What are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?

[IndianaGreen]

December 3, 2009

Asking For It

What are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?

By PAUL FITZGERALD and ELIZABETH GOULD

It was the opportunity for the president of the United States to deliver his most important address yet. America was entering a new era after failing to defeat an implacable foe in a far off and forbidding land. His speech was filled with Sturm und Drang, delivered to the finest young men and women the country had to offer and the highest defense and intelligence officials in the land at the world’s most prestigious military academy. It should have been a sacred moment in American history.

For months the world had waited with great anticipation for the president to weigh in on America’s involvement in Afghanistan amidst a bitter debate over the respective consequences of investing more troops and further billions, and the very likely possibility that the United States could lose the war and be subjected to more merciless attacks by Al Qaeda. A varied mix of solutions were offered up, which included negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban, and, ultimately, withdrawing current troops.

Had the president leveled with the American people and talked about ethnic cleansing of Pashtun and Baluch tribal areas by Predator Drones, of Blackwater crimes and targeted assassinations, some might have breathed a sigh of relief. Instead the president weighed in with a well worn mantra by offering as his primary justification for sending more troops that “We did not ask for this fight.”

We did not ask for this fight?

For 60 years the United States played both Pakistan and Afghanistan against each other in a Manichean, dualist game of superpower politics with little regard for the consequences. But like the Soviet Union before it, the cold war assumptions of military power that the United States carried with it into Afghanistan have been rendered useless by the ethnic, political and military complexities of the Afghan/Pakistan region.

Before the United States can hope to win anything in Afghanistan it has to decide what it is fighting for. Is it oil, geostrategic positioning, against terror or just to save face. In the last few years U.S. strategy has broken down to a confused mix, dominated by those wishing to withdraw troops and limit the American commitment to containing Al Qaeda and those favoring a robust counterinsurgency campaign requiring a permanent political and military commitment that would last for decades.

http://www.counterpunch.org/fitzgerald11032009.html

[Orsino]

1. Ever.

Oh, perhaps not that long. I can see that an ending is taking shape.

But I'm sitting in a comfortable chair, half a world away from all that misery, failure and death, which probably seem pretty endless to a populace that still hadn't gotten over the Soviet occupation.

[VMI Dem]

2. We are fighting to prevent the possibility of a future threat.

See: The Bush Doctrine.

[BeFree]

3. Oil is our reason

Middle East oil lines and pumps, and China.

The American people need to own up to why they support war over there.