Right-wing voices talking gibberish

http://texasfred.net/archives/34

"Our fight after 9-11 was with the Taliban in Afghanistan, we kinda/sorta took care of business there and had em on the run, not destroyed, but on the run, had we actually completed that mission we would be in a much different situation today, but NO, we couldn’t DO that, our A.D.D. president took our forces to Iraq on a personal vendetta, a place we had no business going in the 1st place, but he took us there anyway, with WAY less than enough troops to get the job done, and now Afghanistan is very close to being out of hand again…"

I don't often bother with rebuttals of other blogs output. Its a huge fount, and there is not much mileage to slapdowns. But having read many 'conservative' bloggers arguing the same points as TexasFred, I thought I'd explain why I disagree with every single word of his analysis.

First, 9-11 was not a Taliban job. The Taliban paid the price of hosting Al-Qaeda. They became the dead crow on the fence- a reminder to one and all what happens to those who knowingly harbour America's deadly foes. The Taliban no longer control Afghanistan. Completely destroying the Taliban- 'completing the mission' is a virtually unattainable goal, even for NATO/US. Looking at a map of the North West Frontier Province will tell you why. Get out a ruler, and work out how much room they have to hide in. You would need 5 armies the size of the US army to weed them all out, and even if you did, what exactly would you have achieved? The tribes of the NWFP have always been murderous, lawless and brutal. It is enough from a practical point of view to convince them that harbouring foriegn jihadis is not worth the hassle, and let them get on with their usual pastimes. As long as NATO/US can construct a semblance of a working country in lowland Afghanistan, with proper roads, schools and administrations, they will have won. Completely destroying the Taliban was never a strategic US goal, and rightly so.

'Afghanistan is nearly out of hand again'? Really? Do you people read the news reports AND have access to maps? Most of the fighting in Afghanistan is in two provinces, Helmand and Kandahar, both of which border Pakistan. Both are Pushtun. Both are a long, long way from the capital, Kabul. In the rest of Afghanistan, people are getting back to a relatively normal life. Do I really have to explain to you that the media will NEVER report about the places where people are getting along fine, and ONLY report from the places where stuff is getting blown up. You have to find out about the getting-along-fine stuff yourself, or not at all. Not only that, but for various reasons, the Taliban invasion of Afghanistan scheduled for this spring has not taken place. Main reason? Can't get enough recruits. Main reason for that? Very very short life expectancy for Taliban grunts (as opposed to the brass, who never seem to die).

I have described many times my own view of the US/British invasion of Iraq, and why it was both necessary and good. The ludicrous assertion that Bush attacked Iraq to progress a personal vendetta hardly needs comment. When the history books come to be written, the fact that George W. Bush destroyed the regime which George G. W. Bush had also fought a war with will be a small footnote. The main story is probably best told from the point of view of the megalomaniacal dictator- how Saddam Hussein rose to power in a potentially wealthy, well-organised country, and created his own hell on earth. It will detail how Hussein could not resist the temptation to make war on his neighbors, and tried to build an arsenal of the most awful weapons of war to enhance his personal standing. And how finally, after riding the brink of war with the US for twelve long years, he finally lost the game of bluff. Any description of Iraqi affairs which seeks to diminish the responsibility of the main player is an abuse of history.

There is no evidence that the US had too few troops to invade Iraq with. The invasion was a resounding and comprehensive success. The valid criticisms of US action in Iraq stem from the naivety and ignorance of the men tasked with creating the new Iraqi settlement. Britain had hundreds of years, and thousands of men immersed in the task of ruling other peoples countries- America has virtually no experience at it. Paul Bremers administration did virtually none of the tasks it needed to do, with virtually none of the information it needed to perform those tasks. They behaved towards Iraq as if it were just like Kansas, but with a different language. This failure to get to grips with the particular nature of Iraq virtually guarunteed failure to produce a workable polity. The judicious application of force, combined with a detailed knowledge of the political mechanisms in place in Iraq could have spared many hundreds of thousands of lives. That is a tragedy. It is not, however, evil. The intentions of the US/British coalition are good. But the learning curve is steep, and hopefully next time the US fronts up to an evil dictator, I trust that they will spend five times as long planning his replacement. Carnage is the alternative.

I met many Americans during my time there whose views exactly coincided with TexasFreds- a bizarre mix of ignorance, shrill jingoism, fatalism and xenophobia. I have to say I got very tired of listening to their tirades. Of course for every American like that, there are ten who are knowledgeable, reasonable, rational and open to argument. And it is these latter on whom I pin my hopes for the future of American interventionism in the world. The United Nations was meant to be the means by which the fruit of good governance, world trade and good international behaviour were delivered to the world. But it can't deliver: it is now a completely corrupt and shambolic husk which cannot and will not stop evil regimes from doing evil things to their own people and to other countries (e.g. Sudan, Rwanda, Burma, North Korea, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Kosovo, Iraq etc etc etc). So its up to America, with the help of all the other non-currupt nations, to shoulder the burden. Its a helluva job, but somebody has to do it.