Afghan War: Still going, and going...

One principle of government PR is to release news that you would prefer that people not focus on much at a time when other headlines are likely to overshadow it.  Buried in this article is the fact that we are escalating the number of US troops in the Afghan War, as well.

Pakistan's commitment criticized: Appeasing militants only delays likely battle, U.S. general says San Francisco Chronicle 05/04/04:

[US commander in Afghanistan Lt. Gen. David] Barno has boosted his forces in Afghanistan from 11,000 to about 15,000 since the end of last year, but the extra troops have failed to prevent a surge of violence. More than 300 people have been killed in the country so far this year, including almost 100 in the past month.

Fifteen thousand is the largest number I’ve seen so far of US troops in the Afghan War.  I’ve always seen the Afghan War as much more urgent for American security than the Iraq War – not to mention much more legal under international law, though we see all too well now how much the President and the Secretary of Defense care about that.

But this is not the right way to fight a counterinsurgency war, either.  Congress should be having hearings, political leaders should be declaring themselves on whether this escalation is good or bad, the press should be looking at the results and the risks.  Historians and foreign policy analysts looking at how we got to this point with the Islamic jihadist groups can scarcely avoid the fact that the phenomenon in its present form cannot be understood apart from the way in which the US intervened in Afghanistan in the guerrilla war against the Soviets.

These interventions are not like a special all-star football game, where you declare a winner after a certain time and then its all history.  Even a limited intervention like this can have far-reaching, long-term consequences.

I’m unfortunately not surprised that the Iraq War is such a rip-roaring mess, though I am surprised at how quickly the situation has deteriorated.  Because I’ve been paying attention to how the Bush-and-Rummy approach to war has been playing out in Afghanistan.  Now, Congress should be asking another question:  since the Iraq War has become such a fiasco, are we doing what is necessary to make sure Afghanistan doesn’t wind up the same way?  The answer is no.  The answer to the question of what to do about it is considerably more complicated.

The focus of that article is not the US troop escalation, though, but what a flaky farce the Pakistanis have been going through to pantomine cooperation with the US anti-al-Qaeda campaign in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.