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EDITORIALS: Rotten Deals Bound to Prolong War
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Asia Times Online

Two months after September 11 and five weeks after the first shots in retaliation were fired in anger, chin-up Washington opinion - by some counts, informed and sophisticated - has it that the war on terror is "meeting targets". As those targets have not been revealed, we can't dispute such claims. But if what's been accomplished to date has accomplished US and allied war planners' goals, we pity their strategic vision and deplore their tactical acumen.

A just and justifiable war to eradicate global terrorist capabilities and punish or end regimes and states helping to sustain them has in effect been reduced to a war against a government, with much "collateral damage" to the people of one of the poorest countries on earth - and even that's going badly enough for there to be no early end in sight. The problem, as can be expected, is politics.

On the weekend, after Taliban forces had retreated from Mazar-e-Sharif and were apparently relinquishing more territory to the Northern Alliance on the road down to the Afghan capital of Kabul, the US government got nervous. "We will encourage our friends to head south ... but not into the city of Kabul itself," said US President Bush at a joint news conference with visiting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday. Musharraf was quick to agree. "If they [Northern Alliance forces] do [enter Kabul], we'll see the same kind of atrocities being perpetuated against the people there" as after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan more than a decade ago, he said.
(More: Atimes.com News Source)
2001 © Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

Dan