Peace is for pussies [Updated]

With apologies to Oscar Wilde, one racks one’s imagination to come up with a situation in Afghanistan that would not immediately be made worse by the presence of a contingent of U.S. military forces.

The reports and accounts from virtually every source—granted, I don’t read CIA analyses or RNC talking points memos—paints a picture of a losing, if not already lost, counter-insurgency war, permanently aggravated by the presence of an occupying army.

The fervid debates taking place in Washington now turn on whether to pursue ‘counter-terrorism’ (Biden) or continued ‘counter-insurgency’ (McChrystal). The latter option looks completely demented given the size of Afghanistan, the difficulty of its terrain and the damage done by eight years of failed warfare.

The miserable and miserably corrupt performance of the Afghan security forces, combined with the ongoing abuses at Bagram prison, rivaling those of Abu Ghraib but without the photos, are driving the situation from bad to worse. The whole war was supposed to make us safer from terrorist attacks, but the huge distraction it represents may very well be doing the opposite.

It is a testament to the biped reluctance to contemplate defeat in war that this sorry and treasure-draining exercise has not been wrapped up long ago.

Over three decades ago in 1969, Richard Nixon faced the prospect of presiding over a lost war when he took office. LBJ had already decided against what would have been a disastrous further escalation in troop numbers, leaving Nixon and Kissinger to drum up ‘Vietnamization’ as their magic solution. This meant slow U.S. troop withdrawals accompanied by massive slaughter through bombing and escalation of the war into neighboring Cambodia, with many happy results for the Cambodians—what’s left of them.

Mayhem and genocide, however, were a small price to pay to assure that Nixon did not have to preside over a lost war. That was left to Gerald Ford, the only president in American history to reach office through appointment.

The risks to calling it quits in Afghanistan do not really involve our security given the tenuous links between al-Qaeda and the Afghan/Pakistani Taliban, even were the latter to retake power there. The U.S. would lose face and influence in the region, which might be bad for business or other geopolitical aims like containing the Chinese.

But all that is manageable. The real fear among Democratic policy-makers, like their Republican counterparts while the latter occupied the throne, is political: how to handle the inevitable onslaught of denunciation from the opposition party for having been a yellow-bellied, no-dick, lily-livered, wimp-ass loser who dared to leave the field of battle before The Triumph.

This political gay-bashing strikes such terror into the hearts of the Rahmites and other Obamanians that they cast desperately about for some way to keep the fantasy alive and reshape the narrative of objectives and/or achievements. It also partly explains the cowardly acquiescence to President Karzai’s blatant theft of the recent elections since the White House has to pretend there is some sort of legitimate government in Kabul rather than a corrupt puppet regime.

It will be interesting to see how Nobel laureate Obama deals with the necessity of retreat. As Mikhail Gorbachev’s experience shows, history is often unkind to people who opt for peace. But we celebrate thugs and murderers throughout the ages.

Who today remembers that Richard Nixon caused the needless deaths of a million people?

[Update] Karzai's stealing the election turned out to be too much after all, and a runoff is now to be held. This is a positive sign although it seems less a defense of principle than a recognition by the U.S. and the UN lackeys that the theft was too blatant. It's not clear that the run-off will be handled any better, but a win by the opposition candidate might give the country a shot in the arm.