Losing the War in Afghanistan

If a picture is worth a thousand words, that's just 6,000 words of value I've added, right?

No. First of all, I'm an awful photographer. These are digital photos, taken at low-res. They are not publication quality.

I could set my camera to high-res, and publish those here but it would be a waste. The files would be too heavy for anyone visiting over a lower bandwith connection, such as visitors from overseas.

Over the past three and a half years, people have accessed this blog from all over the planet. The last time I checked, at least one person from virtually every country on earth had visited Hotweir at least once.

Maybe no one from Kazakhstan has come by yet, but they should, given the many times I write about Central Asia, especially Afghanistan. Life in the Land of the Afghans (Pasthuns) is not that different from life in the Land of the Kazakhs, except the latter at least are not suffering from an unending war.

My political opinion has changed, again. My unwavering support for the war in Afghanistan has weakened considerably over the months. This is unlike Iraq. It isn't a civil war of clashing ethnic groups, although it could easily degenerate into that at some point, whether the U.S. military is there or not.

Rather than force, I'm starting to sense a more powerful weapon. It was the rebellion in Iran that first got me thinking this way. Then, came last week's election in Japan. For the first time since World War Two, for the first time in Japan's experiment with democracy, the ruling party was thrown out of power.

The events in both Iran and Japan were inspired by the election of Barack Obama. The things that conservatives and know-nothings despise about Obama, though they never admit it, are primarily his race, his family's Islamic background, his centrist politics, and his ability to inspire people of all faiths, beliefs and politics.


In other words, the fringe right fears Obama. They are frightened little people, cowering before the specter that their ways are fading away, never to return.

If they actually had the analytical ability to see what Obama's influence has become, on a global level, they would have to remake their own geo-political calculus much as I have had to.

Obama has the power to change Japan, the world's second largest economy, from a pseudo-democracy into (finally) a functional democracy. No previous U.S. President had this power.

I'm still a realist about the need for drone attacks on the badlands of the Khyber Pass, and an agreement with whoever happens to be in power in Kabul that al-Qaeda leaders will be bomb-able by the U.S. wherever and whenever we locate them.

It's time for a true "War of Terror." In the course of that, it's time to stop being seen as an occupation force by the Afghans. A deep irony about these people, many of whom I have known and respected deeply all of my adult life, is the minute the U.S. removes its military troops, our national image will begin to improve among the Afghans and their need for our support will increase accordingly.

Afghans are first and foremost realists. They don't want Russia, Iran or Pakistan to have undue influence in their internal affairs. They actually prefer Americans to all of those potential occupiers by an order of magnitude.

The problem is that right now we are on the wrong side of the Afghan equation. We've allowed ourselves to become the bad guys who kill civilians and don't bring peace or security.

You can still argue this political position from either side; to be precise, I can still argue it. It is the proverbial rock and hard place; we are basically screwed whether we stay or leave.

Obama, of course, wants the international community to really embrace this piece of the war on terror, but most countries are far more sensitive to the utter inability of any outsider to impose order on a country so chaotic that no conqueror -- from Alexander the Great to the British to the Soviets -- has ever succeeded.

The U.S. won't, either.

I'm no foreign policy expert, and this is not a white paper. But it's time to start rolling back from military confrontation, I believe, and step up economic incentives and the "lead-by-example" method that has destabilized Iran and re-energized Japan in the first few months Obama has been on the job.

He can and will work wonders in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

The military is the military, even the best-trained, best-resourced military in the world, and that is based on imposing physical force on "bad guys." The trouble is that the paradigm has shifted and today's bad guy is tomorrow's friend.

We're still, as a people, trying to undue the "clash of civilizations" the Bush-Cheney crowd decided to employ post 9-11. It failed.

It's time to turn another page. It's time to wage peace.

p.s. That was about 800 words.

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