NBC news has run reports from Richard Engel in Afghanistan for the last couple of nights and they are unbelievable. I chose that word - unbelievable - because to be watching US soldiers in the 21st century spray anti-flea spray all over their legs, eat food out of a bag, discuss going without showers for months on end and then use a toilet which looks to be nothing more than a hole in the ground - is completely unbelievable.
Yes, yes, yes, I know that conditions in a war zone are intense and unsanitary and ugly. Except - this is the 21ST FREAKING CENTURY. We are not in a declared war with Afghanistan. We aren't even in some lame ass police action. What we are though, in the vaunted "War on Terror" is stuck in the absolute ends of the earth where every night the soldiers Engel was with shoot at Taliban/Al Qaeda/Fill-In-The-Blank-Here Bad Guys, who they can not see but manage to shoot at them with abandon as they are in a handy dandy fort-like structure which as far as I can tell they are supposed to defend and prevent the bad guys from capturing. Bullets come in and bullets go out. When there are no bullets coming in, the soldiers clean their continuously sand jammed weapons, play cards and eat really gross food.
This is your democracy being kept safe.
The people who live in these mountains are not so happy about having war brought to their doorstep. And before you declare them the enemy for protecting the bad guys consider that it doesn't look like they have a clue who the good guys or the bad guys are. In other words, no evidence of satellite tv, wi fi hookups or even radios. I can't stress enough how remote this location is. It reminded me of some planet at the edges of universe that suddenly finds itself a mini ground zero in an inter-galactic war between two sides it had barely heard of. These people are just trying to survive, I doubt the issues of terror and freedom have too much weight to them against food and water.
But they're not even the point. Here we are in 2008 in Afghanistan and if you squint your eyes, if you turn down the sound, you would see the hills of Korea in 1951 or the jungles of Vietnam in 1965 or some remote Pacific Island in 1943. In other words, you would see some other place in another time that no one can name today, that does not have any significance to life today.
That could just as easily have never existed.
What will we win if we hold this little fort in Afghanistan? What is our victory if all those guys - those invisible never seen even in the distance guys - are captured or killed? Won't more appear at some other remote location? Won't more of them find more of us? Am I the only one thinking these thoughts?
I've been reading about Afghanistan for a long time - from the first instance I read about the "Great Game". The best book on modern war in Afghanistan I have read is Artyom Borovik's The Hidden War. (His personal story is even more compelling then his coverage of the Soviet Invasion.) It is beyond my comprehension that anyone in the US military could think that invading Afghanistan would not devolve into a quagmire of epic proportions after reading this book. Say what you want about Russia, but they're no neophytes when it comes to war and Afghanistan nearly broke their army. From where I'm sitting now, it is easy to understand why.
I also found Said Hyder Akbar's Come Back to Afghanistan an excellent read when it comes to trying to understand the political situation in the country both before and after the Taliban. Akbar's father fled the Taliban and then returned under Hamid Karzai to work for the government. Even as Afghanis they find themselves struggling to make a difference, and overwhelmed by the competing goals of everyone (both Afghani and American) involved in the country's development.
There are a lot of excellent books about both war and peace in Afghanistan and the prosecution of our war (and attempts at nation resurrection - not building). The need to understand a country before we invade; the need to have some sense of its history and struggles, is crucial I think to obtaining any sort of victory on any level. There are no hills to capture in Afghanistan, no lines to get beyond, no bunkers to destroy. Not even any generals to capture and kill. This is a war, yet again, for the hearts and minds of the people. We keep finding ourselves here even as we yearn for those battles and victories of old. (Or at least the way we mythologize those wars of old.) We keep finding ourselves in the same place and I can't help but think that while some wars may indeed be unavoidable (sigh) at the very least we should be educated enough to know what we are trying to accomplish before we get there.
On a hilltop in the middle of nowhere we have soldiers firing in the dark. They don't know what they are aiming for and even less, know who is trying to kill them. They just keep firing and waiting for someone to tell them it is finally their turn to go home. That's 21st century warfare folks and it is flat out unbelievable.
[Post pic: Scouts from 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), pull overwatch during Operation Destined Strike while 2nd Platoon, Able Company searches a village below the Chowkay Valley in Kunar Province, Afghanistan via soldiers media center. Second pic is a screen shot from Engel's report on Oct 22.]
