It doesn’t really matter how many troops Barack Obama decides to send to Afghanistan. Obama could send every man and woman he’s got into those mountains, he could call every veteran out of retirement, he could revoke Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and send recruiters to every gay club in San Francisco, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Afghanistan is screwed.
We’ve heard often now that the disputed election has changed the calculus in Afghanistan, that without a reliable, legitimate partner in the government, counterinsurgency tactics aren’t worth much.
But things looked bad even before Hamid Karzai rigged the vote so blatantly the OJ jury would have convicted him. It’s no secret that the Afghan government is among the most corrupt on the planet. Getting absolutely anything done in the country, up to and including, say, entering the airport,
requires a bribe. The police are poorly paid, and often
make deals with insurgents. People at the highest level of Karzai’s administration have been linked to Taliban drug runners—including his
own brother.
No troop surge is going to change that. We need a different kind of surge, a kind America is uniquely qualified to provide. We’ll send lobbyists. We’ll send congressmen. Let the think tanks roll; what Afghanistan needs is our decades of experience in shady politics.
Afghanistan is new at this whole democracy thing. With our help, they can replace those bribes with campaign contributions and questionable real estate deals. Karzai can launch a vigorous investigation into his brother’s drug connections that costs millions and lasts until no one cares anymore. If we can turn the militants of Iraq into “concerned local citizens,” surely we can turn some of the Taliban—the smack-growing, money-hungry portion—into a special interest group.
Come on, Ted Stevens doesn’t have anything better to do. Tom DeLay’s done dancing. No one will notice if Charlie Rangel takes a month or two off. If there’s anyone who can make a dysfunctional, money-grubbing government look good, it’s America. And in between, maybe, just maybe, we can convince them to start providing some basic services or security for the Afghans.
Because the Taliban isn’t so much running an insurgency as a
competing government. It’s a brutal government made up of religious fanatics, but it actually gets things done, and a lot of Afghans prefer that.
“I can't blame them,” one Wardak province judge told the
Guardian last year. “A court case in the government system takes five years and many bribes. The Taliban will settle it in an afternoon.”
Until this government can at least pretend to give a damn about its people, the Taliban isn’t going anywhere, and sending more troops is a fool’s errand. We’re not fighting for freedom over there. We’re fighting for gangsters.
And they’re not even competent gangsters.
