Just Don't Tell the Geezer - Muslim Peacekeepers for Afghanistan

One of the saddest moments in Tuesday's presidential debates came when Obama and McCain fielded questions about Afghanistan. Both of them claimed to want to expand their country's war in that country with, at the very least, more troops.

McCain, parading about like a Chaplin impressionist, called for a "surge" that would, he claimed, surely bring victory to Afghanistan just as it had brought America victory in Iraq. Obama spoke of merely increasing troop levels and continuing attacks in Pakistan if Islamabad won't.

Those comments showed the next American president will be out of step with every other nation on the planet on Afghanistan and, to some extent, the "war on terror." That's not a particularly bright prospect given how deeply the Bush maladministration has undermined American goodwill abroad with its unilateralism and bully tactics and its adventures in Iraq. Bad as that was, Washington has only worsened things by unleashing poison securities into the global markets, triggering a worldwide economic crisis.

I expect Obama knows better on Afghanistan but he also knows it would be political suicide to breathe a mention of trying to negotiate with the Taliban. His countrymen just can't take that much reality right now, maybe ever.

McCain, the blowhard, wanna-be war president, is much more worrisome. He announced that the surge tactics of "clear and hold" are just the thing Afghanistan needs. Clear and hold works, to the extent it works at all, in an urban setting where the ethnic cleansing agenda has already been accomplished and the local militias have decided to wait out your departure.

Afghanistan is primarily a rural war and, in that respect, resembles Vietnam. You're not going to clear and hold the plains, the hills and the moutain regions with 30,000 troops. Even if they pulled all American forces out of Iraq and flew them to Afghanistan they wouldn't have nearly enough to clear and hold the Afghan countryside where the insurgents live and operate. In reality, the American army and marines don't have nearly enough troops to do that job.

Both men still speak of Afghanistan as though they were back in 2001. Al-Qaeda to them is still sitting around in Pakistan waiting for American forces to wipe it out. Neither one of them would acknowledge that the terrorist organization, thanks almost entirely to the negligence of the Bush regime, has been able to grow and spread and decentralize its structure. Al-Qaeda now reaches from Southeast Asia to West Africa to Europe and, in all probability, North America to boot. One analysis recently claimed that al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist cells now operate in 64-countries.

Neither of these guys seems to understand that America isn't going to defeat the Taliban. They are the hometeam. The best they can hope for is to drive a deep wedge between the insurgents and the terrorist foreigners. If you want to clear al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the best way is to isolate them, cut them off from their local support. If you stop driving the Taliban into their arms that would at least be a start.

The top British commander in Afghanistan has said the Taliban can't be defeated militarily, echoing remarks to the same effect by the British ambassador to Afghanistan. Now the top representative of the United Nations has added his voice to the chorus. From Reuters:

"I've always said to those that talk about the military surge ... what we need most of all is a political surge, more political energy," Kai Eide, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, told a news conference in Kabul.

"We all know that we cannot win it militarily. It has to be won through political means. That means political engagement."

Mr. Eide said success depended on speaking with all sides in the conflict. "If you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant. If you want to have results that matter, you must speak to those who matter," he said.

America may simply find itself overtaken by events in Afghanistan. It's unwilling to negotiate with the Taliban and it has shown no interest in allowing "those who are relevant," which includes Afghanistan's most significant neighbours Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran, the states that will have to live with the results, into the peace process.

As reported in Asia Times Online, the Saudis are no longer waiting for the American victory in Afghanistan. Instead they're brokering peace talks between the Taliban and Kabul:

"Reports emerged this week that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia recently hosted high-level talks in Mecca between representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban. If a middle road is found, next year's elections in Afghanistan could be held under the supervision of peacekeeping forces from Islamic countries, rather than those of NATO."

Now there's a wonderful idea, Muslim peacekeepers, not Infidels. Imagine, leaving Muslims with the chore of keeping order in the Muslim world?