Winning the Peace, not the War in Afghanistan

www.RETHINKAFGHANISTAN.com

Larry Corb, a frequent lecturer at the Center for American Progress and expert on military matters noted in the video/DVD that you can order off the above site that the Afghan and Iraq wars combined will cost us a trillion dollars under the current plans before long.
The conclusion that this contributed to our current economic melt-down is unavoidable. Much if not most of this funding is borrowed funding for which we owe interest- even to foreign governments.
The DVD is moving in its depiction of civilian casualties and the antipathy that the Afghanis have regarding the American military presence. We have had 7 years to deliver on infastructure and aid and all the funds seem to be misplaced in the direction of the American contractors direction enriching Americans not Afghanis. That, anyway appears to be the perception of the Afghani families who curse the existence of the soldiers and throw their candy back in their faces.
At a panel on 'Rethinking Afghanistan' an American woman who spent the last four years living in Afghanistan indicated that at one time there was a window of opportunity for Americans
after the repressive Taliban was thrown out- she could travel freely on public transport and felt more or less welcome. Not so now. She argued that the existence of our overthrow of the Taliban only benefitted a small minority of women who threw off their Burkas but the village women were unafected except that wherever American soldiers were in which places they were under tighter repressive lock and key.
Panelists argued that the effort now should be directed toward winning the peace- rebuilding schools and infrastructure using capable Afghanis- even expat Afghanis who are living in Western countries (such as a German NGO is doing sending German Afghani doctors to serve in clinics throughout Afghanistan.) There is a large Afghani diaspora who could be summoned to help with their professional skills. The solution won't be military, argued panelists. The Afghanis are the world champions of throwing off foreign occupation and domination and the Taliban are a mixed lot of people who are integrated fully and wholly into the villages- they did not come from foreign countries, they originated in the villages and were sent outside for schooling but are Afghanis and the Afghanis have lived with them co-operatively. The Afghani woman Member of Parliament panelist who is also a medical doctor (Gynocologist) indicted that it is an impossible task to eliminate all Taliban, and an unacceptable cost of civilian casualties would result. She noted that no one wanted them to have a one party rule system and is glad that is gone, but she thinks it preferable that they have a place at a multi-coalition government table. Otherwise they will be able to exploit the Afghani fear that the outside military influences are there to destroy their religion. Afghanis are very religious people, she argued. An angle of society has successfully convinced a segment of the fundamentally motivated Muslims that their martyrdom will result in immediate trajectory to paradise if they kill themselves as suicide bombers against the christian forces. She held out no hope that Americans will dissuade the religious zealots of their views of martyrdom.

The war begs the question- what is the Exit Strategy. There is no less risk of this becomming the Vietnam of the 21st century than Iraq. The panelists uniformly expressed
the need to keep pressure on the Administration to concretize an Exit Strategy- and not commit by default to an open ended war and occupation when the Afghanis are at this point, universally disgusted with our presence, argued the panelists. There will need to be some concrete progress and delivery of all the promises currently deemed broken and illusory- we have created a huge refugee problem-and destroyed villages, created massive numbers of widows and fatherless children and in seven (7) years done very little to make anyone believe an American influenced Afghanistan is any better than a co-alition Taliban government, according to this panel.

Whether the panel is one sided or not wasn't evident- because the PR job that the Administration is doing to inform the American public about what progress is actually made in Afghanistan is paulty and insufficient to get a true picture of what is going on there.
The conclusion that the human rights plight of the women has improved in any marked fashion was refuted by the panel. So what exactly are we spending a trillion dollars on that we cannot afford?