mojo: Remember Afghanistan... this is a song about Afghanistan...

From our good friends at The Center for American Progress we learn that perhaps the Land of the Khans is perhaps not the newly minted peacable republican kingdom that mythology is making it out to be...

VIOLENCE ESCALATING: The violence in Afghanistan has worsened. More than 60 people have been killed in this month alone. Suicide bombing, previously not the threat in Afghanistan that it has been in other places like Iraq, is becoming more prevalent, with two attacks already this month. NATO is trying to combat the escalating violence and has authorized an expansion of forces in the country and is racing to boost security. But the peacekeeping group has run into massive roadblocks. Knight-Ridder reports, "The alliance has been seriously hamstrung by a lack of contributions of troops and equipment, failing to obtain even enough helicopters for its operations in Kabul."

Correct me if I'm wrong... and it's always possible that I am, but weren't we supposed to have already won the war there? I mean, we even managed to install a vaguely successful mayor in Kabul, what the hell more do those ingrates want from us?

There are chickens coming home to roost, and even now as the spring thaw gets ready to kick off another season of guerrilla war in the highlands on the Paksitani border and more insurgency almost certainly following in the cities, how are we going to manage this without a new commitment of troops we don't have?

Hmmmm...

Interestingly enough, The New York Times Book Review has an interesting take on how this has been working, with a review of several books and publications that have been silently critiquing the U.S. and international experience in nation-building in Afghanistan.

Let's get right down to it, it's a long read:

Last summer, in a joint report, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society issued a similar grim warning:

Unless the situation improves, Afghanistan risks sliding back into the anarchy and warlordism that prevailed in the 1990s and helped give rise to the Taliban. Such a reversion would have disastrous consequences for Afghanistan and would be a profound setback for the US war on terrorism.

The report urges the US to do the very things that Human Rights Watch has been recommending ever since the American victory and that are still not being adequately addressed: speed up training of the Afghan army and police force, provide at least $1 billion for reconstruction—over and above relief aid—for the next five years, help the ISAF expand or make peacekeeping part of the mandate for US troops, and undertake a major diplomatic initiative to bolster Karzai and prevent neighboring countries from interfering in Afghanistan.

That the Taliban are returning in force two years after their defeat is testimony enough that the West's support and strategy for rebuilding Af-ghanistan have so far been a failure. The war against terrorism is still to be won in the Afghan mountains and deserts and among the Afghan people as well. Their nation, the largest and most tragic victim of terrorism, is not being rebuilt. Until that happens there is little incentive for al-Qaeda or extremists elsewhere to lose heart.

The urgency of the Afghan situation was emphasized by Kofi Annan in a UN report issued on December 3. "Unchecked criminality, outbreaks of factional fighting and activities surrounding the illegal narcotics trade," he said, "have all had a negative impact." He warned that "the international community must decide whether to increase its level of involvement in Afghanistan or risk failure."

And we would appear to be well on the way to that failure, and I fear that it is going to make things even worse than they were before 9/11...

Thank's Dubya, thanks a lot...

freekin' doofus...

mojo out!