After wasting billions, we can finally say good riddance to Bush’s fantasy.
On the trip over to the Hague conference on Afghanistan, Secretary of State Clinton confirmed that GWOT, the “Global War on Terror” was no more. In fact, it never did exist in any real way except as a fantasy for the war happy zealots who have been in charge for eight long years.
I imagine that initially they thought they could pull the same rabbit out of a global hat that Bush 41 did and convince the rest of the world to pay for our invasion of another country. Powell’s embarassing rejection by the United Nations put an end to that kind of thinking. Iraq had not invaded another country first this time and the rest of the world saw through Bush’s half done speculation.
A few countries did make an effort. There was great sympathy for 9/11 around the world just as there was rage and sorrow here. If Bush had made the appropriate response – the response finally being made now by Obama – there might have been actual global support. Why Tony Blair did what he did will always be a mystery to me. But for the most part, only countries that the U.S. could pay or bully even made a token gesture to support Bush’s GWOT.
Clinton put it in stark terms. According to the Washington Post Clinton said, “For those of you who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, you have seen with your own eyes that a lot of these aid programs don’t work. There are so many problems with them. There are problems of design, there are problems of staffing, there are problems of implementation, there are problems of accountability. You just go down the line.”
Clinton called the amount of money spent without results “heartbreaking.”
Yeah … and economy breaking too. Who can doubt that if we hadn’t been pounding all this money down two middle east ratholes simultaneously, we might not be in the economic mess we’re in now.
It is not clear what Obama plans for Afghanistan. At the same time Clinton is making the comments you quote she is also asking for more money — US and foreign — for rebuilding the economy and infrastructure in Afghanistan. It looks like they plan on pouring more money down at least one rathole. Obama is not pretending that we are not going to create a cradle of democray in Afghanistan — which is good.
I’m not sure that the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan has much to do with getting us into the current economic mess. The huge debt accumulated in the two wars witll make it tougher to fix our economic problems.
You’re right that there’s not much difference in the Afghanistan policy in the view from this side … except that it will cost us more money and more soldiers. I have mixed feelings about that too. A lot of us on the left do. But I have always believed that the Afghanistan was justified and Iraq was not. At this point, I’m willing to trust the man we elected.
What we’re being told is that the money and men will simply be used very differently, and that this time they’ll get the job done. Since political and religious orthodoxy was the primary qualification for a job in the Bush administration, I can see where that case can be made. As noted previously, Obama has kept on Republican Gates because he’s getting the job done. (And Gates has shown himself more than willing to fire generals who don’t get the job done. Two Air Force generals lost their job when a nuclear weapon was simply flown across the US without proper authorization last year.)
The main point I’m stressing here is that Obama (and Clinton … who appears to be working well in partnership with Obama now) are telling the truth a lot more than Bush ever did. GWOT was never real. They’re not pretending that it ever was.