Here’s something you might want to keep in mind while celebrating the U.S.’s pending withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. From Tom Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard:
There is evidence that al Qaeda is already using Afghanistan (once again) to plot attacks against the West.
Earlier this month, for example, Spanish authorities announced that they had broken up a three-man al Qaeda cell that was plotting terrorist attacks on one or more targets. The cell had been trained in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Investigators added that the men had ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is headquartered in Pakistan, and had attended the LeT’s training camps inside Afghanistan as well.
After the United States helped push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s, American indifference to the fate of the that country turned immediately into neglect. A decade later, we went into Afghanistan because the ruling Taliban were hosting and protecting the terrorists behind 9/11. In 2014, we’ll leave Afghanistan—Taliban, al Qaeda plots, and all—because “it’s time for nation building at home” is a catchy slogan.
Must we really learn this lesson again? Mark Twain said famously that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. He was wrong; it repeats itself.
After the United States helped push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s n nMaybe we should have worked with the Soviets. n n
The arrogance, the condescension of such transparent inanity! What scorn for the readers, what presumption, to seek to maneuver them with yelps and barks, like a border collie herding sheep or cattle! n nAbe Greenwald flourishes a CNN story about two Chechens who were supposedly trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan to drop explosives from a radio controlled aircraft on a shopping mall in Gibraltar. n nThat is his justification for spending an annual $100 billion and hundreds of US lives to keep Kabul out of Taliban hands. n nSince when is operating radio controlled aircraft an Afghan specialty; since when has the soil and air of Afghanistan become indispensable for teaching terrorists their craft? n nThat war does not just bleed the US and her standing in the world, it undermines the conservative cause in US politics. n nThe folly of Afghanistan should be a central Republican campaign issue. n nObama, the dove, turned bellicose in 2008 when the war in Iraq, which he had claimed was militarily unwinnable, began to be won, when the surge he had predicted would only make our debacle worse was giving us a precious victory. To wipe that egg off his face he charged the GOP with neglecting the Taliban and vowed to make Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror and give it all the combat battalion required to win. That is how and why the embers of Bush's side show, where we, quite justifiably, had fewer troops than in Korean, was blown into a blazing war. It was a campaign tactic, not to win a war for our nation, but to win the White House for one man . Subsequently the president used Afghanistan to appear strong on national defense, where we have no vital national interests, while allowing our strategic victory in Iraq, where our national interest is immense, to be lost. n nBut instead of calling the president on this disaster, Greenwald reflexively supports this "necessary" war with the most trite and ridiculous arguments. n nIt is especially discouraging since Greenwald, on other issues, has often produced astute and razor sharp posts.