Afghan War Not Going Well

If you listen to the administration and the generals running the war in and occupation of Afghanistan, you might think things are going well in that never-ending war. The president says things are going so well that we can now start reducing troops and replace them with units to train Afghan soldiers and police. The generals agree, but would like to continue the war a bit longer first. Frankly, that has me wondering -- if those police and troops haven't been trained and that country pacified after ten years of war, how long is it going to take?

I have never thought things were going as well as both the Bush and Obama administrations would like for us to believe. If they were, then our soldiers should have been home by now. Now the truth is starting to come out. It seems that the intelligence community in this country thinks things aren't going nearly as well as the generals do. here is part of an article in the Los Angeles Times on testimony before Congress by intelligence officials:

Senior U.S. intelligence officials offered a bleak view of the war in Afghanistan in testimony to Congress on Thursday, an assessment they acknowledged was more pessimistic than that of the military commanders in charge.

“I would like to begin with current military operations in Afghanistan, where we assess that endemic corruption and persistent qualitative deficiencies in the army and police forces undermine efforts to extend effective governance and security,” Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at its annual worldwide threat hearing.

The Afghan army remains reliant on U.S. and international forces for logistics, intelligence and transport, he said. And “despite successful coalition targeting, the Taliban remains resilient and able to replace leadership losses while also competing to provide governance at the local level. From its Pakistani safe havens, the Taliban leadership remains confident of eventual victory.”

Burgess testified alongside James Clapper, director of national intelligence, who said that the Taliban lost ground in the last year, “but that was mainly in places where the International Security Assistance Forces, or ISAF, were concentrated, and Taliban senior leaders continued to enjoy safe haven in Pakistan.”

Clapper was asked by committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) about reports in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere describing a recent National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan that questioned whether the Afghan government would survive as the U.S. steadily pulls out its troops and reduces military and civilian assistance.

After ten years of war, I have no doubt that the intelligence estimate is probably much closer to the truth than anything else we've heard from the government. The war is not going well, and could still drag on for years without a resolution. Isn't it time we withdrew our troops from that country? The corrupt government we are propping up in that country cannot survive -- and is not worth the life of even a single additional American soldier.