By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 20, 2012
When the gentleman from North Carolina mentioned "Uncle Chang," it hit
with an awkward clang.
"We are spending $10 billion a month that we can't even pay for," said
Congressman Walter Jones, that rarest of birds, a Southern Republican
dove. "The Chinese — Uncle Chang is lending us the money to pay that
we are spending in Afghanistan."
On Tuesday morning, members of the House Armed Services Committee
tried to grill Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the commander in
Afghanistan who succeeded David Petraeus, about the state of the
mission.
The impossible has happened in the past few weeks. A war that long ago
reached its breaking point has gone mad, with violent episodes that
seemed emblematic of the searing, mind-bending frustration on both
sides after 10 years of fighting in a place where battle has been an
occupation, and preoccupation, for centuries.
Afghan security forces cold-bloodedly murdered some American troops
after Korans were burned by military personnel. Then an American
soldier walked out of his base early one morning and began
cold-bloodedly murdering Afghan innocents, leaving seven adults and
nine children in one small village dead.
There was an exhausted feel to the oversight hearing, lawmakers on
both sides looking visibly sapped by our draining decade of wars. Even
hawks seem beaten down by our self-defeating pattern in Afghanistan:
giving billions to rebuild the country, money that ends up in the
foreign bank accounts of its corrupt officials.
Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, a Republican from California, made a
pro forma complaint that the administration is "heading for the
exits."
But most of the politicians seemed resigned to the fact that President
Obama is resigned to settling for a very small footprint and enough
troops to keep terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base to attack
the U.S. or our allies.
The White House seems ready to forget eliminating the poppy trade and
expanding education for girls. We're not going to turn our desolate
protectorate into a modern Athens and there's not going to be any
victory strut on an aircraft carrier.
When you're buried alive in the Graveyard of Empires, all you can do
is claw your way out.
Congressman Jones directly confronted General Allen on the most
salient point: "What is the metric?" How do you know when it's time to
go?
"When does the Congress have the testimony that someone will say, we
have done all we can do?" he asked. "Bin Laden is dead. There are
hundreds of tribes in Afghanistan and everyone has their own mission."
Jones was once so gung ho about W.'s attempts to impose democracy in
Iraq and Afghanistan that, after the French opposed invading Iraq in
2003, he helped lead the effort to rename French fries "freedom fries"
and French toast "freedom toast" in the House cafeteria.
But now he thinks that both wars are sucking away lives and money,
reaping only futility, and that he was silly about the fries. He said
he's fed up with having military commanders and Pentagon officials
come to Capitol Hill year after year for a decade and say about
Afghanistan: "Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks"
and "We are making progress, but it's fragile and reversible."
He said he had recently visited Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval
Hospital to see wounded troops: "I had a young Marine lance corporal
who lost one leg," in a room with his mother.
"My question is," the Marine asked him, "Why are we still there?"
Jones also read an e-mail from a military big shot whom he described
as a former boss of General Allen's, giving the congressman this
unvarnished assessment: "Attempting to find a true military and
political answer to the problems in Afghanistan would take decades.
Would drain our nation of precious resources, with the most precious
being our sons and daughters. Simply put, the United States cannot
solve the Afghan problem, no matter how brave and determined our
troops are."
Jones agreed, noting mordantly: "I hope that sometime in between now
and 2014, if things are not improving or they are fragile like they
are now, somebody will come to the Congress and say the military has
sacrificed enough. The American people have paid enough. And somebody
would shoot straight with the American people and the Congress."
He concluded: "We can declare victory now. But there's one thing we
cannot do, and that is change history, because Afghanistan has never
changed since they've been existing."
The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written
last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: "Any future defense
secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army
into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head
examined."
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/opinion/dowd-heart-of-darkness.html
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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