The Afghanistan Fiasco

In today’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd has an op-ed that is mostly devoid of her usual snarkiness.  It’s entitled Blunder on the Mountain, and deals with the U.S. failure to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora.  She quotes Peter Bergen as follows: 

“In a compelling cover story in the current New Republic called “The Battle for Tora Bora,” Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert, reconstructs the debacle, calling it “one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history.” He reports that Tommy Franks rebuffed the C.I.A. request for 800 Army Rangers from nearby bases to assault the complex of caves where Osama was hiding and block his escape. In the end, Bergen notes, there were more journalists there than Western soldiers.”

The decision by the Bush administration to change the focus, to put it mildly, to Iraq, remains inconceivable to me.  I think however there is ample evidence that invading Iraq was the plan all along, at least on the part of Rumsfeld and Cheney, who had never forgiven Bush the first for failing to pursue Saddam Hussein back into Iraq after driving him from Kuwait.  They saw invading Iraq as the conclusion of unfinished business and they were single-mindedly determined to do it, even if they had to make up connections between Saddam and Al Queda to get there.  Did they lie about WMD’s to further their plan?  Possibly.  More likely, I think (since I’m not big on conspiracy theories), they simply didn’t heed or were deaf to information that contradicted or did not support their goal.  In any case, the result was something worthy of Greek tragedy. 

Just over a year ago, 60 Minutes did a segment with the commanding officer of the Delta Forces assigned to assault Tora Bora, entitled Kill Bin Laden.  This is powerful stuff. 

You cannot help but wonder how different the world would be today had we focused all our power and attention on capturing or killing Bin Laden.  At the time when the entire world was with us in our grief and outrage.

You also can’t help but understand why many people question our continued presence in Afghanistan, because the “front” is now in Pakistan.  And we let that happen.  It’s also no wonder why President Obama thought so long and hard about what to do next.  The question really is:  what is our goal?  If it’s to prevent the Taliban from regaining power, that’s a noble goal.  You have only to read The Kite Runner, or A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini to get a picture of what life was like, and might be again, under the Taliban.  But wasn’t that the rationale for continuing the war in Iraq after the absence of WMD’s was confirmed?  It was like, well, Saddam was a bad guy anyway and needed to go.  Fine, but that’s not why we were supposedly there.   

I feel a bit like Ben Bernanke.  I saw an interview with him, again on 60 Minutes, where he was asked how he felt about “bailing out” the financial institutions which created the recession.  He said he was furious, but more or less then said, “I had no choice”.  I feel the same way about our getting into Iraq and about our escalation in Afghanistan.  I’m furious, but we have no choice.  As I’ve frequently said, no matter how mistaken it was to go there, you don’t go in and blow up a country and then say “oops!”.  My mistake, going home now.   Good luck with the bad guys.