this mean I think the Taliban are a good alternative? Hell no! The Taliban are an evil Pakistani construct, not an Afghan movement. We look to have burned all our bridges though. We have played this misadventure so badly from the get go that we no longer have any options. I hate to say this. I love Afghanistan and want above all else to put on rose colored glasses and pretend we can fix the mess. I simply can’t pretend any longer. This tears me up but I can’t ignore it. We need to extricate our troops and let the Afghans decide their own destiny.
At this point the best we can do is work feverishly to cut all the funding strings to the Taliban and drug lords. This we CAN do. We know who these people are. We know how to disrupt international funding channels. If we were to effectively limit outside influence from Afghanistan, our own included, the country would sort itself out. Will we do that? No. Too bad. You have no idea how angry this all makes me. Here we go again…