Let's Fight A Doomed War In Afghanistan, Not Iraq

There is too a difference between the two major parties. Republicans want us to spend, die and lose in Iraq. Democrats want us to spend, die and lose in Afghanistan.

There's a difference between the two major wars, too. Afghanistan is even less justifiable than Iraq. It's also less winnable.

The lily-livered libbies' "Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan when he invaded Iraq" meme is back.

"Six years after we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan - the origin of the 9/11 attacks - we still don't have our priorities straight," Barack Obama said in Des Moines this week. That followed an October speech in New Hampshire in which he described George W. Bush's response to 9/11 as "perfectly reasonable."

"I supported the invasion of Afghanistan because the Taliban had been supportive and the base camp for al-Qaeida," Obama said. "So I had no problem with that."

In fact, Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. The Taliban were not involved. The "base camp" for al-Qaida was, and is, in Pakistan. (Different country! Look it up.)

Democrats, reports Tom Curry of MSNBC, have embraced an election-year "out of Iraq, shift to Afghanistan" strategy. It's a drone of rhetorical distraction worthy of Karl Rove, and one not one mainstream media outlet has bothered to question. Obama and his fellow Democrats (John Edwards is a laudable exception to the lunacy) say they were for Bush's first war - the one he lost because he didn't spend enough money or enough lives - before they were against the second one.

Obama's hoary sports metaphor, regurgitated since 2005 by Howard Dean, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Harry Reid and virtually every other luminary of the lame left, followed a Dec. 17 vote by Congressional Democrats (201 to 30) to send $30 billion for war against Afghanistan, but nothing for Iraq. No wimps here!

"Afghanistan is the primary front of the fight against Islamic extremism, but for too long we have taken our eye off the ball," parroted Rep. Ike Skelton, Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

In fact, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan the whole time U.S. forces were "looking" for him in Afghanistan. So was al-Qaida, and most of its training camps. The money for 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. The hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Hey, never let the truth get in the way of a good sound byte.

I'm not convinced the military can fight terrorists. Blowing up schools and weddings is a lousy way to fight Islamic extremism. The history of counterinsurgency shows that it's easier to kill your enemies with an open mind than with bombs. But if you're determined to go the military route, you'd be better off taking on Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - in that order.

The New York Times, comrades in clueless centrism with the (oxymoron alert) Democratic leadership, reported that the normally implacable Bush Administration is gripped by "a growing apprehension that one of the administration's most important legacies - the routing of Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - may slip away." Then the paper editorialized: "Unless the United States and Europe come up with a better strategy - and invest more money, attention and troops - the 'good war' will go irretrievably bad."

Ugh. "Good war," indeed. Doesn't anyone care that Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are entirely separate countries?

Committees are being empanelled to analyze why Afghanistan is a mess of warlords, opium farmers and suicide bombers. Could it be the decision to send one-tenth as many troops as Iraq to a nation the same size, but with more daunting terrain and a fierce population of warriors renowned for slaughtering invaders? Was it a PR mistake to replace the Taliban, who stoned rapists and murderers to death, with the Northern Alliance government, whose officials are rapists and murderers? Did the lack of reconstruction increase resentment? How about the grinding poverty, which the U.S. invasion made worse?

Yes.

The cold, hard truth is that Afghanistan can't be won. Not with more money, and not with the 6,000 more troops Obama wants to send there. Not with 60,000, or 600,000.

With the recent exception of 9/11, America's wars have been fought overseas. We have a deadline: We can't stay over there forever. The Afghans, on the other hand, live there. They have time - all the time in the world. They know that all they have to do is wait us out, and hassle our forces in the meantime. They're damned good at it - ask the Brits and Russians.

Not everyone is falling for the Democrats' "forget their war, let's fight our war" spiel, though. A letter to the editor of the Times began: "I hope that when the Bush administration and NATO conclude their analyses of the Afghanistan mission they will reach one inescapable, common-sense conclusion: that Western-style democracy cannot be militarily imposed on a culture that is based on tribal loyalties. Maybe at that point, our nation and the world will be able to finally use our economic and human resources in a more efficient manner."

The letter writer's name was Bill Gottdenker. Too bad he's not running for president.