On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Chris Kromm wrote:
> Good piece. Putting thugs like the Northern Alliance in power can now
> be added to the list of achievements of the U.S. military action in
> Afghanistan, which has also included killing innocent civilians,
> alienating broad sections of the Middle Eastern public, and
> threatening hundreds of thousands of destitute Afghan refugees with
> starvation.
Chris, some of those things are true, and others of them might happen, but overall this seems like a mischaracterization of the current big picture, which on the face of it looks the opposite. Now it looks like the war is going according to its most hopeful original plan: that the Taliban, forced to mass to meet Northern Alliance troops, and having a choice of getting bombed or heading for the hills, headed for the hills. The chances of a UN-organized interim government, while never certain, have never looked more likely in history. And there is a chance that the humanitarian crisis in the North and the center, where it was always supposed to be worst, might be largely over -- that is to say, might be better handled than looked in prospect on September 10th. And the bombing of Kandahar and environs when there were no ground troops in prospect, which seemed so brutally counterproductive and planless, seems to be largely admitted to have been a mistake. Now it looks as if they are trying to woo Southern tribal leaders chiefly with money and with the prospect of a better government -- again, the most hopeful prospect before the war started.
> So what was the point of this war, anyway?
To remove the Taliban and replace it with a tolerant and inclusive government that isn't half run by al-Qaeda. That's half of the war against al-Qaeda, and good in itself. The hardest part is yet to come, the prospect of ruling the north equitably and legitimately while fighting an anti-guerilla war in the South in a country ethnically divided. That's terrifying enough. I can't think of any precedent for success, while still I hope. But there is no need to pretend what has happenened these last few days is bad news. No matter what your position on the war -- whether you were for it from the first on principle or against it from the first on principle or scared and anxious in the middle like me -- surely all would agree that, once it started, having the first half of the war over faster than anyone would have thought possible is a good thing.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com