Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Double Incompetence

Victor D. Hanson makes the case, not heard often enough, that Afghanistan is as screwed up as Iraq, though he doesn't characterize it that way:
But if we put aside for the moment the reasons to have gone into each country, the two now look remarkably the same. Both have fragile democratic governments. Radical Islamists--using similar tactics of suicide bombing and improvised explosive devices--are pouring in from sanctuaries across the border, whether Pakistan or Syria and Iran. Bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri themselves have boasted that Iraq, at the heart of the ancient caliphate, is now the frontline theater for the jihadists.

So far the international approval of Afghanistan and its smaller costs have ensured support from the Left. But note, as casualties begin to mount, and the nature of the counter-insurgency fighting increasingly begins to resemble Iraq--as it must in this particular front of a global war--and as the magic multilateral solution proves a mirage, the NATO coalition being no more effective than the coalition of the willing in Iraq, expect to see the Democratic leadership begin to bail on Afghanistan as well.
Unlike Iraq, we invaded Afghanistan with a legitimate justification, but as the Tora Bora battle and Operation Anaconda show, the same incompetent crowd is in charge.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Unlike Iraq, we invaded Afghanistan with a legitimate justification."

Yeah, we did, but where did that get us? Had we done nothing, after 911 but remove our troops from where they don't belong and secured our own borders we would have had a victory. Am I the only one who happened to notice that OBL did not launch those planes from a carrier fleet?

We are always told to learn from the Brits, they knew how to run an empire. Well, they ran it so successfully that they no longer have one, but that is beside the point. One thing we could learn from the mommy country is that Afghanistan is not a fun place.

Richard