Like Vietnam, we need to get out

I've been reading several articles in the last few days about Afghanistan and the Afghanistan war the previous administration got us into.

It seems everyone is talking, lately, about our status there now and what, exactly, we should be doing in the short- and long-term.

I think if we consider a few basic statistics and some raw, hard data about Afghanistan that we can see the only sensible thing to do is, as I said above, treat it like Vietnam and get the hell out and as soon as possible.

The following information comes from Frank Rich's article in The New York Times today:

--"the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones";

--"American intelligence officials now say that 'there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior Al Qaeda members'”;

--"we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one";

--we cannot "score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them", describing Afghanistan;

--"The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year";

--"The existing Afghan “army” is small, illiterate, impoverished and as factionalized as the government;"

--"Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention." Thinking that we've had "success" in Iraq is virtually completely unsupportable in my view and many others and even if you do think we've been "successful", the war and difficulties we face in Afghanistan are far more vast and troubling than Iraq;

This is the big one, for me:

--"Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area";

This all, for me, brings up the following questions which Mr. Rich wrote of today:

--Why are we dealing and working with Hamid Karzai who is known to be part of greedy, corrupt and graft-laden government that is benefitting mightily from overseeing this country, which is in such a mess? and

--Why are we doing anything but writing scenarios to get out of Afghanistan as quickly, safely and intelligently as possible, given even these few facts, above, other than to "save face" for America?

--Are we too proud to do the right thing for our soldiers and our country?

The Soviets had to do it--and did--and somehow survived. If it's the right thing--in this case, withdrawing from Afghanistan, you just do it, eventually.


Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11rich.html?th&emc=th

Addendum:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/143097/the_human_cost_of_war%3A_the_images_the_corporate_media_doesn%27t_want_you_to_see/