Afghanistan Improving? Rubbishby David Smith-Ferri
Published on Sunday, December 12, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
A December 9 article in the Wall Street Journal began with the following sentence: "After touring bases in eastern Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that he was confident the war strategy was working, rejecting doubts that have been voiced by some inside the administration as the White House finishes work on a review of the campaign."
"There is no doubt the security climate is improving," Gates told a press conference in Kabul.
Two days before, Army General David Petraeus told reporters, "We've made important progress in recent months, both on the ground and psychologically, because we've demonstrated that ISAF and Afghan security forces can take away areas that mean a great deal to the Taliban." Petraeus, who noted that he had spoken with "elders in a remote Afghan village," reported that U.S./NATO forces had stopped the momentum of the Taliban in many parts of the country, and even reversed it in important areas. He said these included Helmand Province and Kandahar Province in the South.
"All of these operations have been really hard-fought, with some really tough casualties," Petraeus said. "The enemy will fight when you take away something that matters to him."
These statements are not presented as casual or off-the-cuff comments. They are meant to be taken as assessments of the effectiveness of U.S. strategies and operations in what is now the longest continuous military operation in the country's history. But our middle and high school children would receive very poor grades for such a presentation. Can the possibility of a peaceful future for Afghanistan really be reduced to heavily armed U.S. troops trying to "take" territory away from the Taliban? What rubbish.
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