What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

i feel u dogg

i saw this a few weeks ago late at nite on bbc four, it's amazing -

Afghantsi (1988)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343351/

lots of up-close footage of afghanistan and the soviet soldiers there who were on the butt-end of an obviously doomed venture - the interviews are harrowing and heartfelt, these guys were just like whattt the fuuuuck are we doing

sequel potential high

1988 soviet army more open to investigative journalism than 2009 american one :/

More s.o.p. AWESOMENESS from the Administration:

February 22, 2009

U.S. Concedes Afghan Attack Mainly Killed Civilians

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NY Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — An airstrike by the United States-led military coalition killed 13 civilians and 3 militants last Tuesday in western Afghanistan, not “up to 15 militants” as was initially claimed by American forces, military officials here said Saturday.

The civilians killed included three children, six women and four men in the Gozara district of Herat Province, in addition to three people suspected of being Taliban fighters, according to an aide to the provincial governor.

American and NATO forces have come under increasing criticism from Afghans and political leaders in Kabul for the soaring number of civilians killed by airstrikes and fighting between Taliban and American-led forces.

The United Nations says civilian deaths rose nearly 40 percent last year to 2,118, the most in any year since the 2001 invasion that drove the Taliban from power. Most of the casualties last year were caused by the Taliban and other insurgents, the United Nations found, but 828 deaths were attributed to American, NATO and Afghan forces, mostly from airstrikes and village raids. Afghan officials fear the numbers will rise as more American troops deploy to the country.

Only five days before the deadly episode in Herat, Afghan and American commanders had hailed a new agreement that called for Afghan officials to have more input into the “planning and execution of counterterrorism missions” in hopes of minimizing civilian casualties.

But Naqib Arween, an aide to the Herat provincial governor, said there was no coordination with Afghan security officials in the province about the operation on Tuesday. He said the bombardment struck nomads in tents in a mountainous region of the province, which borders Iran.

Initially, American forces described the bombardment as a “precision strike” that hit an insurgent hide-out, killing as many as 15 militants. But the attack drew immediate protests from local Afghan officials who said that most of the people killed were innocent, and a military delegation was sent to investigate.

The statement issued by the military on Saturday did not explain why so many civilians had been killed. It did say that weapons and ammunition were found at the site, and that the investigation shows “how seriously we take our responsibility in conducting operations against militant targets and the occurrence of noncombatant casualties.”

In a separate episode, three “coalition service members” on patrol in Oruzgan Province in central Afghanistan were killed by a roadside bomb on Friday. Their names and nationalities were not released.

So far, 26 American service members and 13 from other countries in the coalition have been killed in Afghanistan this year, almost twice as many as the first two months of 2008, according to iCasualties.org, which tracks such fatalities.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.

Yeah, it does feel like Afghanistan is going to be a nasty slough without any real upside to the sort of meager victories that the US/NATO forces are likely to achieve. The Afghans don't want us there and they are particularly good at expelling foreign bodies from their midst. We need to accept that the best we can hope for is preventing the Taliban from taking over the entire country, however anarchic the alternatives look.

Obviously, the other shoe to drop is Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and a government so near to failure that they brush shoulders whenever they leave the room.

I sure as hell hope Mr. Holbrook can harvest some good ideas from the people he talks to who know the region well and he can get our policy back on a marginally effective track. Looks to me like the seeds of disaster that were planted long ago are getting close to maturity now.

The Afghans don't want us there

i'm not sure about this tbh. i think there's alot of Afghanis who are worried about what might happen if the taliban regained control. for alot of people there NATO is the lesser of two evils.

RECORD BOMBS DROPPED IN AFGHANISTAN IN APRIL

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/05/airforce_april_airstrike_050409w/

SO DEEPLY SORRY, AGAIN

The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that airstrikes in western Afghanistan in the past week had killed civilians.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he had received an official update putting the number of innocent casualties from the strikes in Farah province as high as 130.

If that toll is confirmed, it would be the deadliest incident affecting Afghan civilians since U.S.-led forces started battling the Taliban in 2001. In a statement with the Afghan government, U.S. forces said that noncombatants died but that the number was unknown because the victims had been buried.

-- Reuters

I watched an episode of The Daily Show where the author of How To Win a Cosmic War had some intelligible insight on how Bush's battle to establish democracy in Iraq actually distracted pro-war-anywhere-now Muslims from dwelling on such inclinations when left alone.

tbh all the recent afghanistan stuff - hillary's apology etc - makes me feel unavoidably morbsish. having an anti-war president seemed to augur having someone appalled by the idea of people getting blown to shit. i don't know how idealistic i am being and how inevitable it is but ... uhh. collateral damage classic or dud.

The notion that civilians being killed is somehow on a different moral plane than the typical conduct of war is odd to me. I guess the rational is that we should minimize the amount of cruelty and destruction needed to accomplish our goals. However, I find it perplexing that it takes the death of 100+ civilians in one incident for people to say, "wait, this war is too violent!" As if the conduct of war isn't inherently violent and destructive, even when the killing is on a smaller scale. It's like there is some kind of threshold of destruction for morality to kick in.

I wish people, especially our leaders, would be a little more intellectually honest and once in a while acknowledge that war is immoral and unjust. Maybe it's necessary at times, but it's fucking horrible and our leaders should say so.

So yeah, collateral damage is dud, and "primary" damage is dud, and distinguishing between the two is dud. It's all "damage," and that's kind of all that matters.

i think all my views on this come down to soldiers dying versus civilians dying, with the idea that as damage both are lamentable but viewed as something to avoid or strategise around, civilian death is worse. this is endlessly complicated by conscription and a million other things, but i think everything that happens in the typical conduct of wars, ie between armies, per the instruction of governments, is separate from what happens when it spills over into homes, schools, hospitals etc.

But war always "spills over into homes." Doesn't the family of a slain soldier mourn? Is the death of a 20 year old combatant not tragic?

I'm not calling you out, and my point is probably hopelessly idealistic, but I'm increasingly skeptical of moral hedging when it comes to war. The notion of acceptable and unacceptable war seems like a kind of moral relativism that misses the real point: killing human beings is wrong and killing is fundamental to war.

good piece imo

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_8938

American troop levels and war costs in Afghanistan will soar in the coming year, and party leaders, including Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, have warned that Democrats will most likely give the administration just one more year to get a handle on the military situation there before they start losing patience.

Mr. Obey said he would give the White House a year to demonstrate progress, just as he gave the Nixon administration a year to show progress in the Vietnam War inherited from the Johnson administration.

“With respect to Afghanistan and Pakistan, I am extremely dubious that the administration will be able to accomplish what it wants to accomplish,” Mr. Obey said last week. “The problem is not the administration’s policy or its goals. The problem is that I doubt that we have the tools there that we need to implement virtually any policy in that region.”

Mr. Obey, who entered Congress in 1969, added: “At the end of the year, Nixon had not moved the policy, and so I began to oppose the war. I am following that same approach here.”

The House spending bill requires that the Obama administration deliver a report early next year on progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though it does not set any benchmarks for American military performance....

nice!!

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/09/200992111035319236.html

The most senior US and Nato commander in Afghanistan has said the war against the Taliban "will likely result in failure" if more troops are not sent and a new strategy developed.

General Stanley McChrystal said in a leaked report obtained by the Washington Post that, despite some progress, "many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating".

Inability to provide adequate resources "also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support" he said, according to the Post report published on Monday.

"Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."

2 wars > 1 war

this is just a general agitating for thousands more troops, right? and not very subtly.

Hypothetically, what happens if Obama does the sensible thing and haul's ass?

in that case any stubbed american toe that can even theoretically be linked to the actions of an arab person will become the basis for the vilification of the democratic party for the next thirty years

i don't know about that Tracer. i have this vague intuition that nobody in america, outside the political class, wants anything to do with afghanistan.

So politically, Obama only loses support from the left by fighting an unwinnable non-war? Can he not articulately reframe the whole scenario: ("The Taleban, while diametrically opposed to our own values, is not the same as Al Qaeda. Afghanistan has to be responsible for its own future and have the will to resist extremism and keep its people safe. We will provide support where and how we can but we cannot commit to a generation's military occupation of a country thousands of miles from our borders.") in that candid and convincing manner of his?

goole the political class seems to be doing a pretty good job of having things its way these days!

i mean, a majority of americans supports a public health care option. a majority of americans supported letting bank shareholders be wiped out. none of that apparently matters!

i think democrats would be happy to get out of the war in afghanistan because it's a war in afghanistan. i think republicans would be happy to get out because it's obama's war and/or they can complain about it later.

win win!

afghanistan was never tied up with the heavy 'saving civilization' crap that iraq was saddled with, it was basically forgotten by the bush meme machine, as well as practically (remember when john kerry used that against him? lol good times). as a consequence, there's really not any easy idea-hook to pin anything on one way or another. if you want to talk about afghanistan you kind of have to talk about it seriously! there's hardly any domestic politics left to wring out of it (pretty amazing when you think about it). maybe i am completely misreading the entire situation, i dunno...

well we never got osama. i dunno i just feel like we pull out and that first video he makes where he's all like "nanny nanny boo boo, i'm gonna getcha" and the republicans will be like "obama and the democrats don't have the stomach to stay the course against the terrorists who masterminded 9/11"

i mean have you forgotten the way they play these things??

Well, that's Obama's problem.

I'm not going to worry about what David Broder and Newt Gingrich tell Cokie at the Sunday brunch.

that way of thinking is the trap they've set for the democrats of course. if the war on terror is indefinite, and actually infinite, then anything less than maximum bristling hostility can be connected with any perceived success of terrorist tactics, from now until forever. the only way out is to replace that framework. but it will take hard work and discipline among democrats and their kin and frankly on the basis of the last few months - no, the last few decades - i'm not sure they have it in them.

i mean, it's so much more pleasing to talk about "birthers" 24/7 isn't it??

Hey guys remember how well Tom DeLay and the rest of the Republican Congress supported Bill Clinton in Kosovo?

It is, after all, His War now, and since He Owns It, you watch the criticism start to mount through 2010.

yeah i think we're on a short countdown to hearing about supporting afghan civil society and gov't as a fuzzy-headed liberal nation building adventure (which might even be true)

I don't think so - Republicans are gung ho for this war, domestic support for it is almost entirely on the Republican side.

Also the War on Terror meme is dead. That particular propagandistic blight was owned by the Bush admin, and you'll note that Obama has foregone the phrase entirely.

Catching Osama and the upper Al Qaeda leadership is the only practical goal in sight here, and is probably foremost on Obama's mind (a little nation-building in Afghanistan is a prerequisite for accomplishing this though, and you can't do that unless the country is secured militarily... so he's kind of between a rock and a hard place. An open ended military commitment in Afghanistan is doomed, just as it was with the Russians, so that's not really a feasible strategy).

Republican support for the war in Afghanistan is at like 70% or something, are you guys not aware of this

i don't want to say you're not right Tracer -- the current media/political environment means that any action by the president necessitates a not-equal but furiously opposite reaction -- i just don't think afghanistan is a hill anyone wants to die on. where's the real constituency for it?

xps 70% really? you always have to correct for the GOP's atrophied share. ONLY 70% of the people still willing to call themselves republicans? feh, you couldn't go to war on that. can you stay at war on that?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/afghan.war.poll/index.html

The poll suggests that 23 percent of Democrats support the war. That number rises to 39 percent for independents and 62 percent for Republicans.

Support will drop the longer Obama's president.

probably, but I think we're talking years not weeks there

Kosovo's a bad analogy - there were not terrorists who killed American civilians on American soil hiding out in Kosovo, it was an easy war for Republicans to oppose. To support withdrawing from Afghanistan, Republicans have to willingly and publicly admit that catching Bin Laden isn't worth it.

also they won't be able to say that Obama's made less of an effort there than Bush, because that simply isn't possible

so Karzai promised "change" in his re-inaugural address; sounds hauntingly familiar.

and hooray for David Obey:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9126805

so how do we get rid of this warmongering fuck in 3 years?

self-therapy:

http://pol.moveon.org/afghan_timeline/?id=18131-1293854-VAebEWx&t=4

http://rethinkafghanistan.com/?utm_source=credopetition

This was a good light-ish critique of that piece

Some of this is a bit too novelistic in presentation to inspire complete confidence imho, but the core claim that the occupation of Afghanistan was a parade of crimes and horrors is very clearly going to be completely correct. https://t.co/ziiyZCv9Tp

— Lafargue (@Lafargue) September 7, 2021

NYT: The drone strike that the military said took out a potential ISIS car bomber right before we departed Afghanistan likely hit a a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group who was bringing people to and from work. https://t.co/eh5C18FTAg

— Sam Stein (@samstein) September 10, 2021

ah! nevertheless

BREAKING: Gen. McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, to announce no ISIS-K fighters killed in U.S. drone strike in Kabul Aug 29. 10 civilians killed, including 7 children in Toyota. No disciplinary action expected, officials say. US military stands by intel leading to strike.

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) September 17, 2021

No disciplinary action expected, officials say. US military stands by intel leading to strike.

I can only think of a few possibilities of how this went down, but none of them fit with both of these sentences. Either the intel was inaccurate. Or it was inadequate. Or it was accurate and actionable, and the operator made a grievous error and struck the wrong target. Or the operator was ordered by a superior to strike although the target was incorrect.

Asked by a reporter to explain how the "complete and utter failure" could have occurred, McKenzie said, "While I agree that this strike certainly did not come up to our standards and I profoundly regret it, I would not qualify the entire operation in those terms."

Fucking piece of shit

The Taliban takeover has restored order to the conservative countryside while plunging the comparatively liberal streets of Kabul into fear and hopelessness. This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable project—the Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.”

In this week's @NewYorker I write about the Afghan women who wanted US troops to leave https://t.co/nQGzqKPFZu
— Anand Gopal (@Anand_Gopal_) September 6, 2021
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 6 September 2021 17:25 (one week ago) link

*strokes chin thoughtfully*

I've been listening to like 6 different podcasts with Spencer Ackerman bc of his new book being out and I am finding all of them incredibly informative & sensible. His description of how the war wasn't really happening *in* Kabul and it was safe to be a drunk Westerner walking through the streets to your hotel, there was no security, etc, versus how heavily rural areas were droned, mined, and so on...was something I hadn't realized at all.

I put a hold on his book at the library, but I'm 11th in line for a shot at one of the 4 copies in the system.

No disciplinary action expected, officials say. US military stands by intel leading to strike.

I can only think of a few possibilities of how this went down, but none of them fit with both of these sentences. Either the intel was inaccurate. Or it was inadequate. Or it was accurate and actionable, and the operator made a grievous error and struck the wrong target. Or the operator was ordered by a superior to strike although the target was incorrect.

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Friday, September 17, 2021 5:31 PM (two hours ago)

I read this anand gopal essay essay earlier this week and I think it illuminates the perverted ethics of this sort of thing

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians/amp

The Ackerman book is great

incredible pic.twitter.com/8bFf5vVLH5

— rice🌐 (@412ricefarmer) October 25, 2021

otm

they tried so hard to manufacture consent

extremely grim report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/08/afghanistan-winter-crisis/

The country’s new rulers, cut off from most international aid as well as Afghan government assets held in U.S. accounts, have scant resources to protect millions of vulnerable people against another harsh winter. Aid groups estimate that nearly 23 million Afghans, out of a total population of 39 million, already do not have enough to eat. Many also lack solid shelter and money to heat their homes at night, forcing them to choose between food and fuel, and creating additional potential for a full-fledged humanitarian disaster, aid officials said.