Feinstein: Afghanistan Cannot Sustain A Democracy
By dday Monday Sep 14, 2009 6:00pm
It's one thing for the Bernie Sanderses and Russ Feingolds to openly question the mission in Afghanistan. It's quite another for Dianne Feinstein to do so.
KING: Well Senator Feinstein, you're the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence. To the question of where this ends, it is eight years after 9/11. We've paused and reflected on that just the other day. You see the things that we can't see, the intelligence. Are we winning in Afghanistan? Are we any closer to finding Osama bin Laden, and does the president have a clear strategy, in your view?
FEINSTEIN: Well, I can tell you this. A lot of the leadership has been taken out of al Qaeda. I can say and I think you would agree that Afghanistan and the Pakistani border are still the major safe haven, the major safe haven for terrorists in the world. And these are people who will, if they can, come after us, not necessarily the Taliban, but certainly al Qaeda and other affiliated groups.
So we have to consider that. We have about 60,000 troops there, another 8,000 are moving in with our allies, it about equals the force that is in Iraq. To the best of my knowledge, the president has had no request for additional troops up to this time. My view is that the mission has to be very clear. I don't believe --
KING: Has to be means it is not now?
FEINSTEIN: I believe it is not now. I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity.
I do believe that clearing out Al Qaida, clearing out the Taliban is a bona fide part one of the mission. I do agree that training Afghan troops, Afghan -- Afghan police is an important piece of the mission.
I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, well, we'll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do. I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.
Feinstein is actually more charitable about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan than the commanding general on the ground, Stanley McChrystal, who said this week that there are no signs of major Al Qaeda anywhere in the country.
But as far as the wariness of the viability of Constitutional democracy in Afghanistan, you need only look to their recent election, into which the opposition leader is now seeking a criminal investigation. He has accused Hamid Karzai of treason and "state-engineered fraud". Despite this, Karzai will probably win election on the first ballot, and a vote that has been horribly compromised will be made official. We saw in Iran how this can lead to violence and chaos, and Afghanistan is not nearly as stable. Without a viable partner in the government, as Feinstein says we cannot expect an endless commitment. Yet because Karzai is Pashtun the US will likely back him in this fight, alienating the other ethnic groups in the region. Kalashnikovs are flying off the shelves in the Tajik areas. Civil war is not an unlikely scenario at this point.
This further limits the mission, away from state-building and toward dealing with the elements in the country willing to deal. Otherwise we set ourselves up for a decade-long slog that will only end with more dead and more treasure squandered, to little effect. And yes, as Sen. Feinstein says, that process should have an end date.
(h/t Heather)
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Talk about a 100 year war, this could be one. We may have had a chance to make Afghanistan a democracy if we had stayed there and not gone to Iraq, or if we had stayed there after the Russians left and helped them rebuild their country. We are at the point now where the Afghan people don't like us....time to leave.
Just another one of little Georgie's collossal fuck-ups. If they would have let the rangers capture bin Laden when they had him surrounded, instead of "outsourcing" the job to tribal leaders, how different might things have been?
Historians can never, ever, write enough scathing opinions to even begin to describe the sheer magnitude of destruction this stupid, greedy, evil cowardly sociopath unleashed upon our country.
That's who was really driving the train.
I think anyone paying attention knew that when we deployed into the tribal areas largely ruled by anti- American warlords that insurgents from all over would jump at the opportunity to fight against Americans. This is what we all talked about before going in. Where is the surprise in this? Just like opposition leader Abdul Abdul claiming vote rigging. I see nothing surprising there of course he will say that because he represents the faction that hates us the most. If anyone liking us there was a prerequisite then we would have never gone. You say time to leave I say time to finish the job. If the insurgent element can see that by way of their efforts we will back away from our challenge then in my opinion we are admitting defeat. I support our efforts there until the last guy gets home and if the General on the ground say we need more troops to make the men already there safer then we need to send them. If the general on the ground says more equipment is needed the send it and not a month from now.
After all, the job was get the people responsible for 9/11. They ain't there any more! w let them get away. w spoke big words and made lofty promises but his real "mission" was to inflate the coffers of his wealthy friends in the oil and arms industries. He lied to us and a lot of brave men and women died as a result. Enough! We'll never "win", no matter how long we stay if the enemy we seek isn't there anymore. And, if we were serious at this point, I don't think the world would condone the amount of blood on either side that would be shed in the countries where the enemy is.
Well you do realize the "people responsible for 9/11" go a lot deeper than just those few guys on the planes and Bin Laden himself. There is a world wide network of these "people" that would like to see Americans die. I think that is what most of us agreed the "job" would be after we all witnessed the towers fall and our people die there. What if we had got Bin Laden the next day? Would that be the be all end all answer to you surfjac? I don't think that you doubt there is a job to be done there I think you don't even realize what the job should be. In the same article above where it quotes the general "there are no signs of major Al Qaeda" he also said that "allied troops there likely prevented other terror attacks since 9/11" Do you think it would be a good idea to keep on preventing that? Like it or not it's a fact Afghanistan was a sancuary, training ground and staging area for terrorist from all over the world who had a few things in common one of which was the will to kill Americans. It still is!
Senator, please tell us something we don't already know.
or does she thingk they should be using more of her husband's weapons.
Civil War can be very very good for business!
Just like it was (and likely will be again - soon) in Iraq.
Really? I thought all they had were guns and poppies. And the Taliban.
The US Government is not interested in Democracy, there or here.
War profits, oil, oil pipelines and poppies.
Does anyone wonder about Senator Blum?
I am beginning to have doubts about this country sustaining a democracy.
Although as any Repug will be happy to tell you, we don't HAVE a democracy here. I simply question the sustainability of liberty in this country under our soon to be Corporate Aristocracy.
and some progressives say we are living in a plutocracy. Bob Dylan said we are on our own, we always were, in a land of wolves and theives. I say everyone can be bought. The trick is to live your life in such a way that no one can afford the price.
... DiFi's math is pretty bad. Since when is 68,000 troops about equal to the force in Iraq? Last numbers I saw were about 128,000 troops in Iraq, and about twice as many mercenaries... I mean, "contractors".
And how does DiFi propose that U.S. and NATO forces "clear" the Taliban out of Afghanistan when the Taliban are Afghans and actually live there?
And, as noted above, McChrystal acknowledges that there are no Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Perhaps this nugget of intelligence never made it to the Intelligence (sic) Committee.
It's this kind of ignorance of basic facts that makes you wonder how clowns like DiFi can open their mouths in public without being laughed off the stage / set / podium / whatever. This, coupled with the fact that she sat on the Intelligence (sic) Committee all through the Bush era and never said a word about the lies and deceit that were being propagated by the regime and its enablers in their push to war, in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wish someone would stand up at one of her bloviatings and shout: "You lie!" But that would be redundant.
short is to hand it over to Iran
call me cynical this is not about democracy but more about capitalistic imperialism.
"Feinstein is actually more charitable about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan than the commanding general on the ground, Stanley McChrystal, who said this week that there are no signs of major Al Qaeda anywhere in the country."
Not near as charitable as the author of this post in conveniently leaving out the fact that Gen. Stanley McChrystal also went on to say
allied troops there likely prevented other terror attacks since 9/11.
That was the point in being there right?
He also stated that "where the Taliban has success, that provides a sanctuary from which al-Qaida" and "We have not been struck again in the United States, and I think the strikes that would have hit across the world – not just in Europe or the United States but I think also in much of the Muslim world – I think have been prevented"
There are lots of generals. One is bound to have said whatever you are looking for.
And what you found is laughably vague: "likely prevented"?
Evidence is required for these self-serving assertions.
What I found was from the link to the huffington post article that the author of this blog posted. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/11/mcch...
While there are a lot of generals there are only 12 4 star generals in the army a any given time and Gen.Stanley McChrystal is the current Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. So when you say there are a lot of generals I would say not like him.
That way, she no longer has any direct influence on my state.
Sorry, but she's in the pocket of the RIAA, the MPAA, the insurance industry and basically every corporation out there. She's opposed to Net Neutrality. Her position on Afghanistan may be OK, but she's so bad on so many other things that I just want her away from me.
and her husband are part of the Military Industrial Complex. War is good for the Feinsteins. She is a big pal of the Zionist Cabal. Her and Schumer were the key deciding votes allowing Mukasey to become Bush's AG after Gonzo. We do not need her as a Democrat. A snake in the grass is more like it.
Just for the record, I don't agree that there's a Zionist Conspiracy, and her opinions on gun control and the military may suggest that she's not much for the military part of the military-industrial complex.
Then again, she may be pro MI-complex. I just haven't looked at her MI-complex votes too closely.
What is "the mission" in Afghanistan?
Obama is smoking and mirroring us with his nothing payoff-to-insurance-companies healthcare bill.
And while we're talking about it - without any hope of having any effect on the government - Obama goes right ahead bombing these poor people.
We seem to be incapable of learning anything.
America is a funny place. Since we are only a few hundred years old as a social entity of diverse immigrant populations, we basically don't _have_ a culture. Really, you aren't going to argue that Disney, the NFL, the NRA, Neocon Jesus, and Las Vegas count, are you? Just technology in service of pragmatic, imperial expansionism -- and American Idol. We hit the Pacific and had to keep going to Hawaii, Manila, Central America and, then, the world after WWII. To bring more things to the homeland like a nest of army ants.
So it's interesting when America runs up against an homogenous culture with a history going back a millennium or two. We just assume that if we build them the Magic Castle, they will want to live in it. Of course, it never works out that way. In the first place, we like to bomb them back to the Dark Ages, bring back a third of their electricity and proclaim, "Look what we gave you." And when the Magic Castle is built by contractors, the pipes leak and the walls crumble. Even when the Magic Castle is built, it seems to be the odd American who figures out that not all cultures _want_ to be Disneyfied. They already have a culture, thank you, and it isn't something they are going to change like this fall's fashion.
Like David Bowie sings, "I'm afraid of Americans." So anarchistic and rootlessly odd.
This is another reason why America has its head in its ANUS. Second, I don't know why people pay attention to this woman. She is one pathetic politician. I cringe when I see this woman. Amazed why Californians STILL vote this woman in. You would expect that from the midwest, but CALIFORNIA.??? Go figure.
More like the US cannot sustain Afghanistan.
Bush tried and failed to bring democracy through war to both those countries and in the process has just made the Islamic world hate us beyond redemption. Most of the people that Feinstein is talking about training are illiterate and cannot be trained, unless we set up schools to teach them how to read and write first. This is a hopeless mess from which we should extricate ourselves today.
Forcing democracy on Muslim countries was shrub's shtick. Afghanistan has had its own kind of tribal/democratic government since, perhaps, the time of Alexander. We have no business dictating what kind of government Afghanis should have. Let them decide.
I didn't read the other comments, but...
seems as if the real problem is we put dooshbags in power in order to force the taliban out.
So we exchanged assholes for 'friendly' assholes.
Except, they're not friendly to the citizens of Afholustan.
We did indeed fuck that country up, twice, and we do indeed need to fix it.
As a lib, this kills me, but leaving is not an option anytime soon.
Stop listening to the know-nothing pacifist idiots. We leave, they die.
Repeat.
We leave, they die.
Read the real history of the post Vietnam era. Do you want that blood on your hands just to save U.S. Soldiers lives?
To those that broke balls about "our lives versus theirs", do you really suggest we bail now?
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