Additional thoughts and links on Afghanistan

As a follow-up to my Afghanistan post prior to President Obama's speech, I don't mind saying I was wrong about a few things, although what I was wrong about doesn't make me feel any better about the situation. One, I was wrong when I said that the President wouldn't use the specter of imminent attack to justify the escalation. Not precisely correct - he spent the first section of the speech recounting the events of 9/11 and the initiation of the Afghan conflict, repeatedly saying that our primary mission now is just what it was then - disrupting and dismantling al Qaeda so they can't launch more attacks against us. He didn't say exactly how he was going to keep al Qaeda from centralizing in Somalia or Yemen after they were routed, but then he also relied heavily for his case on the conflation between al Qaeda jihadists, who could be anywhere, and Taliban nationalists, who are really the ones right at home in the mountains of Afghanistan. So he wasn't really going for a real precise articulation of the mission. Obama also did not mention the capture or death of Osama bin Laden as either a missed opportunity or a current goal of his administration. But he did say that not succeeding in Afghanistan would leave America less safe.

Second, I also said that the President would remind us of our historic commitment to the welfare of the Afghan people. Greenwald, in a curious and measured bit of praise, points out that Obama kept his case clearly within the bounds of American national interest:

There were no grandiose claims that the justness of the war derives from our desire to defeat evil, tyrannical extremists and replace them with more humane and democratic leaders. To the contrary, he was commendably blunt that our true goal is not to improve the lives of Afghan citizens but rather: "Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda." There were no promises to guarantee freedom and human rights to the Afghan people. To the contrary, he explicitly rejected a mission of broad nation-building "because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests"

While Greenwald is happy about the bit of refreshing honesty, I'm extraordinarily bothered by the fact that Obama is abandoning even the pretense of helping average Afghans to realize a better future for themselves. What it shows is that Obama's interest is consistent with a situation that is identical or worse for Afghan citizens, even than it is now. We know how bad Karzai is on women's rights, and we know that in general the whole Afghan government is near-hopelessly corrupt, and can't be trusted to take care of its people. But Obama's explicitly not trying to solve that problem - he's trying to create stability and eliminate a nominal threat to American security. Nice, limited goals - here's the problem though. We already have client states in the Muslim world that are capable of cracking down on internal dissidents and that claim to share America's global interests. Saudi Arabia and Egypt come to mind, and the best we can probably hope for Iraq is that it soon joins that club. (That whole wellspring of democracy idea? Not so much.) Saudi Arabia is among the most oppressive governments in the entire world, by any standard of measurement. If Obama wants the same for Afghanistan in exchange for stability, he ought to remember that while the al Qaeda leadership had safe haven there prior to 2001, that country didn't actually produce the terrorists of 9/11. By and large, Saudi Arabia did - our supposed ally, propped up by our military support. So this is the plan then? America will side with Karzai over the Taliban, and try to summon some pride that, as Obama put it, "while the election was marred by fraud, it produced a government that was consistent with the Afghan constitution and laws." Whoopee. That government, if we're lucky, will crush its opposition (with our help), so we can go home. And then we'll have created another effective dictatorship who only knows how to survive by oppressing its own people. This is going to make us safer? Please.

Here's an op-ed by a courageous Afghan woman who points out that things are as bad as they've ever been for the Afghan people, and that they're poised to get a lot worse with Obama's escalation. I remain exasperated and very, very sad.