Leading up to Election, U.S. hopefuls mince words on Afghanistan

By Li Hongmei, Special to Sina English

The Pentagon will downsize the US contingent in Afghanistan to 68,000 by the end of next month, and plans to complete the withdrawal by the end of 2014.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed on Tuesday that the US would stick to the pullout timetable despite the continuing tensions in Afghanistan. Panetta said the Afghan military was already experienced enough to singlehandedly ensure domestic security.

Meanwhile, the combat phase of the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan is still underway.

The New Yorker magazine on Monday published an article by Dexter Filkins, a journalist covering Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, titled "Have Obama and Romney Forgotten Afghanistan?" The fact that attracts the author's attention is almost total silence both presidential candidates keep on the issue of Afghanistan.

"You can make your own guesses about why the candidates have said so little about Afghanistan - their positions are virtually identical, the economy is more important, etc." writes Dexter Filkins and goes on to say, " My own guess: neither of them knows what to do about the place. In a mere twenty-eight months, the United States is scheduled to stop fighting, and every day brings new evidence that the Afghan state that is supposed to take over is a failing, decrepit enterprise."

He further on looks into the recent developments in Afghanistan that have been intensively covered by the Voice of Russia, paying utmost attention to the recent corruption scandals involving three ministers in Hamid Karzai's government, especially the finance minister Omar Zakhilwal, who made a million-worth fortune while being a public servant in a war-torn and badly impoverished country.

The particular details about Omar Zakhilwal may be interesting in themselves, but there is hardly any time or space to repeat Filkins' story. What really matters is the conclusion the author comes to.

"Why does all this matter to American voters?" asks Filkins. "Look at it this way: after eleven years, more than four-hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we’ve built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own - even when we’re there."

Perhaps, The Afghan adventure initiated eleven years ago by George W. Bush was doomed from the very beginning. For centuries, no outside force has ever been able to impose its rule on Afghans, and the Soviets were the last to know that.

Still, the US leadership had no intention to learn from other people's mistakes and preferred to commit their own. The result is there - a total chaos in the country, the most incompetent and corrupt governance, second in corruption only to Somalia which has no governance at all, mass defections of US and NATO-trained soldiers and policemen who repeatedly turn their arms against their mentors, and the only force in Afghanistan seemingly capable to achieve at least relative stability is the one the West took all the pains to fight against, the Taliban.

Now, the question is, is it something that happened in spite of the U.S.-led operation or something that the U.S. strategists really had in mind when they started the war? If the former is true, then the only plausible way for both the incumbent president and the challenger is to acknowledge the defeat. This is something no one in the American establishment is ready to do. But maybe the truth lies in the latter supposition, and the only aim the West pursued in Afghanistan was exactly what we see in today's Afghanistan - a situation that will enable the US to continue fishing in the troubled waters for times immeasurable? But that means that the whole ideological entourage - human rights, anti-terrorist war, bringing democracy to "half devil and half child", etc. - was nothing more than just a smokescreen. Again, this is something no one would admit.

So, the silence surrounding the Afghan war seems quite natural. In fact, speaking up would be a lose - lose situation for either of the contenders.

Looking straight into the eyes of the reality in today's Afghanistan may be too painful an experience for the majority of the American public that has only recently gotten over (if it has) the "Vietnam syndrome". Well, maybe the number of American casualties in Afghanistan, due to the advance in technology of warfare and the lack of aid from other superpowers (in fact, the lack of other superpowers), is less than it was in Vietnam. But that hardly diminishes the devastating effect of the war. And this is the true reason why neither of the major candidates is ready to open the floodgates for the truth to dawn on the American public.

So, no wonder both keep mum and will continue to do so.