Orphaning failure

"Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan." -- Common proverb

"Woe to those who began this war, if they were not in bitter earnest." -- Mary Chestnut

As Kevin pointed out in another forum, a growing number of previously hawkish columnists are now expressing reservations about the efforts in Afghanistan. It's been said U.S. foreign policy drifted along in the 1990s, without a coherent framework after the fall of the USSR. But the same has been true the past eight years, too, only the bullets have been flying nonstop during that time. This is simply inexcusable.

Too harsh, you say? Hardly, I reply. Eight years should be time enough to figure out the strategic endpoint to current efforts. What is the desired outcome? Stable governments in Iraq and Afghanistan? OK -- strongmen could produce those. Democracy? OK -- be prepared for Shiite government in Iraq, and Taliban government in Afghanistan. Trying to square these circles is producing the laughable consequence of a ballot-stuffing would-be strongman in Afghanistan. Is this kind of farce really what we're paying and dying to continue?

It's possible, though highly unlikely, that a focused, sustained national effort after 9/11 might have shifted Afghanistan out of its bloody 30-year rut onto a new and better path. We will never know, because like the ADD nation we are, we immediately took a detour through Baghdad that siphoned off most of whatever power we could have brought to bear on the more immediate problem. We left just enough forces in Afghanistan to be perceived as an occupier, but not enough to provide the security necessary for people to reconstruct their society along different lines. And the Afghans have long been an anvil upon which to break occupiers.

We have not been 'bitterly earnest' about either war--Iraq or Afghanistan. Our political class certainly cheered on couch-potato patriotism, but neither party attempted to mobilize anything resembling a true national effort. To do so would have required clear enunciation of objectives beyond lining the pockets of defense contractors and private armies, or using Osama as a poster boy for surrendering civil liberties at home.

Our nation has a lot to answer for in Afghanistan. We used them as proxies against the Soviets, then abandoned them for lack of interest after the Cold War. Only when the Taliban overreached by protecting Osama after 9/11 did we reengage, ensuring the blood would continue to flow. Three decades of non-stop violence has shattered any chance of a peaceful, democratic nation there anytime soon--there are simply too many scores to be settled and deaths to avenge.

We are responsible, directly and indirectly, for many of those deaths. Along the way we've squandered vast amounts of blood, treasure, and moral standing. None of this will be forgotten anytime soon. I doubt the nation has the resolve to pursue what it would take to pull something worthwhile from this mess... particularly since we can't seem to define what 'worthwhile' would be. Far from creating security, we have galvanized generations of Afghans and their foreign jihadist allies to a searing hatred of us. That fury is our forseeable future. As Mary Chesnut said in her diary, the day has not yet come when the chattering classes will be required to sacrifice. But it is coming. We've done just enough to make sure of that.

"I want to know who the men in the shadows are. I want to hear somebody asking them why... they can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are, but they're never the ones to fight or to die."