Is There Something We As American Citizens Can Do To STOP The Tragic Mayhem In Afghanistan?

I'm always nervous about boring DWT readers by recounting the adventures I had on my trips over forbidden seas to land on barbarous coasts, to paraphrase Herman Melville; that's why I have a travel site. But sometimes I just feel that those adventures have a place here too, like last month when I wrote about my experience with Pashtunwali, the code by which the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan live their lives. My own two lengthy stays in Afghanistan color everything I say and write about the war there.

Yesterday I was reading a post by David Wood at Politics Daily, Afghanistan: Who Are We Fighting For, Anyway?, in which he lays out the case that the rising antipathy for Karzai's corrupt and incompetent government has doomed U.S. efforts in that country. Much of what he has to say I started writing about 8 years ago when Bush blundered into an occupation of that country-- and I based it on what I had picked up in my very first couple of weeks there in 1969!

[A] rising chorus of mid-career U.S. military officers with years of combat experience in Afghanistan say the current war-fighting strategy-- based on making tribal and clan leaders subservient to a central government-- is doomed to fail. Far better, they say, to work with tribes and clans, in essence building trust and security from the ground up rather than the top down.

There is no sign that the military command or the White House is willing to consider abandoning what has been the central U.S. strategy through eight years of bloody war, and more recent demonstrations of widespread corruption in Karzai's government. That idea remains central, according to administration officials: the United States holds to the singular goal of creating the first powerful central government in Afghan history, striving to prop it up and strengthen it to the point where American forces -- now numbering some 74,000 -- can go home.

The result seems to be a widening gulf between official U.S. strategy, and the field experience of officers with broad experience on the ground in Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has acknowledged that Afghan society "is rooted in tribal structures and ethnic identities.'' But he insists that "Afghans do have a sense of national identity.'' And in his West Point speech, the president reiterated his intention to "strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government'' with the 34,000 troop reinforcements now flowing into Afghanistan.

A rejoinder from the field came from Army Maj. Jim Gant, who led a Special Forces team in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004 (and subsequently won a Silver Star for combat valor in Iraq in 2006-2007). In a paper widely shared with journalists, Afghan experts and the military, Gant argued that Afghanistan's tribes should be the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency actions.

"Afghan tribes always have and always will resist any type of foreign intervention in their affairs,'' Jim Gant wrote. "This includes a central government in Kabul, which to them is a million miles away from their problems, a million miles away from their security.

"A strategy in which the central government is the centerpiece of our counterinsurgency plan is destined to fail,'' Gant added. "It disenfranchises the very fabric of Afghan society. . . . By supporting and giving some power back to the tribes, we can make positive progress in the region once again.''

My business partner in Kabul was the equivalent of the Postmaster General. His father had been governor of Herat and was a close relative of the King. When I was arrested with 50 kilos of Mazar-i-Sharif hash, he had me out of jail in hours-- I wouldn't have lasted much longer-- and he had my van and my hash back to me the next day. It took a lot for him to pull it off, because basically, as I learned, the King's jurisdiction was pretty much confined to an area around Kabul and was dependent on the goodwill of tribal leaders in the rest of the country. I was lucky that the guys who caught me had plenty of goodwill, or the baksheesh it cost to get me out would have been in dollars and not afghanis. (I think it cost my friend something like $20 to free me and another $20 for the van and hash, although I was sternly warned that I couldn't take the hash across the border.)

The "official" Afghan government in Kabul was recognized-- and armed-- by foreign powers. But in the valleys that make up Afghanistan, the King was just the damn King of Kabul who the damned foreigners were (unfairly) giving fancier weapons than the ones they had. And no, I wasn't there with the British in 1878.

Where I start to differ with Jim Gant is when he talks about a winning strategy. There is only one winning strategy-- short of completely annihilating the Afghan people-- and that was very well-summed up by Alan Grayson when he said, "People just want to be left alone." There is no place for the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

Yesterday I heard that counterterrorism experts think American shopping malls and airport counters and parking lots are going to be hit by suicide bombers to wreak havoc here in the U.S. If they do it, well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you what the results will be. But these people are sick of our drones killing their women and children. Wouldn't you be? We just have to stop. Obama has to stop. He should listen to the advice defense experts from Rand gave Nixon almost 4 decades ago, about the tragic and ill-fated U.S. invasion of Vietnam:

America should withdraw, they said, unilaterally and immediately-- not "conditioned upon agreement or performance by Hanoi or Saigon." They went on, "Short of destroying the entire country and its people, we cannot eliminate the enemy force in Vietnam by military means." Even further, if every enemy soldier or sympathizer was somehow magically eliminated, the other side would still not make "the kinds of concessions currently demanded"-- a divided Vietnam with the South overseen by a government that the people there thought fundamentally illegitimate. "'Military victory' is no longer the U.S. objective," despite what the American government told the American people, and that wasn't even the worst of the lies: "The importance to U.S. national interests of the future political complexion of South Vietnam has been greatly exaggerated as has the negative impact of the unilateral U.S. withdrawal"-- whose risks "will not be less after another year or more of American involvement."

And that brings us to:

Brownbaggers Not Teabaggers
VIGILS AGAINST WAR FUNDING SPREAD ACROSS NATION

Since the media didn't deem it as newsworthy as the 600 demented and unfocused angry teabaggers who gathered in Nashville last weekend, you probably don't know that PDA organized "brownbag" lunch vigils against war funding at the district offices of 22 congressmembers on January 20th. What these "brownbaggers" want are commitments from congressmembers to vote against more money for war. Not as sexy as Sarah Palin's handjob? Or frothing at the mouth teabaggers screaming racial and ethnic epithets on TV? Maybe that's what the mainstream media thinks but most Americans want to see this war over... now.

Don't worry about having missed one of the first 22 lunchtime vigils. PDA has another whole set-- 37 so far-- scheduled for February 17. That link will show you which ones are on the schedule and help you put one together if there's none near you. So far they are planning them for the district offices of:

Tim Ryan (D-OH) in Akron
Dennis Cardoza (Blue Dog-CA) in Modesto
Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID) in Medidian
Louise Slaughter (D-NY) in Rochester
Rick Larsen (D-WA) in Bellingham
John Olver (D-MA) in Pittsfield
Charlie Dent (R-PA) in Bethlehem
Gary Miller (R-CA) in Brea
Ed Royce (R-CA) in Orange
Chaka Fattah (D-PA) in Philadelphia
Nita Lowey (D-NY) in White Plains
Norm Dicks (D-WA) in Tacoma
Dave Obey (D-WI) in Superior
John Campbell (R-CA) in Newport Beach
Ron Kind (D-WI) in Eau Claire
Lois Capps (D-CA) in Santa Barbara
Mary Bono-Mack (R-CA) in Palm Springs
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) in Huntington Beach
Richard Neal (D-MA) in Springfield
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) in Santa Rosa
Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN) in Jeffersonville
Brian Baird (D-WA) in Vancouver
Kendrick Meek (D-FL) in Miami Gardens
Gary Peters (D-MI) in Troy
Jim McGovern (D-MA) in Worcester
Brian Bilbray (R-CA) in Solana Beach
Susan Davis (D-CA) in San Diego
Joe Sestak (D-PA) in Media
Barbara Lee (D-CA) in Oakland
John Garamendi (D-CA) in Walnut Creek
Bill Young (R-FL) in St. Petersburg
Bilirakis the Younger (R-FL) in Tampa
Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ) in Scottsdale
Betty Sutton (D-OH) in Akron
John Kerry (D-MA) in Boston
Bill Delahunt (D-MA) in Hyannis
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in Bakersfield

Obviously some of these members are heroes of the anti-war movement, like Barbara Lee and Jim McGovern, and some are clueless warmongers, like Gary Miller, Charlie Dent and Baron Hill, so some of these events will be more like "thank you" demonstrations and some will be wake-up calls. And there are an awful lot of Democrats on the list above who talk the talk but who do not walk the walk. We need to help them change that. Remember, "brownbaggers" are asking members of Congress to publicly commit to voting "No!" on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen and to publicly urge their colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment. As lesser steps in the same direction, PDA is encouraging congressmembers to cosponsor HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan.