Afghanistan Offensive

The primary reason I was against the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq was because of the bungle the Bush Administration made of Afghanistan. Bush and his think tank lackeys had previously demonstrated that they had neither the intelligence nor the imagination needed for the project they espoused for Iraq; specifically the creation of a democracy in a largely tyrant ruled middle east.

The post-9/11 war in Afghanistan has been lauded by many in the neo-conservative press as a success, because of the rapid collapse of the Taliban. But that lauding came far too early, and it clearly ignored the facts on the ground. Close to three years after the war, Afghanistan is a country largely ruled by drug dealing warlords, with small enclaves of western troops providing very limited protection for urban populations in a few of the larger cities. To depict the results of the war in Afghanistan as any kind of success is a baldfaced lie.

Moreover, it appears things could take a turn for the worse as the spring nears. As the
Asia Times details in an article on a possible spring offensive in Afghanistan.

What galls me is not only the Bush Administration's clear lack of interest in keeping any of it's promises about truly reconstructing and democratizing Afghanistan, but their utter incompetence at failing to recognize a unique historic opportunity. 9/11 presented the US with an opportunity to rally the world to the cause of creating a democracy from a failed state. But that state was Afghanistan, not Iraq. The Taliban harboured a group of vicious killers, and the rest of the world was eager to help the Americans with their cause of ridding the world of a horribly repressive regime.

The Bush Administration should have concentrated its efforts on rebuilding Afghanistan, by pouring more money into reconstructing it than into dropping bombs on it. The Afghani population would have been far more receptive than Iraqis, after decades of unending war and extreme poverty. The US could have helped create the Muslim state the neo-conservatives so desire. A shining beacon of democracy that could have served as a model to the rest of the Muslim world as an example of what the west, and the US in particular, is capable of when it is willing to truly help a people.

The Americans have done it before in post-WWII West Germany and Japan. But due to stupidity, hubris and greed the Bush Administration ignored the lessons of history, and embarked on an Iraq project billed first as the elimination of a brutal threat to world saftey, and later as a liberation from tyranny. But in truth it was, and is, a project ultimately tainted by delusions of American hegemony.