Remember Afghanistan?

(Cross-posted at Candide's Notebooks)

(Added on March 16, a link to a BBC World Service broadcast re why the U.S. believes we've got a blueprint for winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan.)

George Bush has said so many times that Bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their allies are "on the run," the phrase has become prayer-like, a way to get Americans to nod our heads and smile in agreement at his public pep rallies. Since both he and Cheney have become highly skilled over the past eight years at not telling the truth while not technically lying, we'd be foolish at this point not to ask, "In which direction are they running, Mr. President?" We, the little people who are sending in our taxes and our sons and daughters to support this effort, would like to know the answer to that question.

Writer/photographer Matthew Cole explores these rhetoric/truth boundaries in a March 10, 2008, first-person account in salon.com. Cole traveled to Afghanistan and met with a former Taliban commander who goes by the pseudonym Haji Muhammed out of fear of being assassinated for treason, and who told Cole in Pashto, a language that is probably not one of the foreign language offerings by your local public school district this year, "If you had tried to interview me this time last year, I would have killed you."

Cole exposes the truth about our efforts in that country, a truth that belies the cheerleading of our commander-in-chief. The official Bush/Cheney line, AKA war rhetoric, is that Pakistan is a committed ally in the war on terror. Really! The reality is that we are paying for both sides of the war on terror in Afghanistan.

How can this be? The Pakistani government's intelligence agency and certain elements of its military have been aiding the Taliban using part of the $10 billion that America has ponied up since 9/11 and handed over to the Musharraf regime. Aid to the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is part of Pakistan's well-known foreign policy, so our government officials have got to know that our foreign aid to Pakistan is being spent to kill our troops and the Afghan people they are dying for in their brave efforts to help them.

So while we are officially directing military and financial efforts toward helping the Afghan people and our puppet-government in Kabul become strong, independent, and economically able to resist the lure of the Taliban and al Qaeda, we are also directing military and financial efforts toward helping the Pakistani government pursue its foreign policy agenda within Afghanistan to keep Afghanistan weak. Since it's safe to say that this part of the Pakistani foreign policy is anti-American, and that America is paying for that part of the Pakistani foreign policy, it's also safe to say that America is paying for the attacks on our own troops and on our allies in Afghanistan. In other words, our own foreign policy in Pakistan is anti-American.

Got that? We are paying our friend to buy a gun to give to their friend who is our enemy, so that our enemy who is their friend will then use that gun to shoot us. Somehow, that just doesn't seem like a very intelligent thing to be doing.

This knowledge is especially disturbing when you combine it with the fact that we are right now sending 3,200 more Marines into Afghanistan to fight the anticipated springtime Taliban offensive that is being financed by our own foreign aid money to Pakistan. First, we paid for the Taliban surge. So now, we have to pay for a U.S. troops surge to counteract the U.S. taxpayer-financed Taliban surge.

Why on earth are we paying to support the Taliban's steady comeback and the highest levels of American and Afghan casualties since we took on the military task in Afghanistan right after 9/11?! Despite the well-intentioned and heroic efforts of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, this is a losing battle. Our own military cannot possibly be expected to compete with the extraordinary amounts of U.S. money going toward defeating them! Every time our government pumps more money and blood into the war in Afghanistan, that is more money and blood it is pumping into making sure we fail to successfully complete our mission in Afghanistan.

Haji Muhammed told Cole, "If the world can know what happens inside the Tribal Areas, maybe Afghanistan has a chance to survive. Like this the war will not end."

I heard ya, Haji. And I'm gonna pass it on to everyone I can.

And to everyone who supports presidential contender John McCain: You need to understand that McCain is telling us that, if elected, we've got to brace ourselves for maybe a hundred years of war. He's letting us all know that he's going to keep this stupidity going, by continuing to finance both sides of the Bush/Cheney so-called war on terror, including the front in Afghanistan. By doing so, he will make sure that it will go on forever, and ever, and ever, until both sides, which are us, run out of both money and will, and so surrender to each other, in which case we will effectively be surrendering to ourselves.

One final question: When we eventually and finally defeat ourselves in the war in Afghanistan, what might that surrender ceremony look like?