THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 3, 2009
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Matt Yglesias and Michael Cohen, both of whom have been asking very tough and smart questions about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, doubt that our copious care in avoiding civilian casulaties--as opposed to the Soviets' savage tactics--could make the difference between victory and defeat there. Quoth Matt:
Maybe. That said, I don’t really think it’s a fair comparison. The Soviets had to fight a Mujahedeen force that was receiving open and full-throated support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, plus substantial financial and material assistance from the United States. We’ve had our problems with Pakistan playing footsie with the Taliban, but nothing like the level of open support for anti-Soviet forces that the Russians had to contend with. And you’d have to assume that our efforts in Afghanistan would be badly complicated if the government of China decided to adopt the Taliban as its proxies.
Fair point. On the other hand, it's not as though the Taliban don't have own well-heeled patrons. Just last week, Richard Holbrooke complained about the sustenance the Taliban gets from Gulf Arab states--prominently including Saudi Arabia (though not, admittedly, from the official regime, but rather "individuals carrying suitcases with money," as Holbrooke puts it.) But that's presumably not the same as the superpower (i.e. American) support that the anti-Soviet mujahideen enjoyed.
P.S. Cohen argues that "[s]imply because the Soviets targeted civilians and lost the war does not mean that the US protecting civilians will win the war." I agree! Didn't mean to imply otherwise. Just thought the contrast between the two armies is important to consider when drawing historical analogies.
2 comments
Listening to apologists for American foregn policy in Afghanistan talk about apologists for the Soviet Union's foreign policy in Afghanistan is a lot like listening to apologists for Chinese foreign policy talk about apologists for American foreign policy in Afghanistan while listening to apologists of American foreign policy talk about apologists for Chinese foreign policy in Sudan. Or something in the vicinity. Around and around the hypocrisy goes; as though the foreign policy of any world power over the course of human history was not predicated first and foremost on exploiting the far weaker Third World nations in whatever manner was more effective. But which is worse, the idealists, the realists....or the hackneyed hypocrisy of the Bilderberg denizens? Too close to call. And no way to come up with a vocabulary to encompass it all anyway. george
- iambiguous
September 3, 2009 at 5:36pm
"would be badly complicated if the government of China decided to adopt the Taliban as its proxies." That is not a fair point, there is not a snowballs chance in hell that China would ever do such a thing, especially when they already have to deal with the Uighers in Xinjiang. The Taliban represent about as big a long term threat to them as they do to us. That hypothetical is absurd and he should be called on it. Certainly the war is unwinnable from the perspective of getting any kind of lasting peace and stable government, but that is not the war we are fighting. The Taliban are rats and we are exterminators. Just because there are always rats doesn't mean the exterminators have lost, we need only control the vermin infestation as much as possible. The Russians in fact almost did win that war, and it wasn't because they killed everyone, they devised those tactics when they began to lose and the reason they began to lose is because we armed the mujahadeen with stinger missiles and other advanced weaponry, this leveled the fight. There is no one that can offer the Taliban that. George Will's hysterics aside, we are winning the war we set out to fight, which is to contain the rat infestation in Afghanistan so that those rats would not be able to spread.
- blackton
September 3, 2009 at 5:59pm