In one of many exit interviews Gen. David Petraeus has given as his command in Afghanistan ends, he said: “No country has suffered more from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda than Afghanistan.” This comment stopped me. It was the gratuitousness of the flip-side demotion of the American experience since Osama bin Laden and his gang first struck here nearly 10 years ago.
The catastrophic terror attacks of 9/11 caused, and still cause, some extremely deep and aching degree of suffering, it seems odd to have to say. They also marked the beginning of a decade-long American crackup, a self-ignited meltdown of reason and judgment that has blinded us to the markers of global jihad across the Western world.
As a result, our see-no-Islam leadership has sent armies to fight endless, foundationally flawed wars of impossible conquest — Muslim hearts and minds — through gross expenditures of men and materiel.
More than any one person’s, this policy is Petraeus’ policy. But even at this retrospective moment in his career, he doesn’t have to answer for it because neither he nor it are ever even questioned.
No, not even when Petraeus slips in a new U.S. objective. Our objective, he explained in another interview, “is Afghans able to secure and govern themselves with some continued level of support.”
With continued support? Not long ago, our objective was Afghans securing and governing themselves, period. That ain’t gonna happen, so Plan B seems to bump Afghanistan into a new “lockbox” of untouchable entitlement.
Paul Avallone, an Afghan War veteran who returned to Afghanistan as a photojournalist, emailed me that what bothered him most about Petraeus’ salute to Afghan suffering was that Afghanistan had actually gained from 9/11, and more than anyone else.
“I came to that conclusion during my first stay in Afghanistan (combat in ’02-’03),” Paul writes. He realized that everything the U.S.-led coalition was doing, from freeing people from the Taliban to feeding them, was an Afghan benefit.
Nothing has changed. “Start anywhere you want,” he continues. “Roads. Electricity. Food. Medicine. Whatever it is that billions of dollars per year are buying.”
Make that billions of dollars per month. That buys the white elephants of Western hubris — the 210-ton turbine 3,000 British troops dragged, fighting, for five days through Taliban territory to Kajaki; the 75-kilometer railroad from Mazar-i-Sharif to nowhere (and which Afghans aren’t skilled enough to run); the Shariah-supreme Afghan constitution midwifed by Western “experts.”
It covers the massive graft, payola, jizya, take your pick, our forces use to bribe Afghans to make them like us better than the Taliban. (Some popularity contest not to have won by this late date.)
This includes countless mosques infidel-troops have rebuilt; innumerable public works projects; and the rushing, endless streams of cash dumped on villages and bazaars, men on the make, Taliban-linked “security,” and Bank of Kabul.
It’s true. Thanks to OBL, Afghanistan has profited more than any nation, with what Petraeus this week called “our Pakistani partners” probably coming in a strong second.
In light of this, why would either Afghanistan or Pakistan want to see this counterinsurgency war end? Ditto for Russia and China, who aren’t about to complain about our slow bleed into the rubble.
What’s odd, though, is to find our pre-eminent commander acquiescing to the eternity timeline. As quoted in Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama’s Wars,” Petraeus said:
“I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. … This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”
Doesn’t anyone want to question Petraeus’ wisdom — before he becomes head of the Central Intelligence Agency?
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
