Monday, December 13, 2004
The Taliban throw in their towels
The Christian Science Monitor, which has consistently had the most intrepid American reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has a story in tomorrow's edition about the progressive weakening of the Taliban.
Nine months ago, when Richard Clarke and Michael Scheuer were putting the finishing touches on Against All Enemies and Imperial Hubris, respectively, it was an article of faith among President Bush's detractors that the war in Afghanistan was a strategic defeat for the United States. Since then, the tide has turned. Against virtually all conventional wisdom (including the partisan revisionism of John Kerry), the Bush Administration has shown great subtlety in Afghanistan and avoided many of the mistakes of the invaders of old. So far, we have destroyed the only regime in the world that is sufficiently Islamist for Osama bin Laden's caliphite restoration and deprived al Qaeda of its only open and notorious base, and we have done it without unleashing the Afghanis' notorious xenophobia. Afghanistan may yet turn into an American defeat, but today it looks at as much like a victory as a campaign in Afghanistan ever could.
For more on the new Afghanistan, see the seventh installment of Arthur Chrenkoff's "Good news from Afghanistan" series here.
With another frigid winter setting in, and a new US offensive being launched this week, this weary Taliban fighter says he's ready to come in from the cold.
"If the government will let us peacefully return to our villages and our children, we will come," he says. "We are tired living on the run in these snowy mountains."
His fellow tribesman, Sarwar Akhund, goes one step further: Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and terror kingpin Osama bin Laden, he charges, tricked followers like him into believing they were fighting a holy war against infidels, "when really they just wanted to consolidate their own seats of power." If allowed back into society, he pledges to "do whatever I can" to help kill or capture the fugitive leaders.
Nine months ago, when Richard Clarke and Michael Scheuer were putting the finishing touches on Against All Enemies and Imperial Hubris, respectively, it was an article of faith among President Bush's detractors that the war in Afghanistan was a strategic defeat for the United States. Since then, the tide has turned. Against virtually all conventional wisdom (including the partisan revisionism of John Kerry), the Bush Administration has shown great subtlety in Afghanistan and avoided many of the mistakes of the invaders of old. So far, we have destroyed the only regime in the world that is sufficiently Islamist for Osama bin Laden's caliphite restoration and deprived al Qaeda of its only open and notorious base, and we have done it without unleashing the Afghanis' notorious xenophobia. Afghanistan may yet turn into an American defeat, but today it looks at as much like a victory as a campaign in Afghanistan ever could.
For more on the new Afghanistan, see the seventh installment of Arthur Chrenkoff's "Good news from Afghanistan" series here.
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