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Who is seeing the real Afghanistan?


Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditure of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war…. The United States presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

Matthew Hoh has served his country bravely in combat and he has responded to a policy with which he disagreed by making the honorable choice to resign. His observations about the situation in Zabul province merit serious consideration. I wish that many others in the previous administration who had serious misgivings about policy but waited to reveal them until after leaving office had, instead, followed Hoh’s example.

Several days later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Washington Post from Benjamin Joseloff, an American serving as a fellow at the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. This initiative, started by Stanford Law students, is devoted to a helping Afghan universities improve the quality of their legal education. Joseloff writes....

continue reading Brian Vogt's post at http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/11/03/who-is-seeing-the-real-afghanistan/


PSA November 3, 2009 - 3:20pm
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( categories: Afghanistan | Analysis | Asia: Central | Global Politics and Culture | Global War on Terror | USA: Armed Forces | USA: Foreign Relations | USA: Homeland Security | USA: Intel and Policy )

Apples and oranges

The article presents Joseloff's view, in part....

I don’t agree with Mr. Hoh that there is nothing here worth fighting for….I am greeted at work every day by cheerful, 18- to 30-year-old Afghan men and women eager to bring peace, stability and, yes, even democracy to their troubled country.

I fail to understand how the awesomely destructive presence of a active foreign military can be saddled with the responsibility of bringing peace and democracy to the country at the same time as it is required to bomb villages, ferret out enemies, etc.

I though the reason for attacking Afghanistan was

1) To capture/kill Osama Bin Laden, which aim no longer seems to matter (if it ever truly did.)

Time passed and this reason transformed into

2) Hunting down Al Qaeda foreign militants holed up in the country conducting vile terrorist training for future attacks on America

but that proved complex since, whoever they were/are, they just packed up and moved to Pakistan or elsewhere.

so that reason evolved into

3) Fighting the Taliban religious political extremists

but that proved unpopular because the Taliban have a significant following within the general population

So now, we're told, that having either accomplished or abandoned all those aims, the military is there to build democracy in the country.

I'm pretty sure that a foreign political idealogy cannot be successfully imported at gunpoint to any country.

The continued presence of the western military in Afghanistan seems desperately in need of a new reason d'etre.

Alternatively, it may be time to drag out that old "Mission Accomplished" banner and go home, leaving the business of rebuilding a healthy social environment to non-military global initiatives whose highly motivated and well trained personnel are best able to do the job.

""If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?" - Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Chickadee November 3, 2009 - 5:03pm
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