America's Exalted Capacity For Murder

America's exalted capacity for murder
The west's war now stretches from Waziristan to Connecticut. There will be no victors in this desert of bewilderment
By Pankaj Mishra | Guardian.co.UK

Obama has declared that American forces will start withdrawing from Afghanistan in July next year, by which time they will have been fighting there for longer than they did in Vietnam. It will be politically expedient for him to wind down the war and bring a majority of soldiers home before the next presidential election in 2012.The timetable depends entirely on success in defeating or bribing the Taliban into passivity, which also makes it absurdly impractical. For the Taliban won't be subjugated – not even with the much bigger military commitment that the US cannot presently afford. Nor will they be inclined to negotiate with an adversary that has all but lost – not at least while they are still being hunted down by Nato, which makes Karzai's grand multimillion-dollar strategy for reconciliation with the Taliban appear yet another self-enrichment scheme.

What does the new British government make of its war in Afghanistan? While we await a clear statement, events in the blighted country hurtle with their own menacing momentum towards the endgame. Last week in Washington Barack Obama tried to appease his increasingly intransigent Afghan ally, Hamid Karzai, who had recently threatened to join the Taliban. Laden with reassurances and promises of some more cash, the Afghan president had barely arrived back in Kabul when the Taliban attacked a Nato convoy in the city. Within 24 hours of the suicide attack, which pushed the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 1,000, the Taliban assaulted the American base at Bagram. They were also reportedly in control of Marja in Helmand province, three months after being driven out by Nato and Afghan soldiers in a much-touted military offensive.

Another ambitious military campaign looms this summer, this time in Kandahar; and plenty of embedded journalists will be at hand to report on thrilling battles with, and early successes against, a treacherous enemy. But the periodic trumpets of war in Afghanistan increasingly fail to drown out the dangerously deepening confusion at the heart of western strategy, especially as every few months a new enemy announces itself on an arc now expanding from Waziristan to Connecticut. Read more.