War In Afghanistan

WASHINGTON - In the war room where the White House works to mold public opinion in the Arab world, all eyes are turned to March 21. It is the first day of the new school year in Afghanistan, and it promises to be a media event. Will President Bush urge American students to send school supplies and adopt Afghan pen pals? How many headlines can be generated about the arrival of girls in school after the fall of the Taliban, which prohibited their education? Can any U.S. officials get on TV to discuss the image of America among young Muslims?

It isn't often that the U.S. Conference of Mayors expresses its collective opinion on an issue of foreign policy. The last time the group did so was in 1971, when it called on the president and Congress to end the war in Vietnam. So it was significant that the nation's mayors, meeting in Baltimore over the weekend, voted overwhelming on Monday to urge President Obama to do the same in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the aim of redirecting the billions of dollars we are spending on those wars toward addressing the pressing problems facing America's cities today.

August has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the eight-year war in Afghanistan, and as the security situation continues to deteriorate amid charges of widespread fraud in last week's national elections there, the outcome of the conflict seems as uncertain as ever. Friday, a roadside bomb that killed a soldier brought to 45 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan this month, surpassing the previous record of 44 in July. Presently there are approximately 60,000 U.S. troops in the country, with 29,000 more expected to arrive by the end of the year.

Is there any way to look at the war in Afghanistan as anything but a mounting failure? I don't think so. The "metrics," as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would say, aren't looking good. This week, as the ninth anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan war was observed, we learned that the death of each Taliban fighter we battle costs at least $50 million. That's a conservative estimate. It could actually be $100 million. This figure came not from the Pentagon, which goes to great lengths to conceal such accounting, but from an enterprising reporter named Matthew Nasuti, who works for Afghanistan Press.

IT IS NOT too late for Washington to declare loud and clear that the Geneva Convention must be observed for all prisoners held by all parties in the war in Afghanistan. To refrain from doing so would be folly. The Taliban and al-Qaida probably have fought more determinedly since the murders of prisoners by the forces of Northern Alliance warlords in Mazar-e Sharif and Kunduz last month. Confidence of humane treatment would induce more surrenders and save lives on both sides. Afghanistan's recent traditions include mass murders of prisoners but also negotiations to avoid actual fighting.

Whatever the outcome of last week's Afghan elections - the results are due Sept. 17 - the cruel fact is that the Afghan war is a deadly trap. It makes no difference whether Hamid Karzai or his former foreign minister Abdallah Abdallah is declared the winner. Rather than pouring in more troops, the United States and its NATO allies should urgently seek an exit strategy from that unfortunate country. The war in Afghanistan has lasted eight years, with no end in sight. It has claimed 780 American lives and more than 200 British ones.

It's been eight years since Sept. 11, 2001, and we are still at war in Afghanistan and still have not captured Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar. Reconstruction on the site of the World Trade Center has only just begun. We still have not figured out how to handle combatants in the global war on terror in a way that is fully consistent with our values. We are not close to declaring victory, and sometimes it seems that we may never be. But on this anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon and in the skies over Pennsylvania, it's important to recall why we are fighting and what is at stake.

It is a cardinal rule of politics: Never murder your opponent when he's in the process of committing suicide. But sometimes, the opportunity is simply too good to pass up. Is that the case with President Barack Obama's failed effort to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to his hometown? Some Republican strategists warned, in the aftermath of the International Olympic Committee's shootdown of Chicago, that it would be a mistake to pile on. But they seemed to be in the minority. Republican National Chairman Michael S. Steele was only too pleased to rub it in, though he did it in a careful way. "While I am disappointed with the IOC's decision, I look forward to the president returning stateside so that he can refocus his efforts on the growing unemployment crisis that was highlighted by today's monthly jobs report," Steele said.

"The Hidden War: A Russian journalist's account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan," by Artyom Borovik, 288 pages, The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, N.Y., $19.95.THE HIDDEN War" in Afghanistan that Artyom Borovik writes about was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. And many of the voices that arise from his book sound very much like the voices of the Americans who fought in Vietnam.The Afghan war is collapsing and the Soviet Army is withdrawing when Borovik encounters a lieutenant colonel putting two wounded men on a plane for medical evacuation.

Bush at War, Bob Woodward, (Simon & Schuster) 352 pages, $28 With his occasional malapropisms, nervous laughter and goofy jokes, President Bush has been an easy mark for urban liberals and the intellectual elite. But the commander in chief we see in Bush at War is anything but fodder for late-night comedy routines. He's a real commander. Bush has a laser-like focus on the war on terror, in Bob Woodward's latest book, boring in on everything from war plans to public relations to diplomacy.

From The Baltimore Sun: Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway "expects Marines ... to be [in Afghanistan] until 2014 or 2015. " ("Top Marine: Afghan win may take 5 years," Aug. 28). In other words, Gen. Conway thinks we need five more years of spending $119 billion per year, not counting the interest – it's all borrowed – and not counting most of the future cost of treating our injured veterans. So he wants us to spend another $595 billion plus. And exactly what are the chances of success – what is the definition of success?

A new poll shows a substantial majority of Americans have resigned themselves to the reality of our nation's perpetual foreign wars. They don't like it, but they see it happening and know there is nothing they can do about it. The poll, conducted by Clarus Research Group, showed that 68 percent of us agree with idea that we won't either win or lose the war in Afghanistan, now eight years long, but will instead just remain there. The image of flies and flypaper again swirls in my head, just as it did at the time of the invasion of Iraq.

It is a cardinal rule of politics: Never murder your opponent when he's in the process of committing suicide. But sometimes, the opportunity is simply too good to pass up. Is that the case with President Barack Obama's failed effort to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to his hometown? Some Republican strategists warned, in the aftermath of the International Olympic Committee's shootdown of Chicago, that it would be a mistake to pile on. But they seemed to be in the minority. Republican National Chairman Michael S. Steele was only too pleased to rub it in, though he did it in a careful way. "While I am disappointed with the IOC's decision, I look forward to the president returning stateside so that he can refocus his efforts on the growing unemployment crisis that was highlighted by today's monthly jobs report," Steele said.

It's been eight years since Sept. 11, 2001, and we are still at war in Afghanistan and still have not captured Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar. Reconstruction on the site of the World Trade Center has only just begun. We still have not figured out how to handle combatants in the global war on terror in a way that is fully consistent with our values. We are not close to declaring victory, and sometimes it seems that we may never be. But on this anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon and in the skies over Pennsylvania, it's important to recall why we are fighting and what is at stake.

August has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the eight-year war in Afghanistan, and as the security situation continues to deteriorate amid charges of widespread fraud in last week's national elections there, the outcome of the conflict seems as uncertain as ever. Friday, a roadside bomb that killed a soldier brought to 45 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan this month, surpassing the previous record of 44 in July. Presently there are approximately 60,000 U.S. troops in the country, with 29,000 more expected to arrive by the end of the year.

Whatever the outcome of last week's Afghan elections - the results are due Sept. 17 - the cruel fact is that the Afghan war is a deadly trap. It makes no difference whether Hamid Karzai or his former foreign minister Abdallah Abdallah is declared the winner. Rather than pouring in more troops, the United States and its NATO allies should urgently seek an exit strategy from that unfortunate country. The war in Afghanistan has lasted eight years, with no end in sight. It has claimed 780 American lives and more than 200 British ones.

REGARDLESS of whether Kandahar falls soon by negotiation or later after fearful street-fighting, some objectives of the war in Afghanistan are coming into view. The Taliban is removed as the governing authority. Al-Qaida is on the run. Osama bin Laden may be found soon, or never. But the notion of a quick triumph is illusory. Fortified villages like Spin Boldak and such cave warren fortresses as Tora Bora may hold out for a long time. Neither will social peace come soon. The dominant position of the Northern Alliance on the ground bodes ill for sharing power gracefully with fragmented rivals.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 270 points yesterday as investors worried that a prolonged war in Afghanistan could push the U.S. economy into an even deeper downturn - dimming hopes that corporate profits and stock prices will surge anytime soon. The sell-off followed a week in which the Dow rose 4 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 rose 3 percent and the Nasdaq composite index climbed 6 percent. "This is not a `buy-and-hold' market anymore," said Morry A. Zolet, senior vice president of investments at Salomon Smith Barney in Lutherville.

Monday marks the seventh Memorial Day since the United States invaded Iraq and the eighth since American troops went to war in Afghanistan. At latest count, 4,299 American servicemen and women had lost their lives in Iraq, and another 686 had died in Afghanistan. Since the last Memorial Day, nine Marylanders have been killed in those two wars, four in Iraq and five in Afghanistan. Two of them were just teenagers. Pvt. Charles Yi Barnett, 19, of Bel Air, was a sweet kid, a mama's boy, who joined the Army shortly after turning 18. His family said he wanted to better himself and go to college in a few years.

As members of Congress return from Thanksgiving recess next week, they will have a list of unfinished business to confront, most pressing of which will be approving funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While there remains a great deal to debate in regard to funding the war in Iraq, no such disagreement exists in supporting the mission in Afghanistan. Despite this fact, the Bush administration demands that Congress appropriate war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan collectively - as if they were the same war. This poses a grave dilemma.