Why die for Karzai? - Tom Hayden/LA Times

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

And, now the Pentagon is feuding with he White House over how much more cannon-fodder to shovel into a lost war. FUBAR is insufficient to describe this bottomless quagmire.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hayden10-2009nov10,0,5592560.story

Has it occurred to anyone in the White House national security circles or the pundit class that these recent American deaths were wasteful and immoral? That sending Americans to die for an unpopular regime of warlords, landlords, drug dealers and CIA assets (Karzai's brother) is impossible to justify? And that rather than admitting the mistake, the president and his advisors are preparing to compound it?

Negotiating with the Taliban would be distasteful, but how many more American soldiers will die while trying to achieve this upper hand? The Pentagon forecasts two years of harsh combat in Afghanistan alone, which at current rates could mean an additional 1,000 American dead and 8,000 wounded. For each American boot on the ground, there will be an equivalent increase in roadside bombs, according to a U.S. agency called the Pentagon Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. Meanwhile, Afghanistan is running taxpayers about $3.6 billion a month.

The Al Qaeda strategy of overextending our military and exhausting our economy seems to be on schedule. With Al Qaeda relocated to Pakistan, the Pentagon now is fighting Afghan insurgents -- who hate foreign invaders -- on the hypothetical grounds that Al Qaeda will someday return to Kandahar. Elsewhere, national security strategists such as Britain's Peter Neumann claim "broad agreement" that Europe is actually the nerve center for global jihad. One is tempted to respond that NATO should invade Europe instead of Afghanistan, but this is not a laughing matter.

Al Qaeda is a real threat, but the threat only worsens as Western powers rampage through Muslim countries. Defense against Al Qaeda is a legitimate mission, but not where the tactics being used feed a desire for indiscriminate revenge among millions of people with nothing to lose.