I didn't say that... but some of the mistakes made in Afghanistan have certainly made success (which was never going to easy) far more remote and failure far more likely.
I'm not sure that global perceptions mean much. It's Afghan perceptions that count, and it appears that to many Afghans our presence is precisely what deprives the Government of legitimacy. If large portions of a populace see foreign efforts to enable as an inherently de-legitimizing factor, the outcome of anything we do will be seen as illegitimate simply because it was we who did it.
It also has to be noted that we do have a stake in at least one facet of the outcome: the question of whether AQ will be able to use Afghanistan as a refuge and a base. If that interest is illegitimate, then our entire presence there has been illegitimate from the start, because that's why we're there.
I'm not sure we have the capacity to force the GIROA to dissolve itself and hold a Loya Jirga to create a new government. Afghanistan has a Constitution - adopted by a Loya Jirga, I believe. Does it provide for an outside power demanding a new government? Are we proposing to tell the Afghans that WE have decided that what that Loya Jirga did was no good, this constitution is no good, this government isn't working, and WE want a new Loya Jirga to select a new government? Do we propose the toss the entire edifice that we helped to establish, because WE aren't happy with what it's done? Somehow I don't think that's going to be interpreted as us relinquishing control.
Of course Karzai isn't going to hold any kind of assembly that could remove him from power. I expect he'd like to stage a sort of grand consultation, packed with delegates that support him, and use it to reinforce himself. If we try to stop him, we are effectively asserting ourselves as the real governing power in Afghanistan, which is more likely to enable the insurgency than to disable it.
If we've been paying all that money to control the peace, or to control anything, we've gotten a very raw deal, because when you get right down to it, what have we actually controlled? Between, say, the end of the Cold War and 9/11, did we ever control a Muslim country? If we did it must have been very briefly and under cover of absolute darkness, because I sure didn't notice it. Even during the Cold War we were manipulated more effectively and more consistently than we manipulated others: how many dictators discovered to their delight that they could unlock the US Treasury simply by shouting the word "Communist"?I've said it before, but we need to confront our fears as a Nation; and it is not a fear of terrorists or even of other nations. It is a fear of who we will be if we relinquish the role of controling outcomes.
Why is our military so budget-crushing big compared to other states? To fight the wars that might occur? No. It is so damn big and committed to so many big ticket programs to control the peace
Though much of the 90s our policy was not to control, but rather to avoid, deny, and kick as many problems as possible down the road for others to deal with. Once the Soviets were out of Afghanistan we forgot the place existed. We let the UN take the lead in Iraq, and ended up with a stagnant stalemate - we may or may not have had a better alternative, but we certainly didn't try to take control. When AQ first attacked us our response was not to seek control, but to fire off a few cruise missiles and go back to watching the Nasdaq.
Not saying I'm in favor of the control passion, but I'm not convinced that it's the sole cause of our current problems. There's a fair blend of causes at play, and I think we're deceiving ourselves if we choose to see the problems purely as a response to our actions. The other parties involved do not merely respond, they can and do actively initiate actions in pursuit of their own agenda.
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