As for Odierno being the intellectual father of some overarching strategy, that’s where Ricks really jumps the shark. It’s like the Fonze really being Albert Einstein in disguise only less believable.

Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has no real source of legitmate income, with the opium trade being how a big chunk of the population puts food on the table. So to accomplish the goal of having a non-criminal enterprise in place to help stabilize the country – with the stabilization being for the US’ own interests of national security – you need to have some kind of help.

In addition to the promises made, there has also been a) the demonstrated capacity of the US to devote large military resources to the country and to use those resources to engage in activities that routinely kill civilians and b) a great deal of US “taking credit for” ALREADY providing aid and the Afghans aren’t seeing it, which makes them even more frustrated.

It’s a bit dated, but this article by Ann Jones (which I am finding through google as a reprint at TomDispatch) helps to explain the frustration in the nation over phantom aid, creating projects that only employ non-Iraqis, bringing in prostritution and exploiting the population via unreasonable charges and tolls and backing criminals in the name of “security” that is never created, etc. Then add on the continued killings of civilans and the outright lies circulated as propaganda about those killings, and yeah, I think they do feel we owe something. YMMV, but listen to Chayes and read the Jones article and factor them in to your ultimate impressions and decisions.

Then you might want to also look into information such as the info on Dostum, who Afghans have wanted to pursue for war crimes on more than one occasion, but who has been protected by the US. One of the cases that the Obama administration will be “defending” is one brought by survivors of an encounter with Dostum, who the US sent to GITMO and then (I’ll use “coerced” but I’m thinking tortured) coerced false confessions that they were the men in a picture with Bin Laden. In any event, while we were paying people like Dostum cash bounties for anyone they turned over that they said was Taliban or al-Qaeda, Dostum put a few hundred people he rounded up in sealed containers, shipping them like goods for cash. They began suffocating to death and as they screamed, he had people fire directly into the containers, killing some of those inside from gunfire. Only 20 or so survived, and of those the US decided that the 4 who were British and might have quite a tale to tell about the hundreds killed in the sealed container – well, those guys had to go to GITMO and something had to be gotten out of them in confessions. And now – well, Dostum had the container buried initially, but as the US case has been going forward and it looked like the US might be electing someone who cared about war crimes (kind of laughable now, but still, he thought it then) Dostum has been digging up and destroying the evidence from the container killings, while US troops stand back and let him.

Hard to understand why the Afghans think we owe them?

Back to the Jones article for a few snips:

Instead of pressing for peace negotiations among rival Afghan parties, the victorious Americans handed power to Islamists and militia commanders who had served as America’s stand-in soldiers in its Afghan proxy war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Then the Bush administration staged elections for these candidates and touted the result as democracy. It also confined an International Security Assistance Force, made up largely of European troops, to the capital, creating an island of safety for the government, while dispatching warlords of its choice to hunt for Osama bin Laden in the countryside.

She touches on “phantom aid” and how pledges of aid are often “met” by paying for US based consultants to hand out opinions, and then brings in a specific discussion on the “gift from the US” a road that the US promised to Afghanistan.

…even though other international companies had been ready to rebuild the highway for $250,000 per kilometer, the U.S.-based Louis Berger Group got the job at $700,000 per kilometer — of which there are 389. Why? The standard American answer is that Americans do better work — though not Berger which, at the time, was already years behind on another $665 million contract to build Afghan schools. Berger subcontracted to Turkish and Indian companies to build the narrow, two-lane, shoulderless highway at a final cost of about $1 million per mile; and anyone who travels it today can see that it is already falling apart.
…
Former Minister of Planning Ramazan Bashardost complained that when it came to building roads, the Taliban had done a better job; and he too asked, “Where did the money go?” Now, in a move certain to tank President Karzai’s approval ratings and further endanger U.S. and NATO troops in the area, the Bush administration has pressured his government to turn this “gift of the people of the United States” into a toll road, charging each driver $20 for a road-use permit valid for one month. In this way, according to American experts providing highly paid technical assistance, Afghanistan can collect $30 million annually from its impoverished citizens and thereby decrease the foreign aid “burden” on the United States.
…At one end of the infamous highway, in Kabul, Afghans complain about the fancy restaurants where those experts, technicians, and other foreigners gather, men and women together, to drink alcohol, carry on, and plunge half-naked into swimming pools. They object to the brothels — eighty of them by 2005 — that house women trafficked in to serve the “needs” of foreign men. They complain that half the capital city still lies in ruins, that many people still live in tents, that thousands can’t find jobs, that children go hungry, that schools and hospitals are overcrowded, that women in tattered burqas still beg in the streets and turn to prostitution, that children are kidnapped and sold into slavery or murdered for their kidneys or eyes. They wonder where the promised aid money went and what the puppet government can possibly do to make things better.

maybe Jack Keane was off-planet that week

and as an off-topic smiler, look at this poll number:

A Gallup poll released today shows Obama with 67% support, while the Republicans in Congress have only 31% approval and a staggering 58% disapproval.

I’m wondering if the repuglitards have figured out who’s being played here …

Let me define it for him…sorry.

1) the constitution above all else.
2) Provide universal health care…socialized medicine. This would end the debt that has frozen and destroyed so many American’s credit and assets.
3) Develop alternatives to oil, so that the middle east problems have less power to destroy our economy and so they have less control over us.
4) stop the banking fraud as it will restore the economy as well.
5) Develop a new plan and strategy with the Middle East based on oil independence and detachment from the middle east. So we can take on a humanitarian role instead of needy, greedy dependency that makes us violate our values and look like a whole country of pathological co-dependents.

Now if his behaviors would simply follow those values of which he should be unwavering…he could reach across the aisle and be as nicey, nicey as he wants to be. Unfortunately right now he is exhibiting the signs of symptoms of co-dependency in that he is making his decisions based on their reactions and his fears about what they might do next. That causes inconsistent policy, it causes us to violate our values and it give THEM way too much power to manipulate the country with.

Intervention!!!