Question on Afghanistan policy

I was reading up on our initial response to 9/11 in Afghanistan. We swept through Afghanistan pretty quickly, I believe we started in mid-October and had pushed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda into Pakistan by mid-December. We spent some time consolidating our position in Afghanistan and couldn't go after Al-Qaeda in Pakistan for political reasons, anyway. By the start of March 2002, Al-Qaeda's forces had reclaimed some treacherous portions of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, but by mid-March we had again pushed Al-Qaeda back into Pakistan.

Despite giving Musharraf billions of dollars following 9/11, his government was unable to assail bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, and in fact, Al-Qaeda was able to recuperate within the borders of Pakistan. In fact, a large number of Pakistanis (~40 million) are Taliban-esque and seem to relatively support Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I have trouble understanding why more pressure wasn't put on Pakistan to hand over bin Laden or get the f out the way. I especially have trouble understanding why we chose Iraq over Pakistan.

But this is what I've been able to reason so far...
Musharraf was relatively supportive (through pressure) of US action in Afghanistan. He represents a chance at stability and has nuclear weapons so we don't want to send Pakistan into turmoil. Not to mention, fighting 40 million Muslims might be a bad PR move, could result in a lot of casualties, and might stress our volunteer army. Instead, we give Pakistan more than 4 billion in the 3 years following 9/11 (and we're up to 16 billion at this point, reportedly) in hopes that Musharraf will be able to deliver bin Laden and make Pakistan more stable and US friendly. This is a slow process, so in the meantime we try to build a more stable and US friendly Afghanistan.

In 2003 we decide to go into Iraq because Saddam supposedly poses a national security threat and because Iraq has not supported with UN restrictions. Iraq is a fairly westernized, non-Islamic extremist country. Also, at this point, Iraq is fairly weak. I am beginning to wonder if the real reason we went into Iraq was because it would be fairly easy to topple and then install a more US friendly administration there. I see this as part of a broader plan to make the Islamic world more US friendly, a plan that will take decades to fully implement.

Going into Pakistan would have been a more direct route to going after Al-Qaeda, but I think the "Bush" policy has been much more ambitious. Bush wants to eliminate terrorism stemming from the middle east. Bush knew that going into Pakistan would have been tough from a strategic point of view. Plus, getting bin Laden is only a small piece of the pie, if the pie is making Islamic countries more pro-US and working to eliminate Islamic extremism.

I can't help but think this is related to oil, which I find disturbing considering a new report that a new prototype electric/hybrid vehicle is out that gets 150 miles per gallon and can travel 40 miles per day without fuel. This means that those that travel, on average, less than 40 miles back and forth from work, would need significantly less gasoline, and could go on without refueling almost indefinitely.

This while the US has companies making a lot of money dealing in oil (with a lot of Bush's administration directly or indirectly benefiting) with interests in the middle east and Afghanistan. We don't want to end our presence there though it is a sore spot for many in the middle east. We don't trust that the free market will work for these large US companies and feel that we need to be in the region to support our "interests".

I think if we weren't there, supporting our interests, a lot of the motivation for Islamic extremists would die down. It would be tougher for Al-Qaeda to get new recruits when we are pulling back from Islamic countries and allowing them their freedom (and not unintentionally killing innocents). There will always be those that blame the US, but those numbers would not continue to escalate.

Does anyone care to jump into this discussion and tell me how wrong I am? I've done a little research but arrived at a lot of this by drawing my own conclusions. I may be off on a lot of this. If I am, please let me know why I am wrong.

Note: I don't hate the US, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of things.

 

Wow, the idea in my head of Asian geography turns out to be all wrong. I didn't realize Iran was east of Iraq and I didn't know Afghanistan bordered Iran. I though Afghanistan was more south of China. I also thought for some reason that India and Afghanistan touched. Musharraf did say he was afraid we would make a deal with India and put Pakistan in a tough position. Anyway, wow on my geography lesson. :dis:

I'm not really advocating a war with Pakistan, but a war with Pakistan seems to make more sense than a war with Iraq. Not tactically, but in terms of bringing Al-Qaeda to justice and fighting the nations that harbor terrorists, Pakistan seems to be the more applicable target.

I like Paul's view of how things should have went down. Realistic? I'm not sure. Paul didn't really want to remove the Taliban from power, he simply wanted a pointed attack on the leaders of Al-Qaeda. In the short term, no government we prop up will be able to stand firmly on its own without much aid, especially when there are many sufficiently powerful parties opposing a US backed government.

I do think we should have been more forceful with Pakistan, and if this is really about defending our nation and bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice, it is a bad failure that bin Laden hasn't been taken care of.

What are our national interests? Oil? Tactical placement of US forces for quick strike capability? Maintaining a foreign presence costs a lot of money, and our debt keeps growing. The economic impact of foreign bases is felt by foreign nations. We are capable of defending ourselves against any state, and no worldwide tactical bases will prevent a stateless attack. Intelligence is the best answer for preventing a stateless attack.

 

I'm not that old. :hihi:

So you believe our money is well spent and makes the world safer by having bases around the globe? Do we need to control what happens around the world? I believe we are strong enough to defend ourselves without having a global presence. I also imagine other countries resent our control, as we would resent giving away our freedoms to a more powerful nation.

If the government weren't so involved in oil, alternatives would come more freely. Oil isn't necessary, especially consumption on the level we are used to. We also have oil reserves that we could tap; the environmentalists may not like it, but it is a much better choice than war in the middle east and Asia.

I don't think we need military bases to ensure free trade. We should probably produce more goods.

Are our allies to weak to fend for themselves? Do we really need to annoy our enemies every chance we get?

I'm still really upset about how Afghanistan/Iraq went down. I'm surprised more Republicans aren't. We'll never be able to prop up Afghanistan and Iraq to be the nations that we want them to be, especially when we are in such a financially poor status.

 

I don't see how invading/liberating an islamic country would make it more pro US...I actually think it has the opposite effect.

I think the premise for not leaving Afghanistan and Iraq are flawed. Is there any factual evidence that if we leave those places will become a terrorist heaven? If we leave, don't we have the resources and intelligence to identify a possible terrorist camp? Can democracy be imposed by way of the gun on a country? How long will it take for the new governments to become stable and strong? Does our military pressence in those countries makes them happier or angrier? What's Pakistan's involvement with Al Qaeda? Do we need to invade a country cause its people support Al Qaeda more instead of the US (lesser of two evils in their minds?)? Is that support really a threat to us? How much pressure are we willing to put on Pres. Musharaf?

I think that these questions are important when it comes to develop a strong and logical foreign policy for a region that's ilogical and unstable. IMHO, the Bush administration are making policy as they go along and improvising, they list their long term goals as bringing democracy and stable governments to these two countries cause they say that will make us safer. These things sound all nice, but they have no clue as to how they are gonna accomplish those goals and what's worse, not even the presidential candidates know how to accomplish that. Nobody knows how long will it take to make the US secure internationally, but I do know one thing, the longer it takes for the US to make us safer and stronger abroad, the weaker our country becomes at home.

 

I really think we aren't pushing harder to take out bin Laden for a number of reasons.

• A direct invasion of Pakistan may result in nuclear warfare and there are 40 million Pakistanis who aren't really beholden to Musharraf that look favorably on the Taliban and to some degree Al-Qaeda.
• We might not be able to fight 40 million enemy combatants and it wouldn't make us look any better in the eyes of the world.
• I believe it is Bush's long term goal to keep a presence in the Middle East to slowly eat away at terrorism. I don't think that is such a great tactic. It will annoy the locals and it will cost us buckets of money. Billions of dollars out of your pocket and out of the pockets of people like you to maintain a 100 year presence in the middle east. I don't think Bush wants to threaten the stability of Pakistan.

Our debt is escalating like crazy. Something like 7 trillion growth in 15 years. We are currently at 9 trillion, so we had 2 trillion in debt in the hundreds of years before the 90s. That doesn't include the coming social security and medicare drain caused by the baby boomers (that bumps it up to 40 trillion). I've heard it said that if every piece of property in the US were sold, we would have paid 1/3 of the 9 trillion debt.

That means we have to borrow from China to continue our presence in the Middle East. How does that make sense? None of the Republicans see that as a problem. I don't think they really want to talk about it. McCain's economic foundation is weak. Romney, the business man, doesn't seem to realize we are way in the red and we can't keep spending to get out of the red. That leaves Huckabee, Paul, and the democrats. Huckabee has said he'd like to phase out the IRS, but I don't see him going against the grain. The democrats want to take care of everybody, even other countries, so don't expect them to fix the economy. So that leaves Paul, IMO. Every other choice leads us to financial ruin.

 

Ron Paul and I exactly agree with you.

You're right on that. If we were to invade Pakistan (invasion seems to be our modus operandi - see Afghanistan and Iraq) there are 160 million people and approximately 40 million Pashtuns between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taliban forces are currently around 10,000, with 2000-3000 highly motivated insurgents, but I think that number would grow exponentially were we to invade Pakistan. We have superior firepower, but it would likely be a mess.

I didn't vote for him. But Bush wasn't acting unilaterally, I imagine he was taking a lot of guidance from advisors. I imagine those neocon advisors were thinking tactically about some future goal. I agree that it isn't a wise course of action, but it isn't as simple as Bush playing war to finish what his daddy started.

Ron Paul was one of very few in Washington opposing Iraq. He would be a leader with foresight. He was talking about economic troubles before the rest of the candidates really got running on that subject, and he still seems to be the only candidate that understands the gravity of the situation. What other candidate will sincerely take on our economic folly?

It makes me sad that so many seemingly intelligent people make light of Paul.