Afghan effort stalls

Australia's Howard, the prime Bush toady now that Blair has made his exit, is echoing the White House again. Bush apparently needs more troops in Afghanistan, though all reports and official comment from the Bush Administration somehow indicate that the Afghan effort is going swimmingly. How odd.

There are five nations, along with the Afghans, in combat roles in Afghanistan. The British press has been candid in assessing the Afghan effort and the British role. The British military has been fighting two bloody conflicts and is wearing thin. The Iraq mission, ill-conceived and ridiculously expensive, had to give in order for the Afghan mission to continue. The Afghan mission is the one concerned with terrorism, after all, which is what Britain ostensibly signed up for. Of course, this change in focus bore only contempt and insults from the Pentagon; the only reward for loyalty to the Decider. Public opinion in Canada and the Netherlands has turned against the Afghan effort, even as Bush makes further irritated demands of greater support from these nations. Australia's media has published pieces calling the Afghan situation "going down fast", and Howard is facing a tough election. U.N. reports are also hardly optimistic.

As usual, the Bush line is that apparent failure only proves that the enemy is "desperate". The Afghan people are pretty desperate, too. Unemployment is 40%, the infrastructure is a shambles, reconstruction never got off the ground, and the warlords who control the vast majority of the country refuse to give tax receipts to the puppet government in Kabul. However, girls can now to school, and this is apparently the crowning achievement of the conflict. Desperate Afghan farmers have grown a record crop of poppies, since aid has been slow or non-existent and poppies offer large profits. The military solution has been to destroy these crops, or at least to make ham-fisted attempts to do so, leaving these farmers even worse off than they were before they turned to poppies. The Afghan government barely even controls the capital and is too broke to pay the civil servants. Efforts to train the Afghan military and police are slow. Due to high troop casualties, the Coalition is increasingly turning to air power to combat the Taliban, and civilian casualties have produced outrage from Afghanis across the board, including Karzai.

Given all of this, what nation wouldn't want to get a larger piece of the Decider's 'success', knowing full well that Bush will take all of the credit and none of the blame? Seeing that the allies are now being cast as the scapegoat for the failure of the Afghan effort, how can these nations possibly resist pouring even more troops and cash into their efforts? Aware that our allies face domestic political peril in following Bush even further, surely they will step up to the plate for the mere opportunity to get a pat on the head from the Decider, which has been the kiss of death for other leaders.

Certainly all that is required is a continuation of the bullying attitude, rank condecension, arrogant demands, and unfounded optimism that got us this far. After all, the worse things look, the better they really are in Bush-land.

full story from ireland.com

Bomb kills 4 at US Afghan base

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the entrance to a US base in eastern Afghanistan today, killing three Afghan soldiers and one Afghan civilian.

A US spokeswoman said initial reports indicated the bomber walked up to the first security gate outside of Forward Operating Base Bermel in Paktika province.

She said three Afghan soldiers and one civilian were killed and that four Afghans were wounded.

No Americans were wounded in the attack, she said. It wasn't immediately clear if the bomber had been trying to gain entry to the base, which is near the border with Pakistan.

Taliban insurgents have set off more than 100 suicide blasts this year, a record pace, and violence in 2007 has been the deadliest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. More than 5,200 people have died because of the insurgency this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

Australia's prime minister, meanwhile, said more NATO powers must directly engage the Taliban to help ease the burden on Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, which all have troops in the dangerous southern and central parts of Afghanistan.

Germany, Italy, France and Spain have troops in the safer northern sections, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard said those countries need to help ease the burden on the countries in the south.

"Some of the other countries have lots of troops in Afghanistan but they're not in some of the areas that are experiencing the heaviest fighting," he said.

The governments of the Netherlands and Canada in particular are coming under domestic pressure to pull out troops because of heavy casualties.

"I think the Dutch government has been very courageous to date," he said. "It's not for me to comment on Dutch politics but I do observe that the Dutch are making a great contribution and as are of course the Canadians."