COMPOUNDING FAILURE

This from the Charleston, WV Gazette (10/29/09):

Quagmire: Afghan war futility

"Fourteen U. S. troops were killed in Afghanistan
Monday, followed by eight more Tuesday, bringing
the October toll to 55, the worst monthly loss. This
painful tally is doubly tragic because most Americans
now realize that the costly U. S. sacrifices in the wild
mountain land accomplishes little. . ."

"Today the Afghan struggle is futile, according to a
gung ho U. S. officer who worked hard in a combat
region, then decided it was pointless. Former Marine
Capt. Mathew Ho, who fought in Iraq, went to sou-
thern Afghanistan as a State Dept. operative against
Taliban insurgents. Now he has quit, submitting a
damning letter of resignation, which was leaked in
Tuesday's Washington Post."

Capt. Ho wrote that primitive fundamentalist Afghan
tribes are fighting simply because they consider U. S.
soldiers to be foreign intruders in their country --
just as they previously considered Russian occupiers
in the 1980s.

"Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster
a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and
system of government unknown and unwanted by
its people," his letter said.

Afghanistan is a feudal patchwork of "tribes, valleys,
clans, villages and families," he wrote. Recurring
conflict "has violently and savagely pitted the urban
educated, secular and modern of Afghanistan against
the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional," he said.
The latter segment of backward people drove out
Russians two decades ago, and now they fight to
expel Americans.

"I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency
fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but
rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and
taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in
Kabul," Capt. Ho wrote.

The departing State Dept. agent said Washington
misunderstood the Afghan enemy -- and sent young
Americans to die for bungled reasons. If Washing-
ton really intends to attack places where al-Qaida
breeds, he wrote, it "would require us additionally to
invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan,
Yemen, etc." -- as well as Western Europe, where
Muslim fanatic cells proliferate. (Remember that
9/11 was planned in Hamburg, Germany.)

The ex-Marine captain likened the U. S. role in Af-
ghanistan to that of King Sisyphus, who was con-
demned to push a boulder up a hill, from whence it
endlessly rolled back down and had to be pushed up
again. "We are mortgaging our nation's economy on
a war which, even with increased commitment, will
remain a draw for years to come," he said.

Following is my response to a letter to the editor of
the local paper, who wrote that Obama is stupid for
not just listening to his military, and giving them
anything they want:

WHY IT'S A FOOL'S ERRAND

Soviet generals looking back on that war regret not
taking into account the following demographics and
history. Obama was a law professor for eight years
and is certainly bright enough to understand this.
But campaign rhetoric has painted him into the
same corner LBJ was in on Vietnam, and he can't
figure out how to change direction now.

We are trying to do what the Soviets failed to do:
install a viable central government. It can't be done
by any number of troops because: Afghanistan is
not now and never has been a "nation." It has never
ever had an effective central government. There is
no Afghan language. What it is and always has been is
a territory peopled by diverse, warring and culturally
separate ethnic groups. They are governed by war-
lords, if at all. Each group has their own language
and ethnic loyalties: the Uzbeks to the 25 million
Uzbeks to their north, the Tajiks to Tajikistan, and so
on.
The largest ethnic group, and historically the dominant
one, is the Pashtuns. There are 41 million of them,
and they have never been ruled by anyone outside
that group, going back to Alexander the Great! While
most of them live next door in Pakistan, about 12
million or so live (mostly) in southern Afghanistan.
As you have just heard from Capt. Ho, they just want
to be left alone. They speak their own language, Pashto.
From their membership comes the Taliban, but they
not all support or agree with the Taliban, tho many do
to varying degrees. If we send more troops, many more
of them will join or help the Taliban. It's like a deadly
poker game that we can't win because they hold the
best cards.

There are 14 or 15 million Tajiks in the region. Half of
them live in Afganistan. They are traditional enemies
of the Pashtuns, and particularly hate the Taliban.
They lead the Northern Alliance, a loose association
of neighboring ethnic groups that used to be rivals but
our CIA (with lots of $ for their warlords) got them to
join in fighting the Soviets. They now back the U. S.
and the Karzai government in Kabul, which includes
corrupt warlords in their cabinet. That government
has made no effort to reconcile with the Pashtuns.
Until that comes about (which isn't likely as long as
the U. S. discourages it), it's really a civil war with
little chance of anyone winning, particularly the
brutal, corrupt, and ineffective central government
we are backing. That part is a replay of Vietnam.
We already know how it comes out. For a fuller
insight on that, see Google News on Capt. Mathew
Ho. He lived with those people, and knows them
well.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.netl