Critics Blast Trump on Afghanistan Policy – Ignore Why It’s a Lose-Lose Situation
President Donald Trump inherited a foreign and domestic policy mess from Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah. But, both of these men inherited a mess involving Afghanistan.
In fact, the American involvement in Afghanistan reaches back to 1980.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
When Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson (2nd District) read an Associated Press article referring to Afghan refugees, he used his seat on the Defense Appropriations committee “to secretly steer billions of dollars to Afghan rebels resisting Soviet occupation.”
Wilson became the secret patron of the largest covert operation in Central Intelligence Agency history. Through his use of “backroom deals,” Wilson was able to secure billions of dollars of taxpayer money to funnel to the Afghan rebels, known as the mujahedeen, fighting Russia.
By the time of Russian troop withdrawal in 1989, the appropriation for Afghanistan reached $750 million dollars per year.
In fact, CIA officials kept the mujahedeen going in order to “suck the Soviet Union into a Vietnamese quagmire,” prior to Soviet troops entering Afghanistan.
Wilson was congratulated on his victory by Pakistani General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq.
The Soviet Union collapsed two years later.
But, what Wilson did covertly with taxpayer money, along with CIA aid, has left the US deeply involved in Afghanistan – monetarily and militarily.
What does this have to do with the Trump presidency?
The question that should be asked of critics and experts alike is “why has 37 years of involvement in Afghanistan not resulted in a nation by now?”
Breitbart reported:
In his announcement of the new strategy on Monday for Afghanistan, Trump said “We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.” He also said the U.S. would “continue its support for the Afghan government and the Afghan military.”
Experts say that without “nation-building” – insofar as it means things like helping Afghanistan pull off democratic elections – there will be no Afghan government or Afghan military to support.
Andrew Wilder, vice president of Asia programs at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), pointed to the upcoming Afghan presidential elections in 2019. The last election in 2014 required heavy U.S. involvement.
“In 2019 we scheduled to have the next round of presidential elections in Afghanistan. If those aren’t held, we have a big crisis on our hands,” Wilder said.
“If we don’t end up with a legitimate election resulting in an accepted outcome, well, then, there are fundamental questions of who’s going to control the Afghan National Security Forces that we’ve put tens of billions of dollars into developing,” he said at a roundtable for reporters on Tuesday.
Tens of billions of dollars stolen from the American taxpayer for a “covert CIA operation” by a Congressman dubbed “Good Time Charlie”, using his seat on the Defense Appropriations committee, after reading about the plight of the Afghans; but, more than likely, his involvement possibly had something to do with women. Pardon the digression.
Wilder stated that without a successful election, a return to anarchy could befall Afghanistan so “where we actually do need to take things like nation building – if by that you mean the fundamentals of democracy which are what are helping hold Afghanistan together now.”
Everyone should ask Wilder what he’s been smoking and drinking so it can be given to the leftist liberals ensuring that whatever conservative, constitutionalists say they will nod their head.
Afghanistan is hardly being held together by “the fundamentals of democracy.”
What is holding that fractured piece of territory together is US military troops, troops guarding poppy fields, and the CIA.
After 37 years of US involvement, Afghanistan is no closer to having a cohesive government, much less a democracy, because of splintered groups and the religion of Islam.
Breitbart continued:
Scott Worden, director of Afghanistan and Central Asia Programs at USIP, said that, on one hand, Trump wants to protect the U.S. from terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, but on the other, 30 years of non-democratic institutions in Afghanistan have led to more violence.
“Our goal is not to send our forces over to fight for building democracy,” he said. “However, stable governance and democracy may well be — and I would argue is — an essential component to achieving our end of an end to a terrorist threat.”
Belquis Ahmadi, a senior program officer as USIP, said it is now “up to the Afghans to address the needs of its people.”
Wilder agreed that the Afghan government has to make tough decisions in terms of fighting corruption, which is going to be “fundamental if we’re actually going to have success in Afghanistan” in terms of stability and a functioning Afghan state.
But, he said, they continue to need U.S. support in doing so.
“We’ve put a lot of effort into actually helping support the Afghan state and so the idea that we’re not there to build democracies and things like that I find a little bit worrying because, actually, that’s kind of what we’ve done,” Wilder said.
Afghanistan, like so many other US involvements in the Middle East, Libya, and Egypt, has become a lose-lose situation for any president – Democrat or Republican.
Any intervention taken causes the US to lose and critics to declare victory should a president’s intervention fail.
In a simple historical context, the Soviet Union entered Afghanistan to assist the communist government against a growing insurgency.
Moreover, the Soviet Union had concerns about the security along the border with Afghanistan because of the mujahedeen.
If the US had not become involved in Afghanistan, the nation would have remained a Soviet problem until its collapse in 1991.
The mujahedeen secured the capital of Kabul after the Soviets withdrew because the war had become a stalemate and no longer worth the cost.
The differing mujahedeen factions could not decide on how to “share power,” which led to civil war. Enter the Taliban from refugee camps in Pakistan.
By 1996, the Taliban reached Kabul and secured much of the rest of Afghanistan by 1998.
It was in 2001 that the US entered Afghanistan to fight the Taliban.
Underlying all of this political hoo hah and foreign strategy for developing a government in Afghanistan is one little bitty problem that no one acknowledges – Islam.
The “religion of pieces” believes the only government possible is one of Sharia Law, which is anathema to Democracy, freedom, liberty, and individual inherent rights.
It matters not who is in Afghanistan – Soviet Union or the united States, the outcome would be the same where trying to build a government based in anything other than Shari’a will fail.
Moreover, with the differing sects of Islam and each wanting power to govern according to their interpretation of the Qu’ran, teachings of the pedophile rapist thief, and Sharia, in-fighting will continue until one sect emerges victorious.
It won’t be a nation of democracy but an Islamic nation of Sharia.
The corruption that needs to be fought in Afghanistan is Islam.
However, with a population almost totally Muslim, it is unlikely corruption will be rooted out of the desert territory.
Furthermore, part of the corruption in Afghanistan revolves around the poppy fields and the CIA’s use of American troops to secure their cash crop of opium to fund their secret operations.
Experts and critics alike ignore some inconvenient facts when it comes to Afghanistan and refuse to identify the true reason for that disjointed territory to form a cohesive government.
For these individuals, it is easier to sit back and fault the differing presidents for failed foreign policy in Afghanistan when the truth is all foreign policy in Afghanistan will fail because of Islam.
Now, the government uses the “terrorism” angle to continue to push a lose-lose proposition in Afghanistan for citizen support while keeping hidden certain “covert” operations benefitting no one but the CIA.
Regardless of who is president, the CIA plan to trap the Soviets in an Afghanistan debacle backfired, turning it into another “Vietnam quagmire” for the united States.
So much for “experts” and “central intelligence.”
