Afghanistan Is Not Vietnam
Peter Bergen has an excellent analysis on why the media’s negative attitude towards the prospects for success in Afghanistan are wrong. It’s interesting to see how the media is treating Afghanistan now like it did Iraq before and during the early stages of the surge. Yes, political bias seeps into the media, but I’ve often said that the media’s attitude towards war efforts is pessimistic no matter who is president.
Bergen notes that, similar to Iraq in 2006, the American public’s patience is running thin:
“This has caused consternation among some in the Democratic Party. In May, fifty-one House Democrats voted against continued funding for the Afghan war. And David Obey, the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which controls federal spending, says the White House must show concrete results in Afghanistan within a year—implying that if it doesn’t do so, he will move to turn off the money spigot. If this is the attitude of Obama’s own party, one can imagine what the Republicans will be saying if his “Af-Pak” strategy doesn’t start yielding results as they gear up for the 2010 midterm elections.”
Amazingly, 42% of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is a mistake. Amazing. I can think of no war more jusitified. This proves that the American people’s attitude towards war is more based on their optimism of winning, than an appraisal of the justification and objectives.
Bergen also debunks the notion that Afghanistan isn’t a real country, noting that it’s been a nation-state longer than the U.S. has.
Other noteworthy observations by Bergen:
- Karzai has a 52% approval rating
- Afghanistan had an over 80% turnout during the 2004 elections
- “In 2008 more than 2,000 Afghan civilians died at the hands of the Taliban or coalition forces; this is too many, but it is also less than a quarter of the deaths last year in Iraq, a country that is both more sparsely populated and often assumed to be easier to govern. (At the height of the violence in Iraq, 3,200 civilians were dying every month, making the country around twenty times more violent than Afghanistan is today.)”
- There are only about 20,000 Taliban militants.
- In 2005, 80% had a favorable opinion of the U.S. and supported having foreign forces in the country. In Iraq at that time, only one-third supported having foreign forces in their country. Now, slightly less than half of Afghans have a favorable opinion of the US, but it’s still high for a Muslim country.
- “BBC/ABC polling found that 58 percent of Afghans named the Taliban—who only 7 percent of Afghans view favorably—as the greatest threat to their nation; only 8 percent said it was the United States. “
- The economy is booming with a 14% increase in GDP in 2007, and one in six have cell phones.
Bergen writes that the surge will allow a huge expansion of the Afghan security forces, whose personnel will also be paid more so as to better compete with the Taliban for recruits. There’s only 16,000 cops/soldiers, and Afghanistan is bigger than Iraq, so there’s currently a huge shortage.
Read the whole thing by clicking here. Thank you Peter Bergen for putting the war there in the proper context.