'Mowing the Grass' in Afghanistan

[tekisui]

Source: The Boston Globe

‘MOWING THE grass’’ is the term frustrated soldiers use to describe the war in Afghanistan. America and its NATO allies sweep in and clear an area. But, once they leave, the Taliban creep back like weeds in the lawn and the allies have to mow it all over again.

The Soviets felt the same frustration. Their firepower was superior, but they were never able to keep the Mujahideen from growing back. So it was with the British who kept mowing the Afghan grass for the better part of 100 years - sending armies in again and again, but never to lasting effect.

It is ever thus with these kinds of wars. Think of the Israelis who have been mowing the Palestinian grass for more than 40 years, with the last major cutting in Gaza in 2007.

In Indochina, Americans churned over the same area again and again for more years than it took armies and navies to sweep across Europe and the Pacific in WWII, but, as it was for the French before them, never succeeding in keeping the grass trimmed.

The battle for the Afghan town of Marja is being hyped as if it were the battle of Stalingrad. There was never doubt that NATO would force the Taliban out. A contemporary British account of frontier in the last century said of the Pashtun-fighting man: “When he stayed and defended something, whether a gun or a village, we trapped him and pulverized him. When he flitted and sniped, rushed and ran away, we felt we were using a crowbar to swat wasps.’’

General Stanley McCrystal wants to put an end to grass mowing. He plans to hold Marja and has brought in his ready-made Afghan “government in a box.’’ Can it last? And what of other Marjas? Since it would take a foreign army of many hundreds of thousands to stand on every blade of grass - a force level we will never see - the war will continue.

more: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/03/02/mowing_the_grass_in_afghanistan/

[Kolesar]

1. This is beginning to shift.

H.D.S. Greenway: Americans now flirt with the concept of paying off local anti-Taliban tribesmen without going through the Kabul government - “bribe a tribe,’’ as the British did.

[tekisui]

2. Until the Taliban offer more money or we leave.

Or until we quit paying. How long are we going to stay and pay?

[unhappycamper]

3. How many more lives and money are we going to pump into this shithole?

Inquiring minds want to know. :sarcasm:

My prediction: The troops will come home when the Soviet style economic meltdown occurs.

[tekisui]

4. But, but, but....We are winning! Or is it we are turning a corner?

Or is the enemy on the run?

I fear you may be right, sadly. Americans are a bloodthirsty bunch.

[unhappycamper]

7. Yea, we're turning a corner alright.

Complete economic meltdown is around the corner. There's a train a coming and it's gonna be ugly.

[madokie]

8. Please it's not a shit hole

its an innocent population of peoples home, its their kids being blown to bits, its their country that is being blown to bits. please refrain in referring to Afghanistan as shit holes, please

[unhappycamper]

15. You are correct madokie.

Mea culpa.

[gorfle]

11. My question, too.

How long will America continue to try and nation-build for people incapable or unwilling or uninterested or hostile to our efforts?

It's a waste of time.

[madokie]

5. I've been reading the same thing since my war

Vietnam. You do not occupy a country if the indigenous people do not want you to. And especially when you, usa, picks on a country where the citizens have such a hard life to begin with. In their comfort its hard for the generals to see that. We will bring our troops home ultimately, the question is at what expense of human live, misery and destruction of a Country. All so sad when you stop to think about it. All this being perpetrated on these otherwise innocent, and I mean innocent people because of the oil and gas they have under their land. It is criminal and all involved in the decision making to do this should be at the dock at the Hague right the fuck now. No if and or buts about it either.

I feel better now

[spanone]

6. k&r

[tekisui]

9. k

[G_j]

10. "a foreign army of many hundreds of thousands to stand on every blade of grass"

reality check!!!

[slipslidingaway]

12. knr nt

[Echo In Light]

13. K&R

[Individualist]

14. K&R

[amborin]

16. MoJo on Marja:

snip

"The US military is intent, according to the Wall Street Journal, on "delivering a new administration and millions of dollars in aid to a place where government employees didn't dare set foot a week ago." Slated to be the future "mayor" of Marja, Haji Zahir, a businessman who spent 15 years in Germany, is, according to press reports, living on a US Marine base in the province until, one day soon, the American military can install him in an "abandoned government building" or simple "a clump of ruins" in that city.

He is, we're told, to arrive with four US civilian advisors, two from the State Department and two from the US Agency for International Development, described (in the typically patronizing language of American press reports) as his "mentors." They are to help him govern, and especially dole out the millions of dollars that the US military has available to "reconstruct" Marja. Road-building projects are to be launched, schools refurbished, and a new clinic built, all to win Pashtun "hearts and minds." As soon as the fighting abates, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has suggested, the post-military emphasis will be on "economic development," with an influx of "military and civilian workers" who will "show a better way of life" to the town's inhabitants.

So explain something to me: Why does the military of a country convinced it's becoming ungovernable think itself so capable of making another ungovernable country governable? What's the military's skill set here? What lore, what body of political knowledge, are they drawing on? Who do they think they represent, the Philadelphia of 1776 or the Washington of 2010, and if the latter, why should Americans be considered the globe's leading experts in good government anymore? And while we're at it, fill me in on one other thing: Just what has convinced American officials in Afghanistan and the nation's capital that they have the special ability to teach, prod, wheedle, bribe, or force Afghans to embark on good governance in their country if we can't do it in Washington or Sacramento?

Explain something else to me: Why are our military and civilian leaders so confident that, after nine years of occupying the world's leading narco-state, nine years of reconstruction boondoggles and military failure, they suddenly have the key, the formula, to solve the Afghan mess? Why do leading officials suddenly believe they can make Afghan President Hamid Karzai into "a Winston Churchill who can rally his people," as one unnamed official told Matthew Rosenberg and Peter Spiegel of the Wall Street Journal—and all of this only months after Karzai, returned to office in a wildly fraudulent presidential election, overseeing a government riddled with corruption and drug money, and honeycombed with warlords sporting derelict reputations, was considered a discredited figure in Washington? And why do they think they can turn a man known mockingly as the "mayor" or "president" of Kabul (because his government has so little influence outside the capital) into a political force in southern Afghanistan?

And someone tell me: Just who picked the name Operation Moshtarak for the campaign in Marja? Why am I not convinced that it was an Afghan? Though news accounts say that the word means "togetherness" in Dari, why do I think that a better translation might be "crushing embrace"? What could "togetherness" really mean when, according to the Wall Street Journal, to make the final decision to launch the operation, already long announced, General McChrystal "stepped into his armored car for the short drive... to the presidential palace," and reportedly roused President Karzai from a nap for "a novel moment." Karzai agreed, of course, supposedly adding, "No one has ever asked me to decide before."

This is a black comedy of "governance." So is the fact that, from the highest administration officials and military men to those in the field, everyone speaks, evidently without the slightest self-consciousness, about putting an "Afghan face" on the Marja campaign. The phrase is revelatory and oddly blunt. As an image, there's really only one way to understand it (not that the Americans involved would ever stop to do so). After all, what does it mean to "put a face" on something that assumedly already has a face? In this case, it has to mean putting an Afghan mask over what we know to be the actual "face" of the Afghan War, which is American.....

snip

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/afghan-mask-slips

[Kolesar]

17. Why, why, why??

Here is an answer. The bush government managed the war in Afghanistan horribly. A president who can actually listen to his diplomatic and military leaders might succeed.

I certainly don't doubt President Obama's motivations. As opposed to bushOILcheney