Texas Straight Talk - Ron Paul: End the War in Afghanistan! [Archive]

bobbyw24

06-28-2010, 05:28 AM

C.I.A. Chief Sees Taliban Power-Sharing as Unlikely ... The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta (left), expressed strong skepticism on Sunday about the prospects for an Afghanistan deal being pushed by Pakistan between the Afghan government and elements of the Taliban, saying militants do not yet have a reason to negotiate seriously. "We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation, where they would surrender their arms, where they would denounce Al Qaida, where they would really try to become part of that society," said Mr. Panetta in an interview on ABC's news program "This Week." ... Acknowledging that the American-led counterinsurgency effort is facing unexpected difficulty, Mr. Panetta said that the Taliban and its allies at this point have little motive to contemplate a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan. ... In his remarks on ABC, Mr. Panetta reiterated the narrow goal Mr. Obama set for the Afghan war: "The fundamental purpose, the mission that the president has laid out, is that we have to go after Al Qaeda. We've got to disrupt and dismantle Al Qaida and their militant allies so they never attack this country again." – New York Times

Dominant Social Theme: Look, as soon as we wipe out Al Qaeda and their military allies we'll leave the region.

Free-Market Analysis: This is startling news. We will explain. First of all, the reality of Al Qaeda is fairly tenuous. It may stem from a "list" of Arab militant activists that the CIA kept in the 1980s and 1990s. Second, without state funding there cannot really be an Al Qaeda. It is a dominant social theme – a fear-based promotion, if you will – that terrorist organizations can exist as free-floating cells within the larger body politic. Terrorists need money, places to stay and relatively safety from whence to launch their attacks. Only the state or excrences of it can provide this sort of security in the modern age. Pakistan, for instance, obviously can, and does.

Leon Panetta also made the point on Sunday (as reported in the Washington Post) that there may be as few as 50-100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan now. This is an incredible statement from our point of view. How does he know? Do Al Qaeda look different than Taliban? Do they wear name tags? Do they even exist? We remember when Donald Rumsfeld took to the air on national TV with big charts showing the five-level cave complexes that bin Laden operated out of. There were said to be several and thousands of Al Qaeda, as well, though neither the caves nor Al Qaeda were ever found and several months ago the Youtube videos of Rumsfeld's fatuous explanations were take down due to "copyright infringement."

What is not tenuous at all is the hurdles that statements like Panetta's set up when it comes to disengaging from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, whatever it was, if anything, is now the label for a rag-tag band of young men who are attracted to the fighting in Afghanistan from countries other than Pakistan and Afghanistan itself. The Taliban, of course, are drawn from the 40 million-strong Pashtuns, the loosely linked tribal federation that has lived in the mountainous middle of Afghanistan and Pakistan for up to 5,000 years or more (in one form or another).

Let us translate what Panetta just said this Sunday, then. Here it is, as near as we can figure: "The US, Britain and NATO will not withdraw from Afghanistan until the rebellious Muslim youth drawn to the fighting cease to arrive and cease to fight us. Additionally, we will not withdraw until the Pashtuns effectively surrender and lay down their weapons."

So the demands are on the table. The Pashtuns who have not ceased to fight for hundreds if not thousands of years, must stop fighting. Rebellious youths must stop trickling into the area for training and fighting as well. This strikes us as fairly ambitious. In fact, it strikes us as a methodology for turning a decade-long war into one that goes on for most of the century, so long as America, Britain and NATO can afford it. (Britain has done this before, actually, fighting the Taliban for some 50 years in the latter half of the 1800s, to no real avail.)

There are other complications that Panetta didn't allude to in his statement. In a previous article, we pointed out that the Afghanistan war has become far more generalized now and includes Pakistan. Why Pakistan? Because Pakistan wants to control Afghanistan and has used the Pashtuns and their Taliban fighting force as a means to create a military enterprise that is amenable to Pakistan authority. Pakistan remains a mortal enemy of India and despite US efforts it is hard to see how the leadership and peoples of the two countries will ever get along, not in the short run anyway. Here's some more from the NY Times article:

In his remarks on ABC, Mr. Panetta reiterated

http://www.thedailybell.com/1168/Afghanistan-the-50-Year-War.html