A big story in today's
New York Times (byline is David Rohde and James Risen) describes a new CIA assessment of the situation in Afghanistan that is damning for President George W. Bush and his famously inept administration, and issuing "increasingly dire warnings" about the situation there.
The Times notes that Bush cut funding for the Afghan war by 30 percent over the past year. Bush also "proposed the withdrawal of up to 3,000 American troops. At least 143 American and NATO troops have been killed in the Taliban resurgence this year, 55 more than died in all of 2005, and the planned withdrawal was canceled."
The debacle in Iraq is getting all the headlines, but this administration's famous detour on its self-declared "war on terror" to take out Saddam (now on the verge of execution himself), continues to weaken allied positions in Afghanistan, leaving Bush-picked Afghan leader Hamid Karzai "significantly weakened" and widely unpopular, according to "American officials". Meanwhile, the Taliban grows in influence.
According to the
Times article:
The assessment found that Mr. Karzai's government and security forces continued to struggle to exert authority beyond Kabul, said a senior American official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The assessment also found that increasing numbers of Afghans viewed Mr. Karzai's government as corrupt, failing to deliver promised reconstruction and too weak to protect the country from rising Taliban attacks....
Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in a recent interview that the United States faced "stark choices" in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take "multiple years" and "multiple billions."
"We're going to have to stay at it," he said. "Or we're going to fail and the country will fall apart again."
The Bush spokesman -- this time it was Gordon Johndroe for the National Security Council -- lauded the "progress" the Bush administration has made in Afghanistan the last five years. Meanwhile, the anonymous senior official talking to the Times, and likely leaking the CIA Afghan review, decried the failure to train or reform the police, widely seen as corrupt. In addition, the rising tide of suicide bombings, previously little known in this mountainous tribalized country, is having a profoundly negative psychological effect. Meanwhile, the Taliban continue to operate with near impunity from their Pakistani strongholds.
The GOP must be aware of the looming disaster in Afghanistan, for it was only a few weeks back that Senate GOP leader Bill Frist was suggesting the U.S. capitulate and bring the Taliban back into the Afghan government. The same Taliban implicated in 9/11, harboring Bin Laden in 2001. Where were the talking bubble heads at Fox at this mention of capitulation and near-treason?
George W. Bush is sometimes satirized as the Great Decider; but what he is is the Great Failure. The Times article is peppered with descriptions of just how Bush has failed:
"The ability to project out into the countryside, perceptions of corruption in the government," said the official, listing Afghan complaints. "The failure to deliver the services"....
"We're going to have to stay at it," he said. "Or we're going to fail and the country will fall apart again."
If this election is going to be a referendum on Bush and his policies, then his full record of failure must be blazoned across the country. Bush's blather in these last days about "values" is a tepid and weak response to the massive evidence gathered that judges him, in the court of history, as the greatest failure as a president the United States has ever had. And things in this country must change -- fast -- if he is not to bring us and the world down with him.