Is Obama the next LBJ?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Peter Baker asks: Could Afghanistan Become Obama's Vietnam?  The answer is yes and in fact it looks likely.  The strategy of the Obama administration is said to be dependent on support from the Afghanistan Security Forces but the Times reports that support is virtually non-existent. As I said yesterday many of the administrations assumptions are based on Afghanistan being a country but it's not. In response to that post I received this email from Allan Bazar:

You are 100% correct about Afghanistan not being a country
in the sense we normally understand the term: country.
When I traveled there in the 60's, it was in Afghanistan
that I first really understood the nature of government as a
function the ability of police power to reach out from
a  political/legal center.

Not only that did that ability not exist, but people who
lived in Mazar-e-Sharif did not consider themselves (and
were not ethnically) fellow nationals with the people who
lived in Kandahar or Herat, let alone Bamyan.
The hordes of nomads (at that time the majority of the
people who lived in Afghanistan and who traveled
across  the Iranian and Pakistani borders as if they
did not exist)were not "Afghanis" but members of their
tribes.

I recall standing outside the bus at the Iran/Afghanistan
frontier looking into the desert where a tribe of nomads,
camels, sheep, tents and all crossed the border a couple of
hundred meters away with nary a notice from the border
guards who were busy trying to read my passport. Do you
think that tribe had passports?

A law could be promulgated in Kabul which had no influence
whatsoever on the vast majority of the population and what
is a government that is irrelevant to the people under its
purported purview?  I recall some irritation, at that
time,expressed by tribal nomads about Pakistani border
patrols (most likely more interested in bribes than
"national security") hindering the traditional winter
pasturing of their herds in relatively balmy Baluchistan.

There are quite a few such "countries" in the world. We are
confused by Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan's northwestern
provinces etc. where people live (and die) unaffected, for
the most part, by any central government.  But where
the so called government cannot, due especially to logistic
problems, enforce its will on all of the regions under its
control that state is a line drawn on a piece of paper
only.

I believe the Turkmenistan/Afghan/Pakistan pipeline (which
is probably the real reason we are in nominal Afghanistan to
begin with) is, no pun intentionally intended, a pipe
dream.  It would take immense amounts of military power
functioning 24/7 in a myriad of tribal satraps to maintain

and protect it. The resources to achieve this do not exist.

Note that the pipeline issue which we covered here and here comes up again.

Eric Margolis writing in the The Toronto Sun says it's Quitin' Time in Afghanistan.

An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic.

This
week's stage-managed vote in Afghanistan for candidates chosen by
western powers is unlikely to bring either peace or tranquility to this
wretched nation that has suffered 30 years of war.

The Taliban
and its nationalist allies rejected the vote as a fraud designed to
validate continued foreign occupation and open the way for western oil
and gas pipelines.

The Taliban, which speaks for many of
Afghanistan's majority Pashtun, said it would only join a national
election when U.S. and NATO troops withdraw.

After all the
pre-election hoopla and agitprop in Afghanistan, we come out the same
door we went in. The amiable U.S.-installed leader, Hamid Karzai, may
remain in office, powerless.

Yet Washington is demanding its
figurehead achieve things he simply cannot do. Meanwhile, Karzai's
regime is engulfed by corruption and drug dealing.

Real power
remains with strongmen from the Tajik and Uzbek minorities and local,
drug-dealing tribal warlords who are paid by Washington to pretend to
support Karzai. Behind the Tajiks and Uzbeks stand their patrons,
Russia, India and Iran.

Afghanistan's Pashtun tribes, which make
up 55% of the population, are largely excluded from power. They were
the West's closest allies and foot soldiers ("freedom fighters") during
the 1980s war against the Soviets.

So after the election we have an Afghanistan that is a geographic location with no central government.  Why are we their?  Margolis continues:

The current war in Afghanistan is not about democracy, women's rights,
education or nation building. Al-Qaida, the other excuse, barely
exists. Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan. The war
really is about oil pipeline routes and western domination of the
energy-rich Caspian Basin.

Instead of senseless war and meaningless elections what should be done?

Afghanistan is a three-legged ethnic stool. Take away the Pashtun leg and stability is impossible.

There
will be neither peace nor stability in Afghanistan until all ethnic
groups are enfranchised. The West must cease backing minority Tajiks
and Uzbeks against majority Pashtun -- who deserve their rightful share
of power and spoils.

The solution to this unnecessary war is not
more phoney elections but a comprehensive peace agreement among ethnic
factions that largely restores the status quo before the 1970 Soviet
invasion. That means a weak central government in Kabul (Karzai is
ideal for this job) and a high degree of autonomy for self-governing
Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara regions.

Government should
revert to the old "loya jirga" system of tribal sit downs, where
decisions are made by consensus, often after lengthy haggling. That is
the way of the Afghans and of traditional Islamic society.

All
foreign soldiers must withdraw. Create a diplomatic "cordon sanitaire"
around Afghanistan's borders, returning it to its traditional role as a
neutral buffer state.

The powers now stirring the Afghan pot --
the U.S., NATO, India, Iran, Russia, the Communist Central Asian states
-- must cease meddling. They have become part of the Afghan problem.
Afghans must be allowed to slowly resolve their differences the
traditional Afghan way, even if it initially means blood. That's
unavoidable.

I see nothing that indicates that Obama will not follow the same path in Afghanistan that LBJ followed in Vietnam.  Just a few months into the Obama presidency public opinion has already turned on the war.  As I discussed here the expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan threaten all of Obama's domestic agenda including health care.