Move along, nothing good to see here
Talking about Afghanistan, I think this bolsters my point that we didn't do much good there.
A suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car near a U.S. military convoy Monday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing himself and wounding an American soldier and two passers-by, officials said.I'm predicting this will get worse in 06.
...The blast follows a string of suicide attacks and comes days after a top Taliban rebel commander, Mullah Dadullah, claimed that more than 200 insurgents were willing to kill themselves in assaults on U.S. forces and their allies.
...Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden. The fighting killed about 1,600 people as militants belonging to the Taliban, al-Qaida and other groups have stepped up attacks.
posted by Libby Spencer at 3:20 PM
4 Comments:
Afghanistan is not as bad as Iraq right now, but the sad thing about Afghanistan is that we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory there.
Afghanistan should have been the beginning of the domino effect of democratization across the region. Going to Iraq to do something that anyone with any knowledge of the region knew had a narrow chance of succeeding, and leaving behind minimal resources to build up Afghanistan doomed that country to a continuation of the same old mess.
And not understanding how to deal with the poppy farmers just makes that mess worse.
Afghanistan should have been the beginning of the domino effect of democratization across the region.
Exactly.
This was, in my opinion, the highlight of the Bush administration - a well conceived, well executed plan that toppled an "announced" enemy of America.
Team Bush took their eye off the prize too early - abandoning Afghanistan for the folly that is the Iraq war.
But, in my opinion, it does not detract from the success that was available to America in Afghanistan.
Bush took his eye off Afghanistan because it was never his goal to complete the mission there. Iraq was the goal from day one.
Unfortunately, it appears that Bush is again failing to carry through on promises and stated goals. Bush will not ask Congress to renew $18 billion in reconstruction funds for Iraq when the budget is presented to Congress next month. We should be asking ourselves why. I doubt his motive is to reduce the huge deficit. I'm afraid he might have his eye on another target - Iran, another try at social security maybe?
We should all be skeptical. President Attention Deficit Disorder is bored with his war that isn't going too well and he wants a new project to dabble in.
I never thought taking out the Taliban and bombing the bejebus out of the country was a good plan for dealing with AQ. It looks to me like we did was destablize an at least predictable , if distasteful gov't. I believe it's much more chaotic than we see in the press and the indigenous are definitely not better off than they were before. It's not like we actually acheived a victory there. We have still have active military operations that you don't hear about and the violence has been escalting as the Taliban and AQ regroup. We effectively created two common enemies.
As far as what's happening with the poppy farmers, it's just disgusting. Instead of going after the processors and distributors that are making all the money that financing the "terrorists" they're employing the same failed strategy as Plan Colombia, going after the lowest and weakest link in the production chain - the indigineous farmers.
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